A scientist who discovered space. History of Russian cosmonautics

September 1967 was marked by the proclamation of October 4 by the International Astronautical Federation as the world day for the beginning of the space age of mankind. It was on October 4, 1957 that a small ball with four antennas tore apart the near-Earth space and laid the foundation for the space age, opened the golden age of astronautics. How it was, how space exploration took place, what the first satellites, animals and people in space were like - this article will tell about all this.

Chronology of events

To begin with, we will give a brief description of the chronology of events, one way or another connected with the beginning of the space age.

Dreamers from the distant past

As long as humanity exists, the stars have beckoned it so much. Let's look for the origins of astronautics and the beginning of the space age in ancient tomes and give just a few examples of amazing facts and far-sighted predictions. In the ancient Indian epic Bhagavad Gita (circa 15th century BC), an entire chapter is devoted to instructions for flying to the moon. Clay tablets in the library of the Assyrian ruler Assurbanipal (3200 BC) tell of King Etan flying up to a height from which the Earth looked like "bread in a basket". The inhabitants of Atlantis left the Earth, flying to other planets. And the Bible tells about the flight on the fiery chariot of the prophet Elijah. But in 1500 AD, the inventor Wang Gu from Ancient China could have become the first astronaut if he had not died. He made a flying machine out of kites. Which was supposed to take off when 4 powder rockets were set on fire. Since the 17th century, Europe has been raving about flying to the moon: first Johannes Kepler and Cyrano de Bergerac, and later Jules Verne with his idea of cannon flight.

Kibalchich, Gunswind and Tsiolkovsky

In 1881, in solitary confinement in the Peter and Paul Fortress, while awaiting execution for an attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II, N. I. Kibalchich (1853-1881) draws a jet space platform. The idea of his project is the creation of jet thrust by burning substances. His project was found in the archives of the tsarist secret police only in 1917. At the same time, the German scientist G. Gansvid created his own spacecraft, where the thrust is provided by the outgoing bullets. And in 1883, the Russian physicist K. E. Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) described a ship with a jet engine, which was embodied in 1903 in the scheme of a liquid rocket. It is Tsiolkovsky who is considered to be the father of Russian cosmonautics, whose works already in the 20s of the last century were widely recognized by the world community.

Just a satellite

The artificial satellite that marked the beginning of the space age launched the Soviet Union from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on October 4, 1957. An aluminum sphere with a mass of 83.5 kilograms and a diameter of 58 centimeters, with four bayonet antennas and equipment inside, flew up to a perigee height of 228 kilometers and an apogee of 947 kilometers. They called it simply "Sputnik-1". Such a simple device was a tribute to the Cold War with the United States, which developed similar programs. America with their satellite Explorer 1 (launched on February 1, 1958) is almost half a year behind us. The Soviets, who launched the first artificial satellite, won the race. A victory that has not been lost, because the time has come for the first astronauts.

Dogs, cats and monkeys

The beginning of the space age in the USSR began with the first orbital flights of rootless tailed cosmonauts. The Soviets chose dogs as astronauts. America - monkeys, and France - cats. Immediately after Sputnik-1, Sputnik-2 flew into space with the most unfortunate dog on board - the mongrel Laika. It was November 3, 1957, and the return of Sergei Korolev's favorite Laika was not foreseen. The well-known Belka and Strelka, with their triumphant flight and return to Earth on August 19, 1960, were by no means the first and far from the last. France launched the cat Felicette into space (October 18, 1963), and the United States, after the rhesus monkey (September 1961), sent the chimpanzee Ham (January 31, 1961), who became a national hero, to explore space.

Man's conquest of space

And here the Soviet Union was the first. On April 12, 1961, near the village of Tyuratam (Baikonur Cosmodrome), the R-7 launch vehicle with the Vostok-1 spacecraft took off into the sky. Air Force Major Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin went on his first space flight. At a perigee altitude of 181 km and an apogee of 327 km, it flew around the Earth and landed in the vicinity of the village of Smelovka (Saratov Region) at the 108th minute of the flight. The world was blown up by this event - agrarian and bastard Russia overtook the high-tech States, and Gagarin's "Let's go!" became an anthem for space fans. It was an event of global scale and incredible significance for all mankind. Here America lagged behind the Union for a month - on May 5, 1961, the Redstone rocket carrier with the Mercury-3 spacecraft from Cape Canaveral launched the American cosmonaut Air Force Captain 3rd rank Alan Shepard into orbit.

During the space flight on March 18, 1965, co-pilot Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Leonov (the first pilot was Colonel Pavel Belyaev) went into outer space and stayed there for 20 minutes, moving away from the ship at a distance of up to five meters. He confirmed that a person can stay and work in outer space. In June, American astronaut Edward White spent only a minute more in outer space and proved the possibility of performing maneuvers in outer space with a hand gun that runs on compressed gas on the principle of a jet. The beginning of the space age of man in outer space has come to pass.

First human casualties

Space has given us many discoveries and heroes. However, the beginning of the space age was also marked by casualties. Americans Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were the first to die on January 27, 1967. The Apollo 1 spacecraft burned out in 15 seconds due to a fire inside. Vladimir Komarov was the first Soviet cosmonaut to die. On October 23, 1967, he successfully deorbited on the Soyuz-1 spacecraft after an orbital flight. But the main parachute of the descent capsule did not open, and it crashed into the ground at a speed of 200 km / h and completely burned out.

Apollo lunar program

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin felt the surface of the moon under their feet. Thus ended the flight of the Apollo 11 spacecraft with the Eagle lunar module on board. America did take over the leadership in space exploration from the Soviet Union. And although later there were many publications about the falsification of the fact that the Americans landed on the moon, today everyone knows Neil Armstrong as the first person to set foot on its surface.

Orbital stations Salyut

The Soviets were also the first to launch orbital stations - spacecraft for the long stay of astronauts. Salyut is a series of manned stations, the first of which was launched into orbit on April 19, 1971. In total, 14 space objects were put into orbit in this project under the Almaz military program and the civil one - the Long-Term Orbital Station. Including the station "Mir" ("Salyut-8"), which was in orbit from 1986 to 2001 (flooded in the cemetery of spaceships in the Pacific Ocean on 03/23/2001).

First international space station

The ISS has a complex history of creation. Started as an American project Freedom (1984), in 1992 it became a joint Mir-Shuttle project and today it is an international project with 14 participating countries. The first module of the ISS launched the Proton-K launch vehicle into orbit on November 20, 1998. Subsequently, the participating countries removed other connecting blocks, and today the station weighs about 400 tons. It was planned to operate the station until 2014, but the project was extended. And it is managed jointly by four agencies - the Space Flight Control Center (Korolev, Russia), the Mission Control Center. L. Johnson (Houston, USA), the Control Center of the European Space Agency (Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany) and the Aerospace Research Agency (Tsukuba, Japan). The station has a crew of 6 cosmonauts. The program of the station provides for the constant presence of people. According to this indicator, it has already broken the Mir station record (3664 days of continuous stay). Power is completely autonomous - solar panels weigh almost 276 kilograms, power up to 90 kilowatts. The station houses laboratories, greenhouses and living quarters (five bedrooms), a gymnasium and bathrooms.

Some facts about the ISS

The International Space Station is by far the most expensive project in the world. More than $157 billion has already been spent on it. The speed of the station in orbit is 27.7 thousand km / h, with a weight of more than 41 tons. Astronauts observe sunrise and sunset at the station every 45 minutes. In 2008, the Disk of Immortality, a device containing digitized DNA of outstanding representatives of mankind, was delivered to the station in 2008. The purpose of this collection is to save human DNA in case of a global catastrophe. In the laboratories of the space station, quails are born and flowers bloom. And viable spores of bacteria were found on its skin, which makes one think about the possible expansion of space.

Space commercialization

Humanity can no longer imagine itself without space. In addition to all the advantages of the practical exploration of outer space, the commercial component is also developing. Since 2005, private spaceports have been under construction in the United States (Mojave), the United Arab Emirates (Ras Alm Khaimah) and Singapore. Virgin Galactic Corporation (USA) is planning space cruises for seven thousand tourists at an affordable price of $200,000. And well-known space merchant Robert Bigelow, owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, announced the project of the first Skywalker orbital hotel. For $35 billion, Space Adventures (partner of the Roscosmos Corporation) will send you on a space journey for up to 10 days tomorrow. Having paid another 3 billion, you will be able to go into outer space. The company has already organized tours for seven tourists, one of them is Guy Laliberte, head of the circus du Soleil. The same company is preparing a new tourist product for 2018 - a trip to the moon.

Dreams and fantasies have become reality. Having overcome gravity once, humanity is no longer able to stop in its pursuit of stars, galaxies and universes. I would like to believe that we will not play too much, and we will continue to be surprised and delighted by the myriads of stars in the night sky. All the same mysterious, alluring and fantastic, as in the first days of creation.

Introduction:

In the second half of the XX century. humanity stepped on the threshold of the universe - went out into outer space. The road to space was opened by our Motherland. The first artificial satellite of the Earth, which opened the space age, was launched by the former Soviet Union, the first cosmonaut in the world is a citizen of the former USSR.

Cosmonautics is a huge catalyst for modern science and technology, which has become one of the main levers of the modern world process in an unprecedentedly short period of time. It stimulates the development of electronics, mechanical engineering, materials science, computer technology, energy and many other areas of the national economy.

In scientific terms, humanity seeks to find in space the answer to such fundamental questions as the structure and evolution of the Universe, the formation of the solar system, the origin and development of life. From hypotheses about the nature of the planets and the structure of the cosmos, people moved on to a comprehensive and direct study of celestial bodies and interplanetary space with the help of rocket and space technology.

In space exploration, mankind will have to study various areas of outer space: the Moon, other planets and interplanetary space.

The current level of space technology and the forecast of its development show that the main goal of scientific research using space means, apparently, in the near future will be our solar system. The main tasks will be the study of solar-terrestrial relations and the Earth-Moon space, as well as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and other planets, astronomical research, medical and biological research in order to assess the impact of flight duration on the human body and its performance.

