An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology part 68 ppt

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occupied what was left of Peenemunde and the V-2 production plants, and
obtained the assistance of a number of V-2 technicians. After learning all they
could about V-2 technology, the USSR and the USA exploited their advantage
in different ways. By 1949 both had atomic weapons, but these were heavy
and bulky and would need an enormous rocket to carry them.
America relied on aircraft to deliver atomic weapons from European bases
within striking distance of Soviet territory, and began developing winged cruise
missiles capable of carrying atomic warheads. Rocket development was
shelved until smaller, lighter warheads were available. Soviet work
concentrated on developing the large rockets that would be needed to carry a
nuclear warhead across the Atlantic.
Meanwhile, scientists had realized that advances in rocket technology had
made it possible to launch a small satellite. The International Geophysical Year
scheduled for 1957–8 provided a good reason; both the Soviet Union and the
USA announced satellite programmes for the IGY, but little attention was paid
to the Soviet announcement. American belief in their technological leadership
was shattered when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial
satellite, Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957 (Figure 13.3). On 4 November, Sputnik
2 followed. Both satellites were, for the time, large and heavy, showing that the
Russians had developed rockets more powerful than any the Americans had at
the time. On 6 December the experimental American Vanguard satellite
launcher exploded on its launch pad, in full view of the world’s press.
The events of those three months had shown that space technology was a
powerful propaganda weapon, and in the ‘cold war’ climate between East and
West, an undeclared ‘space race’ began between the two superpowers.
MANNED SPACEFLIGHT AND THE SPACE RACE
On 12 April 1961 a Russian became the first man in space, when Yuri
Gagarin’s Vostok spacecraft completed a single orbit of the earth. Their
powerful booster rocket had enabled the Russians to score another space first.

As a result, President Kennedy announced that the United States would land a
man on the moon ‘before the decade is out’. Meanwhile, the American Project
Mercury succeeded in sending Alan Shepard on a short hop into space, and on
10 February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth.
The Russian Vostok programme produced more space ‘firsts’: two
spacecraft in orbit at once and the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova
on 16 June 1963. A ‘new’ Soviet spacecraft was launched in October 1964,
Voshkod. On its first flight it carried three cosmonauts, and on the second and
final mission in March 1965, Alexei Leonov carried out the first spacewalk.
What was not disclosed at the time was that Voshkod was really an adapted
Vostok spacecraft. To get three men into orbit, the escape system had been
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removed to save weight. In the event of a launch failure, the cosmonauts would
have had no means of escape.
The next American spacecraft was the two-man project Gemini. Gemini
missions in 1965 and 1966 saw the first American spacewalk, and proved that the
orbital docking techniques vital to the later Apollo moon missions were practical.
But in January 1967 the American space programme suffered its first casualties;
astronauts Grissom, White and Chafee were killed in a fire aboard their Apollo
spacecraft during a ground test before what was to have been the first manned
Apollo mission. The ensuing enquiry uncovered flaws in the spacecraft, costing
Apollo a year’s delay. A little later the Soviet programme suffered a major setback.
Vladimir Komarov was killed on 23 April 1967 when the new Soyuz spacecraft
crashed after re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. It appears that the spacecraft
was spinning, causing its parachute lines to become tangled.
The Apollo programme prepared for a moon landing with tests of the giant
Saturn V (Figure 13.4) booster rocket which was to carry the two part
Figure 13.3: A model of Sputnik 1, the first artificial earth satellite.
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spacecraft into orbit. To save time, the Americans tried a novel approach.
Instead of the more usual course of testing the rocket stage by stage, the first
Saturn V took off with all its stages live on 9 November 1967. An unmanned
test of the complete Apollo spacecraft (including the separate lunar lander) in
earth orbit followed on 4 April 1968, and a manned orbital test, Apollo 7, on
11 October. Two unmanned Soviet Zond spacecraft also orbited the moon in
September and November 1968. These may have been tests for a manned
flight, but Apollo 8 became the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon in
December 1968.
The Apollo 9 astronauts tested the spacecraft and lunar lander in earth
orbit during March 1969, and Apollo 10 carried out a rehearsal for the
necessary docking manoeuvres in moon orbit during May. Then on 20
July, on the Apollo 11 mission Neil Armstrong became the first man to
set foot on the moon. Four more landings followed, punctuated by a near
disaster when an oxygen tank on Apollo 13 exploded during its trip to
the moon, and the astronauts safely returned to earth using the lunar
module as a liferaft to return to earth. With Apollo 17 in December
1972, the American lunar exploration programme came to an end.
Government funding was not forthcoming for ambitious future
programmes such as moon bases, a space station and a manned landing
on Mars. The only part of these plans to survive (although in a modified
form) was the Space Shuttle, a re-usable spacecraft originally intended to
service the space station.
During the 1970s, manned spaceflight concentrated on long-term stays in
space. The USA’s sole space station, Skylab, was launched in 1973 and
demonstrated the ability of astronauts to carry out emergency repairs in space,
but after three crews had visited the station, the programme came to an end.
Skylab itself re-entered the earth’s atmosphere in 1979, parts falling in
Australia. Delays in the Space Shuttle programme prevented an intended

