04-OCT-1957: Sputnik

In message , Gene Cash
writes
Has NOBODY remembered today is the anniversary of Sputnik?

I'm not surprised there's no news stories, but I figured SOMEBODY here
besides myself would remember...

It was on the BBC news site "On This Day" spot, which I thought was
quite good for a not-very-memorable anniversary.
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In article , Gene Cash wrote:
I'm not surprised there's no news stories, but I figured SOMEBODY here
besides myself would remember...
Two more years and it'll be a full half-century.

I remembered, but didn't think a 48th anniversary was worth posted
comment. :-)

Or for that matter, yesterday's anniversary -- the 63rd anniversary of
"today, the spaceship was born". (That was Walter Dornberger's comment on
3 Oct 1942, seeing the first successful A4 flight at Peenemuende -- the
first man-made object in space, and also the first self-propelled vehicle
to exceed Mach 2, Mach 3, Mach 4, and probably Mach 5, one of their
earlier subscale test vehicles having been the first to exceed Mach 1.)
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"Gene Cash" wrote in message
...
(Henry Spencer) writes:

In article , Gene Cash
wrote:
I'm not surprised there's no news stories, but I figured SOMEBODY here
besides myself would remember...
Two more years and it'll be a full half-century.

I remembered, but didn't think a 48th anniversary was worth posted
comment. :-)

Of course YOU did, you're St. Henry of Utzoo, patron saint of space
historians.

I dunno... I think putting something in orbit is decidedly non-trivial,
although it's now routine, and it triggered a whole lot of other things
at the time.

Not trivial, and arguably still not all that routine. For example, VAFB's
first Delta IV launch was delayed today::

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/delta/d314/status.html

"Launch of a classified spy satellite aboard the first California flight of
Boeing's Delta 4 rocket has been placed on hold while engineers examine
conflicting analytical models about possible fuel sloshing during the
booster's ascent to orbit."

Better to have caught it before launch, and hopefully upon further review it
will prove not to be a problem. On the other hand, I marvel at the launch
rate to orbit achieved at VAFB in the mid-60's.

The three peak years we 1965, with 40 launches, 1966 with 46 launches,
and 1967 with 40 launches. Nine of the 126 launches failed, for a 93 percent
success rate. Stats derived from Jonathan McDowell's launch log:

http://www.planet4589.org/space/log/launch.html

The high launch rate was due in large part to the need to launch many
payloads limited to short-lived missions, e.g. the early KeyHole film-return
imaging reconnaissance satellites. During 2002-2004, VAFB made a total of 10
orbital launches, none of which were imaging reconnaissance satellites.

Ted Molczan

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...

Or for that matter, yesterday's anniversary -- the 63rd anniversary of
"today, the spaceship was born". (That was Walter Dornberger's comment on
3 Oct 1942, seeing the first successful A4 flight at Peenemuende -- the
first man-made object in space, and also the first self-propelled vehicle
to exceed Mach 2, Mach 3, Mach 4, and probably Mach 5, one of their
earlier subscale test vehicles having been the first to exceed Mach 1.)

"Willkommen zu den Muppetlabors, in denen die Zukunft heute gebildet wird."

Or something.

I did put some comments on my Sci/Tech WebLog (at www.mattwriter.com),
but it's funny how it did sort of sneak up on us this year. Maybe
we're all looking ahead to 2007.

My favorite trivia:
No one "saw Sputnik" with the naked eye. It wasn't possible. People
saw the core stage of the R7 booster.

There was no mass panic in the US. There's wasn't even mass concern
until the media had a month or so to whip things up.

The Soviets didn't use the agreed-on IGY frequency of 108MHz, and US
scientists complained about that. Apparently a Soviet message did go
to someone in the US IGY community in advance but was misplaced.

All this and more in (do you think I'd miss this opportunity?) The
First Space Race, by Matt Bille and Erika Lishock, Foreowrd by James
Van Allen (Texas A&M University Press, 2004)

Regards,
Matt Bille

Henry Spencer wrote:

the
first man-made object in space, and also the first self-propelled vehicle
to exceed Mach 2, Mach 3, Mach 4, and probably Mach 5, one of their
earlier subscale test vehicles having been the first to exceed Mach 1.)



They got a A5 past Mach one?
My books say it only approached the speed of sound.
A4 V3 broke the sound barrier on August 16th, 1942; but it was a full
sized A4, not a subscale test vehicle.
Say, although the Peenemunde team is happily claiming that they shot
the first supersonic rocket around, in November of 1941
Rheinmetall-Borsig started doing tests on its multi-stage solid-fueled
Rheinbote missile prototypes, and the two and three stage variants of
those test missiles would have been easily supersonic.
The production four stage variant hit Mach 5.55 at burnout, although
this came after the first successful A-4 flight.

Pat

Ted Molczan wrote:


Not trivial, and arguably still not all that routine. For example, VAFB's
first Delta IV launch was delayed today::

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/delta/d314/status.html

"Launch of a classified spy satellite aboard the first California flight of
Boeing's Delta 4 rocket has been placed on hold while engineers examine
conflicting analytical models about possible fuel sloshing during the
booster's ascent to orbit."



This should have been caught during the rocket's design, not when it's
built and sitting on the pad; that's very sloppy.

Pat

Matt wrote:

The Soviets didn't use the agreed-on IGY frequency of 108MHz, and US
scientists complained about that. Apparently a Soviet message did go
to someone in the US IGY community in advance but was misplaced.



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.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
first man-made object in space, and also the first self-propelled vehicle
to exceed Mach 2, Mach 3, Mach 4, and probably Mach 5, one of their
earlier subscale test vehicles having been the first to exceed Mach 1.)

They got a A5 past Mach one?
My books say it only approached the speed of sound.
A4 V3 broke the sound barrier on August 16th, 1942; but it was a full
sized A4, not a subscale test vehicle.

I've seen/heard conflicting reports about this, and have never cared
enough about it to go digging for positive confirmation, so I gave them
the benefit of the doubt.
--
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:


first man-made object in space, and also the first self-propelled vehicle
to exceed Mach 2, Mach 3, Mach 4, and probably Mach 5, one of their
earlier subscale test vehicles having been the first to exceed Mach 1.)


They got a A5 past Mach one?
My books say it only approached the speed of sound.
A4 V3 broke the sound barrier on August 16th, 1942; but it was a full
sized A4, not a subscale test vehicle.



I've seen/heard conflicting reports about this, and have never cared
enough about it to go digging for positive confirmation, so I gave them
the benefit of the doubt.



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.
Everything I have says that the second A4 launched- the A4V3 (Versuchs
3- research vehicle 3) was the first one to go supersonic, and the
launch team was proud of this fact even though the missile broke apart
194 seconds into its flight.
However, this:
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

Pat