Author Topic: Sputnik 60 years later  (Read 7260 times)

Online Blackstar

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Sputnik 60 years later
« on: 10/03/2017 12:47 pm »
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3341/1

Sputnik remembered: The first race to space (part 1)
by Asif A. Siddiqi
Monday, October 2, 2017


On the early morning of September 20, 1956—just before 2 am—the US Army launched a Jupiter C intermediate range ballistic missile from Launch Pad 5 at Cape Canaveral. Basically a souped-up version of Wernher von Braun’s Redstone rocket, it had a dummy fourth stage loaded with sand. The missile lifted off successfully, generating a thrust of over 35 tons from its first stage engines, which burned for 150 seconds. The upper stages continued to arc over the Atlantic, reaching an altitude never reached before by any human-made object: nearly 1,100 kilometers. The payload itself traveled downrange about 5,400 kilometers from the launch site before burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. As radio systems beamed back information to the blockhouse on the record-breaking flight, von Braun was said to have “danced with joy.”1 Although the Army did not publicly announce the launch or the results of the flight, information about the event leaked out to the mainstream press within a week.2 This somewhat obscure missile launch may have irrevocably changed the course of the “space race,” serving as one of the main catalysts for the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik.




Offline Star One

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #1 on: 10/03/2017 07:18 pm »
Excellent article. Loads of new stuff to me and eagerly await part 2.

Offline Apollo-phill

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #2 on: 10/03/2017 08:45 pm »

Tomorrow - Wednesday, 4th October 2017 - marks 60 years since the launch of the first artificial earth satellite , Sputnik-1, by the then Soviet Union . 

Since that date , over 3,700 satellites have been launched by many nations including USA,Russia,UK, China and European nations under guise of European Space Agency as well as several " smaller " states. Over the next few years many thousands more are planned to be launched to create communication relay constellations for radio,TV and computer data as well as further weather, earth resource and  military intelligence satellites. In addition, there will be further launches of manned spacecraft and planetary probes.

And, of course, in the past 60 years there have been manned space missions both to space stations and to the surface of the Moon and return. Within the next 60 years there  will be tourist flights into space not just for the thrill and excitement of the ride and views but to establish large manned space stations , lunar habitats and outposts on Mars that will eventually see humanity become a multi planet species.

As the Russian pioneer of  spaceflight , Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935)  wrote:-

 “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.”


Today, we are leaving that Cradle .........🚀


Phill Parker
UK

( And, I've been a "witness" to it all since 1957 😃😃😃😃😃  )












Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #3 on: 10/03/2017 08:47 pm »
Asif's giving a talk about Sputnik on Wednesday, it should be webcast:

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-space-race-and-the-origins-the-space-age

I'll be there and he and I are supposed to meet up later on. If you have questions about the article/topic, I suggest posting them to The Space Review article.

Offline Svetoslav

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #4 on: 10/03/2017 09:00 pm »
I'd really like to hear from people who remember that fateful day :)

Offline Phillip Clark

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #5 on: 10/04/2017 01:28 am »
From my Facebook page:

On October 4, 1957 at 19h 28m 34s GMT/UT the Soviet Union launched an 8K71PS variant of the R-7 missile and placed "Prosteishyi Sputnik 1" (PS-1, commonly called "Sputnik 1") into Earth orbit, thus opening up the so-called Space Age.   

In recent years some American writers have claimed the Soviets were "allowed" to complete the first satellite launch to set the precedent of a space object flying over foreign, hostile territory, and that if this had not been a consideration the United States would have launched the first satellite.   Such "what if" scenarios are mildly interesting but they cannot detract from the magnitude of the Soviet achievement because the payload was more than ten times the mass of the planned contemporary United States satellites.   

Indeed, the original Soviet plan was to launch a 1.3 tonnes satellite on the first mission (this satellite was delayed until 1958), not the 83.6 kg PS-1, and if this had happened one can only speculate about the horror that would have been generated in the United States - the mass of PS-1 was enough of a shock!
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane - WJ.

Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #6 on: 10/04/2017 01:35 am »
From my Facebook page:

On October 4, 1957 at 19h 28m 34s GMT/UT the Soviet Union launched an 8K71PS variant of the R-7 missile and placed "Prosteishyi Sputnik 1" (PS-1, commonly called "Sputnik 1") into Earth orbit, thus opening up the so-called Space Age.   

In recent years some American writers have claimed the Soviets were "allowed" to complete the first satellite launch to set the precedent of a space object flying over foreign, hostile territory, and that if this had not been a consideration the United States would have launched the first satellite.

Who?

Seriously, if you want to do history, then do it right.

Online Alter Sachse

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #7 on: 10/04/2017 08:02 am »
One day you're a hero  next day you're a clown  there's nothing that is in between
        Jeff Lynne - "21century man"

Online plutogno

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #8 on: 10/04/2017 09:26 am »
I realize only now that I have read many times about the deployable reflector mounted on the core stage but I have never seen what it actually looked like. Are there any images or drawing of it available?

Offline Magic

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #9 on: 10/04/2017 01:04 pm »
 "- listen now for the sound that will forever more separate the old from the new." NBC news report
 beep, beep, beep, beep

Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #10 on: 10/04/2017 03:15 pm »
Newly declassified CIA documents on Sputniks 1, 2 and 3, but mostly the events leading up to Sputnik 1.

Lots of interesting stuff in this collection. I'll have to go through it carefully. However, I see a document indicating CIA financial support for the US civilian satellite project (the Vanguard satellite). In previous decades I tracked down the connections between the CIA and sponsorship of the US civilian satellite. I do not believe that I found evidence of CIA providing money to it, only that they were aware of it and supported it because they wanted it to establish "freedom of space" and freedom of overflight for reconnaissance satellites.

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/2017-press-releases-statements/sputnik-60-years-later-cia-releases-declassified-documents.html

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/intelligence-warning-1957-launch-sputnik

« Last Edit: 10/04/2017 03:28 pm by Blackstar »

Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #11 on: 10/04/2017 03:30 pm »
Attached is a new CIA article on the subject.

Offline clongton

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #12 on: 10/04/2017 03:53 pm »
From my Facebook page early this morning:

60 years ago today the Soviet Union shocked the world by orbiting the world's 1st satellite, Sputnik. I remember sitting in our living room with the whole family gathered around the family radio listening to the "beep beep beep" from it and Walter Cronkite explaining what it all meant. We did not consider it a great thing. It meant that the Soviets were capable of sending atom bombs thru space to decimate us all and we could not respond or defend ourselves. Both my mom and dad were WWII Navy veterans and there was fear in the room that night. It was estimated at that time that if there was any warning at all it would be less than 2 minutes. We were terrified. I will never forget that evening.

That said, it was the beginning of the space age and it was this event that set my life in motion to who I became, what interested me in life, my choice of military service and the direction of my career path.
Chuck - DIRECT co-founder
I started my career on the Saturn-V F-1A engine

Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #13 on: 10/04/2017 04:20 pm »
From Anatoly Zak:

Quote
A few visual treasures had surfaced with today's #Sputnik anniversary in the avalanche of old cliches. DETAILS: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/r7.html

https://twitter.com/russianspaceweb/status/915560941072392193
« Last Edit: 10/04/2017 04:21 pm by FutureSpaceTourist »

Offline Star One

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #14 on: 10/04/2017 04:45 pm »
This article looks to the future for the Russian space industry and makes for depressing reading.

60 years after Sputnik, Russia is lost in space

Quote
MOSCOW — Just over 30 years after the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, the nation that opened the space race stood on the precipice of a second golden age of space exploration. A major program, the Energia heavy booster rocket and the Buran space shuttle, was nearing completion — making its maiden flight in November 1988.