In principle, the development of space technology should outstrip the "Demand", associated with the solution of urgent national economic problems. The main tasks here are launch vehicles, propulsion systems, spacecraft, as well as supporting means (command-measuring and launch complexes, equipment, etc.), ensuring progress in related branches of technology, directly or indirectly related to the development of astronautics.

Rocketry is far from a new concept. To create powerful modern launch vehicles, man went through millennia of dreams, fantasies, mistakes, searches in various fields of science and technology, accumulation of experience and knowledge.

The principle of operation of a rocket lies in its movement under the action of the recoil force, the reaction of the flow of particles thrown from the rocket. In a rocket. those. in an apparatus equipped with a rocket engine, the exhaust gases are formed due to the reaction of the oxidizer and fuel stored in the rocket itself. This circumstance makes the operation of the rocket engine independent of the presence or absence of a gaseous medium. Thus, the rocket is an amazing structure that can move in airless space, i.e. not a reference, outer space.

A special place among Russian projects for the application of the jet principle of flight is occupied by the project of N. I. Kibalchich, a famous Russian revolutionary who, despite his short life (1853-1881), left a deep mark on the history of science and technology. Having extensive and deep knowledge of mathematics, physics, and especially chemistry, Kibalchich made home-made shells and mines for the Narodnaya Volya. The "aeronautical device project" was the result of Kibalchich's long research work on explosives. He, in essence, for the first time proposed not a rocket engine adapted to any existing aircraft, as other inventors did, but a completely new (rocket-dynamic) apparatus, a prototype of modern manned space vehicles, in which the thrust of rocket engines serves to directly create lifting the force that keeps the craft in flight. Kibalchich's aircraft was supposed to function on the principle of a rocket!

But since Kibalchich was imprisoned for an attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II, then the project of his aircraft was discovered only in 1917 in the archives of the police department.

So, by the end of the last century, the idea of using jet instruments for flights gained large scale in Russia. And the first who decided to continue research was our great compatriot Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935). He became interested in the jet principle of motion very early. Already in 1883 he gave a description of a ship with a jet engine. Already in 1903, Tsiolkovsky, for the first time in the world, made it possible to design a scheme for a liquid rocket. Tsiolkovsky's ideas were universally recognized as early as the 1920s. And the brilliant successor of his work, S.P. Korolev, a month before the launch of the first artificial satellite of the Earth, said that the ideas and works of Konstantin Eduardovich would attract more and more attention as rocket technology developed, which he turned out to be absolutely right!

The beginning of the space age

And so, 40 years after the design of the aircraft created by Kibalchich was found, on October 4, 1957, the former USSR launched the world's first artificial Earth satellite. The first Soviet satellite made it possible for the first time to measure the density of the upper atmosphere, to obtain data on the propagation of radio signals in the ionosphere, to work out the issues of launching into orbit, thermal conditions, etc. The satellite was an aluminum sphere with a diameter of 58 cm and a mass of 83.6 kg with four whip antennas 2 long, 4-2.9 m. The equipment and power supplies were placed in the sealed housing of the satellite. The initial parameters of the orbit were: perigee height 228 km, apogee height 947 km, inclination 65.1 deg. On November 3, the Soviet Union announced the launch of the second Soviet satellite into orbit. In a separate pressurized cabin were the dog Laika and a telemetric system for recording her behavior in weightlessness. The satellite was also equipped with scientific instruments for studying solar radiation and cosmic rays.

On December 6, 1957, an attempt was made in the USA to launch the Avangard-1 satellite using a launch vehicle developed by the Naval Research Laboratory. .

On January 31, 1958, the Explorer 1 satellite, the American response to the launch of Soviet satellites, was launched into orbit. By size and

mass he was not a candidate for champions. Being less than 1 m long and only ~15.2 cm in diameter, it had a mass of only 4.8 kg.

However, its payload was attached to the fourth, last stage of the Juno-1 launch vehicle. The satellite, together with the rocket in orbit, had a length of 205 cm and a mass of 14 kg. It was equipped with outdoor and indoor temperature sensors, erosion and impact sensors for determining micrometeorite flows, and a Geiger-Muller counter for recording penetrating cosmic rays.

An important scientific result of the satellite flight was the discovery of the radiation belts surrounding the Earth. The Geiger-Muller counter stopped counting when the apparatus was at apogee at an altitude of 2530 km, the height of the perigee was 360 km.

On February 5, 1958, a second attempt was made in the United States to launch the Avangard-1 satellite, but it also ended in an accident, like the first attempt. Finally, on March 17, the satellite was launched into orbit. Between December 1957 and September 1959, eleven attempts were made to launch Avangard-1 into orbit, only three of them were successful.

Between December 1957 and September 1959, eleven attempts were made to launch the Avangard

Both satellites contributed a lot to space science and technology (solar batteries, new data on the density of the upper atmosphere, accurate mapping of islands in the Pacific Ocean, etc.) On August 17, 1958, the first attempt was made in the USA to send from Cape Canaveral to the vicinity Moon probe with scientific equipment. She was unsuccessful. The rocket rose and flew only 16 km. The first stage of the rocket exploded at 77 from the flight. On October 11, 1958, a second attempt was made to launch the Pioneer-1 lunar probe, which also turned out to be unsuccessful. The next several launches also turned out to be unsuccessful, only on March 3, 1959, Pioneer-4, weighing 6.1 kg, partially completed the task: it flew past the Moon at a distance of 60,000 km (instead of the planned 24,000 km).

As well as when launching an Earth satellite, the priority in launching the first probe belongs to the USSR; on January 2, 1959, the first man-made object was launched, which was launched on a trajectory passing close enough to the Moon, into the orbit of the Sun satellite. Thus, "Luna-1" for the first time reached the second cosmic velocity. "Luna-1" had a mass of 361.3 kg and flew past the Moon at a distance of 5500 km. At a distance of 113,000 km from Earth, a cloud of sodium vapor was released from a rocket stage docked to Luna 1, forming an artificial comet. Solar radiation caused a bright glow of sodium vapor and optical systems on Earth photographed the cloud against the background of the constellation Aquarius.

Luna-2, launched on September 12, 1959, made the world's first flight to another celestial body. Instruments were placed in the 390.2-kilogram sphere, which showed that the Moon does not have a magnetic field and a radiation belt.

Automatic interplanetary station (AMS) "Luna-3" was launched on October 4, 1959. The weight of the station was 435 kg. The main purpose of the launch was to fly around the Moon and photograph its opposite side, invisible from the Earth. Photographing was carried out on October 7 for 40 minutes from an altitude of 6200 km above the Moon.

man in space

April 12, 1961 at 9:07 Moscow time, a few tens of kilometers north of the village of Tyuratam in Kazakhstan at the Soviet Baikonur cosmodrome, an intercontinental ballistic missile R-7 was launched, in the nose compartment of which the Vostok manned spacecraft with Air Force Major Yuriy was located Alekseevich Gagarin on board. The launch was successful. The spacecraft was launched into orbit with an inclination of 65 degrees, a perigee altitude of 181 km and an apogee altitude of 327 km, and completed one revolution around the Earth in 89 minutes. On the 108th mine after launch, he returned to Earth, landing near the village of Smelovka, Saratov Region. Thus, 4 years after the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, the Soviet Union for the first time in the world carried out a manned flight into outer space.

In space exploration, mankind will have to study various areas of outer space: the Moon, other planets and interplanetary space.

Photo active tours, holidays in the mountains

Before flying into the world space, it was necessary to understand and put into practice the principle of jet propulsion, learn how to make rockets, create a theory of interplanetary communications, etc. Rocketry is far from a new concept. To create powerful modern launch vehicles, man went through millennia of dreams, fantasies, mistakes, searches in various fields of science and technology, accumulation of experience and knowledge.

But since Kibalchich was imprisoned for an attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II, then the project of his aircraft was discovered only in 1917 in the archives of the police department.

So, by the end of the 19th century, the idea of using jet instruments for flights gained large scale in Russia. And the first who decided to continue research was our great compatriot Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935). He became interested in the jet principle of motion very early. Already in 1883 he gave a description of a ship with a jet engine. Already in 1903, Tsiolkovsky, for the first time in the world, made it possible to design a scheme for a liquid rocket. Tsiolkovsky's ideas were universally recognized as early as the 1920s. And the brilliant successor of his work, S.P. Korolev, a month before the launch of the first artificial satellite of the Earth, said that the ideas and works of Konstantin Eduardovich would attract more and more attention as rocket technology developed, which he turned out to be absolutely right!

The beginning of the space age

On December 6, 1957, an attempt was made in the USA to launch the Avangard-1 satellite using a launch vehicle developed by the Naval Research Laboratory. .

On January 31, 1958, the Explorer 1 satellite, the American response to the launch of Soviet satellites, was launched into orbit. In terms of size and weight, he was not a candidate for champions. Being less than 1 m long and only ~15.2 cm in diameter, it had a mass of only 4.8 kg.

Between December 1957 and September 1959, eleven attempts were made to launch the Avangard

man in space

The spacecraft consisted of two compartments. The descent vehicle, which was also the cosmonaut's cabin, was a sphere 2.3 m in diameter, covered with an ablative material for thermal protection during atmospheric entry. The spacecraft was controlled automatically, as well as by the astronaut. In flight, it was continuously supported with the Earth. The ship's atmosphere is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen at a pressure of 1 atm. (760 mm Hg). "Vostok-1" had a mass of 4730 kg, and with the last stage of the launch vehicle 6170 kg. The Vostok spacecraft was launched into space 5 times, after which it was declared safe for human flight.

Four weeks after Gagarin's flight on May 5, 1961, Captain 3rd Rank Alan Shepard became the first American astronaut.

Although it did not reach low Earth orbit, it rose above the Earth to an altitude of about 186 km. Shepard, launched from Cape Canaveral in the Mercury-3 spacecraft using a modified Redstone ballistic missile, spent 15 minutes 22 seconds in flight before landing in the Atlantic Ocean. He proved that a person in zero gravity can manually control a spacecraft. Spacecraft "Mercury" was significantly different from the spacecraft "Vostok".

