Fifty Years In Space

Today marks the 5oth anniversary of the beginning of the Space Age and the Space Race. The Space Age and its Race was the result of the Cold War, which began with the Atomic Age. Not surprisingly the Atomic Age over laps the Space Age, in fact the Space Race not only superseded that short age, but was far more popular. Considering that the former meant the end of the world as we know it, and the latter meant finding other worlds.

While the Americans launched the Atomic Age it was the Soviet Union which launched the Space Age and its Race to the Moon.

History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed only 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.

The story begins in 1952, when the International Council of Scientific Unions decided to establish July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958, as the International Geophysical Year (IGY) because the scientists knew that the cycles of solar activity would be at a high point then. In October 1954, the council adopted a resolution calling for artificial satellites to be launched during the IGY to map the Earth's surface.

Both ages come as result of WWII. And it is ironic that while the Atomic Age was the collective effort Allied scientists and the U.S. military exemplifying the best aspects of a planned economy, the space race was begun in a collectivist state by the individual efforts of a scientist worthy of being a character in an Ayn Rand novel.

Sputnik was a spur of the moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, cobbled together a satellite and persuaded a doubting Kremlin to usher in the space age.
In a series of interviews with the Associated Press, Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space programme, has told the little-known story of how Sputnik was launched and what an unlikely achievement it was.

For much of his life, Mr Chertok couldn't whisper a word about the project, which culminated in Sputnik entering orbit on October 4 1957.

His identity, along with that of Sergei Korolyov, the chief scientist, was a state secret. Today, aged 95, he can finally express his pride at the pivotal role he played in the history of space exploration.

"Each of these first rockets was like a beloved woman for us," he said. "We were in love with every rocket - we desperately wanted it to blast off successfully. We would give our hearts and souls to see it flying."

As described by the former scientists, the world's first orbiter was born out of a separate Soviet programme: the development of a rocket capable of striking the US with a hydrogen bomb.

Today the Space Race is on again in earnest. The Chinese have launched their first successful rocket into space. Canada, NASA, Russia, India, the European Space Agency, Japan, all have space programs. What we don't have is a common space program. Instead everyone, including the private sector, is once again competing to get to the Moon and to Mars.

Rather than developing a common space station in the Lagrange 5,an area in space where a space station could exist in perpetuity, we have a disposable station being built as a joint US/Canada/Russian venture, that will once again become space junk.

Once the space race began in earnest fifty years ago, humanity focused upwards to the skies. And it is no coincidence that as we launched space probes, space aliens appeared in popular culture to probe us.


SEE:

Drunks In Space

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Canada Celebrates Star Wars

Star Wars The Next Installment

Science or Tourism

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Hoax

Two moons on 27th August 2007?

An eclipse wrongly called a double moon? Or is it Mars?

It's Neither.

As Molly's Blog points out

As Molly has made plain in a previous post (see' What's All This Double Moon Stuff' earlier today) there will not be either any "double Moon" or "double eclipse" on the upcoming lunar eclipse in the early morning of August 28th. It will be the regular and ordinary lunar eclipse.

And the Mars post circulating by email, appears to be based on events in the recent past.

Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August.

It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will cultivate on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65 Million miles of earth.
Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons.
The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.

The text of this rumor was roughly accurate when it first began circulating in the summer of 2003, outdated when it went around again in 2005, and just plain false when it appeared for the third time in 2006. It is now 2007, and making the rounds again. How many times can a "once in a lifetime" event occur?

The oscillating orbits of Mars and Earth did, in fact, bring the two planets closer together on August 27, 2003 than at any other time during the past 50,000 years. Though Mars never actually appeared "as large as the full moon" -- not even close -- for a few days in 2003 it was indeed the brightest object in the night sky.

On August 27 of that year, the orbital paths of Earth and Mars brought the two planets to within 34.65 million miles of one another -- closer than at any other time in the past 50,000 years. Though Mars never actually appeared "as large as the full moon to the naked eye" (as claimed in the email), the red planet did vividly dominate the night sky for a time, making 2003's close encounter a once-in-a-lifetime event indeed for astronomers, space enthusiasts, and ordinary observers alike.

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