This week Russia celebrates the anniversary of the launch of the Sputnik-1, an event that many hold to be the Soviet Union's most important victory in the international arena of science and technology competition. The landmark event was a heady cocktail of scientific experiment, military might, and pure propaganda. But determining the primary objective of the launch is not a simple question.
The official motivation for the Sputnik launch was research. The experiment was a single event to mark ‘International Geophysical Year (1957-58)' when scientists around the world planned a series of experiments to coincide with a period of high solar spot activity that lasted 18 months. Sputnik was not designed to do much more than remain in orbit and transmit radio signals - the much quoted ‘beep-beep' that was heard by radio enthusiasts all over the world.
Nevertheless, the experiment yielded immediate dividends: it allowed researchers for the first time to study how radio waves penetrate the ionosphere - as well as to plan communication for future space flights.
Sputnik's military importance was not advertised in the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union's main rival - the United States - understood it perfectly. Though not a weapon itself, the Sputnik was propelled by an R-7 carrier-rocket that was intended, designed, built and tested as a completely new weapon - the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Soon after American military radars were viewing the Sputnik crossing their skies every 98 minutes, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev unambiguously said that "all we need now is simply to replace the warhead," meaning the ability of the R-7 to deliver a nuclear bomb to the North American continent.
The Soviet Union, however, was not the first to initiate the campaign of intimidation. The United States constantly demonstrated the power of its strategic bombers, which flew missions across the Atlantic on a regular basis and several times violated Russian airspace in Siberia, despite the risk of sparking a global nuclear conflict. With the U.S. superiority in bombers and anti-aircraft defenses, the Soviets decided to put all their effort into missiles. The final result proved terribly successful.
In fact, the R-7 missile could deliver much larger payloads than the 83 kilogram Sputnik; initially it was planned that it would orbit a larger spacecraft with more instruments on board.
Such a launch actually happened on November 3, less than a month later, when Sputnik-2 was sent into orbit with a dog named Laika on board.
The third and possibly the most important reason behind the rush to launch Sputnik-1 was propaganda.
Many of the participants of the project recall that Sergei Korolev, the chief designer of the carrier rocket, hurried the project along due to suspicion that the United States were ready with their own satellite. Korolev feared that the U.S. would launch their own satellite into space at any moment. Thus, he ordered the simple Sputnik in place of a more sophisticated satellite (the actual name of the spacecraft was PS-1, or Prosteishiy Sputnik - "the simplest satellite" in Russian). At the last moment, as Soviet intelligence were becoming increasingly worried that the Americans were planning a launch on the 5th, the Sputnik launch date was moved forward from October 6 to October 4. Korolev's caution proved to be excessive - the US project, ambitiously named "Vanguard," ended in failure on December 3 (It is rumored that initially the designers wanted the Sputnik to transmit the Soviet Anthem, but they were so short of time they had to do with simple beeps. This is most likely a joke as the beeps were actually signals that carried information about pressure and temperature inside the satellite).
It is interesting that as Sergei Korolev was hurrying his team to outpace the American space researchers, the Communist authorities did not pay much attention to the propaganda potential of the program and realized it only when the whole world exploded with excitement. The initial report about the launch in the daily Pravda was not even a headline that day. Only on October 9 did the newspaper run a headline article with a full description of the project and praise for Soviet science.
This blatant example of Soviet media failing to catch the big story is best explained by the veil of secrecy that surrounded the project. The world only learned Korolev's name much later when his accounts were published either anonymously or under the pseudonym ‘Sergeyev.' Khrushchev turned down Korolev's nomination for a Nobel Prize saying the accomplishment was made "by the entire Soviet people." Korolev was denied his share of fame and glory, as all the attention centered on the orbiting marvel.
The Russian people understood the space breakthrough as their own achievement. Of course, such sentiments were boosted by state propaganda. Pravda, for example, told people the time and place in the night sky where they could view the Sputnik pass. This was not correct information: what people were actually viewing was a stage of the carrier rocket. Nevertheless, the whole nation watched the night skies with pride and excitement, while millions of people, including Khrushchev and his family, listened to the Sputnik's signals on their radio receivers.
Sputnik, which means "companion" in Russian, was on its way to becoming a legend in its own time. Even the Soviet economy capitalized on the brandname potential. While there were no commercial brands in the Soviet Union, no Sputnik trademark was officially registered. Yet consumer goods labelled "Sputnik" flourished. Over time, a whole slew of consumer goods were stamped with the household name (Sputnik bikes, Sputnik vacuums, Sputnik razors). More famously, a hotel and a state agency for youth tourism used the name as well.
Despite this down-to-earth popularization of the romantic space term, the Russian people remained enchanted with space research for a very long time. The first artificial satellite remained in the memory as a peaceful victory, a scientific achievement and a demonstration of the genius of Soviet scientists and engineers.
By Kirill Bessonov
The Start of the Space Race
March 1950 - International Council of Scientific Unions proposes to hold the International Geophysical Year in 1957-1958,
May 1954 - Sergei Korolev proposes Soviet leaders to build and launch the artificial satellite,
August 1954 - Korolev's proposal is approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
August 1955 - U.S. Department of Defence approves plans to launch the Vanguard satellite,
August 1957 - First successful long flight of the Russian R-7 missile,
October 1957 - Launch
of Sputnik-1
October 1957 - U.S. authorities the restart of the Explorer project to catch up
November 1957 - Launch of Sputnik-2
December 1957 - Failure during first launch of the Vanguard satellite
January 1958 - Successful launch of the Explorer-I satellite
