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04.10.07
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A Beep That Changed The World
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By Shaun Walker
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The Soviet Union Launched Sputnik 50 Years Ago Today
It was an event that shocked the United States and the world, exposed the vulnerability of the superpower that had thought itself invincible and spurred a new drive in Washington to achieve unapproachable military superiority. But unlike the fire and carnage of Sept. 11, 2001, the only signs of Sputnik, the world’s first satellite launched 50 years ago today, were a small speck of light in the night sky, and a beep-beep-beep radio signal.
The surviving veterans of the Sputnik program and other early Soviet space programs gathered in Moscow this week for a conference held at the Russian Academy of Sciences to discuss the science behind Sputnik and share memories about the events that led up to the launch on Oct. 4, 1957. Although Sergei Korolyov, the grandfather of the Soviet space program and the driving force behind Sputnik, died in 1966, many of his colleagues and associates are still alive and arrived at the conference proudly wearing the medals and awards they received for their work. The place of honor was given to Boris Chertok, who at 95 has surpassed the current Russian male life expectancy by three and a half decades, but is still lucid and sprightly, and continues to work two days a week as a consultant at the Energiya spacecraft manufacturing company.
Looking back at the events with all the information available today, it seems that Sputnik’s launch, which gave the Soviets a lead in the space race that they held until Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon more than a decade later, was the result of a good deal of chance and the personal determination of Sergei Korolyov. Indeed, the Soviet leadership didn’t even appreciate what a propaganda coup they had scored until the fuss in the West made them realize the magnitude of the launch. Pravda didn’t even bother to make Sputnik headline news until several days after the event.
But even if Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership did not realize the significance of launching an artificial satellite, Korolyov did. In 1955, the White House had announced plans for an artificial satellite launch, but Korolyov was determined that the Soviets would do it first. Already in 1954, during a speech at the Russian Academy of Sciences, he said, “the creation of an artificial satellite and a spaceship for human flight is getting closer and closer.” Efraim Akim, who has worked at what is now called the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics since 1955, remembered the early work of his first boss, Mstislav Keldysh, who worked with Korolyov on Sputnik. “At the start everyone was talking about the military aspect of the program,” he recalled. “But Keldysh and Korolyov, even at the early stages, were excited by the idea of space flight.” Boris Chertok agreed, “At the time, we were mostly thinking about the military missile – it was a race against the Americans.” He also recalls that the scientists mostly saw Sputnik as a toy, the personal project of Korolyov, rather than a giant leap for mankind. “At the time, we had no idea of the significance of what it was we were doing,” he said.
When Sputnik was launched, it was blasted into space atop an R-7 ballistic missile, but the missile had been developed for a very different goal – to be able to strike U.S. cities with nuclear warheads. During a test launch with a mock-up nuclear warhead, however, the warhead burned up. The scientists had to go back to the drawing board, but in the meantime, there remained two more R-7 missiles.
In Fall 1957, Korolyov heard that the Americans were closing in on a satellite design and jettisoned a more ambitious satellite project in order to build a simple satellite that would get into space first. Sputnik was basically just a metal ball with four protruding antennae, capable only of sending back a beeping radio signal. Requests from other members of the team to load it with more complicated scientific equipment were rejected by Korolyov as too risky given the time frame.
The launch was set to take place deep in the Kazakh steppe on Oct. 6, but rumors began to surface that the Americans were planning a launch for the previous day. Not wanting to lose out by a day in the race to be the first into space, Korolyov promptly moved the date forward by two days.
The satellite itself was smaller than many people imagine – it was only about the size of a basketball and weighed less than 100 kilograms (220 lbs). It was the first time that a manmade object had conquered gravity and left the earth’s atmosphere. While Sputnik-1 did nothing more than emit a beep-beep-beep, it paved the way for many things people take for granted today including cheap international phone calls, weather forecasting and navigation systems.
The satellite took about an hour and a half to orbit, passing over the United States seven times a day. Sputnik-1 emitted its radio signal back to earth until Oct. 23, when its battery died, and it burned up in the earth’s atmosphere in early January. But already in early November, Korolyov’s team had launched Sputnik-2, this time with Laika the dog on board. She died from stress a few hours into the flight, but the principle that a living being could function in space had been established, and it was less than four years before Yury Gagarin became the first man in space, in a program also led by Korolyov.
Paradoxically, despite the fact the R-7 missile had carried a harmless beeping satellite and not the nuclear warhead that the Soviets had intended for it, its successful launch caused mass hysteria in the United States. Physicist Edward Teller, who had worked on the hydrogen bomb, told Americans on television that the country had lost “a battle more important and greater than Pearl Harbor.” James Killian, who at the time was the science advisor to President Dwight Eisenhower, recalled the terror that swept the country after Sputnik. “As it beeped in the sky, Sputnik-1 created a crisis of confidence that swept the country like a windblown forest fire. Overnight, there developed widespread fear that the country lay at the mercy of the Russian military machine and that our own government and its military arm had abruptly lost the power to defend the homeland itself.”
In hindsight, Sputnik doesn’t seem like too much of a disaster for the United States. The Americans initiated a new education program to promote the sciences, and their passive response to Sputnik’s overflight laid the groundwork for the de facto rules of the sky, so that later, when the United States flew countless satellite spy missions over Soviet territory, the Soviets were unable to object.
Sergei Korolyov now has scientific institutes, awards, a city, and craters on the Moon and Mars named after him; a film dedicated to his life is to be released in cinemas next week. But during his lifetime, his achievements were a close-guarded secret, and he was never referred to by name. In an interview with the newspaper Rossyiskaya Gazeta last year, his daughter Natalya told how after Gagarin’s return to earth, Korolyov was turned away by guards, unaware of who he was, at the entrance to the celebrations on Red Square. At another space event, he tried to take a seat in the front row, and was unceremoniously shunted off it by one of the ushers with the words, "These seats are only for those with a direct connection to this event, Comrade."
The 50 year anniversary has been a chance for his former friends, associates, colleagues and descendents to remember his achievements and pay him the respect he never received in his lifetime. “Without Korolyov, none of this would have happened,” said Chertok. |
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