Plans for Sputnik 50th Anniversary?
Matt
know of any? Books, films, conferences, ceremonies, etc?
Thanks,
Matt Bille
www.mattwriter.com
Guy Parry
Here's a radical proposal to take to the Russians - how about a
decent color still of the launch??
>
>http://www.si.edu/about/budget/2007/22-NationalAirandSpaceMuseum.pdf
>
>To recognize the 50th anniversary of Sputnik's launch and the birth
>of the
>space age, NASM will open a new exhibit in October 2007. In addition,
>the
>Museum will continue planning the next two galleries, Exploring the
>Planets and
>Human Space Exploration in the Shuttle/Space Station Era. Other
>galleries will
>be evaluated for upgrades, and installation of new artifacts at the
>Udvar-Hazy
>Center will continue throughout FY 2007.
>
>
>Rusty
Pat Flannery
Guy Parry wrote:
> Here's a radical proposal to take to the Russians - how about a
>decent color still of the launch??
>
>
True...we've got the R-7 ICBM, we've got Sputnik 2, but where the hell
is Sputnik 1?
I imagine the fact that it launched at night had a lot to do with it.
Next question is obviously why did it need to launch at night? It was
battery powered, so sun position had nothing to do with it.
I'd have to check, but I'd bet the launching was originally intended for
daylight but got delayed.
Either that, or they wanted to track it visually on its first few orbits
as it crossed the dark sky shortly prior to sunrise to determine its
exact orbit by the time of its appearance and position in the sky.
So both Sputnik 1 and Explorer1 went up by night- the dawn of space
exploration started at night on both sides. :-)
Pat
Neil Gerace
"Pat Flannery" <fla...@daktel.com> wrote in message
news:12hmqrl...@corp.supernews.com...
> So both Sputnik 1 and Explorer1 went up by night- the dawn of space
> exploration started at night on both sides. :-)
All dawns start at night, I think :)
Scott Hedrick
"Neil Gerace" <ger...@iinet.net.au> wrote in message
news:451b6dd0$0$15650$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
When is it not after midnight?
Pat Flannery
Neil Gerace wrote:
>
>
>>So both Sputnik 1 and Explorer1 went up by night- the dawn of space
>>exploration started at night on both sides. :-)
>>
>>
>
>All dawns start at night, I think :)
>
>
Yeah, and the darkest part of night at that. ;-)
You'd be able to get a lot more precise tracking data to establish a
satellite's orbit visually than by radio signals.
Unlike later Soviet unmanned spacecraft, Sputnik 1 was pressurized with
nitrogen, not helium. It did have a small fan inside it to circulate the
gas for thermal control.
I don't know at what point they changed gases, but helium has the
advantages of high thermal conductivity and excellent chemical
inertness, so that possible chemical interaction with the internal
electronics could be avoided (i.e. corrosion between plugs and their
sockets). One advantage of gas pressurization is that vacuum welding of
moving metal components can be avoided.
Pat
robert casey
> Here's a radical proposal to take to the Russians - how about a
> decent color still of the launch??
>
Yeah, why were most of the photos of Russian launches and spacecraft so
crappy? Photography was a mature technology back in the 50's.
Neil Gerace
"robert casey" <wa2...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:IF%Tg.5689$o71...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
To convince people they were genuine. Sharp pictures scream 'fake!' :)
mike flugennock
I've often wondered, myself. My only guess could be that the images we
used to see of those events were perhaps ripped out of Pravda or
something, smuggled out of the country, then transmitted to the West
over a wirefoto service.
At least, that's my SWAG.
--
.
"Though I could not caution all, I yet may warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools!"
--grateful dead.
_______________________________________________________________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
"Mikey'zine": dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org
Pat Flannery
robert casey wrote:
>
> Yeah, why were most of the photos of Russian launches and spacecraft
> so crappy? Photography was a mature technology back in the 50's.
The Soviet Union made really crappy color film back then.
Also, this stuff was all classified so we're lucky that they even
allowed it to be filmed at all, given their paranoia.
Pat
Jochem Huhmann
I'd assume that the crappy quality of the available photos is at least
partly due to them being reproduced from old prints over and over.
Jochem
--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Pat Flannery
Jochem Huhmann wrote:
>I'd assume that the crappy quality of the available photos is at least
>partly due to them being reproduced from old prints over and over.
>
>
And even the Soviet populace didn't know what their main space rocket
exactly looked like till they brought a Vostok booster to the Paris Air
Show in 1967, and no one got a really good look at the Proton until the
Vega missions.
The photos and film of the early launches probably stayed locked away in
some obscure office of the bureaucracy, to be seen by only a select few
in the government.
That and the film itself- when they filmed "The Fall Of Berlin" as a
tribute to Stalin's 70th birthday in 1949, they used captured Agfacolor
German film due to the inferiority of their own film.
