Beginning the Space Race: Sputnik, First Satellite Launch Was 60 Years Ago Today
“Now comrades, I am finally convinced that a dream of mine — space travel — for which I have given the theoretical foundations, will be realized. I believe that many of you will be witnesses of the first journey beyond the atmosphere. In the Soviet Union we have many young pilots. . . (and) I place my most daring hopes in them. They will help to actualize my [image error]discoveries and will prepare the gifted builders of the first space vehicle. Heroes and men of courage will inaugurate the first airways: Earth to Moon orbit, Earth to Mars orbit, and still farther; Moscow to the Moon, Kaluga to Mars!”
The square erupted in cheers, led by none other than the country’s leader Joseph Stalin.
Twenty-two years later, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into space aboard the R-7 rocket. After its flight into space on October 4, 1957 — 60 years ago today — Sputnik-1 quickly entered into legend, and struck fear in the United States about falling behind in the space race. But such a momentous launch likely couldn’t have happened without [image error]Tsiolkovsky, a mathematician, founding father of modern rocketry, and a science-fiction visionary that even inspired Arthur C. Clarke.
Thus starts today’s anniversary internet gleaning, “How a Russian Scientist’s Sci-Fi Genius Made Sputnik Possible” by Matt Blitz on POPULAR MECHANICS.COM, on the Russian visionary Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, rocket pioneer and, yes, science fiction author, remembering the October 4 1957 launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik. Some of us are so old we remember that day, even now when we’ve just celebrated a few weeks ago a space probe’s demise in crashing on the planet Saturn. And some of us so young that we might live to see the first colony on Mars. And some of us who became science fiction fans, or even scientists — or even writers — may share in a tip of the hat to those times, though Tsiolkovsky himself, born just over a hundred years before in September 1857, had died twenty-two years before the launch, on September 19 1935.
For more, one may press here. And for even more than that, for the rocketry details also from POPULARMECHANICS.COM, please to peruse “The Rocket that Launched Sputnik and Started the Space Race” by Anatoly Zak by pressing here.
