On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union stunned the whole world by launching the first artificial satellite into space. This week we are celebrating his 60th birthday. A small balloon transmitting a radio signal caused panic among ordinary Americans when they imagined Russian atomic bombs in orbit. The US military was alerted. Soviet technology took them by surprise. Sputnik 1 pulled the trigger with which the space race began.
As is often the case, if the Soviet Union or the United States had made several different decisions at the time, the story would have been very different.
Khrushchev just wanted a rocket
When Nikita Khrushchev took over the nation in 1953, he had a problem. The Cold War was in full swing, and the Soviet Union felt very vulnerable. If a real war broke out, American planes carrying atomic bombs and taking off from bases in Western Europe could reach Leningrad and Moscow in a few hours. It would take Soviet aircraft much longer to reach the United States. By the time they reached their destinations, the cities of the USSR would most likely have been charred ruins. Khrushchev needed a new weapon that would free the Americans from the idea that they could win the war if they attacked first. He needed a missile that could strike the United States in less than an hour after launch.
Therefore, in 1954, it was decided to develop the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The person who was tasked with creating this weapon was Sergey Korolev. The new rocket was designated the R-7 and was supposed to be large. The Russian bombs were heavy. The R-7 was supposed to be capable of delivering a 3-ton warhead over a distance of more than 6,400 kilometers. The Soviet rocket was more than anything the Americans worked on.
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Korolyov wanted into space
Like many men fascinated by rockets, Sergei Korolyov dreamed of space exploration and suddenly realized that the R-7 could be powerful enough to launch satellites into orbit. In 1956, designer Mikhail Tikhonravov proposed launching a satellite together with the R-7, and in September Korolev received permission to develop.
According to the plan, the satellite was to be launched in the International Geophysical Year, which ran from July 1957 to the end of 1958. However, for Khrushchev, the satellite was an annoying fly. He needed a missile that could reach the United States, nothing else mattered.
Heat shield problem
The first launch of the R-7 took place on May 15, 1957. The rocket collapsed after only 400 kilometers. The next flight, a month later, lasted only 33 seconds. Improvements were made, and on August 21, after a successful flight of 6,000 kilometers, the rocket hit the target. A few days later, the TASS agency announced that the Soviet Union "successfully tested a multistage ICBM."
The second successful test launch took place on 7 September. Nikita Khrushchev hoped for a violent reaction from around the world, but did not receive it. The missile flew over the entire territory of the USSR, and the tracking systems that monitor modern launches in North Korea simply did not exist. There was no evidence, and it seemed that the Western world was not ready to believe that Russia had a functioning ICBM.
In reality, there was another problem. Having risen above the earth's atmosphere, the rocket warhead had to withstand the extremely high temperatures created by the friction of the body against the air. In both test flights, the heat shield completely failed, so instead of hitting the target, the burnt debris did not even reach the ground. A real nuclear warhead could self-destruct long before detonation.
Several months passed before the new heat shield design was ready for testing. At the same time, parts were arriving for the new R-7s, ready for assembly and launch.
Korolyov was ready to risk
Sergey Korolev did not want to wait until the new heat shield is ready for testing. He knew what he wanted to do with the new rockets to be built - he wanted to launch a satellite. But the Soviet military had other thoughts. They only needed a fully functional ICBM. Launching a satellite would be a waste of time on scientific nonsense; science will wait.
Korolev decided to take a chance and did not give a damn about the military, turning directly to Nikita Khrushchev. He emphasized the propaganda value of the first launch of an object into orbit by the forces of a separate country, and convinced the Soviet leader to send a satellite on the next P-7.
The simplest satellite
Korolyov knew that he needed to quickly put the satellite into orbit. Once the redesigned heat shield is ready, the generals will push for a return to missile testing.
Unfortunately, the design of Tikhonravov, which weighed 1400 kilograms and contained many scientific instruments, was far from ready. She eventually went into space as Sputnik 3, but an alternative was hastily sought out at the time.
PS-1, or "Simplest Sputnik-1", was a metal sphere with three batteries and a radio transmitter with four antennas. And it transmitted sounds on two different radio frequencies. They made it so quickly that there were not even formal construction drawings left. Technicians worked from sketches and verbal instructions, and engineers didn't really think about how to do it better.
Korolyov was acutely aware of the propaganda value of a satellite in orbit and wanted his satellite to be as noticeable as possible when moving around the world. The metal sphere has been polished to a bright shiny silver. Then, to maximize visibility, reflective prisms were added to the outside of the last stage of the R-7 rocket, as it also had to enter orbit.
A telegram lost in translation
The launch was scheduled for October 6, 1957, but then Korolev received a telegram stating that the Americans were planning to launch their own probe into space. He set out to be the first and postponed the launch by two days.
However, there was no reason to panic. The message in the telegram somehow turned out to be incorrectly translated, and no launch was planned - just a presentation at the conference. And all the same, October 4, 1957 became the day that is generally considered the beginning of the space age.
Long wait
Today, almost everything in Earth's orbit is tracked and observed, even small pieces of space debris. In 1957, tracing of the Soviet Union only extended to the eastern border off the Pacific coast.
Korolev and his colleagues waited anxiously for over an hour (no doubt biting elbows and biting lips) before Sputnik's signal was caught from the west and completed its first orbit. Only then did they find out that the launch was successful and passed the news to the Kremlin.