Pat
Pat Flannery
Rusty wrote:
>
>I believe prior to 1967 when the Russians pulled back the curtain and
>revealed the Vostok and Vostok rocket at the Paris Air Show, the
>western press obtained many of their Soviet space photos from the front
>pages of Pravda, etc. Copies of pictures taken from a newspaper would
>be one reason for the poor quality.
>
>
>
>
And in most of those photos and movies you could get only a vague idea
of what the Semyorka looked like, as they were chosen for dissemination
on the basis of just how little they revealed.
In the case of Sputnik, the Soviets put out pictures of a V2A sounding
rocket as the launch vehicle, and the western press thought the side
instrument pods might be turbojet engines. :-)
Pat
Henry Spencer
Pat Flannery <fla...@daktel.com> wrote:
>...One advantage of gas pressurization is that vacuum welding of
Vacuum welding, aka cold welding, is basically a myth. There are *no*
documented cases of it actually occurring in orbit, except in experiments
deliberately designed to provoke it (with susceptible materials, great
care to avoid contamination, and deliberate mechanical removal of oxide
layers etc.).
A number of early problems were ascribed to cold welding, but those are
now thought to have been mostly cases of galling -- surface damage due to
metal-to-metal rubbing -- with lubrication absent, inadequate, improper,
or migrated. A few others were simple design botches. No spacecraft
anomalies have been attributed to cold welding since 1966, around the time
when people started having doubts about its reality.
No cold welding was found anywhere in LDEF's mechanical systems. All
apparent cases of it were eventually shown to be galling damage during
installation, or improper removal techniques leading to galling then.
(Stainless-steel fasteners, in particular, gall very easily.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | he...@spsystems.net
Henry Spencer
Matt <MattW...@AOL.com> wrote:
>I've really seen nothing about any plans for commemoration... anyone
>know of any? Books, films, conferences, ceremonies, etc?
Also of some significant, but less likely to be commemorated, is that the
day before the 50th anniversary of Sputnik will be the 65th of the first
man-made object in space -- the first fully successful A4 flight at
Peenemuende. That A4 was also the first self-propelled vehicle to reach
Mach 2, Mach 3, Mach 4, and probably Mach 5, some years before Crossfield,
Apt, etc. did it in aircraft. But it was done for the wrong people...
Pat Flannery
Henry Spencer wrote:
>Peenemuende. That A4 was also the first self-propelled vehicle to reach
>Mach 2, Mach 3, Mach 4, and probably Mach 5, some years before Crossfield,
>Apt, etc. did it in aircraft. But it was done for the wrong people...
>
>
Fastest of the German rockets was Rheinbote- the final stage was going
over 5,900 and 6,800 kph at burnout.
According to one website citation I found, the V-2 maxed out at 5,760
kph or a tad over Mach 5.
There's a possibility that one of Goddard's rockets cracked Mach 1 on
March 8, 1935...but it can't be proved.
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ROSWELL/roswell.htm
Pat
Pat Flannery
Rusty wrote:
>Here is a NASA translation of the Pravda article reporting about the
>Vostok rocket at the Paris Airshow in May 1967.
>
>http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19670019600_1967019600.pdf
>
>
Thanks! This should make a fascinating read.
Pat
Henry Spencer
Pat Flannery <fla...@daktel.com> wrote:
>There's a possibility that one of Goddard's rockets cracked Mach 1 on
>March 8, 1935...but it can't be proved.
>http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ROSWELL/roswell.htm
The performance numbers for the A5 (subscale V-2 prototype, many flights
1939-1942) in NASA TM-X-59820 fairly strongly imply supersonic speed, but
there appears to be no positive confirmation of this, perhaps due to
limited instrumentation.
The third A4 test (the one before the full success) definitely exceeded
Mach 1 on 16 Aug 1942, although it exploded before reaching Mach 2.
Pat Flannery
Henry Spencer wrote:
>
>The performance numbers for the A5 (subscale V-2 prototype, many flights
>1939-1942) in NASA TM-X-59820 fairly strongly imply supersonic speed, but
>there appears to be no positive confirmation of this, perhaps due to
>limited instrumentation.
>
>The third A4 test (the one before the full success) definitely exceeded
>Mach 1 on 16 Aug 1942, although it exploded before reaching Mach 2.
>
>
Are you getting a feeling of deja-vu about this discussion? :-) :
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X224128ED
Pat
OM
wrote:
>>The third A4 test (the one before the full success) definitely exceeded
>>Mach 1 on 16 Aug 1942, although it exploded before reaching Mach 2.
>>
>Are you getting a feeling of deja-vu about this discussion? :-) :
>http://makeashorterlink.com/?X224128ED
...Nah, Henry's just an old space war horse reliving old memories
again :-) :-) :-)
OM
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