It consisted of only one module - a manned capsule in the shape of a truncated cone with a length of 2.9 m and a base diameter of 1.89 m. Its pressurized nickel alloy shell had titanium skin to protect it from heating during atmospheric entry. The atmosphere inside the "Mercury" consisted of pure oxygen at a pressure of 0.36 atm.

On February 20, 1962, the USA reached Earth orbit. The Mercury 6 was launched from Cape Canaveral, piloted by Navy Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn. Glenn stayed in orbit for only 4 hours and 55 minutes, completing 3 orbits before successfully landing. The purpose of Glenn's flight was to determine the possibility of human work in the spacecraft "Mercury". Mercury was last launched into space on May 15, 1963.

On March 18, 1965, the Voskhod spacecraft was launched into orbit with two cosmonauts on board - the commander of the ship, Colonel Pavel Ivarovich Belyaev, and the co-pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov. Immediately after entering orbit, the crew purged themselves of nitrogen by inhaling pure oxygen. Then the airlock compartment was deployed: Leonov entered the airlock compartment, closed the cover of the spacecraft hatch and for the first time in the world made an exit into outer space. The cosmonaut with an autonomous life support system was outside the spacecraft cabin for 20 minutes, sometimes moving away from the spacecraft at a distance of up to 5 m. During the exit, he was connected to the spacecraft only by telephone and telemetry cables. Thus, the possibility of the astronaut's stay and work outside the spacecraft was practically confirmed.

On June 3, Gemeni-4 was launched with captains James McDivitt and Edward White. During this flight, which lasted 97 hours and 56 minutes, White left the spacecraft and spent 21 minutes outside the cockpit, testing the possibility of maneuvering in space using a compressed gas hand-held jet pistol.

Unfortunately, space exploration has not been without casualties. On January 27, 1967, the crew preparing to make the first manned flight under the Apollo program died during a fire inside the spacecraft, having burned out in 15 seconds in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee became the first American astronauts to die in spacecraft. On April 23, a new Soyuz-1 spacecraft was launched from Baikonur, piloted by Colonel Vladimir Komarov. The launch was successful.

On orbit 18, 26 hours and 45 minutes after the launch, Komarov began the orientation for entry into the atmosphere. All operations went well, but after entering the atmosphere and braking, the parachute system failed. The cosmonaut died instantly at the moment the Soyuz hit the Earth at a speed of 644 km / h. In the future, the Cosmos claimed more than one human life, but these victims were the first.

It should be noted that in terms of natural science and production, the world is facing a number of global problems, the solution of which requires the combined efforts of all peoples. These are the problems of raw materials, energy, control over the state of the environment and the conservation of the biosphere, and others. A huge role in their cardinal solution will be played by space research - one of the most important areas of the scientific and technological revolution. Cosmonautics vividly demonstrates to the whole world the fruitfulness of peaceful creative work, the benefits of combining the efforts of different countries in solving scientific and national economic problems.

What problems do astronautics and astronauts face? Let's start with life support. What is life support? Life support in space flight is the creation and maintenance during the entire flight in the living and working compartments of the K.K. such conditions that would provide the crew with sufficient performance to complete the task, and the minimum likelihood of pathological changes in the human body. How to do it? It is necessary to significantly reduce the degree of impact on a person of adverse external factors of space flight - vacuum, meteoric bodies, penetrating radiation, weightlessness, overloads; supply the crew with substances and energy without which normal human life is not possible - food, water, oxygen and net; remove waste products of the body and substances harmful to health, released during the operation of systems and equipment of the spacecraft; to provide human needs for movement, rest, external information and normal working conditions; organize medical control over the health of the crew and maintain it at the required level. Food and water are delivered into space in appropriate packaging, and oxygen is in a chemically bound form. If you do not restore the products of vital activity, then for a crew of three people for one year you will need 11 tons of the above products, which, you see, is a considerable weight, volume, and how will all this be stored during the year ?!

In the near future, regeneration systems will make it possible to almost completely reproduce oxygen and water on board the station. It has long been used water after washing and shower, purified in the regeneration system. Exhaled moisture is condensed in the refrigeration and drying unit and then regenerated. Breathing oxygen is extracted from purified water by electrolysis, and hydrogen gas, reacting with carbon dioxide coming from the concentrator, forms water that feeds the electrolyzer. The use of such a system makes it possible to reduce the mass of stored substances in the considered example from 11 to 2 tons. Recently, it has been practiced to grow various types of plants directly on board the ship, which makes it possible to reduce the supply of food that needs to be taken into space, Tsiolkovsky mentioned this in his writings.

space science

Space exploration helps a lot in the development of sciences:
On December 18, 1980, the phenomenon of a runoff of particles from the Earth's radiation belts under negative magnetic anomalies was established.

Experiments carried out on the first satellites showed that near-Earth space outside the atmosphere is not "empty" at all. It is filled with plasma, permeated with flows of energy particles. In 1958, Earth's radiation belts were discovered in near space - giant magnetic traps filled with charged particles - high-energy protons and electrons.

The highest intensity of radiation in the belts is observed at altitudes of several thousand km. Theoretical estimates showed that below 500 km. There should be no increased radiation. Therefore, the discovery during the flights of the first K.K. areas of intense radiation at altitudes up to 200-300 km. It turned out that this is due to the anomalous zones of the Earth's magnetic field.

The study of the natural resources of the Earth by space methods has spread, which in many respects has contributed to the development of the national economy.

The first problem that confronted space researchers in 1980 was a complex of scientific research, including most of the most important areas of space natural science. Their goal was to develop methods for thematic interpretation of multi-zone video information and their use in solving problems of the Earth sciences and economic sectors. These tasks include: the study of global and local structures of the earth's crust to understand the history of its development.

The second problem is one of the fundamental physical and technical problems of remote sensing and aims to create catalogs of the radiation characteristics of terrestrial objects and models of their transformation, which will make it possible to analyze the state of natural formations at the time of shooting and predict them for dynamics.

A distinctive feature of the third problem is the orientation towards radiation of the radiation characteristics of large regions up to the planet as a whole, using data on the parameters and anomalies of the Earth's gravitational and geomagnetic fields.

Exploring the Earth from space

Man first appreciated the role of satellites in monitoring the state of agricultural land, forests and other natural resources of the Earth only a few years after the onset of the space age. The beginning was laid in 1960, when with the help of meteorological satellites "Tiros" map-like outlines of the globe were obtained, lying under the clouds. These first black-and-white TV images gave very little insight into human activity, and yet it was a first step. Soon new technical means were developed that made it possible to improve the quality of observations. Information was extracted from multispectral images in the visible and infrared (IR) regions of the spectrum. The first satellites designed to take full advantage of these capabilities were the Landsat. For example, the Landsat-D satellite, the fourth in a series, observed the Earth from a height of more than 640 km using advanced sensitive instruments, which allowed consumers to receive much more detailed and timely information. One of the first areas of application of images of the earth's surface was cartography. In the pre-satellite era, maps of many areas, even in the developed regions of the world, were inaccurate. The Landsat images have corrected and updated some of the existing maps of the United States. In the USSR, images obtained from the Salyut station turned out to be indispensable for reconciling the BAM railway.

In the mid-1970s, NASA and the US Department of Agriculture decided to demonstrate the capabilities of the satellite system in forecasting the most important agricultural crop, wheat. Satellite observations, which turned out to be extremely accurate, were later extended to other agricultural crops. Approximately at the same time, in the USSR, observations of agricultural crops were carried out from satellites of the Cosmos, Meteor, and Monsoon series and the Salyut orbital stations.

The use of satellite information has revealed its undeniable advantages in assessing the volume of timber in the vast territories of any country. It became possible to manage the process of deforestation and, if necessary, to give recommendations on changing the contours of the deforestation area from the point of view of the best preservation of the forest. Thanks to satellite images, it has also become possible to quickly assess the boundaries of forest fires, especially the “crown-shaped” ones, characteristic of the western regions of North America, as well as the regions of Primorye and southern regions of Eastern Siberia in Russia.

Of great importance for humanity as a whole is the ability to observe almost continuously the expanses of the World Ocean, this "forge" of weather. It is above the depths of ocean water that monstrous forces are born of hurricanes and typhoons, bringing numerous victims and destruction to the inhabitants of the coast. Early warning to the public is often critical to saving the lives of tens of thousands of people. Determining the stocks of fish and other seafood is also of great practical importance. Ocean currents often curve, change course and size. For example, El Nino, a warm current in a southerly direction off the coast of Ecuador in some years can spread along the coast of Peru up to 12 degrees. S . When this happens, plankton and fish die in huge numbers, causing irreparable damage to the fisheries of many countries, including Russia. Large concentrations of unicellular marine organisms increase the mortality of fish, possibly due to the toxins they contain. Satellite observation helps to identify the “whims” of such currents and provide useful information to those who need it. According to some estimates by Russian and American scientists, the fuel savings, combined with the "extra catch" due to the use of information from satellites obtained in the infrared range, yield an annual profit of $ 2.44 million. The use of satellites for survey purposes has facilitated the task of plotting the course of ships . Also, satellites detect icebergs and glaciers dangerous for ships. Accurate knowledge of snow reserves in the mountains and the volume of glaciers is an important task of scientific research, because as the development of arid territories, the need for water increases dramatically.

The help of astronauts in the creation of the largest cartographic work - the Atlas of Snow and Ice Resources of the World is invaluable.

Also, with the help of satellites, oil pollution, air pollution, minerals are found.

space science

Within a short period of time since the beginning of the space age, man not only sent robotic space stations to other planets and set foot on the surface of the moon, but also revolutionized the science of space, which has not been equaled in the entire history of mankind. Along with the great technological advances brought about by the development of astronautics, new knowledge about the planet Earth and neighboring worlds was obtained. One of the first important discoveries, made not by the traditional visual, but by another method of observation, was the establishment of the fact of a sharp increase with height, starting from a certain threshold height, in the intensity of cosmic rays previously considered isotropic. This discovery belongs to the Austrian WF Hess, who in 1946 launched a gas balloon with equipment to great heights.

In 1952 and 1953 Dr. James Van Allen conducted research on low-energy cosmic rays when launching small rockets to a height of 19-24 km and high-altitude balloons in the region of the north magnetic pole of the Earth. After analyzing the results of the experiments, Van Allen proposed placing on board the first American artificial earth satellites, fairly simple in design, cosmic ray detectors.

