Prof. Boerner's Explorations

Edited by Gerald Boerner

    
Commentary:

The space race was a fascinating journey down memory lane. I enjoyed re-reading my blog posting from two years ago (August 24, 2009, “Sputnik I, the Space Race, and the Cold War”. See the Reference section for the hyperlink). The launch of Sputnik I by the Soviets in October of 1957 was a feat that proved a wake-up call to Americans. If the Soviets could put such a small satellite into earth orbit, then they could also use their Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles to deliver a warhead to any of our cities in the United States. So, not only was the launch of Sputnik provides Americans with a new challenge to our country’s scientific prestige, it was also a military of threat as well.

So NASA was forced to demonstrate that we also had the launch capacity to put our own satellite into earth orbit. The launch of a Vanguard rocket with the TV3 naval satellite was scheduled for the morning hours on this day in 1957. The countdown started and went according to plan. The OK for launch was given and the Vanguard’s rocket engines came to life. The forces started the lift-off from the launch pad and reached a height of four feet before dropping back to the launch pad and exploding. We experienced our first space disaster that day at Cape Canaveral, in public!

Fortunately, the TV3 satellite was thrown wide from the exploding rocket. It kept functioning, although later inspection would show that it was too damaged to be launch on another rocket. Back to the drawing board. This first satellite now greets visitors as they enter the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. NASA would live to see another day; it really suffered few major disasters in the Space Race, but those that did occur were in the full view of the public, in this country and abroad.

Sitting in the wings were a group of engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at Cal Tech in Pasadena, California. The had been pursuing a the development of their own satellite, the Pioneer 1. NASA turned to this group for the next try. In January of 1958, this JPL group successfully launched the Pioneer I satellite atop a Red Stone rocket, patterned after the V2 developed by Wernher von Braun for the Nazis during World War II. That event marked the transfer of responsibility from the military to civilian groups.

At that point, we too had joined the Space Race with the Soviets. This competition would take place over the next decade. It ended in July of 1969 when we landed two Americans on the moon and returned them to earth safely during the Apollo 11 mission. Thus, the challenge of John F. Kennedy was fulfilled. So was the dreams of that visionary author, Jules Verne, realized by the reality of Apollo 11. And it all started with the launch, in October of 1957 of a small gadget, the Sputnik I, by the Soviet Union. Isn’t life so sweet!

But now we need to get on with our exploration of the attempted launch of the TV3 satellite by a Vanguard rocket on this day in 1957... GLB

These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2011 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved

[ 3060 Words ]
    

Quotations Related to Space (Race):

“America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.”
— John F. Kennedy

“Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.”
— Robert Frost

“It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.”
— T. S. Eliot

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Edited by Gerald Boerner

Commentary:

Today we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. launch of a chimp, Ham, into a suborbital flight. The completion of this and follow-up flights paved the way for human astronaunts to follow in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Projects. Our quest of space was triggered by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I in 1957. President Eisenhower took the control of the military and placed it into the hands of a new civilian agency. This agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was to end the contention among the different military services for the recognition for space success; NASA would provide a single, integrated approach to space.

When President Kennedy called for landing a man on the moon, the wisdom of Eisenhower’s creation of NASA became clear. The technology for accomplishing this task was NOT available in 1961. Our computers were relatively crude and slow; they lacked both the ease of use by non-engineers and the programming languages to pull off this task. We lacked any way of communicating efficiently with the space capsule for voice, data, and biomedical monitoring. We also needed to develop new materials and systems for the human environments within a space capsule. In short, we needed to accomplish, perhaps, a century’s worth of scientific advancement in less than a decade!

Fortunately, the U.S. has already “pulled off” a similar feat during World War II in the Manhattan Project. The nation’s resources had been mobilized once in this century, so we knew that we could do it again. We mobilized our scientists, engineers, and manufacturers to attack these various problems. The resources of our universities were also brought to bear; this did not the extreme secrecy needs that the development of the atomic bomb had. When all was said and done, I stood proud when Neil Armstrong took that first steo on the moon in 1969. I was just as proud when the lifted themselves off the moon’s surface, docked with the command vehicle, an returned to earth.

Some of the drama of the space chimps was shown in the movie, “Space Cowboys”. But, let’s now explore the real story of this adventure…  GLB

These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2011 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved

[ 4236 Words ]
    

Quotations Related to NASA:

“NASA should start thinking about this planet.”
— Wally Schirra

“For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.”
— Sally Ride

“At the end of our NASA careers, no one had a place for us in the military.”
— Wally Schirra

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