attempt to boost the station into a longer-lasting orbit. The first joint
American-Soviet spaceflight, the Apollo-Soyuz mission, took place in 1975:
after this, there would be no American manned spaceflights until the Space
Shuttle.
In contrast, throughout the decade the Russians continued with their Salyut
series of civil and military space stations. The first, Salyut-1, was launched in
1971 and the first crew to stay in the station, Dobrovolsky, Patsayev and
Volkov, were killed when their Soyuz II spacecraft depressurized during the
return to earth. Salyut 6, launched in 1977, stayed in orbit until 1982, and was
the first successful space station. Unlike Skylab, Salyuts carried engines to
maintain their orbit, but in 1980, a major new development took place, when
Salyut 6 was refuelled by a ‘Progress’ unmanned supply ship. The Russians
now had a viable long-duration space station system, capable of being readily
resupplied from earth.
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In April 1981 the long-awaited first flight of the Space Shuttle took place,
and America again had a manned spaceflight capability. The next four years
saw the shuttle ‘Space Transportation System’ demonstrate the capacity to
repair satellites in orbit, and return them to earth. The European Space
Agency’s Spacelab manned laboratory was also flown aboard the Shuttle in
December 1983. Scientists on the earth and in space could now collaborate in
carrying out experiments in the space environment. In January 1984, President
Reagan announced an American plan to build a permanent manned space
Figure 13.4: The launch of a Saturn V vehicle carrying three astronauts to the
moon on the Apollo 15 mission, 26 July 1971. NASA.

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station, to become operational in the 1990s. During 1985, Shuttle astronauts

also demonstrated that large structures could be built in space, an important
step towards the space station. The Russians demonstrated their lead in long
term spaceflight during 1984, when three cosmonauts stayed aboard Salyut 7
for 238 days, almost eight months.
As 1985 drew to a close, manned spaceflight was seemingly becoming
almost routine and, with four Space Shuttles now operational, NASA had
scheduled sixteen missions for 1986. Other nations such as Japan and France
were considering developing smaller versions of the Space Shuttle, and the
Russians were known to be developing a shuttle of their own (a prototype of
which was unveiled in 1989). Then, on 28 January 1986, the space shuttle
Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff, killing its crew of seven. Among them
was the first American civilian in space, a schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe.
Over two and a half years were spent in correcting faults in the Shuttle
boosters before the next launch in 1988. The American space programme was
inevitably delayed, but its ultimate direction, a permanent manned space
station, remained unchanged.
The first steps towards such a station were taken by the Russians in
February 1986, with the launch of a Salyut-sized space station named Mir
(Peace), probably the first module of a permanent space station to be
assembled in orbit.
SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY
Sputnik, although it was a small, simple satellite, equipped only with sensors to
measure the temperature and density of the upper atmosphere, proved the
feasibility of launching a satellite and placing it in earth orbit. On the day that
Sputnik 1 was orbited, plans for the idea of the launching of a US satellite were
resurrected; a launch was promised in 90 days. On 6 December an attempt
was made to launch Vanguard 1. The rocket ignited and lifted off the pad.
One second later it lost thrust and fell back to earth, exploding upon impact.
The satellite, thrown free, rolled across the ground with its beacon transmitter
chirping away. Five days later, Werner von Braun and his team at Huntsville,