On January 31, 1958, with the help of the Explorer-1 satellite launched by the United States into orbit, a sharp decrease in the intensity of cosmic radiation was detected at altitudes above 950 km. At the end of 1958, the Pioneer-3 AMS, which covered a distance of more than 100,000 km in a day of flight, registered using the sensors on board the second, located above the first, the Earth's radiation belt, which also encircles the entire globe.

In August and September 1958, at an altitude of more than 320 km, three atomic explosions were carried out, each with a power of 1.5 kW. The purpose of the tests, codenamed Argus, was to investigate the possibility of radio and radar communications being lost during such tests. The study of the Sun is the most important scientific problem, the solution of which is devoted to many launches of the first satellites and AMS.

The American "Pioneer-4" - "Pioneer-9" (1959-1968) from near-solar orbits transmitted by radio to Earth the most important information about the structure of the Sun. At the same time, more than twenty satellites of the Interkosmos series were launched to study the Sun and near-solar space.

Black holes

Black holes were first discovered in the 1960s. It turned out that if our eyes could only see X-rays, then the starry sky above us would look very different. True, the X-rays emitted by the Sun were discovered even before the birth of astronautics, but they did not even suspect about other sources in the starry sky. They stumbled upon them by accident.

In 1962, the Americans, having decided to check whether X-rays were coming from the surface of the Moon, launched a rocket equipped with special equipment. It was then that, processing the results of observations, we were convinced that the instruments had noted a powerful source of X-ray radiation. It was located in the constellation Scorpio. And already in the 70s, the first 2 satellites, designed to search for research on X-ray sources in the universe, went into orbit - the American Uhuru and the Soviet Kosmos-428.

By this time, things were starting to become clear. Objects emitting X-rays have been linked to barely visible stars with unusual properties. These were compact clumps of plasma of negligible, of course by cosmic standards, sizes and masses, heated to several tens of millions of degrees. With a very modest appearance, these objects possessed colossal X-ray power, several thousand times greater than the full compatibility of the Sun.

These are tiny, with a diameter of about 10 km. , the remains of completely burned out stars, compressed to a monstrous density, should have somehow declared themselves. Therefore, neutron stars were so readily "recognized" in X-ray sources. And it all seemed to fit. But the calculations refuted the expectations: the newly formed neutron stars should immediately cool down and stop emitting, and these were X-rays.

With the help of launched satellites, the researchers found strictly periodic changes in the radiation fluxes of some of them. The period of these variations was also determined - usually it did not exceed several days. Only two stars rotating around themselves could behave in this way, one of which periodically eclipsed the other. This has been proven by observing through telescopes.

Where do X-ray sources draw their colossal radiation energy from? The main condition for the transformation of a normal star into a neutron one is the complete attenuation of the nuclear reaction in it. Therefore, nuclear energy is excluded. Then, perhaps, this is the kinetic energy of a rapidly rotating massive body? Indeed, it is large for neutron stars. But it only lasts for a short time.

Most neutron stars exist not alone, but in pairs with a huge star. In their interaction, theorists believe, the source of the mighty power of cosmic X-rays is hidden. It forms a disk of gas around the neutron star. At the magnetic poles of the neutron ball, the matter of the disk falls onto its surface, and the energy acquired by the gas is converted into X-rays.

Cosmos-428 also presented its own surprise. His equipment registered a new, completely unknown phenomenon - X-ray flashes. In one day, the satellite detected 20 bursts, each of which lasted no more than 1 second. , and the radiation power increased tenfold in this case. Scientists called the sources of X-ray flashes BARSTERS. They are also associated with binary systems. The most powerful flares are only a few times inferior to the total radiation of hundreds of billions of stars located in our Galaxy in terms of the energy emitted.

Theorists have proven that the "black holes" that make up binary star systems can signal themselves with X-rays. And the cause of occurrence is the same - accretion of gas. However, the mechanism in this case is somewhat different. The internal parts of the gaseous disk settling into the "hole" must heat up and therefore become sources of X-rays. Only those luminaries whose mass does not exceed 2-3 solar ones end their “life” with the transition to a neutron star. Larger stars suffer the fate of a "black hole".

X-ray astronomy has told us about the last, perhaps the most turbulent, stage in the development of stars. Thanks to her, we learned about the most powerful cosmic explosions, about gas with a temperature of tens and hundreds of millions of degrees, about the possibility of a completely unusual superdense state of matter in "black holes".

What else gives space for us? Television (TV) programs have not mentioned for a long time that the transmission is via satellite. This is further evidence of the tremendous success in the industrialization of space, which has become an integral part of our lives. Communication satellites literally entangle the world with invisible threads. The idea of creating communication satellites was born shortly after the Second World War, when A. Clark in the October 1945 issue of the magazine "World of Radio" (Wireless World) presented his concept of a relay communication station located at an altitude of 35880 km above the Earth.

Clark's merit was that he determined the orbit in which the satellite is stationary relative to the Earth. Such an orbit is called a geostationary or Clarke orbit. When moving along a circular orbit with a height of 35880 km, one revolution is completed in 24 hours, i.e. during the Earth's daily rotation. A satellite moving in such an orbit will constantly be above a certain point on the Earth's surface.

The first communication satellite "Telstar-1" was nevertheless launched into low earth orbit with parameters of 950 x 5630 km, this happened on July 10, 1962. Almost a year later, the launch of the Telstar-2 satellite followed. The first telecast showed the American flag in New England with the Andover station in the background. This image was transmitted to the UK, France and the US station in pc. New Jersey 15 hours after satellite launch. Two weeks later, millions of Europeans and Americans watched the negotiations of people on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. They not only talked but also saw each other, communicating via satellite. Historians may consider this day as the birth date of space TV. The world's largest state-owned satellite communications system has been created in Russia. Its beginning was laid in April 1965. the launch of satellites of the Molniya series, which are launched into highly elongated elliptical orbits with an apogee over the Northern Hemisphere. Each series includes four pairs of satellites orbiting at an angular distance of 90 degrees from each other.

On the basis of the Molniya satellites, the first Orbita deep space communication system was built. In December 1975 The family of communications satellites was replenished with the Raduga satellite operating in geostationary orbit. Then came the Ekran satellite with a more powerful transmitter and simpler ground stations. After the first development of satellites, a new period in the development of satellite communications technology began, when satellites began to be launched into a geostationary orbit in which they move synchronously with the rotation of the Earth. This made it possible to establish round-the-clock communication between ground stations using new-generation satellites: the American "Sincom", "Early Bird" and "Intelsat" and the Russian ones - "Rainbow" and "Horizon".

A great future is associated with the deployment of antenna systems in geostationary orbit.

On June 17, 1991, the ERS-1 geodetic satellite was launched into orbit. The main mission of the satellites would be to observe the oceans and ice-covered parts of the land in order to provide climatologists, oceanographers and environmental organizations with data on these underexplored regions. The satellite was equipped with the most advanced microwave equipment, thanks to which it is ready for any weather: the "eyes" of its radar instruments penetrate fog and clouds and give a clear image of the Earth's surface, through water, through land - and through ice. ERS-1 was aimed at developing ice maps, which would later help to avoid many disasters associated with the collision of ships with icebergs, etc.

For all that, the development of shipping routes is, figuratively speaking, only the tip of the iceberg, if we only remember the interpretation of ERS data on the oceans and ice-covered expanses of the Earth. We are aware of the alarming predictions of a general warming of the Earth, which will lead to the melting of the polar caps and rising sea levels. All coastal zones will be flooded, millions of people will suffer.

But we do not know how correct these predictions are. Long-term observations of the polar regions with ERS-1 and the ERS-2 satellite that followed it in late autumn 1994 provide data from which to draw conclusions about these trends. They're building an "early warning" system for the melting ice.

Thanks to the images that the ERS-1 satellite transmitted to Earth, we know that the ocean floor with its mountains and valleys is, as it were, "imprinted" on the surface of the waters. So scientists can get an idea of whether the distance from the satellite to the sea surface (measured to within ten centimeters by satellite radar altimeters) is an indication of rising sea levels, or is it a “fingerprint” of a mountain on the bottom.

Although originally designed for ocean and ice observations, ERS-1 quickly proved its versatility on land as well. In agriculture and forestry, in fisheries, geology and cartography, specialists work with data provided by the satellite. Since the ERS-1 is still operational after three years of its mission, scientists have a chance to operate it with the ERS-2 for general missions as a tandem. And they are going to receive new information about the topography of the earth's surface and provide assistance, for example, in warning about possible earthquakes.

The ERS-2 satellite is also equipped with the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment Gome instrument, which takes into account the volume and distribution of ozone and other gases in the Earth's atmosphere. With this device, you can observe the dangerous ozone hole and the ongoing changes. At the same time, according to ERS-2 data, UV-B radiation close to the ground can be removed.

Against the backdrop of the many global environmental problems that both ERS-1 and ERS-2 must provide the foundational information to solve, shipping route planning seems like a relatively minor outcome of this new generation of satellites. But it is one of those areas where the opportunities for commercial use of satellite data are being used particularly intensively. This helps in funding other important tasks. And this has an effect in the field of environmental protection that can hardly be overestimated: faster shipping lanes require less energy. Or consider oil tankers that ran aground in a storm or crashed and sank, losing their environmentally hazardous cargo. Reliable route planning helps to avoid such disasters.

Sergei Kalenik writes: “There is a well-known paradox - if you are inside a spaceship flying at almost the speed of light, time slows down for you. Such a ship needs only 25 years to reach the visible edge of the universe, although for those remaining on earth these two decades will stretch into 14 billion years.

It's the same with technological progress. Progress is a shock wave that sweeps away everything in its path like a tsunami - if today a person thought of putting on a skin, then tomorrow he will jump in a spacesuit on the moon - what's the difference?

(Total 36 photos + 2 videos)

But inside this wave, on board the “progress”, it will always seem as if we are crawling like turtles. Hand on heart - which of us considers the USSR the best state in the world that has done the impossible throughout its history?

