The Legacy of Sputnik
Published on Oct 4, 2007 at 4:27 pm.
3 Comments.
Filed under history, space exploration.
So, where is my personal rocket ship? What happened to the permanent Moonbase what was supposed to be here, or the giant orbiting commercial space stations? How about the manned mission to Mars? All of these things were supposed to happen by the year 2000, thanks to the space race. When I was growing up, these seemed to be realistic futures. The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey didn’t seem so far fetched. The science fiction TV show Space: 1999 seemed far fetched (after all, how you you actually blow the Moon out of orbit?!?!), but the idea of a permanent moonbase by 1999 was pretty much a given. In fact, serious discussion of an American moonbase dates back to an Army proposal in 1959, only two years after Sputnik. 
A while back, I ran across a wonderful set of audio CDs called In Their Own Words: The Space Race; the Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury Missions. This very reasonably priced CD set has actual audio from the 1950’s and 1960’s. You can hear the founders of American space exploration talk about their goals for the future. Those goals were amazing. There were realistic plans to have manned exploration and perhaps colonization of the Solar System within a few decades. So, what happened? Why, 50 years after Sputnik, is our only outpost in space a half-completed, way over-budget, space station housing only three crew members? What went wrong with the dream?
All I have are opinions about what went awry. I don’t know that anyone can say for certain, though a lot of people claim to know what happened. Some of them may be more right than I am, but maybe not. All I can do is share my thoughts. I think that the way things have gone may have been a surprise to many who were active in the field at the time.
So, what happened? Lets think back to the days of Sputnik. In yesterday’s post, and in some of my earlier postings to which I linked in yesterday’s post, I have written about the history of the Sputniks. The books that I referenced yesterday also are a good resource. They give a bit of the history of the times.
The 1950s were an active time during the Cold War. In fact, on the heals of the Korean War, the Cold War was fairly warm. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were posturing. Both were trying to impress Third World nations to line up behind them. It was in this era of Cold War posturing that rocket scientists in both superpowers approached their respective governments about launching a man-made satellite into orbit. Putting an artificial satellite into orbit was a natural progression of the work being done in rocketry. The ideas go back to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, or even before. Tsiolkovsky is often credited with suggesting that rockets could be used to lift payloads into space. Basic orbital calculations were already understood, and all that was needed was a mechanism to move and maneuver in space. Rockets provide that mechanism. Many of the early rocket pioneers who built and tested rockets in both Europe and America in the 1930s had space travel as their ultimate goal. Wernher von Braun, architect of Germany’s V-2 rocket, even ran afoul of the Nazi hierarchy by proposing that a better use of rocket technology was space travel rather than solely as weapons. At the end of World War II, von Braun offered himself and his services and those of his colleagues to the United States to help America build rockets and missiles. Throughout his work, though, he maintained the dream of space exploration. In the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev, the Soviet’s counterpart to America’s von Braun, also dreamed of space exploration while he designed and built missiles of war.
But, the dream really moved from speculation and science fiction towards reality when scientists decided to propose that America should launch an artificial Earth-orbiting satellite during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) activities of 1957 and 1958. The US leaders jumped at the chance to show off our technological superiority. About a week after the official announcement that the United States would launch a rocket carrying an artificial satellite into Earth orbit during the IGY, the Soviet leaders gave Korolev the OK to pursue his own project, which he had proposed a year earlier. The race was on.
Here is where the differences in the American and Soviet approaches to space exploration came through. President Eisenhower wanted the US space program to be a civilian effort. So, despite von Braun’s ardent pleas and claims that he could modify an existing Jupiter missile to launch a satellite into orbit, the Eisenhower administration supported the rival Vanguard program, which was funded by the civilian National Science Foundation. At the time, von Braun and his team were working at the Redstone Arsenal’s Army Ballistic Missile Agency. The Eisenhower administration did not want space to be militarized. Further, they want a weapon of war to be the means to get to space. Nor, did they want a former enemy, von Braun, to be the means that we got into space. Meanwhile, the Soviet’s were not at all worried about the political fallout of a military space launch. In fact, they likely relished the idea that using a weapon of war to demonstrate their technological capabilities would perhaps enhance the perception of their military might. The United States wanted to go into space as a peaceful endeavor, and the Soviets were quite willing to use this as a saber rattling episode. A further difference between the two was that the United States conducted its space efforts in full view of the world. The Soviet Union did so in secret. Aside from some in the intelligence community, no one knew how far along the Soviets were in their efforts. So, for most of the world, Sputnik was a complete surprise. Interestingly, its true impact on the world had been grossly underestimated by the Soviet hierarchy. It wasn’t until after the rest of the world reacted in surprise, wonder, and fear that they began to truly promote the news. Below is a link to Newsreel coverage of the event.