If Korolev were an American, he would instantly become famous. But he remained anonymous. In the USSR, he was called the "chief designer". His real name was not disclosed until his death, and the full story of the P-7 and Sputnik became known in the West only with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The CIA did not frighten the "Sputnik" flying over the USA
When Sputnik 1 began to pass constantly over North America, many people in the United States were terrified. They literally saw him as a space invader. But some in the CIA were secretly pleased. They were spies.
The intelligence agency developed the U-2 spy plane, which made its maiden flight in 1995. The cameras of the apparatus flying at high altitude could take valuable footage. However, the mission managers knew that time would pass and the Russians would be able to develop an aircraft or missile capable of catching up with the U-2. The next generation of spy planes, which can fly even higher and faster, will not appear immediately.
Meanwhile, the CIA's attention fell on the idea of satellites that could be good replacements. Talking about the Vanguard project in 1955 set the course. Is it possible to photograph enemy territory from a satellite in orbit? By 1956, long before Sputnik, the US Air Force launched the first American reconnaissance satellite program, the WS-117L.
This idea had two problems. The first was the difficult task of creating and launching a spacecraft for capturing and then returning images to Earth. The second problem was legal. Nobody knew what laws came into force when a satellite of one country passed over another. Is this considered an airspace invasion? The U-2 flights were undoubtedly illegal, but, according to the CIA, “plausibly denied”. The plane can go off course by accident, and if the U-2 crashed, it had no marks, and the pilot would probably be dead. But satellites, on the other hand, were very easy to track. An American satellite over Soviet territory could provoke an international reaction and even lead to war.
Sputnik-1 has gracefully solved this problem. If the Americans did not mind about moving the satellite over the United States (and they did not mind), then the Soviet Union could not object to the American satellites over its territory. The spy satellites got carte blanche.
USA could be the first
Wernher von Braun was a man driven by a desire to build rockets, and he wanted to use these rockets to explore outer space. Serious questions remain about the extent to which he was willing to ignore the moral dilemmas caused by the planned use of what he developed, but he was undoubtedly an engineering genius when it came to developing new technologies.
Von Braun spent most of his time in World War II developing the V-2 missiles, which caused serious damage to London during the war. Then he made a conscious decision to lead his team of engineers on the side of the American forces and offered his services to the US government.
By 1953, von Braun had become the head of the American rocket team. He refined and enlarged the V-2 design, making it the first American ballistic missile, the PGM-11 Redstone, which took off that same year. Redstone was designed for use in more combat and had an operating range of only 320 kilometers, but von Braun wanted to launch satellites with it.
In September 1954, he proposed making a "minimal satellite apparatus." It was essentially a Redstone coupled with three upper stages of small solid-state rockets. This combination, von Braun calculated, could put a small satellite weighing 2.5 kilograms into Earth's orbit. He also requested $ 100,000 in additional funding to develop his satellite, but was sternly refused. Opportunity number one was missed.
The period from July 1957 to December 1958 was designated the International Geophysical Year (IGY), with the aim of promoting scientific cooperation between countries. In 1955, the Soviet Union announced that it would launch scientific instruments into space as part of the IGY. In a spirit of rivalry, not cooperation, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower immediately announced that the US was planning to launch an artificial satellite into Earth's orbit as part of the IGY.
At the time, the US Army, Air Force, and Navy were all developing their own missile designs. And each offered their strength to launch the satellite. Much to Wernher von Braun's chagrin, the Navy won the tender for the Vanguard missile. As a consolation, the army was allowed to build a modified Redstone, which was then named Jupiter-C. This was done in order to test the design of heat shields for the return of nuclear warheads to the atmosphere on the way to the target.
US Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson was not a fan of von Braun and was concerned that he might launch a satellite "by accident." Therefore, he ordered the head of the military missile program, General Bruce Medaris, to personally inspect each Jupiter-C's valuable cargo prior to launch to ensure that von Braun did not place a live satellite on the missiles.
Jupiter-C was first launched on September 20, 1956. The rocket carried a valuable cargo weighing 39 kilograms to an altitude of 1,094 kilometers at a speed of 25,750 kilometers per hour. The addition of one small stage and lighter baggage would accelerate it to 28,485 kilometers per hour and put a satellite into orbit. The space age could have begun a year before the flight of Sputnik-1. Opportunity number two was missed.
And it just so happened that the Russians launched Sputnik, putting the Vanguard project under serious pressure. In December 1957, the low-profile test launch became a worldwide news event. The Vanguard rocket lifted several meters from the launch pad and then exploded with a crash.
In desperation, the US government turned to von Braun's team. She hastily put together a new version of Jupiter-C, including an additional stage with a little valuable scientific payload. The name of the rocket was changed to Juno and convinced the world that it was not really a rocket. And then, on January 31, 1958, Explorer 1 was launched into orbit, and the United States finally entered the space race - with the help of Wernher von Braun's plan, which was refused in 1954 and 1955.
R-7 turned out to be a failed missile
Despite its incredible success as a satellite carrier (astronauts visiting the International Space Station today climb to the top of a stretched version of the same rocket), the R-7 ICBM has not been the most successful. The complex design of the central rocket with attached boosters required many days to assemble. Then, for another seven hours, the rocket had to be refueled and ready for launch - there was no smell of an instant response to the American attack.
The launch pad was also elevated, making it extremely vulnerable. Soviet warheads also got smaller and lighter, so the huge R-7 became obsolete almost immediately.
Ilya Khel