1. Gagarin, satellite, lunar rover - beaten clichés. Like Che Guevara T-shirts. Space has become a boring routine - now dozens of people are constantly in orbit and no one cares about them. But the conquest of space is perhaps the most exciting journey in the history of mankind. Fascinating if you know the true story, and not a propaganda picture on TV.

2. I think in 300 years the USSR will look like ancient Rome or the French empire under Louis - an idealistic society obsessed with the idea of progress and mega construction projects, which died under the weight of its own intellect and then was stipulated by descendants.

How will the USSR be remembered in history?

In total, there were three mega projects in the 20th century: the creation of the atomic bomb, the space race, and the computer revolution. We won outer space - the American program ended with the collapse of the shuttles and since 2011 "all space" has been handed over to the Russians. The Russian language is the only official language of the cosmos, it is now obligatory for anyone leaving our planet to know it (oh, sorry for the Men in Black filmed too early).

Moreover, all the space technologies in the world are now ours - I throw we are selling rockets and ships of fifty years ago, and to France we are building a new cosmodrome in Kourou, which is a complete copy of Baikonur. The land builds all its plans for the development of the outside world with an eye on Moscow.

How did the Russians manage to privatize the entire universe for themselves? This is a whole story, fascinating but confusing - sit in your chairs and put on your spacesuits, our flight will successively pass through five orbits.

Space is the backbone of the twentieth century. Its essence and secret. Therefore, the flight will not be easy. We take a look behind the scenes of history, politics, art and the world as you know it. In short, you already understood that everyone will get the butthurt now.

First space speed: space tourism

3. For the past forty years, reality has been saying no, no, and no to the space exploration program. It turned out that there is no economic benefit there, the flights themselves are very expensive and life-threatening, and what goes well (communications satellites, extraterrestrial astronomy) does not require the presence of people in space and is the fruit of the development of electronics, not aeronautics. That is, a "rocket" is an ax, a primitive tool. This is a dead end branch of progress and there is nothing more to come up with. There is not much difference between Chinese fireworks and a moon rocket. This is a primitive albeit functional tool.

Therefore, the whole ideology, all projects, the whole drive of the space extravaganza is a thing of the past. By inertia, the space theme will always be interesting, but the peak of the 50-70s has passed. All fantastic works on this subject have been written.

Only tourism remains, and this is evident throughout space fiction - the hero of a space odyssey 2001 is clearly a tourist. And the heroine of the movie Alien seems to be visiting the pyramids of ancient Egypt. I'm not talking about Star Trek or Starship Troopers.

There is only one catch here. Remember how they did not want to let the first tourists into space? I think the point here is that all those who flew into space receive a special status and join some closed club, whose members do not complain about life. And then someone wants to buy a membership in it ... just like some moneybag decided to buy a membership in the club of those who climbed Everest. But the rules are the rules, in order to change them - tourism is the only future of space, there is nothing more to do there. But to stand on a par with Gagarin ... not many people understand what this means.

4. Yuri Gagarin is the greatest man in history, his name will be remembered even when the rest are forgotten, because he is the first person to leave the earth. To appreciate this phrase, imagine that our civilization will perish, but the memory of one person can remain from it, whose name will it be?

5. Here is a monument erected in honor of Columbus 600 years after his journey.

No less majestic buildings stand in all countries of the new world. Columbus is their main historical and epic character such as the ancient Zeus or Jesus Christ. But who is he compared to the first cosmonaut? But this is not the main thing. The fact is that it is impossible to jump higher than Gagarin. This is the last hero of mankind. There is nothing more significant than the first flight into space, nothing at all. Even Neil Armstrong stands infinitely lower than Yuri Alekseevich in the world pantheon, despite the colossal efforts of American propaganda.

This is the meaning of space tourism, the attraction of space - you can not go to the new world on the same ship with Columbus and then boldly say I was there. You cannot be the first to climb Everest again or reach the North Pole or sink to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, there is nothing exceptional about this anymore. Space is so far from everything that we have seen and know that the flight to the stars will probably always be a mystical event. No money is spared for the flight to Gagarin.

But in space, money doesn't matter. That is why Roskosmos, being a space monopolist, simply spits on the opportunity to earn trillions on tourism and blocks its development in the West for the same reasons as applicants for space tourists. And without Roskosmos, the very idea of tourism will remain at the level of naive crafts of those very failed tourists.

It turns out that a man in space is superfluous, but maybe a cold vacuum is suitable for war?

Second Space Velocity: The SDI Program and Star Wars

Beginning with Churchill's famous Fulton speech, the Cold War began. The US and the USSR spent half a century in an arms race. A kind of war of attrition, when both countries produced thousands of tanks, aircraft and missiles. which did not even shoot - they were simply written off to the reserve in order to make room for new models. And so for fifty years, until one of the players overstrains.

6. This is a key moment in the history of the cosmos, so I will dwell on it in more detail.

In Fulton, Churchill suggested that the Americans divide the world and rule the three of them - the USA, England and the USSR. America decided to be the mistress of the sea and did not really calculate its forces. For such a solution, the states had an atomic bomb, a hundred aircraft carriers and a fleet of jet aircraft giving complete air supremacy. Seems like world domination is guaranteed...

Only now, in the Korean War of the fifties, everything became clear - instead of an easy expeditionary walk, the American troops were surprised to find ultra-modern MIG-15 jet fighters in the Koreans - made in the USSR but with English engines. Evaluate the English treachery - the British units stood side by side with the Americans in South Korea, but they fired at them from English weapons, albeit with Korean hands.

The Americans are stubborn guys, with each new round of the Cold War they put more and more expensive toys into the ring, and each time the USSR maliciously copied and improved the presented samples. Have you built a fleet of bombers capable of reaching Moscow? Khrushchev sarcastically declares that we are making intercontinental missiles like sausages. Missiles capable of hitting every city in America faster than you can fill up your planes.

7. The Americans wiped themselves off and on June 5, 1961 launched the Chrome Dome program - according to which strategic bombers with atomic bombs were always in the air on the borders of the USSR. However, the B-52s were not the best machines for long-term duty and began to fall. Fully loaded with atomic bombs.

During the seven years of the program, five planes fell, the last case was the final of the program.

In 1968, a fire broke out on board one of the cars - the third pilot put three soft foam cushions under his seat, which blocked the ventilation of the heating system and ignited. The crew ejected, and the plane crashed on the ice near Greenland. On board were four hydrogen bombs of one and a half megatons each - two were found, one crashed and released seven kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium into the atmosphere, and the fourth is still being sought by treasure hunters in the rocks of Greenland.

And the Americans scattered dozens of such bombs around the world - that's where the help for world terrorism is. The chrome dome then had to be rolled up under international pressure.

But in general, this example is indicative - all their other military programs and, of course, the American space program developed in the same vein. Not because in America there are bad engineers or cowardly pilots - they are the best in the world, it's just that this is not enough for super-tasks, they need super-qualities - those that lie not in the field of logic or education, but at the very foundation of the national character.

By the early 1980s, America had a brilliant idea to take the Cold War from earth to space. After watching Star Wars, President Reagan announced the launch of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Its essence is terrifyingly simple - we are building a fleet of hundreds of super-powerful combat lasers that will shoot down ballistic missiles on takeoff.

By the way, the idea is very sensible, because it is possible to intercept such missiles as the SS-18 only on takeoff, after ten minutes of flight, its warhead is divided into 200 parts constantly maneuvering and evading interception - it is no longer realistic to shoot them down. To the lasers - a fleet of Shuttle shuttles that serve the lasers and can also carry a stock of nuclear missiles on board. Despite the Hollywood scope, it was a swan song and the last spurt of the states - leading to a complete rout.

8. The fact is that a feature of the socialist economy is its absolute concentration and unlimitedness. Simply put, the entire USSR was one company, and its economy did not have any special restrictions, it was possible to afford any programs such as building hundreds of nuclear submarines, a huge army or an ocean fleet - all this without mobilization and martial law.

Let me explain with an example. Under Khrushchev, they somehow attended to housing for workers, and in a decade, most of the country's inhabitants received their own apartments. Of course, these were inferior Khrushchevs, but at that time they were a luxury even for Europe. The scale is impressive - 300 million square meters of housing have been built. One meter for every inhabitant of the country.

So Khrushchevs are temporary housing for workers in which they were supposed to live until 1980, when communism came. "Temporary housing" is tin houses for guest workers building skyscrapers in Moscow City. Now imagine the scale of these tin houses in the country of the Soviets and you can also imagine the skyscraper that these workers built. With such a scale of the economy, the "shuttle" is one tooth. The USSR built a whole fleet of nuclear submarines and did not notice this. And one such boat costs as much as an average European country.

9. Already in 1987, the Energia launch vehicle launched the Polus combat laser into orbit - it was immediately drowned in the ocean so as not to escalate the conflict - the USSR then conducted propaganda under the slogan "no weapons in space", etc. The following year, Buran makes its only flight, and it does it in a fully automatic mode without a crew.

Unmanned mode is not just an engineering triumph that no one has achieved so far, but an unambiguous signal to the states. After all, in 1984, the Soviet laser radar “illuminated” a shuttle flying by with its guidance system - the shuttle lost contact with the ground, all electronics turned off, and the crew “felt an acute malaise.” Those. even target tracking disabled the “space bomber”, what can we say about the consequences of a combat salvo?

It suddenly turned out that the Americans had nothing to catch in space - the USSR developed its own shuttle in a couple of years and could easily mass-produce it, not to mention laser weapons.

10. In 1989, an American delegation came to the USSR to inspect all these achievements in person and came to the conclusion that it was time to end the Cold War. In return, the United States accepts the Fulton proposal and abandons the idea of world domination. It hasn't even been 40 years!

But now, without the British colonial empire and the Soviet bloc, such a political system looks very funny - America has 95% of its military power, but it cannot even capture the Middle East. I'm not even talking about the rising China and the EU. Even North Korea wipes its feet on Americans - this is the result of the entire space race.

Third Space Velocity: How We Made America

Space is by and large a propaganda product. All these satellites and flights had as their ultimate goal the picture on the TV. Remember what became a symbol of television? Yes broadcast from the moon.

