Technological breakthrough. Cosmonautics 61 years ago and now

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

After starting to watch Mars after the series "The First", I thought about how the flight of the Mars mission would be perceived in society. In both series, for some reason, they did not emphasize the fact that the whole world clung to the screens and looks at this historical action. There was a feeling that if we live to see the start of a manned mission to Mars, it will not become the same sensation as the launch of the first satellite.

The broadcast of the Falcon Heavy launch on YouTube this year was watched by 2.3 million people, which seems to be a lot, and in the history of streams this is the second place. But first place, Felix Baumgartner's leap from the stratosphere, was watched by 8 million people. Vivid space events act as a beacon that attracts people. If their light does not call as strongly, then new people will not go to astronautics? No. Over the years, her perception has changed, and in general, everything will be fine. Only the meaning of the expression "rocket science" in English will have to be changed.

The global reaction to the launch of the first satellite ranged from panic to euphoria, but was very intense. For obvious reasons, we know best the US reaction - one of the two superpowers is in a very unpleasant situation. And it cannot be said that in all other respects, the Americans' affairs were cloudless - an economic recession began in the summer, and after three years of growth in quotations, the Dow - Jones index fell from July to October 1957 by 21%. Social problems grew - for the first time since 1875, the Civil Rights Act was passed to promote racial equality and the desegregation of people of color in public schools (for an atmosphere of race and space, see Hidden Figures). And here the Soviet satellite threw several challenges at once to the country, which considered itself the first in everything - scientific, technical, military and a challenge to prestige.

In a military sense, the analogy of "dominant height" worked - the satellite's orbit was perceived as a bridge from which the USSR was able to drop hydrogen bombs on everyone below. Space seemed to be a new battlefield, and if in modern times Great Britain was strong with ships, and in the middle of the 20th century, bombers' armadas were a visible expression of the power of the United States, now the question arose of who would be strong in space. And if in the early days of the space era, US President Eisenhower tried to calm the country, talking about the safety of the satellite, then already at the beginning of 1958 he outlined the same three challenges - scientific and technical, military and prestige facing the United States. As a result of the start of the space race, not only orders for military rockets were increased, but also spending on education, not only NASA was created, but also DARPA.

Public panic is perhaps best revealed in Stephen King's memoir:

We sat on chairs like mannequins and looked at the manager. He looked worried and sickly - or maybe it was the lighting that was to blame. We wondered what kind of catastrophe made him stop the film at the most tense moment, but then the manager spoke, and the tremor in his voice embarrassed us even more. “I want to inform you,” he began, “that the Russians have put a space satellite into orbit around the Earth. They called it … "satellite." The message was greeted with absolute deathly silence. I remember very clearly: the terrible dead silence of the cinema was suddenly broken by a lonely cry, I don't know if it was a boy or a girl; the voice was full of tears and frightened anger: "Let's show a movie, liar!" The manager didn’t even look in the direction where the voice came from, and for some reason it was the worst of all. This was proof. Russians outstripped us in space

Science fiction writer Arthur Clarke, who said that the United States had become a minor power after the launch of the Soviet satellite, expressed a change in the identity of society. The waves generated by the first satellite, for example, led to the anger of “our engineers at such a critical moment wasting time on frivolity,” and the first satellite could well be one of the reasons for the failure of the Edsel car brand.

For some, the launch of a Soviet satellite was a real tragedy - Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, published just a week later, postulated a creative and industrial catastrophe of socialist society. The upset of the emigrant from the USSR and the ardent anti-communist Rand was so great that she began to assert that the USSR allegedly did not launch any satellite, much to the amusement of the public.

Part of the interest in Sputnik was realized in emotionally neutral fashion - music, dances, cocktails, or even hairstyles, for example, Japanese ones.

But there was also an opposite pole - for many people, the satellite became a bright star of hope. Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury wrote:

That night, when Sputnik first traced the sky, I (…) looked up and thought about the predetermination of the future. After all, that little light, rapidly moving from edge to edge of the sky, was the future of all mankind. I knew that although the Russians are wonderful in their endeavors, we will soon follow them and take our proper place in the sky (…). That light in the sky made humanity immortal. All the same, the Earth could not remain our refuge forever, because one day it could be expected to die from cold or overheating. Humanity was ordered to become immortal, and that light in the sky above me was the first glare of immortality.