Alabama, were given approval to launch America’s first satellite. Within 85
days, Explorer 1 was in orbit. It was a small satellite less than 1m (3ft) long,
150cm (6in) in diameter, with a mass of barely 5kg (11lb). It carried some
simple experiments which included a Geiger-Mueller tube to record cosmic
rays. Data recorded by any ‘events’ were stored on a miniature tape recorder
and transmitted to earth on demand. This experiment, in fact, was
instrumental in locating the Van Allen radiation belts that surround the earth.
Since those early days thousands of satellites have been launched not only
by the two major space powers but also by many other nations, some using
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their own launch vehicles. The earliest satellites were, in essence, primitive
devices capable of only simple measurements and having the capability to relay
small amounts of data back to earth. However, as with all technology,
advances have been dramatic and today the satellite is a sophisticated and
complex machine, in many cases possessing its own on-board computer.
Satellities can be divided into a number of distinct types, depending on their
purpose. The main groups are: communication satellites, meteorological
satellites, military satellites, remote sensing satellites, scientific and astronomical
satellites. The earliest were mainly intended for scientific purposes. However, 1
April 1960 saw the launch of Tiros 1. Launched by a Thor-Able rocket this US
spacecraft demonstrated the feasibility of using satellites for global weather
observations. Following Tiros 1, a series of more advanced Tiros satellites
followed, ending with Tiros 10 on 2 July 1965. The latest Tiros satellites are very
sophisticated spacecraft which, as well as earth observation equipment, have
advanced search and rescue antennas to provide data for locating and identifying
ships in trouble or aircraft that have come down in remote places. Since 1966 the
entire earth has been photographed at least once a day on a continuous basis.
Data can be used to study cloud movements, sea temperatures and to trace ice
field movements in the Arctic and Antarctic. Combined with ground and

balloon data they serve the meteorological community by providing as accurate
a picture of the global weather as is possible.
Communication satellite technology began with the launch of Echo 1
satellite on 11 August 1960. This large reflective (mylar) balloon was used as a
passive communication system, simply reflecting radio waves from one point
on the globe to another. The first true communication satellite was Telstar 1,
launched on 10 July 1962. Although only an engineering test vehicle, Telstar 1
demonstrated the feasibility of using satellites for transmitting television
pictures over large distances without the use of land lines. Telstar had a low
orbit (952 × 5632km) (590 × 3492 miles) making it impractical for long-term
communication use. For practical purposes the satellite’s orbit must be
geostationary (35,880km (22,245 miles) above the equator of the earth) and
Syncom 3 (launched on 19 August 1964) was the first to achieve this. Syncom
3 broadcast live the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics.
In 1964 the organization INTELSAT (International Telecommunications
Satellite Organization) was formed in which a number of nations contributed
to a common satellite system, sharing the resulting revenues. Intelsat 1 (Early
Bird) was launched on 3 April 1965 to become the first truly commercial
communication satellite. Further Intelsat satellites followed, each with a higher
capacity than the last. Intelsat 1 could transmit 240 telephone channels and
one television channel. By 1980, Intelsat V satellites were capable of
transmitting 12,000 telephone and two television channels. Today, there are
hundreds of communication satellites in geostationary orbit regularly
transmitting television, telephone and telex data all over the globe.
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Many nations have launched satellites purely for military purposes,
mainly for surveillance and communication. Little information is released on
these satellites.
Two areas where satellites have proved invaluable in scientific research have

been in the fields of remote sensing of the earth and astronomy. The most
important development in remote sensing, observing the earth from orbit, took
place with the launch of the American Landsat 1 satellite on 23 July 1972.
From its near polar orbit, Landsat 1 returned over 300,000 detailed images of
the earth until its retirement in January 1978. The Landsat 5 satellite (launched
on 1 March 1984), had a sophisticated array of cameras sensitive at visible and
infra-red wavelengths capable of spatial resolution of the order of 20m (66ft).
The images returned by the Landsat spacecraft have been put to extensive use
by scientists studying cartography, agriculture, oceanography, geology and
many other branches of science which have a direct human resource use.
The earth’s atmosphere is a severe hindrance to astronomers. It not only
absorbs many wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, but its constant
state of movement severely limits the spatial resolution possible with
groundbased telescopes. Satellite observatories provide a means of eliminating
these problems. Hundreds of purely astronomical satellites have been launched
and some of the most successful have been the OAO series, IUE and IRAS.
The Orbiting Astronomical Observatories (OAO) programme began in 1959
and in 1966 OAO 1 was launched by an Atlas-Agena rocket from Cape
Canaveral. However the most successful satellite was OAO 3, launched on 21
August 1972 and named Copernicus. Its battery of UV and X-ray telescopes
was responsible for charting 200 previously unknown X-ray sources. It was
also the first satellite to observe the source Cygnus X-1, the most likely
candidate for a black hole. The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE),
launched in 1978, was a joint NASA, ESA and UK project; with its ultraviolet
telescope it has observed thousands of astronomical sources, many invisible
from earth, and has provided astronomers with data on the chemical
composition and structure of stars, nebulae and galaxies. IRAS (Infra-red
Astronomical Telescope) was launched on 25 January 1983, and like IUE
provided much data, this time at infra-red wavelengths. Its primary instrument,
a 60cm (2ft) Cassegrain telescope, was cooled to—271°C in a liquid helium