11. That is why the real symbol of television is Neil Armstrong.

The world's first artificial satellite of the earth - what could be cleaner, more romantic and sublime than this monument to humanity? To all enthusiasts, researchers, mad scientists and tireless designers who for generations have laid down their lives on the altar of space. But the worst thing about dreams is that they come true.

12. I think the world's reaction to this event was best described by Stephen King, who became a writer on October 4, 1957:

For the first time I experienced horror - real horror, and not an encounter with demons or ghosts living in my imagination - on an October day in 1957. I just turned ten. And, as expected, I was in a movie theater - the Stratford Theater in downtown Stratford, Connecticut.

One of my favorite films was on, and the fact that it was showing it, and not a Randolph Scott western or a John Wayne action movie, turned out to be quite appropriate. On that Sabbath day, when the real horror hit me, there was "Earth vs. flying saucers."

And just at the moment when, in the last part of the film, the aliens are preparing to attack the Capitol, the tape stopped. The screen is off. The cinema was packed with kids, but oddly enough, everyone was quiet. If you look back to your younger days, remember that there are many ways for a crowd of kids to express their annoyance when a movie is interrupted or starts late: rhythmic clapping; the great cry of the children's tribe "We want a movie! We want cinema! We want cinema!”; candy boxes flying at the screen; pipes from packs of popcorn, but you never know what else. If someone has a cracker in his pocket since the Fourth of July, he will certainly take it out, show his friends to approve and admire, and then light it and throw it to the ceiling.

But on that October day, nothing like that happened. And the film was not torn - just turned off the projector. And then something unheard of happened:

Lights were turned on in the hall. We sat looking around and blinking at the Bright light like moles. The manager stepped onto the stage and raised his hand for silence, a completely unnecessary gesture.
[…]
We sat on chairs like mannequins and looked at the manager. He looked worried and sickly - or maybe the lighting was to blame. We wondered what kind of disaster had caused him to stop the film at its most tense moment, but then the manager spoke up, and the trembling in his voice confused us even more.

“I want to inform you,” he began, “that the Russians have launched a space satellite into orbit around the Earth. They called it... "satellite".

The message was met with absolute, deathly silence. A movie theater full of kids with crew cuts and ponytails, in jeans and skirts, with Captain Midnight rings, kids who just got to know Chuck Berry and Little Richards and listened to the New York radio stations in the evenings with such a sinking heart, as if they were signals from another planet. We grew up with Captain Video and Terry and the Pirates! We admired in the comics how the character Casey scatters, like skittles, a whole bunch of Asians. We saw how Richard Carlson in "I Led a Threefold Life" catches dirty communist spies by the thousands. We paid a quarter of a dollar to see Hugh Marlowe in Earth vs. Flying Saucers and got this damn news as a free app.

I remember very clearly: the terrible dead silence of the cinema hall was suddenly broken by a solitary cry; I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl, the voice was full of tears and frightened anger: “Let’s show the movie, you liar!”

The manager didn't even look in the direction the voice had come from, and somehow that was the worst part. It was proof. The Russians are ahead of us in space. Somewhere above our heads, squeaking triumphantly, an electronic ball, designed and launched behind the Iron Curtain, is rushing. Neither Captain Midnight nor Richard Carlson could stop him. He was flying up there... and they called him "satellite". The manager stood a little longer, looking at us; he seemed to be looking for something else to add, but he couldn't find it. Then he left, and soon the film resumed.

13. If the Russians were able to put a satellite into orbit, then America is defenseless against a sudden nuclear strike from heaven. This simple conclusion had far-reaching consequences.

The fear was so strong that in the first days of October 1957, especially hotheads from the Pentagon proposed to “close the sky”, that is, to throw tons of scrap metal into orbital heights: balls from bearings, nails, steel shavings, which would lead to the cessation of any space launches.

But President Eisenhower acted wiser - he did not block orbit, or copy Soviet space technology, he copied the Soviet system itself.

14. According to Soviet models, a unified NASA space ministry was created, which was secretly finally headed by the German gloomy genius Werner Von Braun - he was recruited back in early 1943, but it was painfully contradictory to trust the American space program to the most famous SS in the world.

In addition to the creation of NASA, another little-known, but key to the history of America, reform was carried out - the reform of education. The National Defense Education Act copied the Soviet system of higher education, its meaning was to create a single ministry of education that selected talented students from all over the country to technical universities - this is how the Massachusetts and California Technical Universities, Stanford, Harvard and many other universities gained their current look and fame. Yes, these universities existed before, but until 1958 they were more private shops that were not able to solve large-scale problems.

All of them were united by a single “military-industrial-academic complex” and solved the tasks clearly set for them - to develop rocket engines or a guidance system. That is why American universities still treat Moscow State University with such reverence, Moscow University is always cited as an example, any news from it is caught with an open mouth, and in all ratings of the hundred best world universities it is invariably in the honorable 50th place - it's just their Alma mater and the entire American education system are rooted in this building on Sparrow Hills.

15. Simply put, with this reform, a real space race began.

Space Four: Were Americans on the moon?

A little higher, I already noticed that its purpose of the race was a propaganda effect - for some reason it was believed that success in space was the first evidence of the "correctness" of a particular political system.

Now it may seem crazy, but crazy people could not send a probe to Venus and walk on the moon. There are indeed two sound grains in this idea, I will talk about the first one below, and the second one is just a national character.

16. Do not think that we are talking about some kind of metaphysics, everything is extremely simple here - after all, Russians are born astronauts. We live on the moon for nine months of the year and walk around in spacesuits. Hence the ultimate rationalism, even critical realism if you like. Everything is strictly logical and to the point with us, not because we are so smart, it’s just that the conditions are like that - I forgot to put on a hat and died. As a result, there are no fools in Russia at all - they live with us for exactly one year, until winter. All this has its consequences on a global level - Russians have composure, savvy and endless stress tolerance.

Watch this video from the space station. It first shows spacious American segments of the station. Then the narrow metal Russian ones - they look wretched, but it is in the Russian module that the on-board computer, bathroom, docking module, emergency systems and rescue modules are located. Actually, the entire ISS is in our modules, the rest are not significant.

When the operator enters the central hall of the Russian sector, two cosmonauts naturally sit at the table and drink tea under the portrait of Gagarin. These are the Americans on a space expedition - and ours are here at home.

17. When in 1965 Leonov made the first spacewalk, a defect in the spacesuit appeared - due to the lack of external pressure, it swelled up like a ball and did not allow him to return to the ship. There was only 30 minutes of air, and 20 minutes had already passed by this point. In the next ten minutes, Leonov received the Hero's star.

Not at a loss, he realized that there was no way out and caused the depressurization of the suit, blew the air and climbed head first into the airlock. Further more - during landing, the automation failed and the capsule had to be landed manually - he and Belyaev fell in the remote taiga, where they had to spend two days - which did not make any impression on the astronauts, they even cut down a helicopter landing site in the dense forest.

But the first spacewalk among the Americans showed a completely different national character. It is warm in America, and hence the mentality of the south - when any mistake is not fatal and everything can be replayed. The American folk hero is Big Lebowski and Homer Simpson.

18. On June 3, 1965, the crew of Gemeni 4 was preparing for the first American spacewalk. It was the first multi-day flight of the Americans and the task was too ambitious - to work out all the elements of a long-term stay in space in order to make sure that it was possible to fly to the moon and identify possible problems. And the problems were not long in coming - the rendezvous with the rocket stage in orbit failed, Gemeni used up almost all the fuel and the astronauts began to noticeably get nervous. The task was canceled and it was decided to proceed immediately to spacewalk. But due to the beginning of a panic attack, Edward White had to postpone this task for the third orbit around the earth.

It was not in vain that White was nervous - the entire flight the crew was in wait for mocking engineering errors. Firstly, the Americans failed to create an airlock chamber (!!!) and they simply depressurized the entire ship. But here the main problem lay in wait for them - the engineers took into account the Soviet experience with the inflating spacesuit, but clearly overestimated their capabilities and made the exit hatch completely metal. Instead of rubber gaskets like our ships, they fitted all the details to each other with micron precision. Cool, yeah?

19. On the test bench, everything worked fine, as long as there was a layer of air between the parts - but in a vacuum, this layer evaporated and a super-strong subatomic attraction arose between the metal parts. The door had to be broken with a crowbar to get out, and the unfortunate White was quite nervous when, on his return, when the hatch could not be opened for more than 10 minutes.

Poor White died already on the ground during the first flight of Apollo 1 - the engineers again made an unforgivable mistake and, to save weight, made an atmosphere of pure oxygen on the ship - how they came to this decision is unknown, because in a purely oxygen atmosphere any material becomes especially combustible. Three astronauts died instantly by burning alive in the cabin. NASA management was removed from office, and all flights were suspended for half a year.

And this is at the apogee of the lunar race, when the month went on for a year. But who knows, maybe without this failure, things would only get worse. NASA seriously revised its approach to business and began to develop the lunar program much more consistently - first, two flights in automatic mode, then attempts to dock with astronauts on board, and only after flying around the moon is landing. Surprisingly, everything went without disaster and even the infamous Apollo 13 was able to return home.

20. The Soviet lunar program bogged down precisely for this reason - no one dared to guarantee the safety of the astronauts - the technologies of the 60s were too primitive, they had to be duplicated many times, and all this complicated the already unreliable design.

For example, due to the peculiarities of the trajectory on the way back from the moon, the capsule could land only in the region of the equator, in order to land on the territory of the USSR, it was first necessary to make a braking dive into the atmosphere, slow down to the first cosmic speed, rise again into space, and only after that go to landing.

21. Do not forget that on a technological level we are talking about a Volkswagen Beetle that is fired from a huge slingshot. Literally. Here is a photo of spaceships, their size is no larger than an average car.

Or another fact - the Soviet lunar program was four times larger than the American one: first, two lunar rovers with radio beacons and cockpits for pilots landed on the moon. Then two ships went to the moon - one with astronauts, the other reserve - both came in for landing at the beacon signal. In case of problems, the astronauts calmly got into the lunar rover and drove to the spare ship.

