Space: The First Step... [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Right after completing the first revolution of the First artificial satellite TASS news agency announced ' The first sputnik was successfully launched in the USSR on October 4, 1957. By preliminary data, the rocket vehicle has provided Sputnik with necessary orbital speed, about 8000 metres per second. Now Sputnik gyrates on elliptic trajectories round the Earth, and its flight can be observed at dawn and sunset by means of elementary optical instruments (field-glasses, telescopes, etc.) ' It seemed that the entire world observed small bright point, floating in the night sky fifty years ago, listened to simple signals 'beep-beep', knowing that those sounds were sent by a new celestial body. It was extremely amazing that this celestial body was artificial, that is created by hands of humans. Then, in the beginning of October, 1957 billions of people suddenly felt themselves a part of mankind, citizens of the planet Earth standing on the threshold of vast, but already becoming accessible Universe. Not everybody understood then the implications of this event, but the feeling that something enormous was happening, an event of really 'cosmic' scale, stayed with the almost all the people on earth. Activity of the mankind always striving to new discoveries, conquering new frontiers developed 'new degree of freedom', 'new dimension'. This event enabled to create a new science — space research and to pave the way to unthinkable opportunities, i.e. to look behind dense curtain of terrestrial atmosphere and to reveal basic knowledge about the Universe, to send robots to the bodies of the Solar system, to take a walk on the surface of the Moon and to build feasible plans of manned flights to neighbor planet in the nearest decades. Undoubtedly and at the same time surprisingly enough the launch of Sputnik in the frame of International Geophysical Year 1957-1958 acquired great meaning not only for a limited community of scientists, but also, without exaggeration, for all mankind. That was the event which gave rise to new branches of industry and usage of space practically in all the fields of human activity. Surprising aspect of the Sputnik story was that space race of the Great Powers was a peaceful, 'cold' battle, giving confidence to the nations, involved in this confrontation, that the third world war was impossible. It took half a century after the First Sputnik — an instant from the historical point of view — for dozens of countries to become members of 'space club', and space exploration to become day-to-day routine.