Space the Final Frontier There have been a lot of milestone events in space. We started out with the first rocket to reach space. In 1942 the Germans launched a V-2 A4 rocket. It reached 118 miles in altitude and became the first man made object to reach what was considered space. Can you imagine if the Germans had been peaceful and used their talents for peaceful purposes instead of weapons? They may have enabled us to be far ahead of where we are today. Instead, these V2 rockets became the first long range rocket weapons. The first satellite was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. It was named Sputnik 1. I remember that day very well. The satellite generated a signal. That was about all it did as it orbited the earth, but it had terrified the western world. Many believed it contained a nuclear bomb and the Soviets were planning to drop that bomb on the United States. Radio stations played the signal from Sputnik over and over all day and night, scaring people even more. The United States was not able to launch its first successful satellite until February 1958. It was named Explorer 1. The funny part about the space age is the credit for the first proposal to start space travel came from Scotland in 1861 when an essay named “A Journey Through Space”, was written by an astronomer named William Leitch. In 1903 it was picked up by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky when he wrote a paper called, “The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices.” One of the facts which was a contributing factor to advances in rocketry was the fact Sergey Korolev, who was the chief rocket designer under Stalin, convinced him to develop ICBMs, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles which led to the large Soviet rockets which were used for launches into space. When the Soviets launched Yuri Gagarin into space on April 12, 1961 it changed everything. Gagarin was the first human to ever achieve this feat. Many have said NASA could have launched an astronaut ahead of them during the Mercury program which was started in 1958. I don’t know if this was true or not, but the fact is they didn’t and the Soviets have gone down in the history books as being the first. Our first astronaut into space was John Glenn who reached space on February 20, 1962, almost a year later. The Soviets had already sent up a second cosmonaut before that. There had been many stories told about Soviet disasters in space which were supposedly kept secret and we can’t be sure about them even to this day. We know some cosmonauts died as did some astronauts in training accidents and on the space shuttle. We could have had our secrets too, however. I base this on the fact some space suits with the names of U.S. Airforce members were found in an abandoned room on a base. It seems there could have been more astronauts we know nothing about. The Soviets had launched dogs into space 71 times and 17 of them died. The United States launch monkeys into space and later chimps before launching humans. We know there were quite a few animal deaths, but the exact figures are hard to find for the U.S. space program. There was a time when we not only had a human space flight race, but we also had a space lab race with both the U.S. and the Soviets sending up space laboratories. Those old laboratories are gone now and it was an incredible feat to get countries to agree to take part in the construction and habitation of the International Space Station, known as the ISS. There are only two admitted space stations orbiting the earth, the ISS and the Tiangong 2 from China. There is a rumor however which states the United States has at least one other which is protected by stealth and so far, as not been detected. To me one of the funniest things launched into space was a Soviet satellite with a howitzer mounted on it to destroy other satellites. It was a very bad idea and one has to wonder why this was not realized? The howitzer could not be fired because it would have moved the satellite out of orbit, but this is just common sense. The countries which have spent the most on space exploration are the United States, China and Russia and China now has a bigger space budget than Russia. I have complained about the way the U.S. spends money on contracts which rewards companies for overruns and lateness. I think we probably could have spent half of the amount we did with the same results if we punished companies for not fulfilling the contracts they signed. There was a list published of the nine most important artificial objects orbiting the earth today and I thought it would be interesting to mention them. They are: We have come a long way since we started getting into the space race. We are beginning to make some very important advances such as learning how best to land on other worlds. We see this with the landings lately on Mars and on some of the asteroids. The learning curve is taking place throughout many different nations. There is now talk about how much we need nuclear powered rockets because chemical rockets are too slow. We have faster means of propulsion but it is not practical yet in many situations. The Ion engine is said to have an absolute top speed of 1/9 the speed of light. One of the problems is it needs to get there by building speed so it is better suited to trips to other star systems. Solar sails have a top speed of 1/10 the speed of light but so far these are hard to control. The nuclear rockets are said to have a lot slower top speed of about 200,000 miles per hour. It is estimated the trip to Mars would be cut to about 4 months from about 6. There is talk about a new type of rocket which will be able to make the trip in 39 days, it is a plasma rocket.
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