Colonization of space in the image of Soviet magazines and Tsiolkovsky

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

Almost every Soviet article on the colonization of space mentions the inventor, philosopher and founder of cosmonautics, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Tsiolkovsky saw a solution to the future problem of overpopulation and resource scarcity through the development of new planets. It was he who first wrote about future "etheric settlements" in Earth's orbit, made sketches of extraplanetary stations and came up with the idea of a space elevator. The scientist foresaw the creation of rockets and satellites, but his ideas turned out to be too innovative for the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But a little later, his theories became the main inspiration for scientists and dreamers during the period of active space exploration.

A space catapult, air cities on Venus and a volatile transport ring - in the projects of Soviet inventors and artists.

What the enthusiasts were inspired by

The space era began on October 4, 1957, when the USSR launched the first artificial Earth satellite, and nine years later made the first contact with an extraterrestrial body - landed the Luna-9 station on the Moon. With Soyuz triumph in the unofficial space race, space fantasies have been revitalized. The universe now seemed closer than ever, which means the time has come for bold plans.

First for the Bolsheviks, and then for Soviet writers and directors, space became a place of communist utopia. She performed two tasks: the establishment of new beliefs and values, as well as the adaptation of political ideas for the strategic development of the country.

Alexandra Simonova

Researcher at the Center for the Study of Science and Technology at EUSP in the study "Formation of space mythology as a factor in the development of scientific space research in the USSR and Russia"

The main source of knowledge and inspiration for the Soviet people were the popular science magazines Znanie - Sila, Nauka i Tekhnika, Inventor and Rationalizer, and many others. Perhaps the most "free" in relation to the future in space was the Komsomol magazine "Tekhnika - Molodyozhi". Pictures of artists were printed on the covers, drawings of lunar rovers and rocket diagrams were inside, stories of Soviet and foreign science fiction writers were published there. The magazine encouraged the flight of technical thought and regularly hosted reader contests for the vision of the future.

Most of the articles in Soviet journals described the existing data on space and the restrained theories from the field of astrophysics. Few academic authors have ventured into bold fantasies about populating planets or creating starships, preferring to leave it to writers. Scientific articles were mostly pragmatic in nature.

PhDs and professors preferred to cut off the romance of conquering the universe. Instead, they relentlessly emphasized how advances in satellite launches could help track the weather, establish satellite communications between continents, gain a new source of energy, or conduct experiments in a vacuum. Rare articles on the construction of extraterrestrial objects were necessarily accompanied by an assessment of the benefits to the Soviet people and practical use in the economy. But a few really bright ideas still made their way through scientific skepticism.

First target is the moon

Before the successful Luna-9 project, humanity did not have accurate information about the moon's atmosphere and its nature. But this did not in the least interfere with the ambitious theories published in popular science journals. In 1958, the journal "Tekhnika - Molodyozhi" quoted the American publication Popular Science: first, send an apparatus to the moon to obtain data on its mass, and several years later detonate an atomic bomb on the satellite. Scientists will record the spectra of the explosion to determine the composition of surface substances and collect lunar dust, and the first man will land only by the beginning of the next millennium.

Most often, magazines were in a hurry with predictions, but here they underestimated the tenacity of the space race between the USA and the USSR. The first man set foot on the moon in 1969 - just eleven years after the forecast. It was not necessary to detonate an atomic bomb to determine the composition of the surface; aggressive plans changed into peaceful dreams of lunar scientific stations.

For example, the artist Boris Dashkov imagined that the lunar station would have to be placed deep under the rocks to protect it from meteorites and sudden changes in surface temperature from + 120 ° C to -150 ° C. On the top floor of the laboratory, living quarters, control room. At the bottom there is a warehouse for food, oxygen, fuel and tools. You can enter through the gateway, a tracked vehicle will drive around the planet. Outside there is a greenhouse with vegetables and fruits, solar panels, a radio mast, a radio telescope and an observatory.

The artist Fyodor Borisov presented the new settlement as spherical houses, protected from meteorites by lunar soil and connected by sublunar passages. People on the surface wear light, tight-fitting spacesuits. “Or perhaps, in the deep lunar caves, if air was preserved in them, life could arise and further develop into high forms of mammals,” one of the editors of the magazine voiced the hypothesis.

