04-OCT-1957: Sputnik

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 14:52:27 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:

I wonder if that was due to the fact that originally it was Sputnik II
that was supposed to be launched- but it got delayed, so Sputnik I was a
quicky replacement.

....Actually, it was Sputnik III that got delayed. II was really
nothing more than a doghouse lashed onto another Sputnik I when you
get down to it.

OM

--

"Try Andre Dead Duck Canadian Champagne! | http://www.io.com/~o_m
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OM wrote:

...Actually, it was Sputnik III that got delayed. II was really
nothing more than a doghouse lashed onto another Sputnik I when you
get down to it.


My mistake, I slipped up bad on that one. :-[
I meant Sputnik III- can you imagine what would have happened if the
first Soviet satellite had weighed about the same as a Mercury capsule?
We'd have **** bricks!

Pat

"Matt" writes:

My favorite trivia:
No one "saw Sputnik" with the naked eye.

Except for the people who did.

It wasn't possible.

Was *too*.

People saw the core stage of the R7 booster.

*And*, some, saw Sputnik. National Geographic, December 1957.

--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The 58-cm sputnik was a sixth or seventh magnitude object. The R7
booster was a first magnitude object. The people who described seeing
Sputnik with the naked eye were mistaken - they were seeing the
booster. The sputnik was observed visually only with telecopes and
telescopic cameras. If anyone did visually spot the satellite itself,
and this was confirmed by astronomers or radar, I would be very
interested in reading the reference. I've been through an awful lot of
material from that period, seen a lot of media stories about people
"seeing Sputnik," but never found anything describing an instance where
a claimed visual observation of the satellite itself (which, granted,
may have been barely possible under perfect conditions) was officially
confirmed - not by a science writer or journalist, but by an
observatory or a government tracking station.

Respectfully,
Matt Bille

On 5 Oct 2005 20:37:34 -0700, "Matt" wrote:

The 58-cm sputnik was a sixth or seventh magnitude object. The R7
booster was a first magnitude object.

snip

....Matt, *please* quote to whom you're replying to, so we know who's
being corrected.

Thanks.


OM

--

"Try Andre Dead Duck Canadian Champagne! | http://www.io.com/~o_m
Rated the lamest of the cheapest deported | Sergeant-At-Arms
brands by the Condemned in Killfile Hell!" | Human O-Ring Society

Am Wed, 05 Oct 2005 21:24:51 -0500 schrieb "Pat Flannery":

...Actually, it was Sputnik III that got delayed. II was really
nothing more than a doghouse lashed onto another Sputnik I when you
get down to it.
I meant Sputnik III- can you imagine what would have happened if the
first Soviet satellite had weighed about the same as a Mercury capsule?
We'd have **** bricks!
Didn't many in US anyhow after Vanguard? scnr

cu, ZiLi aka HKZL (Heinrich Zinndorf-Linker)
--
"Abusus non tollit usum" - Latin: Abuse is no argument against proper use.

mailto: http://zili.de

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
A-5 got supersonic in unpowered drop tests:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/a5.htm
But that doesn't count as a self-propelled vehicle.

Aha, that might account for the confusion.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inv.../goddard.shtml
Claims that Robert Goddard flew a supersonic rocket on March 8, 1935.
As does this site: http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ROSWELL/roswell.htm
Astronautics.com states it hit over 700 mph in horizontal flight:
http://www.astronautix.com/chrono/19351.htm

Goddard's own diary (reprinted, in edited form, as "Rocket Development")
makes no mention of thinking it supersonic. It did achieve very high
speed, by flying a nearly horizontal trajectory rather than spending
energy ascending (because Goddard had been misled by the pendulum fallacy
and so his stabilizer did not work, the wind tipped the rocket over to
near-horizontal as soon as it left the launcher).
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Henry Spencer wrote:

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:


A-5 got supersonic in unpowered drop tests:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/a5.htm
But that doesn't count as a self-propelled vehicle.



Aha, that might account for the confusion.


Ah-huh, that might....but we are walking along the edge of T-shirt
territory here, aren't we? :-)




http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inv.../goddard.shtml
Claims that Robert Goddard flew a supersonic rocket on March 8, 1935.
As does this site: http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ROSWELL/roswell.htm
Astronautics.com states it hit over 700 mph in horizontal flight:
http://www.astronautix.com/chrono/19351.htm



Goddard's own diary (reprinted, in edited form, as "Rocket Development")
makes no mention of thinking it supersonic. It did achieve very high
speed, by flying a nearly horizontal trajectory rather than spending
energy ascending (because Goddard had been misled by the pendulum fallacy
and so his stabilizer did not work, the wind tipped the rocket over to
near-horizontal as soon as it left the launcher).

I don't know how you'd check it, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that
some solid-fuel rocket or other went supersonic before the A-4.
It's too bad there isn't more data on those Rheinbote subscale prototype
tests, as by the time they got up to the two and three stager designs
they would have almost have to have reached supersonic velocities.
Even single stage cordite-fueled rockets should have been able to reach
speeds of over Mach 1 if properly designed.
British Z Battery unguided 3 inch antiaircraft rockets could reach
22,000 feet, and when used in the air-to-ground role could reach 1000
mph: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...technology.htm
When I was digging around for info on these rockets, I came across this
Russian language webpage on a museum with Soviet rockets in it:
http://www.enlight.ru/camera/148/
This is obviously a picture showing further development of the German
V-2 engine: http://www.enlight.ru/camera/148/nov25_6216.jpg
But what is this oddity with some sort of finned sub-projectile in it?:
http://www.enlight.ru/camera/148/nov25_6220.jpg
This appears to be a photo of the sub-projectile's electronics:
http://www.enlight.ru/camera/148/nov25_6221.jpg
It seems to have two rows of optical windows wrapped around it.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
This appears to be a photo of the sub-projectile's electronics:
http://www.enlight.ru/camera/148/nov25_6221.jpg
It seems to have two rows of optical windows wrapped around it.

Quite possibly an optical proximity fuze of some kind. (The Germans
fooled around a *lot* with such concepts in WW2 -- there were a ridiculous
number of proximity-fuze projects underway simultaneously, many of them
poorly thought out and likely to go nowhere even if they had adequate
resources, which they didn't.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Pat Flannery wrote:

But what is this oddity with some sort of finned sub-projectile in it?:
http://www.enlight.ru/camera/148/nov25_6220.jpg

According to the text, it's a 9M311 (SA-19)SAM of the Tunguska
antiaircraft complex. The text speculates that the windows/lenses
are associated with a thermal [IR] homing system, but that
doesn't fit with what is known about the missile. Instead, as
Henry suggested, they seem to be part of a laser proximity fuse:

http://warfare.ru/?catid=264&linkid=1693 says

"As compared to the 9M311 air defense missile, the 9M311-1M is
noted for:

"- installation of a radar proximity target sensor in place of
the 8-beam laser one;"



See also

http://www.army-technology.com/proje...tunguska3.html
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/tunguska.htm