Dewar flask. The helium ran out on 21 November 1983.
PROBES TO THE MOON
While most of the publicity and glory of lunar exploration has been given to the
manned Apollo missions, it was the unmanned probes of the early and mid-
1960s that paved the way for these missions. The first four American attempts at
launching a lunar probe were unsuccessful and on 12 September 1959 the Soviet
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Union launched the Luna 2 probe, which impacted 800km (500 miles) north of
the visual centre of the moon. It thus became the first man-made body to reach a
celestial object. Very soon after Luna 2, the Russians again achieved a space
‘first’ when Luna 3 photographed the invisible face of the moon. After these
early days, the pace of lunar probe launches accelerated. The American Ranger
series of spacecraft were intended to photograph the lunar surface in advance of
the Apollo landings. The first six Ranger missions were failures, but Ranger 7
(launched 28 July 1964) sent back more than 4000 high-resolution photographs
before impacting in the Sea of Clouds. Two more later Rangers returned more
than 13,000 images between them.
In 1963 the Russians were planning for a lunar soft landing. The first attempts
were unsuccessful. Luna 9 finally succeeded in 1966 and the spacecraft returned
the historic first pictures from the moon’s surface. The rapid sequence of the
Russian lunar launches leading up to Luna 9 was a direct response to its American
competitor, the Surveyor spacecraft. Surveyor 1 softlanded on the moon barely
four months after Luna 9, returning 11,000 pictures over a six-month period. The
Surveyor craft were more sophisticated than the Luna vehicles. Further Surveyor
landings examined the surface in regions representative of Apollo landing sites. At
the same time as the Surveyor craft were landing on the moon, the Americans
were launching Lunar Orbiter spacecraft aimed at returning very high resolution
photographs of the lunar surface.
During 1969 while all the American efforts were directed towards the

Apollo programme, the Russians were landing more lunar craft in a bold
attempt to soft-land and return to earth with lunar soil samples. This ambitious
programme failed to pre-empt the Apollo 11 landing, but in 1970 Luna 16 did
achieve the goal of returning a sample to earth. The Russians never tried to
send men to the moon, concentrating solely on robot explorers. Luna 21
carried a rover vehicle (called Lunokhod) which for four months roamed over
37,000 metres (23 miles) on the surface under command from ground control.
PROBES TO THE PLANETS
Since the early 1960s there has been great activity directed towards sending
space probes to either make close encounters with, or land on, the planets. Up to
the launch of the Jupiter probe, Pioneer 10 in 1972, the efforts of the USA and
USSR were concentrated on the inner planets. The first successful fly-by of
Venus took place on 14 December 1962 by the Mariner 2 craft. Two further
Mariners encountered Venus; Mariner 5 in 1967 and Mariner 10 in 1973.
Mariner 10 took the first pictures of the cloud tops of the dense atmosphere of
Venus, after which it went on to fly-by Mercury. The Soviet Union, meanwhile,
concentrated on soft landings on Venus. Venera 4, launched on 12 June 1967,
released a spherical capsule (1m (3ft) in diameter) when 45,000km (28,000
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miles) from the planet. A parachute then permitted a slow descent through the
atmosphere. During the 94-minute descent, it recorded temperatures of 370°C
and sent back data on the pressure, density and chemical composition of the
atmosphere. However it was a later spacecraft, Venera 7, that was the first to
survive the journey to the planet’s surface, relaying data such as pressures in
excess of 90 atmospheres (1320psi) and a temperature of 475°C. Later more
sophisticated spacecraft succeeded in sending back pictures of the rocky surface
of Venus: Veneras 13 and 16 in 1982 actually returned colour pictures and
undertook remote analysis of the soil.
Mars, the red planet, has received its due attention from Russian and