Artificial rings of the Earth

Soviet scientists were often inspired by the projects of their Western colleagues. One of the most popular ideas was the concept of an orbital city by Princeton University professor Gerard O'Neill called the "O'Neill cylinder":

“An autonomous space colony will be created for 10 thousand to 20 million people in the form of two connected cylinders with a diameter of 7.5 kilometers. Their rotation will create a force of gravity similar to that of the earth. Agriculture and animal husbandry will develop inside the station and on the outer agronomic rings. The cost will be one hundred billion dollars for twenty years of construction. However, the colonized areas will become cramped for mankind, and the problem of pollution will return, so all systems must work in a closed cycle,”says Iosif Shklovsky, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, on the pages of Technics - Youth.

Professor O'Neill was frequently mentioned in Soviet magazines. His ideas about the development of civilization were supported by Soviet scientists: if other systems are still unattainable, the space around the Earth can also be useful. O'Neill believed that by 2060 about sixteen billion people would live and work outside our planet. He also invented an electromagnetic catapult for launching artificial satellites into orbit and actively funded research on the colonization of space.

Logistics of the future

Large-scale plans for space required equally impressive transport. For the construction of lunar stations, the delivery of mined resources from other planets and asteroids, faster, more capacious and economical rockets or the discovery of new methods of cargo transportation are needed.

Project "Centon" is a tunnel with a carriage passing through the center of the Earth with exits at exactly opposite ends of the planet. At 16 meters per hour, the tunnel would have been dug in 48 years. While drilling at great depths, the high temperatures of magma would be cooled by a stream of cold water. It would take the carriage about 43 minutes to cross the tunnel completely. No motors are needed: gravity will work for them.

"If you place a launch vehicle in the tunnel and give additional speed when passing through the center of the planet, then it will accelerate enough to fly into space with less fuel consumption, carrying away even a heavy ship along with the train," the Tekhnika - Molodyozhi magazine reported for 1976. Separately, it is emphasized that the idea is quite working and is based on accurate mathematical calculations.

The author of the article for the "Inventor and Rationalizer" engineer Anatoly Yunitskiy criticized the idea of the tunnel. Instead, he proposed to encircle the Earth in a huge transport ring in its orbit.

An overpass will be built along the entire equator at a height of one hundred meters, floating supports will support it over the ocean. At the top of the flyover, there will be a transport ring with a diameter of ten meters and a total length of forty thousand kilometers. The flywheel will set the outer ring in motion to the first cosmic speed, then the lower ring with the load and passengers will be attached to it. Large weights are attached to the ring directly on the ropes. The transport ring will receive environmentally friendly energy from the currents of the ionosphere and the energy of the Earth's rotation around its axis.

In an hour, the ring will rise up to a distance of 300-400 kilometers above the Earth and will bring cargo to industries in low orbits, then it will develop a second cosmic speed and fly to deliver resources across the solar system. Landing on Earth will happen in the reverse order. One-time transportation is designed for four hundred million people and two hundred million tons of cargo. The cost of the project will be within ten trillion Soviet rubles (in a similar article in the Tekhnika - Molodyozhi magazine - ten trillion dollars), and the cost of transportation will be up to ten kopecks per kilogram. The construction would have taken five years.

The ring could take out all the debris from the planet, especially hazardous radioactive waste, Yunitskiy said. The author of the technology is alive, has created a group of innovative transport companies and is still rooting for the idea of a transport ring. In the summer of 2019, Yunitskiy's company published a video about the new look of the project.

Interplanetary elevator

The idea of a space elevator was described by Tsiolkovsky in 1896, but it was taken seriously much later. One of the early concepts of the elevator, authored by Professor Georgy Pokrovsky, was based on the principles of aerostat operation. The professor wrote about a tower with a gradual multiple tapering of the upper parts to reduce weight on the base. The tower is constructed from a flexible material laid in folds, such as plastic or strong foil. Light gas is injected inside, under pressure the folds are straightened, the tower becomes taller, the spire gradually soars to a height of 160 kilometers. Stability will be provided by cables along the tower body.

Alternatively, the tower could consist of tapered cylinders and move apart like a telescope. As the author noted, the main problem in the construction of ultra-tall structures rests on the strength of modern materials. In Soviet times, and even in modern times, there is no material that could withstand the load of a tower hundreds of kilometers high and could withstand weather and meteorite strikes.

