Sputnik Stunned the World, and Its Rocket Scared the Pentagon
- From: rst0wxyz <rst0wxyz@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:42:35 -0700
I still can remember that night very well. We went to a late night
movie. By the time the movie ended at about 1 or 1:30 am, we came out
of the theater, there was a young boy selling newspaper, with a big,
big one-word headline: SPUTNIK
http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/10/sputnik_anniversary
Sputnik Stunned the World, and Its Rocket Scared the Pentagon
By Robert Lemos 10.03.07 | 12:00 AM
The standard Sputnik story goes like this: It was the launch of this
metal ball that forced the United States to elevate the pursuit of
science. But that's not quite true.
Technically speaking, Sputnik was no more sophisticated than a cheap
transmitter from Radio Shack attached to 120 pounds of batteries. It
was the R-7 launch vehicle that scared the pants off the U.S.
military. The Soviets proved they not only had a rocket with precise
guidance systems, but one that could launch a heavier payload than
anything the Americans had.
The launch system on Oct. 4, 1957, was a one-shot deal. It was preset
before takeoff and it had no navigational thrusters, so its trajectory
could not change during flight. The Russians had to aim straight.
Despite its apparent simplicity, the impact of the R-7 rocket cannot
be understated. Sputnik was the first satellite humans launched into
orbit, and it stunned the public.
"In being beaten so publicly by what we then regarded as a peasant
nation, a nation whose totalitarian government embraced a set of
values abhorrent to nearly all Americans, we felt that we were falling
behind in our much-vaunted technical know-how and industrial
capability," said NASA head Michael Griffin at the Space 2007
conference in September. "The small metal orb beeping overhead,
visible in the clear fall sky to anyone who looked -- and nearly
everyone did -- reminded us of this."
On Thursday, the space industry celebrates the 50th anniversary of the
Sputnik launch, an event that ignited the space race and resulted in
the United States reaching the moon 12 years later. Sputnik may have
been simply built, the impact of its flight was immense, inspiring not
only a whole generation of engineers, but the entire U.S. nation, to
aim for space.
Prior to Sputnik's launch, the R-7 -- originally an intercontinental
ballistic missile -- had twice been tested successfully. Both times,
however, the heat shield failed upon re-entry, destroying the
missile's payload: a dummy warhead.
In addition to precision, the R-7 had to have the muscle to reach
orbit. The 184-pound Sputnik was small in comparison to the bus-sized
communications satellites propelled into orbit today, but for its
time, it was large. The metal moon weighed eight times as much as the
device the United States planned to put into space.
By the time the United States had launched 20 pounds into orbit, the
Russians had already launched Sputnik 2, at 1,118 pounds, more than 50
times as much.
Even a month before the Sputnik launch, many of the military,
political and academic leaders in the Soviet Union saw no merit in
putting such a rudimentary artificial moon above the Earth.
But the maverick bunch of engineers who built Sputnik predicted its
political impact. In the Cold War mentality that took hold following
World War II, Sputnik had a purpose: to show Washington that Moscow
had a lead in the arms race and the technical wherewithal to face up
to the United States.
"The Soviet Union must be first," Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, chief
designer of the Soviet missile program and the chief proponent of
sending Sputnik into orbit, told dissenters the month before the
satellite's launch, according to Matthew Brzezinski's book Red Moon
Rising.
In fact, Korolov didn't include much scientific apparatus besides the
radio transmitters on Sputnik, precisely because he wanted to devote
the satellite's weight allowance to making sure the redundant radio
signals were strong enough to be heard by any ham radio operator.
Sputnik consisted of three silver-zinc accumulators, two D-200 radio
transmitters, pressure and temperature transmitters, and a DTK-34
temperature-control system. This was contained within a polished,
aluminum-alloy sphere pressurized with nitrogen gas and outfitted with
whip-like antennas.
Its designers named it "PS-1", from prostreishy sputnik, Russian for
"simple satellite."
"It was exceedingly basic," said Martin Collins, curator of space
history at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and author of
After Sputnik: 50 Years of the Space Age. "It was essentially a radio
transmitter."
Even the shiny, round shape was dictated by the message the scientists
wanted to send. Korolev turned down several designs for the satellite,
because they were not spherical -- the best shape to reflect sunlight
and remain visible from the United States.
"The overall design was to be able to convey the sound signal, but
recall also that the satellite was polished to a high sheen. It was
meant to be seen from the ground by an observer," Collins said.
Ironically, the light in the sky that earthlings followed in awe after
Sputnik's launch was created by the rocket's flare, not a reflection
from the polished satellite, Korolov told the Associated Press.
Half a century after Sputnik sparked a massive national space program
in the United States, NASA has again embarked on technology
development to take Americans to the moon and beyond. This time, the
pace is more measured, said Steve Dick, chief historian for NASA.
"We want it to be a sustainable program where we go back to stay," he
said. Yet the historian acknowledged that large projects, such as a
push for space, can benefit from a rivalry like the one lit by
Sputnik.
"We seem to respond -- at least the politicians and the budget people
seem to respond -- to competition better than cooperation," Dick said.
For three weeks, before Sputnik's batteries died, radio operators on
Earth could listen to the satellite's "beep-beep" broadcast. On Jan.
3, 1958 -- still four weeks before the first successful U.S. satellite
launch -- Sputnik fell to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere. Yet,
the simple satellite continues to inspire people to look up.
.
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