Another three decades later, on the 60th anniversary of Sputnik 1, the Russian space program is a shadow of its Soviet predecessor. The Energia-Buran project, its last major accomplishment, flew just once before the fall of communism gutted Moscow’s space program. For nearly three decades now, the Russian space industry has been in a state of triage, teetering on collapse.

A replica of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1. Credit: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
A replica of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1. Credit: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
But the Russian space program has consistently defied the dire predictions of those foretelling an imminent end to the program. Today, amid a major effort to reform and reorganize the Russian space industry under the new Roscosmos state corporation, there are signs that the bleeding has been slowed. But major questions about Russia’s future in space linger.

http://spacenews.com/60-years-after-sputnik-russia-is-lost-in-space/

Online Alter Sachse

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One day you're a hero  next day you're a clown  there's nothing that is in between
        Jeff Lynne - "21century man"

Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #16 on: 10/04/2017 06:49 pm »
Motion Picture of Sputnik 1 Rocket from Baltimore on October 12, 1957

http://www.satobs.org/sputnik1rocketbaltimore.html


Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #17 on: 10/05/2017 03:39 pm »
Newly declassified CIA documents on Sputniks 1, 2 and 3, but mostly the events leading up to Sputnik 1.

Lots of interesting stuff in this collection. I'll have to go through it carefully. However, I see a document indicating CIA financial support for the US civilian satellite project (the Vanguard satellite). In previous decades I tracked down the connections between the CIA and sponsorship of the US civilian satellite. I do not believe that I found evidence of CIA providing money to it, only that they were aware of it and supported it because they wanted it to establish "freedom of space" and freedom of overflight for reconnaissance satellites.


Turns out my memory was faulty. I don't know if this document about CIA funding is new, but I wrote about CIA funding of the Vanguard program back in Exploring the Unknown (Vol. 1) in 1995. I used to spend a lot of time tracking down the involvement of the CIA in the early American space program and found a lot of new material. But I have not looked at that specific issue in a long time.

Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #18 on: 10/06/2017 04:32 pm »
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/science/sputnik-launch-cia.html

When Soviets Launched Sputnik, C.I.A. Was Not Surprised

By JACEY FORTINOCT. 6, 2017
When the news broke on Oct. 4, 1957, that the Soviet Union had sent the world’s first man-made satellite into space, the American public was shocked. The C.I.A., it now appears — much less so.

This week, the agency declassified 59 memos, reports and summaries to mark the 60th anniversary of the day the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 went into orbit.

The documents — which include information about Soviet missile capabilities and several Sputnik satellites — suggest that in the years leading up to the first Sputnik’s success, United States intelligence agents and government officials were growing more and more certain that a launch was imminent.

“U.S. intelligence, the military and the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower not only were fully informed of Soviet planning to launch an earth satellite but also knew a Soviet satellite would probably achieve orbit no later than the end of 1957,” the C.I.A. said in a report released on Wednesday.

The declassified documents do not say that the agency knew Sputnik’s precise launch date, and the report takes pains to explain that C.I.A. warnings about the launch were “strategic” rather than “tactical.”

Still, the report suggests that the criticism endured at the time by top United States officials — including President Eisenhower himself — for apparently failing to predict the Soviets’ accomplishment might have been a little off the mark.

When Sputnik launched, the Cold War was about a decade old. So was the C.I.A. Both the Soviets and the Americans had been working on satellite technology for years. But President Eisenhower, concerned about the Soviet Union’s work on intercontinental ballistic missiles, was reluctant to invest military resources in a space race.

The Soviets, on the other hand, had a much better grasp of the power of propaganda, said Michael Khodarkovsky, a history professor at Loyola University Chicago who specializes in Russia and the 20th century. He described “complete euphoria” in the Soviet Union after Sputnik launched.

“As a propaganda tool, it was just extraordinary,” he said in an interview on Thursday.

Sputnik was an aluminum sphere about the size of a beach ball — it was jammed full of communications equipment and weighed more than 180 pounds — with four spindly legs. It careered through space for three months, circling the Earth about every 100 minutes and emitting a regular pattern of beeps.