The main purpose of the elevator was scientific research: at an altitude of one hundred kilometers it would be more convenient to observe cosmic bodies, to study cosmic radiation, electrical and magnetic phenomena, the state of the atmosphere. Through the tunnel inside the tower, balloons would rise into the sky.

An elevator as a means of lifting people, ships and cargo is described in a bolder and more complete technical project by engineer Y. Artsutanov in 1960. According to his plan, the elevator would be a pipe with an elevator shaft attached to the equator. At the other end of the tube, a satellite with the same rotation period as the Earth is "tied" in order to remain motionless relative to the planet. The elevator height is 35,800 kilometers.

The satellite at the end of the lift will be the main base, while scientific laboratories, industrial, residential and work areas will be located along the structure. There may be residential objects inside the pipe, because the ascent time from the Earth to the satellite is weeks. The length of the tube is calculated so that the satellite can have platforms for sending and receiving interstellar ships in space without the need to overcome Earth's gravity.

The elevator will connect to the long-term orbital station in the form of a huge ring around the Earth. “Other elevators from the equator will also extend to the station, forming a 'necklace',” writes Georgy Polyakov, Ph. D. in physics and mathematics. The "necklace" will serve as a road between astro-cities and make them more stable in orbit. The necklace will circle 260,000 kilometers and will house 26 million people along with agricultural and workspaces, including O'Neill's cylinders.

The floating cities of Venus

The surface temperature of Venus reaches 400 ° C, and the air consists of carbon dioxide - not very suitable conditions for humans. But there is a place where we could live - this is a space at an altitude of 50-60 kilometers above the planet, where the temperature drops to a comfortable twenty-five degrees, and the conditions of pressure and air composition are more favorable for humans.

All that remains is to build airships and balloon stations, suggested by engineer Sergei Zhitomirsky. The large circular platform of such a station would have a mound of land for growing plants, creating gardens and parks, and living areas would be located in the very thickness of the platform. The city will "soar" thanks to a huge transparent bubble of air lighter than the Venusian one. Powerful propellers will allow you to move the city and always stay on the sunny side of Venus.

Mars plans

Scientist Georgy Polyakov considered Mars to be the most habitable planet after Earth. It is on Mars that it is possible to create a special transport system due to low gravity and its two satellites: Phobos and Deimos. First, a monorail will run along the planet's equator. Trains on the monorail will be connected by power cables to the satellites of Mars, rotating in opposite directions. The force of rotation of the satellites will easily rush the trains attached to them around the planet: Phobos will accelerate the train to 537 meters per second, and Deimos - to forty-five. The length of the cables from trains to satellites will be at least six thousand kilometers.

There were also big plans for the bodies of the satellites: the construction of intermediate space bases and laboratories. The author does not explain how the work would be carried out in conditions of weak gravity of satellites. An effort that would carry a person two meters on the surface of the Earth on Phobos would make it possible to jump five kilometers in length and a kilometer in height. But it would take half an hour to climb and land.

Soviet scientists made plans for almost every planet in the solar system. Basically, it was proposed to send a satellite for reconnaissance, and then build bases and laboratories. Corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Iosif Shklovsky predicted that at such a pace it would take at least five hundred years to master the solar system, and to populate the entire galaxy - several million years. But even then even an advanced civilization will face the same difficulties as we do now: limited resources and the need to develop new objects.

Space exploration through the eyes of dreamers

Science and creativity are fighting in the pictures of Soviet people. Some of the artists had a technical background, so their creations reflected the theories of scientists and it was possible to believe that the future looks like this. For other artists, the images resembled emotion: the elusive delight of stargazing, adventure fantasies, bright flares in deep space and planets that alluringly twinkling so close.

Among the famous creators of paintings about the Universe was Alexei Leonov, the first person to be in outer space. Leonov often wrote in collaboration with the renowned artist Andrei Sokolov. Together they created a series of space-themed postage stamps and many alien landscapes, including those published in magazines.

By the collapse of the USSR, dreams of space finally lost their political functions and partly the charm of their contemporaries. Work in orbit, rocket launches and spacewalks have become commonplace. “There is no future without a dream of the future,” they wrote in Soviet magazines. Now the dream is perceived with less enthusiasm: fantasy is being replaced by the confidence that space will inevitably be ours. But when exactly is still a mystery.