The space race was a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to see who had the better space technology. The space race started out as a race to gain more missiles, then it evolved into space when the USSR launched Sputnik (or PS-1) into space in 1957. It was launched at 29,000 km per hour (about 18,000 mph) completing one orbit every 96.2 minutes. It followed an elliptical orbit at a 65 degree incline, allowing it to pass over the US. The spacecraft did not have any sensors on it so it could not measure or receive any data, but it transmitted a constant signal at 20.005 and 40.002 MHz. These were common radio frequencies at the time and could be tuned to by any common amature radio. This made sure that everyone knew (and particularly americans) that the Soviet Union was in space and they were flying over them. The unmanned rocket that carried Sputnik(satellite) into orbit was also called Sputnik(rocket). It was a 267 ton two stage rocket based off of the R-7 Semyorka ICBM. The first stage had 4 boosters with a combine thrust of about 3.89 MN of force. This stage was designed to get all 267 tons (minus the weight of the constantly burned fuel) off of the Earth and into the lower atmosphere. The second stage with only 970 kN of thrust was designed to get the payload into LEO and into orbit.
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Great blog Nicholas! While the documentary we watched in class about sputnik was interesting I was quite perplexed by all the mechanics of it, therefore when I read your post I was super intrigued by all the details such as the weight of the rocket and the amount of fuel that went into the flight. Something I found to be quite interesting was that it was only a mere month after they launched Sputnik 1 that they launched Sputnik 2, the satellite and Laika the dog. The craft itself carrying Laika I found was also 6x heavier than sputnik 1 and designed to fly 2x as high with its live furry passenger. Quite cool to think of such advancements they made in a single month, but I guess that was the speed of advancement of the cold war.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/remembering-laika-space-dog-and-soviet-hero