If you look carefully at the animations in the Newsreel story, you will see a rocket that looks much like Vanguard depicted as launching Sputnik into orbit. Actually, the real rocket was far larger. The R-7 was a behemoth. It was designed, not to lift a small satellite into orbit like Vanguard, but rather to lift a multi-ton nuclear warhead from its remote launch site in the Soviet Union to nearly anywhere in the world. And, of course, that was the implication of Sputnik that the rest of the world saw. If they could put this thing into orbit, then they could put a bomb up there, and they could de-orbit that bomb onto any target that they chose. Granted, that was not a realistic fear, but realistic or not it was part of the fears of the time. Remember that this was during the cold war. The actual type of R-7 launch vehicles that lifted Sputnik are shown in the following video link.
The shock of Sputnik, and the continued failure of Vanguard, spurred the Eisenhower administration to finally authorize von Braun to launch an Army missile to put a payload into space. So, a Jupiter missile was modified (and called a Juno rocket to sound less militaristic) to lift a probe constructed at the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory into space. That was Explorer 1, America’s first satellite, launched January 31, 1958.
Not long after the United States entered space with Explorer 1, NASA was created as a civilian agency. The Army Ballistic Missile Agency, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and other facilities were transfered to the new civilian agency, along with Wernher von Braun and his team. Soon, plans were laid to put humans into space. The Soviets beat us to that, too, but we eventually did put humans into space, and we sent a spacecraft to another planet.
The competition between the United States and the Soviet Union kept money and effort moving into the space programs of both nations. The United States landed men on the Moon. The Soviet Union launched the first space station program. Space technology and hardware was being developed at a prodigious rate. Both nations were building unmanned spacecraft and hurling them around the Solar System, and beyond. It seemed reasonable that the developments would continue.
In the early 1970s, it seemed quite realistic that if developments continued at their present rate (from the first orbiting satellite in 1957 to landing on the Moon in 1969) then there really would be orbiting space stations all around Earth by the end of the century. There really would be colonies on the Moon, and perhaps Mars or the asteroids. Manned flights really would have been already made to Mars and beyond. Space travel would be as commonplace as air travel was in those days. Growing up, this is what I believed. Watching grainy images on television of men walking on the Moon, I felt for sure that I would have my own rocket ship and that I would have flown into space by the time that I was in my 40s. It didn’t happen. There is no moonbase. There has been no Mars mission. And, there is only one space station in orbit, and it is a far cry from what had been envisioned. We’ve lost our way.
After the United States beat the Russians to the Moon, what was left to do? That was the political attitude at the time. Funding to NASA was cut. Support for the space program waned. Attentions were focussed on matters here at home. NASA was left without direction. There was a clear focus and goal leading practically from its creation to the landing on the Moon. But, the plans for a space station, moonbase, and a regular space transportation system shuttling astronauts and cargo between the ground and orbit faded. All NASA got was the Space Shuttle, and it was a far cry from what they had hoped to be able to build.
So, what is Sputnik’s legacy? Sputnik began a serious space race, but that race has faltered. I am encouraged, though, in that private businesses have finally begun to seriously move forward with their own space exploitation programs. There is an entire space industry now. It is not just a government operation. And, finally, progress is being made. If we can keep encouraging private space enterprises, then I think perhaps the next 50 years will see the things that people had envisioned for space exploration in the days following Sputnik.
-Astroprof
Video images from Youtube
Astroprof’s Page » 50 Years Ago on October 4, 2007 at 4:52 pm: 1
[…] « 50 Years Ago » […]
A Ler…-- Rastos de Luz on October 5, 2007 at 12:02 pm: 2
[…] The Legacy of Sputnik no Astroprof’s Page […]
Eric on October 5, 2007 at 12:30 pm: 3
Join the Zookers Radio Program on Saturday, October 6th at 7:00 pm central time for an interview with Brian Turner of the Kansas City Space Pirates. Brian and his team are competing in the Spaceward Games 2007 with their space elevator design.
Show link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/zookers/2007/10/07/tba
Zookers Radio Program Website: http://www.zookersradio.com Space Elevator Interview