Such caution is understandable - Gagarin's unsuccessful flight would certainly make a fuss and hit the image of the USSR hard, but still it would not be a disaster - it simply would not be considered the first flight. The moon is another matter - imagine that the first people died on its surface. This is not just a symbol of failure, it is an eternal shame - they will lie there as long as humanity will exist and this is what America or Russia will be remembered for. Such a risk is completely unacceptable, but the Americans saw a chance for themselves and decided to take a chance - they launched their ships without any safety net.

It was no coincidence that I mentioned the possibility of Gagarin's death at the start. That is why almost all video materials with the start of Gagarin were filmed after his return. Otherwise, the very existence of such materials would be an extremely dangerous weapon against Soviet power.

22. From here the legs of the lunar conspiracy grow - undoubtedly a noticeable part of the video footage from the moon filmed by the Apollos was at least retouched, some frames could have been filmed on the ground - a complete copy of the lunar surface, modules and spacesuits were created at the NASA center with ambiguous detail accuracy .

Supporters of the "lunar conspiracy" look naive not because it is obvious. "Podkimki" is just the tip of the iceberg for the media preparation of the moonwalk. Landing on the moon is all that will remain of America in history forever, but it will always be secondary after the first flight. Therefore, it was important to fulfill two tasks in the information space - to pinch Gagarin's fame as much as possible and to exert maximum informational influence. Simply put, it was necessary to show humanity a brighter salute despite the second-rate event, and here all the advertising genius of America manifested itself.

Now it is not noticeable, but the Americans came in from their signature number: We speak on behalf of all mankind, not America. Kennedy initially suggested that Khrushchev fly to the moon together, Armstrong was supposed to set the UN flag as well, and leave a sign next to the flag with messages from the leaders of 73 countries of the earth. The State Commission on the symbolism of the Apollo 11 flight met for 6 months, its result was the following decision (I will give the entire list):

Only the US flag will be unfurled on the moon. The small flags of 135 member countries of the UN, as well as the United Nations itself and all US states and territories, will be in the lunar module and will return to Earth.

23. Flag of the USSR flying to the moon with Apollo 11 and pieces of lunar soil donated to the Soviet Union by the Americans and exhibited at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics at VDNKh in Moscow.

Two full-sized US flags were also supposed to be sent on a return flight, which would fly over both buildings of the US Congress on a fighter jet (they were supposed to be in the command module all the time), a special postmark for cancellation, a “moon letter” in the form of an envelope with a test a stamp, which will be redeemed by the crew in flight, and a cliché for the subsequent printing of the commemorative stamp "First Man on the Moon".

In addition to the flag, two more items should have remained on the Moon: a small silicon disk 3.8 cm in diameter with miniature statements by US Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, goodwill messages from leaders or representatives of 73 states, the names of the leaders of the US Congress and members of the four congressional committees responsible for enacting laws related to NASA, and the names of NASA's senior leaders, current and retired, as well as a commemorative metal plate attached to one of the legs of the Eagle's landing stage. It depicted both hemispheres of the Earth, oceans and continents without state borders. Below is the text:

The plate was engraved with the signatures of all three crew members and US President Richard Nixon.

The commission also decided that emotions should be added to the flight, so astronauts can take personal items with them on the flight. Armstrong's personal belongings included a piece of wood from the left propeller and a piece of cloth from the upper left wing of the Wright brothers' Flyer. Aldrin, at the request of his father, took with him a miniature (5 cm x 7.6 cm) autobiography of the "American Tsiolkovsky" by Robert Goodard, published in 1966. It became the first book to land on the moon.

25. Someone forgot their family on the moon

Scenarios for all TV broadcasts on the ground, the emblem of the flight, all names and call signs were thought out in detail. There shouldn't be anything wacky or comic about an epic flight. And on the moon, Buzz Aldrin performed a Catholic communion service.

I accepted the holy gifts and gave thanks to the mind and spirit that brought the two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. Interesting, I thought, because the very first drink and the very first food served on the Moon was wine and communion bread.

After the flight, Aldrin returned the miniature chalice to Webster Church. Every year on the Sunday closest to July 20, the local parishioners there take part in the service of the Lunar Eucharist. Also in the astronauts' spacesuit pockets were the Apollo 1 emblem, commemorative medals of Virgil Grissom, Edward White, Roger Chaffee, Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, a small golden olive branch, the same as the three others that the astronauts would bring to their wives, and silicon disk with messages of the presidents. All this was left at the landing site of the lunar module. With all this, the crew of Apollo 11 had only one outside the ship's camera. Therefore, studio "imitations" were shown on American television so that the audience could better imagine the exit process itself.

But have you ever wondered what the results of the Apollo mission are?

Yes, the Americans overtook us at the cost of a huge risk, but the Apollo program had to be curtailed quite quickly - it turned out that there was nothing to do on the moon, the technologies of the sixties did not even allow us to stay on the surface for a couple of days.

26. From the height of today it is clear that the space race has overtaken its time by forty years. Like an atomic bomb. Ultra-early flight in the era of punched cards and magnetic tapes has only pushed back the actual exploration of the moon - now no one is ready to return to the moon. For the same reason, the ISS was built so slowly and the development of all astronautics was hampered - all the prizes were already taken in the sixties. It seems space will remain an uninhabited desert... even NASA has abandoned manned missions and switched to using lunar rover technology.

The fourth space race: what is behind the scenes of the space race?

It seems we have come to the end of our journey, but some understatement is clearly felt. Something important is missing, and that important thing is propaganda.

I have already said above that the entire space project was based on a television picture. But this is not the first time the topic of space has appeared in state propaganda.

27. All Hollywood directors from Kubrick to Lucas were devoted fans of Soviet science fiction. Thousands of times they reviewed films about the journey of pioneers to other planets and made their own films in imitation of Soviet propaganda. This well-known fact now seems incredible, but all the key American films about space have a very obvious Soviet prototype.

Kubrick filmed his Space Odyssey as a frame-by-frame imitation of the Soviet blockbuster Road to the Stars, and Star Wars is based on Lucas' favorite film, Planet of Storms. For example, Chewbacca from Star Wars is a modified Russian word for Dog and so on.

28. Were Soviet filmmakers more skillful than their Hollywood counterparts? Of course, yes, because Hollywood itself is a Russian product, it was created by Stanislavsky, who wrote his “system” specially for the Americans. But the point here is still somewhat deeper - in the communist ideology itself.

29. It is mistakenly considered that the birthplace of communism is Germany and England, where all the red leaders lived and worked. Like everything cultural in Europe, communism was invented in France. You will laugh, but initially communism was a literary project at the level of Superman comics - the ideas of social equality and justice in themselves were not very exciting, so they were wrapped in a wrapper of space travel with blasters and beautiful aliens who had to be taught earthly love. In general, everything that teenagers love.

The main body of the texts was written by people whose names can be read on the stele near the walls of the Kremlin: Charles Fourier, Auguste Comte, Proudhon, Pierre Leroux and of course my beloved Saint-Simon - an eternally impoverished crazy blogger who went on absolutely crazy ideas like Newton's church, which should replace Catholicism and extend to the whole universe. People arrive on the planet and the first thing they put up is the Church of Science named after Newton. All this under the sauce of a sexual revolution with common wives and sexual adventures.

As a result, by the 1830s, "Saint-Simonism" had become the latest fashion. Being a socialist was just as cool as being a Beatles fan a century later. In Moscow, a girl could give herself only for one convincing hint of belonging to the international. Herzen, Belinsky, Ogarev, Anninsky were all devoted fans of communism and laid the cornerstone of socialist ideas in Russia.

30. Stella to the ideologists of communism in the Alexander Garden - now you know why it was so important until it was demolished the other day.

This is how a strong bond between socialism and outer space arose. That is why the Soviet government was constantly fiddling with space, planetariums and Tsiolkovsky, shot a mountain of films about the conquest of interplanetary space. It was her invisible spine.

But in the same way, the socialist core is forever entrenched in science fiction. You will not be able to meet a single fantastic work wherever you stumble upon socialist ideas. Even if it will be a gloomy post-apocalypse like Fallout or a futuristic Avatar, everywhere you will see the good squint of grandfather Lenin with freedom-equality-brotherhood.

It is not surprising that the socialist space program turned out to be better than the capitalist one - it is just that it is already two hundred years old. The fashion for space in the 1960s is only an echo and shadow of the space hysteria of the early 19th century.

Fifth space: the speed of light is not redistributed?

It remains only to take a look at the fourteen previous pages and wonder - what's next? Spacewalk, orbital station and flight to the moon - is this the limit? After all, this is not even real space, but “near-Earth space”, and what is there, outside the solar system?

31. In the last decade there has been a real revolution in astronomy, equal to the revolution in physics at the beginning of the last century. Moreover, as in the case of the theory of the atomic nucleus, people have not yet realized the full depth of the change in their view of the world. Even specialist astronomers are just beginning to get used to the new picture of the world. The result of this new picture was the 2006 Astronomical Congress, which made apparently far-fetched decisions about a new classification of the planets. After all, what difference does it make whether Pluto is considered a planet or just a "double planetoid"?

But we are talking about changing the whole picture of the world. If earlier it was believed that the solar system is actually a Star and planets circling in close orbits. And somewhere very far away in 40 trillion kilometers is the nearest star Proxima Centauri, it probably has the same planets in small orbits. But between the two solar systems is the void of space.

32. Everything changed on November 14, 2003 with the discovery of the planet Sedna in the solar system. The distance to the planet was 14 million kilometers. This fit into the upper boundary of the solar system. However, further researchers were horrified to find that the aphelion of Sedna's orbit (the maximum distance from the Sun) is 930 AU (139 billion kilometers). The period of revolution of the planet with such an elongated orbit is more than 10,000 years.

The habitat of Sedna is traditionally called the Kuiper Belt. Initially, it was believed that this is the location of the bulk of the comets of the solar system, that is, objects ranging in size from several tens of meters to several kilometers. Currently, more than 400 objects have been discovered in this area, the size of which exceeds 200 km. According to modern estimates, there are 35,000 objects larger than 100 km in the Kuiper belt, and the total number of bodies, according to experts, is estimated at several billion.

