Volume 7 Number 007 Sputnik - II

Lead: In the fall of 1957, the Soviet Union confounded skeptics by launching Sputnik, the first man- made earth satellite. The U.S., it seemed, had a way to go.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: The Soviet achievement was all the more remarkable in that it was accomplished without America’s sophisticated technological base. The Soviets were using enhanced World War II technology. Their booster rockets were probably based on the successful German V-2 design, brought to Russia by German scientists captured at the Baltic Sea Peenemunde (pay na meun da) Rocket complex after the war, but most of those scientists had been repatriated. The Russian accomplishment was theirs alone. By November they had launched a second Sputnik this one carrying the space dog, Laika.

In the United States, however, space efforts seemed halting and demoralized. The U.S. was operating on two tracks. Vanguard, administered by the Naval Research Laboratory, had the lead, and some success in preliminary tests, but with the advent of Sputnik an alarmed Pentagon rushed up the Vanguard schedule and re-invigorated the Army’s competing Explorer project at the Redstone Missile Complex in Huntsville AL.

In early December, the nation's attention turned to Cape Canaveral where the Vanguard team was preparing to attempt a launch. Time and again they had setbacks attributed to, at one time or another, "bulky" guidance systems, "minor electrical troubles," and "sticky liquid oxygen valves." At last the moment came. On Dec. 6, 1957, just before noon, America's gave its answer to Sputnik. As television cameras turned Vanguard belched flame and smoke, majestically rose four feet off the launching pad and then fell back in a huge spectacular fireball. The infant American space program seemed not unlike the tiny grapefruit-sized satellite that had been thrown clear of the explosion – useless, but still beeping. Next time: Explorer makes it.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Resources

Bulkeley, Rip. The Sputnik Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Diamond, Edwin and Stephen Bates. “Sputnik,” American Heritage 48 ( 6, October 1997): 84-93.

Hartford, James. Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997.

McDougall, Walter A. “Sputnik, the Space Race, and the Cold War,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 41 (May 1985): 20-25.

Roman, Peter J. Eisenhower and the Missile Gap. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.