When Tass, the official Russian news agency, first broke the news about Sputnik — it was a Friday night in Washington — the Soviet Embassy in Washington was hosting a reception for rocket and satellite specialists.

The New York Times reported from the event that Lloyd Berkner, an American who was the president of the International Council of Scientific Unions, “beat on a glass” to get everyone’s attention.

“I wish to make an announcement,” he said. “I am informed by The New York Times that a satellite is in orbit at an elevation of 900 kilometers. I wish to congratulate our Soviet colleagues on their achievement.”

The Soviet scientists in the room were beaming.

The launch surprised and worried many Americans, including politicians who criticized President Eisenhower for failing to take the space race seriously.


Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #19 on: 10/06/2017 04:56 pm »
From the declassified CIA collection:

Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #20 on: 10/06/2017 05:00 pm »
From the declassified CIA collection:

Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #21 on: 10/06/2017 05:04 pm »
From the declassified CIA collection:


Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #22 on: 10/06/2017 05:06 pm »
From the declassified CIA collection:

(last batch)

Online Blackstar

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #23 on: 10/09/2017 09:12 pm »
Part 2 of Asif's Sputnik series:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3344/1


Sputnik remembered: The first race to space (part 2)
by Asif A. Siddiqi
Monday, October 9, 2017

[Part 1 was published last week.]
Success with the R-7?

Although Korolev had obtained permission to launch PS-1 back in February, the launch was not a foregone event. In his letter to the government in January, he had noted that a satellite could be “launched immediately after the first successful launches of the intercontinental missile.”1 A government document specified this as “one or two” successful launches.2 As is well-known, there were several consecutive failures of the R-7 missile in the summer of 1957: one on May 15 exploded 104 seconds into its ascent; a second rocket never left the pad despite three consecutive attempts on June 9, 10, and 11; and a third R-7 was destroyed 33 seconds after launch on July 12. If there had been hope of launching two PS-1-type satellites in the summer, that hope was lost. The mood at Tiura-Tam was hitting bottom by the time that a fourth R-7 was brought out to the pad. Engineers, soldiers, and even government bureaucrats were all desperate for a success.
« Last Edit: 10/09/2017 09:13 pm by Blackstar »

Offline koroljow

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #24 on: 12/09/2017 03:19 pm »
There is a new special project by Russian Archives remembering Sputnik (a little late - but anyway): http://sputnik.rusarchives.ru/
One color photo (http://sputnik.rusarchives.ru/dokumenty/start-rakety-nositelya-s-pervym-iskusstvennym-sputnikom-zemli) allegedly showing the launch of PS-1 attracted my attention. It looks like taken during twilight. But the launch of PS-1 took place at night - on the other hand the nose cone of the launcher looks like the one of PS-1. So, what do we see here?
Geschichte und Geschichten aus mehr als sechseinhalb Jahrzehnten Raumfahrt:
http://www.raumfahrtkalender.de

Online plutogno

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #25 on: 12/09/2017 03:46 pm »
that picture is believed to depict the launch of Sputnik 2. see for example the right sidebar of http://russianspaceweb.com/sputnik2_mission.html
the nose looks more pointy than that of Sputnik 1, and the sunset timing matches the 5.30 PM Moscow Time launch.

Offline koroljow

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Re: Sputnik 60 years later
« Reply #26 on: 12/09/2017 05:39 pm »
that picture is believed to depict the launch of Sputnik 2. see for example the right sidebar of http://russianspaceweb.com/sputnik2_mission.html
the nose looks more pointy than that of Sputnik 1, and the sunset timing matches the 5.30 PM Moscow Time launch.
Yes, I think you're right. I forgot about those (color) photos. And the shape of the nose cone in the b/w photo looked slightly different to me. But that's an optical illusion, probably. The 'kink' in the plf contour is hard to recognize.
Geschichte und Geschichten aus mehr als sechseinhalb Jahrzehnten Raumfahrt:
http://www.raumfahrtkalender.de

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