 Getting to Sputnik -- a retrospective that's been 50 years in the making...
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 Podcast
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Today, October 4, 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first artificial satellite of the Earth -- generally called Sputnik 1. Many space-related sites are covering this in various ways, mostly discussing what's happened in the intervening decades. But Sputnik's launch didn't take place in a vacuum (no pun intended) -- thought it'd be interesting to instead look at what led up to the launch of Sputnik, what political environment was like at the time.
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The early days (pre-1930's)
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Humans have dreamed of flight through space, to the moon or stars, for centuries. It's only relatively recently that rocketry and space travel were really thought of as being related.
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Rocketry itself traces back to Chinese black powder fireworks of about the 2nd century B.C. By about the 10th century, these fireworks had been developed into crude & inaccurate weapons, and within a few hundred years, Mongols brought them to Europe. By the late 18th century, European powers were looking beyond the use of gunpowder in artillery and firearms, and developing their own black powder rockets for military use. In particular, note the British "Congreve" rockets, which look a lot like very large versions of modern bottle rockets.
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 First person to really put pen to paper in an effort to understand rocketry and spaceflight in a scientific way was a Russian named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.
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A few decades after Tsiolkovsky was born, came Hermann Oberth.
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Another individual working at about the same time as Oberth was Robert Goddard
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So, the situation in the mid-1930's
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Tsiolkovsky near the end of his life, but his theoretical work was starting to be noticed, if only within the Soviet Union.
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Oberth working with rocketry enthusiasts in Germany, working with film producers to get the word out via movies.
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Goddard working away in self-designed semi-obscurity in New Mexico.
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Not too surprisingly, most of the advances in rocketry that took place during World War II came about in Germany -- of the three "birthplaces" of modern rocketry, Germany was the only one that was really supportive at the time.
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WWII
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The "grandfather" of all modern rockets was really the V-2 ballistic missile, developed during WWII.
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German millitary in the 1930's took a keen interest in rockets -- particularly since the Versailles treaty that ended WWI limited Germany's use of long distance artillery, but it didn't mention rocketry. Rockets were seen as being a loophole that could be exploited.
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Rockets that the VfR had been working on were scaled up in a number of successive steps, resulting in 1943 in the first launch of a V-2. The V-2 had a range of 300 km / 185 miles, and carried a 1000 kg / 2200 lb warhead.
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The post-WWII decade
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After World War II wrapped up, the Cold War got off to a fast start, resulting in a big scramble at the end of the war to get any V-2 related goodies that were available. In the end result, the U.S. military got most of the researchers & engineers, along with some complete V-2s. The Soviets got the production facilities, and technicians. Both sets of Germans would prove to be critical to their respective sides' efforts in the cold war.
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In the USSR, Stalin decided to make missile development a national priority. Based in part on previous work, but more on technology from captured V-2 missiles and their engineers, Sergey Korolyov and his staff developed a series of missiles over the coming years with longer and longer ranges. Essentially, as each step forward was requested by the Soviet military, both Korolev's staff and the captured Germans put forth their designs that would satisfy the requirements. While the German designs were often judged to be superior, the domestic designs were the ones to be produced, although often after lifting features of the German team's design.
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Things weren't exactly standing still in the U.S. either. V-2 had made it abundantly clear that ballistic missiles had a future in weaponry, so a plethora of R&D and development programs started. But there were two complicating factors:
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High points: U.S. post-war rocket / missile programs (tangled mess...)
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HATV and the RAND study
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Hermes program (Army) -- attempt to implement German rocket technology, essentially consisted of a variety of tinkering based on V-2.
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After exhausting the possibilities of rocket-powered cruise missiles, the USAF decided that an ICBM would be a good thing to have. Many parallel studies ensued, but the end result was the Atlas -- a balloon-tanked vehicle burning LOX & Kerosene. Running about a year behind Korolyov's R-7...
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Redstone / Jupiter C / Juno 1
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This brings us to the mid 1950's...
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IGY -- July 1957 - December 1958
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In 1952, International Council of Scientific Unions proposed a series of scientific activities for period between July, 1957 through December, 1958.
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Launching a satellite was a fairly obvious way to contribute to IGY, and in the U.S., this touched off a firestorm of discussion within the federal government.
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Armed services put forth competing proposals to launch a scientific satellite during the IGY.
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Army: Project Orbiter, would use a Redstone with clusters of solid rockets as upper stages -- could launch 5 pounds into low Earth orbit using existing technology and existing facilities.
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USAF: World Series, would use an Atlas test vehicle with a solid rocket upper stage.
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Naval Research Lab proposed Vanguard
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A secret committee was set up in 1955 to select the best course of action -- representatives of the Navy, Army, USAF, and two appointed by the Assistant Secretary of Defense.
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Another factor: Eisenhower was getting nervous about U.S. intelligence capabilities w.r.t. Soviet ICBM efforts. Current spy plane flights gathered some information, but he knew they were a violation of international law. Wanted to launch a recon satellite, but nobody had established a precedent for satellite overflight (i.e., would Soviets shoot down a recon satellite?). So, there was a strong desire for first U.S. satellite to be one that didn't launch on a vehicle that was a variant of a weapon (i.e., ICBM or IRBM).
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Throughout the development of the R-7, Korolyov had pushed for the use of the missile to launch a satellite into Earth orbit. Korolyov's group actively followed the western press, so when the concept of launching a satellite for IGY appeared in U.S. papers, Korolyov was able to use competition with the West for leverage to gain political approval for the effort.
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On October 4, 1957, only 6 weeks after the first successful flight of an R-7, Sputnik I was launched -- resulting in accolades from Khrushchev and others high in the Soviet political hierarchy, and considerable political discomfort in the West.
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Still, Washington not that keen on letting former Nazis play too large a role -- waited for Vanguard to launch
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November 3 -- Korolev launches Sputnik 2 (500 kg), carrying a dog.
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December 6 -- First Vanguard orbital launch attempt results in televised on-pad explosion.
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After these humiliations, von Braun's team allowed to go forward -- launched Explorer I (or A) on February 1, 1958, using a Jupiter C / Juno 1 LV.
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After another launch failure, Vanguard 1 was finally orbited on March 17th.
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USAF followed up with Score in December of 1958.
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Wrapup
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Sputnik launch had a number of truly unanticipated repurcussions
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Within the USSR, it was met with great interest among the general population -- encouraging sign for a population still recovering from the devastation of WWII.
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Within the U.S., it was a wakeup call. After WWII, a certain complacency had set in -- average American assumed that the U.S. had superiority in technology, Soviets were backwards rural folk.
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By the end of the IGY, all three of the proposed American launch vehicles had orbited a satellite.
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In the end, Sputnik paved the way for reconnaissance satellites -- a technology which would later prove to be a calming influence during the cold war.
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Sources and other links
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Tsiolkovsky
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Oberth
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Goddard
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von Braun
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Korolyov
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Misc. history
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Sputnik program
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Redstone / Jupiter / Juno
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Vanguard
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