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LETTER FROM AMERICA

"Sputunik" Launched Space Exploration Forty Years Ago

Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed writes from Princeton
***- For the US, it meant the subordination of all other national interests to the launching of immensely expensive crash programmes to outdo the Russians in this competition. The space race was on!***
FORTYyisrago. on Octobei' 4, 1997 to be exact, (he1 Soviet'Union ushered in the space age by launching a small sphere into the earth's orbit. The sphere beep-beeped its existence for 21 days before running out of power. The world's first satellite, dubbed "Sputnik", (the word means traveling companion in Russian). Jolted the western world, although, interestingly, it received very little attention within Russia itselfl In its October 5 issue, the Pravda reported the event under the title Tass Report": it did not bother to mention the word satellite in the caption! The report was factual — the size, weight, orbital inclination of the sphere, and the radio frequency on which the beep could be heard. The report correctly credited the great Konstantin Tsiolkovsky with having established the feasibility of artificial Earth satellites decades earlier.
The following day's Prauda was something else. By then the Soviet leaders had began to appreciate the global impact of the event. The New York Times printed the news in a rarely used three-line head in halfinch capital letters, running full length across the front page: SOVIET FIRES EARTH SATELLITE INTO SPACE: IT IS CIRCLING THE GLOBE AT 18.000 M.P.H.: SPHERE TRACKED IN 4 CROSSINGS OVER THE US.
Other western newspapers speculated apocalyptically on what the achievement might mean In terms of Russian technological capability. British daily Manchester Guardian (presently The Guardian) editorialised under the caption, "Next stop Mars?": "The achievement is Immense. It demands a psychological adjustment on our part towards Soviet society. Soviet military capabilities and — perhaps most of all — the relationship of the world with what is beyond." Some of the Guardian's speculation was downright clairvoyant. "We must be prepared to be told what the other side of the moon looks like," (Russia's Lunik 3 produced the photos only two years later.) The Guardian accurately pointed out what would In fact be true In a few years, that "the Russians can now build ballistic missiles capable of hitting any chosen target anywhere In the world."
Many American space enthusiasts, stricken with gloom at that time, now reflect that it was the best thing that could have happened to the American space programme. Only four years later. President Kennedy would call for what became the Apollo programme. (President Kennedy would ask the Congress, in 1961, to fund a programme to send a man to the moon, and to bring him back safely to Earth, before the end of the 1960 decade.) An enormous infrastructure of space research and development centres. test and launch facilities, support industry and university programmes would come Into being. For the US, it meant the subordination of all other national interests to the launching of immensely expensive crash programmes to outdo the Russians in this competition. The space race was on!
Prauda was delighted to print, on October 6, 1957. the praises of friends and enemies over their Sputnik feat. Reactions from Peking (that friendship would dissolve in a few years hence). Warsaw. Paris. Vienna. Rome. London, and specially from New York prompted the Prauda to declare victory with a banner headline: "Russians won the competition."
It was a competition America should have won hands down. Serious proposal to launch an American Earth-orbiting satellite had been discussed since the mid- 1940s. In February. 1946. first the Douglas Aircraft Company and then the project Research and Development (RAND) were funded with 1 million dollars to submit secret proposal for the design of "an Earth-orbiting satellite." RAND's eventual report on "Preliminary Design of an Experimental world-Circling Spaceship" predicted with misguided perception: "The achievement of a satellite craft by the United States would inflame the imagination of mankind, and would probably produce repercussions in the world comparable to the explosion of the atomic bomb."
In Russia. Konstantin Tsi-olkovsky had shown mathe-
matically in 1903 how a device launched at a certain velocity would achieve Earth orbit. In 1948. visionary Mikhail Tikhonravov made the case for developing such a device to Sergei Paplovich Korolev, the legendary chief designer of the Soviet space programme. No government support was forthcoming until 1953.
The US's most substantive design came from the legendary rocket scientist. German-born Wernher Von Braun, who was with the US Army. However. President Dwight Elsenhower wanted to keep the military out of space research. In the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) programmes, dedicated to scientific research and open skies. Eisenhower did not want to disturb Soviet Premier Nikita Kruhchev's sensibilities about overflights over Russia. Therefore, a project ill-named Vanguard, under the auspices of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and based on antiquated technology, was entrusted with the task of carrying the US banner into the space age.
With the Communist party's nervous acquiescence in August. 1957, Korolev placed the development of Russian space programme on a fast track. In a little more than a month, a plain, polished 83.6 kg sphere containing only radio transmitter. batteries and temperature measuring devices was successfully catapulted into the Earth's orbit.
The rest is history. Sputnik 1 went up successfully, followed only two months later by Sputnik 2, which sacrificed to science a dog named Laika. US's Vanguard failed twice, before the von Braun team was rushed in to successfully orbit the Explorer satellite on January 31. 1958. Spaceship "Redstone" lifted the first American, Shepherd, into space in May, 1961.
Korolev went on to lead the Soviet Union to spectacular successes — the 1.3-ton Sputnik 3. the first man (Yuri Gagarin) In space, first women, first three men. first walk in space, the first spacecraft to Impact the Moon and Venus and fly by Mars. However, piggy-backing on the computer technology
and unlimited funds, the US very quickly leapfrogged ahead of the Russians in the race for space.
Korolev failed with the project that was his consuming passion — beating the Americans to a circumnavigation and then a landing on the Moon. He died In 1966. while at the peak
of Soviet effort. The Soviet Moon — launch vehicle failed catastrophically in four test launches between 1969 and 1972. During that time, the United States landed six missions with 12 astronauts on the lunar surface.
Throughout the cold war. the space race intensified. The
ironic epilogue to the story Is ' that Russia and the United
States are now cooperating with nine European nations plus Japan and Canada. In developing an International Space Station whose first element is scheduled for launch in 1998. The prime contractor for the Russian portion of the ISS is none other than the Rocket Space Company Energia, today's name for the Korolev design bureau. A new era for cooperation in space exploration has dawned.