I blessed the Russians for their daring and anticipated the creation of NASA by President Eisenhower shortly after these events.

And, which is very important, all over the world the satellite called children to follow it. Surely there were hundreds and thousands of them, but the most famous story is two. Homer Hickham was born in 1943 in the American wilderness. The town of Coalwood in its best years was inhabited by two thousand people, whose lives were connected with the coal mine. It was possible to escape from there only through sporting successes in school or military service, and Homer would have been a miner, like his father, but Sputnik changed everything.

Homer became interested in space, with friends began to make and launch model rockets, won the National School Fair and got the opportunity to study at the university for free. After college and military service, he began working at NASA, where he was engaged in the design of spacecraft and the training of astronauts. And in 1998, his memoir Rocket Boys was published, based on which the excellent film October Sky was filmed.

Richard "Mike" Mullein described very vividly how the launch of the first satellite changed his life. Born in 1945, Mullein turned 12 in 1957. And he lived in Albuquerque, a city in a sparsely populated area with a desert climate. The absence of illumination made it possible to observe the stars, photograph them, and there were no problems with finding a place without people and property, which could be damaged by unsuccessful launches of missile models. The desire to fly into space became the core of Mike's life. As a child, he wrote to NASA with a proposal to replace adult astronauts with lighter teenagers, which would save on the mass of spaceships (of course, not directly nominating himself, but it was a rather transparent hint). Astigmatism put an end to the hope of getting into the astronaut corps as a test pilot. But fortunately for him, the Space Shuttle was created, which made it possible to send people in glasses who did not pilot ships into flight. Mullein made the first set of space shuttle astronauts, made three flights, and wrote an absolutely adorable memoir.

Subsequent space events also attracted people. In 2016, the action "When Gagarin flew" took place, in which people collected memories of April 12, 1961, you can see a selection of interviews. In the memoirs of the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, it is mentioned that the impetus for his fascination with space was the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. The influence of more recent events is unlikely to be reflected in the memoirs due to the comparative youth of those who were influenced by them. But in general, the events have become smaller, and there is clearly not so much furore from them as at the dawn of astronautics. This is logical - the first achievements were really the first steps into the unknown. Now there is more knowledge, and it is difficult to do something that was not at all before. Does this mean that space is no longer calling for new people? In the old ways, yes, but fortunately new trends have emerged.

The first is well illustrated by the following news:

In early 2018, an ABC7News helicopter conducted a routine flight over the city of Alameda, California. Suddenly, a real rocket was seen below, and judging by the soot on the concrete, its engines had already been tested here. It turned out to be the private space company Stealth Space, which was testing its Astra launch vehicle without any PR.

Like a construction made on the knee - the engines of the Vector-R rocket, also of private production. But they are 3D printed and consist of only 15 parts. There are dozens of similar rocket startups around the world. And if 61 years ago, the efforts of a superpower were required to launch a satellite, now this can be done by several people who have obtained a penny in comparison with the state budget and assembled a rocket in a workshop slightly more advanced than a garage.

The second trend is illustrated by the private company Planet Labs, which has already launched more than one and a half hundred Dove / Flock cubesats with the task of providing continuous survey of the entire earth's surface. The resulting data will then be processed using modern computer technology.

This graph shows the number of satellites launched by mass. Black - light and ultralight satellites weighing less than 100 kg. The dramatically increased number of cubesats is a consequence of the fact that the satellite can be made and launched not only by private companies, but also by universities and even schoolchildren.

General conclusion: Space has become much closer to people. Instead of perceiving the call of satellites flying far away, today a person can get acquainted with astronautics in childhood, and on a very serious level. Those who are especially fortunate can even take part in the creation and launch of a real spacecraft. And the abundance of space content may interest space even earlier. The daughter of my acquaintances, having accidentally seen a video tour of the ISS from Sunita Williams at the age of two, is now looking at night space videos instead of cartoons. Of course, there is no guarantee that our descendants will read this fact at the beginning of the memoirs of an astronaut, scientist or engineer, but those who could potentially be interested in space received a lot of opportunities. And that's great. Unless the English expression "rocket science", which means something very complex, seems to be outdated.

Reflections on the same topic, I expressed in a fresh lecture "Cosmonautics: from romance to realism."