American spacecraft. Mariners 6 and 7 returned many close-up pictures of the
surface in 1969 and the Russian Mars spacecraft actually tried to soft-land on
the surface, but without success. However, this feat was achieved by the Viking
1 and 2 spacecrafts in 1976. The sophisticated Viking craft returned excellent
pictures of the surface from their scanning cameras, as well as analysing the
Martian soil. No organic compounds were found in the samples analysed but
the tests did not totally rule out the possibility of there being some form of
primitive life on the planet.
Possibly the most stunning and exciting results of planetary exploration have
come from the probes sent to the giant outer planets. The two American Pioneer
spacecraft, Pioneers 10 and 11 were launched in 1972 and 1973 respectively on
trajectories that would enable both craft to fly-by Jupiter. After a journey of 21
months they sent back the first detailed images of the planet. After its encounter
with Jupiter, Pioneer 10 used the Jovian gravitational field to swing out of the
solar system while Pioneer 11 was re-positioned on a flight path to intercept
Saturn. Again, close-up images of Saturn and its extensive ring system were
relayed back to Earth. These two missions were ‘scout’ missions for the more
sophisticated Voyager spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, identical craft launched on 5
September and 20 April 1977 respectively. The Voyager spacecraft has a mass of
over 800kg (1765lbs) with a high-gain antenna 3.7m (12.2ft) in diameter and a
sophisticated array of detectors and high and low resolution TV cameras. The
spacecraft functions are carried out by an onboard programmable computer and
its communication transmitter is designed to transmit data, over a billion
kilometres of space, at the rate of 115,200 bits per second, even though its
transmitter has a power of only 23 watts.
On 5 March 1979, Voyager 1 made the closest approach (278,000km
(172,300 miles)) to Jupiter, returning fascinating detailed images of the clouds
in the Jovian atmosphere. The craft made close-up fly-bys of the four Galilean
satellites Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, discovering, rather surprisingly,
that Io showed signs of active vulcanism. Voyager 2 made its closest approach

to Jupiter on 9 July 1979, returning 15,000 images of the planet and
discovering five new satellites. Both craft were then programmed for the 20-
month journey to Saturn, which they encountered on 12 November 1980 and
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25 August 1981 respectively, again returning many startling images of Saturn
and its moons. Whereas Voyager 1 then began to travel out of the solar system
plane, Voyager 2 encountered Uranus on 26 January 1986 and Neptune on 25
August 1989.
LAUNCH VEHICLES
The success of the early satellites depended greatly on the development of
reliable launch vehicles. At the end of the Second World War the Americans,
Russians and British captured German rocket hardware and many of the
personnel involved in its development (see p. 649). The Americans launched
many V2 rockets from White Sands, New Mexico, in a series of tests involving
rocket propulsion and guidance. This Bumper Wac programme, as it was
called, was only moderately successful, but it gave the Americans much useful
experience in rocket technology. At the same time they were developing a
number of short and long range missiles. A direct descendent of the V2 was
the Redstone missile. Using liquid oxygen as fuel it had a range of 800km (500
miles). Two versions of the Redstone, the Jupiter A and Jupiter C, evolved
during the missile test programme of the 1950s, to become significant in the
early phases of the nation’s space effort. The Jupiter C was first launched on
20 September 1950 and carried a payload nearly 5000km (3000 miles) down
range from Cape Canaveral. It was, in fact, a form of the Jupiter C, re-named
Juno I, which successfully launched America’s first satellite, Explorer 1, in
1958. Following on from Juno I was the Juno II vehicle. Ten Juno IIs were
used in space research from 1958 to 1961, but it will best be remembered as
the ancestor of the giant Saturn launch vehicle.
The Saturn 1 launch was commissioned in 1958 to provide capacity for

large payloads. It was composed of a central Jupiter tank surrounded by eight
Redstone tanks. The Saturn’s 100 per cent launch record between 1961 and
1965 provided the platform for the late Apollo lunar missions. The vehicle
used in the Apollo missions was the Saturn V. This was a four-stage launcher
whose first stage was powered by five F1 engines generating, in total 3400
tonnes of thrust.
The USA has developed other launch vehicles primarily for unmanned
satellite and space probe missions. The Scout is a four-stage solid fuel vehicle
first launched in 1961 and still in service in the 1980s. Other liquid fuel
vehicles include the Titan, developed from the ICBM of the same name, and
the Delta, developed from the Thor missile.
The USA’s most recent vehicle is the Space Transportation System (STS),
commonly called the Space Shuttle. It was designed to provide a relatively cheap
vehicle with most of its components being re-usable, in contrast to the usual
expendable launch vehicle. Conceived in 1969, the STS’s eventual design