Why don't the Russians know and appreciate the launch of the first satellite, like the flight of Gagarin?

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

Many are perplexed why Russian and Soviet patriots know, remember and honor the flight of the first man into space in 1961, but no one except Leo the Hud and narrow astronautics specialists know and appreciate the launch of the first satellite as much as 4 years earlier in the distant 50 years.

I explain. In the Soviet Union, the launch of the first satellite was not particularly promoted because they were engaged in business, not PR. It is difficult for the modern young generation to imagine, but, in those days, the technological breakthrough mega-achievements of the communists were such an ordinary routine that it was difficult to surprise with something. Every day, new factories, airports, institutes were opened, fantastic scientific discoveries were made, world records were set both in sports and in industry, agriculture, culture, etc. All this stuff in massive quantities, there was not enough space in the newspapers to write about all this every day. The country is huge, the largest in the world, and everywhere something breakthrough is happening. Go figure out what is most important in this stream.

Well, just think, companion is another achievement. Why is it better than the first nuclear reactor, the first nuclear power plant, the first nuclear icebreaker, the first nuclear submarine, the first passenger jet aircraft, the first supersonic aircraft, the first hydrogen bomb, etc. Plus, in those post-war years, people still remembered what hunger was, and, indeed, instinctively, they were more interested in milk yields and wheat yield than in some kind of beeping pieces of iron flying around the Earth.

Everything changed after the Americans and other foreign capitalists began to unwittingly promote this satellite out of fright. For them, it was the explosion of a hydrogen bomb in their brains. In the west, the worst panic in history began. They have NOTHING LIKE JUST NO, AND EVEN WASN'T EXPECTED! They don't read Soviet newspapers, how many factories the communists open every day, they don't know, but this disgusting thing flies over their heads every hour at an altitude of 300 km. At night it can be seen with the naked eye, and during the day, radio receivers pick up the signal from it. It can neither be brought down nor stopped. What if the evil communists have attached an atomic bomb to him and she is already flying from above to the White House? How not to panic here?

In general, such a howl arose in the Western media that even the Russians realized that they underestimated Sputnik and themselves. And already for the next step in space exploration, the communists prepared in the best way - Gagarin's flight was promoted on an American scale in accordance with all the laws of the genre, and did not drown in the stream of routine Soviet mega-achievements in all spheres of life, from milk yields to enchanting tours of the Soviet ballet. Since then, we do not remember the first satellite, but they remember Gagarin very well.