IGY and Sputnik

15 January 2015

Warfare drove science• War provided a need for scientific and technical

development, leading to government support• Vannevar Bush described the bargain in ‘The

Endless Frontier’• WWII achievements: RADAR, A-bomb, missiles,

computers• US policy was a conscious application of the

Manhattan Project approach, for state direction of science

Hirohima 1945

Bikini 1954

V-2

Space precursors

• Early pioneers were driven by dreams of space flight

• Bolsheviks were committed to material growth through science

• German military developed V-1, V-2 carried bombs to England, invulnerable ‘buzz bombs’

• US, USSR captured German experts• A-bomb led to Cold War: atomic weapons and

ICBMs to deliver them

IGY• International Geophysical Year (1957)• Planned exploration of Earth and Space• Each nation announced plans• US, USSR proposed launch of a small artificial

satellite• US plan selected NAS/Navy Vanguard over

Army/JPL Explorer (not to interfere with military)

• USSR plans not considered credible

Sputnik

• Announced after successful launch on 4 Oct 1957

• No US vehicle was ready then• Immediate alarm and danger! Sputnik had

immediate discontinuous effects• Free world looked to US for moral superiority

of liberal institution and its dominant military • Both threatened

• Sputnik launch after 100-th birthday of Tsiokolvsky, before 40-th anniversary of Russian revolution

• How had the Russians come so far? Interest in materialist progress; Totalitarian command economy; Effort to surpass technical achievements of capitalist states; technology serves progress!

• Sputnik was a famous victory expressing much that is good in Russian culture

• Von Braun had already shown multi-stage rockets capable to launch to orbit in 1954, but not yet demonstrated

• Solid state, miniaturization important because of limited rocket lift (James van Allen later told his student George Ludwig ‘use transistors’).

• Reliability also critical, along with magnetic recorders

Vanguard Explodes 1957

US Response

• Meet the competition of direct military threat and to free enterprise and political freedom

• Vanguard launch 6 Dec 1957 failed spectacularly on TV: ‘Kaputnik’

• LBJ Senate hearings on space/defense• Belatedly, Von Braun and Army were enlisted• Successful Explorer I launched 31 Jan 1958,

discovered ‘Van Allen Belts’

Sputnik changed the Cold War

• Presaged nuclear parity• Ended scientific superiority• Highlihted vulnerability• New era for military, politics called for total

loyalty to prove the superiority of American institutions