In the middle of the 20th century, the hypothetical area where comets were located was moved further, to the so-called. "Oort cloud". Surrounding the solar system at a distance of about one light year, this hypothetical spherical shell was believed to contain billions of comets with a total mass equal to that of the Earth. The cloud's coordinates were calculated speculatively by extrapolating the trajectories of known comets.

And what is the hypothetical limit of perturbation of a celestial body by the Sun? This distance is exactly halfway between the Sun and Proxima. This is the true size of the grandiose solar system, which has yet to be explored by dumbfounded humanity.

33. Our neighbors

That is, the very first serious study of our own star system radically turned our understanding of the universe - it turned out that the cosmos was evenly seeded with matter, only in some places illuminated by the lights of stars. And our own solar system is by no means independent, but is physically united with the nearest stars that form a single planetary system.

Hence two conclusions - the cosmos is saturated with planets. Star systems are much closer than we thought, and common objects often ply between them.

From which it follows that the cosmos is filled with life and makes possible the contacts of civilizations at the most primitive stages of development, when they are still of interest and nutritional value to each other. You can reach your neighbors even on a ship with the most primitive atomic engine.

34. The main nuclear engine of US ships NERVA

And such starships have already been laid down. The program of their construction is the second bottom of the space race. If you've played Civilization then you'll know what I mean. For example, GPS and Glonass are subprojects of “nuclear space”, because for orientation in deep space it was planned to use pulsars (stars giving constant radio pulses), for the needs of the military this idea was converted in 1973 into a navigation system for thirty satellites in medium orbit near the earth.

In the 1960s, both superpowers designed and began building the first starships capable of reaching Alpha Centauri, but both programs were abruptly terminated immediately after positive test results for the NERV and RD-0410 engines were received. Apparently it was postponed until better times, but already in the 1970s the USSR built a series of military “legend” guidance satellites with low-power nuclear installations on board. And apparently we are still significantly ahead of America in this area, it's a pity the area is classified and what is really happening there is unknown.

35. The latest open information on this topic dates back to 2011 and reports a new attempt by the Americans to enter into a partnership with Roscosmos in the field of nuclear propulsion. However, already in March 2013, an interview with Denis Kovalevich, the head of the Skolkovo space cluster, began to circulate on the net, in which he said that the development of a nuclear power plant is being carried out without the involvement of foreign specialists, since there are many dual technologies. “This is a Russian project,” D. Kovalevich said.

36. This was the beginning of the XXI century. We started the 20th century with an attempt to fly and quickly turned our view of the world upside down. Our century begins with a revolution in astronomy and the construction of real starships. So is space dead?

The history of space exploration is the most striking example of the triumph of the human mind over recalcitrant matter in the shortest possible time. From the moment a man-made object first overcame Earth's gravity and developed enough speed to enter the Earth's orbit, just over fifty years have passed - nothing by the standards of history! Most of the world's population vividly remembers the times when a flight to the moon was considered something out of the realm of fantasy, and those who dreamed of piercing the heavenly heights were considered, at best, not dangerous for society, crazy. Today, spacecraft not only “surf the open spaces”, successfully maneuvering in conditions of minimal gravity, but also deliver cargo, astronauts and space tourists to earth orbit. Moreover, the duration of a flight into space can now be an arbitrarily long time: the watch of Russian cosmonauts on the ISS, for example, lasts 6-7 months. And over the past half century, man managed to walk on the Moon and photograph its dark side, made artificial satellites Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury happy, “recognized by sight” distant nebulae with the help of the Hubble telescope and is seriously thinking about the colonization of Mars. And although it has not yet been possible to make contact with aliens and angels (in any case, officially), let's not despair - after all, everything is just beginning!

Dreams of space and pen trials

For the first time, progressive mankind believed in the reality of flight to distant worlds at the end of the 19th century. It was then that it became clear that if the aircraft is given the speed necessary to overcome gravity and maintains it for a sufficient time, it will be able to go beyond the Earth's atmosphere and gain a foothold in orbit, like the Moon, revolving around the Earth. The problem was in the engines. The specimens that existed at that time either extremely powerfully, but briefly “spit” with energy emissions, or worked on the principle of “gasp, crackle and go a little.” The first was more suitable for bombs, the second for carts. In addition, it was impossible to regulate the thrust vector and thereby influence the trajectory of the vehicle: a vertical launch inevitably led to its rounding, and the body as a result fell to the ground without reaching space; horizontal, with such a release of energy, threatened to destroy all life around (as if the current ballistic missile was launched flat). Finally, at the beginning of the 20th century, researchers turned their attention to the rocket engine, the principle of which has been known to mankind since the turn of our era: the fuel burns in the rocket body, simultaneously lightening its mass, and the released energy moves the rocket forward. The first rocket capable of taking an object beyond the limits of gravity was designed by Tsiolkovsky in 1903.

View of Earth from the ISS

First artificial satellite

Time passed, and although the two world wars greatly slowed down the process of creating rockets for peaceful use, space progress still did not stand still. The key moment of the post-war period was the adoption of the so-called package layout of missiles, which is still used in astronautics. Its essence lies in the simultaneous use of several rockets placed symmetrically with respect to the center of mass of the body that needs to be put into Earth's orbit. This provides a powerful, stable and uniform thrust, sufficient for the object to move at a constant speed of 7.9 km / s, necessary to overcome the earth's gravity. And so, on October 4, 1957, a new, or rather the first, era in space exploration began - the launch of the first artificial satellite of the Earth, as everything ingenious was simply called Sputnik-1, using the R-7 rocket, designed under the leadership of Sergei Korolev. The silhouette of the R-7, the progenitor of all subsequent space rockets, is still recognizable today in the ultra-modern Soyuz launch vehicle, which successfully sends "trucks" and "cars" into orbit with astronauts and tourists on board - the same four "legs" of the package scheme and red nozzles. The first satellite was microscopic, just over half a meter in diameter and weighed only 83 kg. He made a complete revolution around the Earth in 96 minutes. The "star life" of the iron pioneer of astronautics lasted three months, but during this period he traveled a fantastic distance of 60 million km!

The first living beings in orbit

The success of the first launch inspired the designers, and the prospect of sending a living creature into space and returning it safe and sound no longer seemed impossible. Just a month after the launch of Sputnik-1, the first animal, the dog Laika, went into orbit aboard the second artificial Earth satellite. Her goal was honorable, but sad - to check the survival of living beings in the conditions of space flight. Moreover, the return of the dog was not planned ... The launch and launch of the satellite into orbit were successful, but after four orbits around the Earth, due to an error in the calculations, the temperature inside the apparatus rose excessively, and Laika died. The satellite itself rotated in space for another 5 months, and then lost speed and burned up in the dense layers of the atmosphere. The first shaggy-haired cosmonauts, who upon their return greeted their “senders” with joyful barks, were the textbook Belka and Strelka, who set off to conquer the expanses of the sky on the fifth satellite in August 1960. Their flight lasted a little more than a day, and during this time the dogs managed to circle the planet 17 times. All this time they were watched from the monitor screens in the Mission Control Center - by the way, white dogs were chosen precisely because of the contrast - after all, the image was then black and white. As a result of the launch, the spacecraft itself was also finalized and finally approved - in just 8 months, the first person will go into space in a similar apparatus.

In addition to dogs, both before and after 1961, monkeys (macaques, squirrel monkeys and chimpanzees), cats, turtles, as well as every little thing - flies, beetles, etc., visited space.

In the same period, the USSR launched the first artificial satellite of the Sun, the Luna-2 station managed to gently land on the surface of the planet, and the first photographs of the side of the Moon invisible from Earth were obtained.

April 12, 1961 divided the history of space exploration into two periods - "when man dreamed of the stars" and "since man conquered space."

man in space

April 12, 1961 divided the history of space exploration into two periods - "when man dreamed of the stars" and "since man conquered space." At 09:07 Moscow time, the Vostok-1 spacecraft was launched from launch pad No. 1 of the Baikonur Cosmodrome with the world's first cosmonaut on board, Yuri Gagarin. Having made one revolution around the Earth and having traveled 41,000 km, 90 minutes after the launch, Gagarin landed near Saratov, becoming for many years the most famous, revered and beloved person on the planet. His "let's go!" and "everything is seen very clearly - the space is black - the earth is blue" were included in the list of the most famous phrases of mankind, his open smile, ease and cordiality melted the hearts of people around the world. The first manned flight into space was controlled from Earth, Gagarin himself was more of a passenger, although superbly prepared. It should be noted that the flight conditions were far from those that are now offered to space tourists: Gagarin experienced eight to ten times overload, there was a period when the ship literally tumbled, and behind the windows the skin burned and metal melted. During the flight, there were several failures in various systems of the ship, but fortunately, the astronaut was not injured.

Following Gagarin's flight, significant milestones in the history of space exploration fell one after another: the world's first group space flight was made, then the first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (1963) went into space, the first multi-seat spacecraft flew, Alexei Leonov became the first a man who made a spacewalk (1965) - and all these grandiose events are entirely the merit of the national cosmonautics. Finally, on July 21, 1969, the first landing of a man on the moon took place: the American Neil Armstrong took the very “small-big step”.

The best view in the solar system

Astronautics - today, tomorrow and always

Today, space travel is taken for granted. Hundreds of satellites and thousands of other necessary and useless objects fly above us, seconds before sunrise from the bedroom window you can see the solar panels of the International Space Station flashing in the rays still invisible from the earth, space tourists with enviable regularity go to “surf the open spaces” (thus translating into reality the arrogant phrase “if you really want to, you can fly into space”) and the era of commercial suborbital flights is about to begin with almost two departures daily. Space exploration by controlled vehicles is completely amazing: here are pictures of long-exploded stars, and HD images of distant galaxies, and strong evidence of the possibility of the existence of life on other planets. Billionaire corporations are already agreeing on plans to build space hotels in Earth's orbit, and colonization projects for our neighboring planets do not seem like an excerpt from Asimov's or Clark's novels for a long time. One thing is clear: once having overcome the earth's gravity, humanity will again and again strive upward, to the endless worlds of stars, galaxies and universes. I would like to wish only that the beauty of the night sky and myriads of twinkling stars never leave us, still alluring, mysterious and beautiful, as in the first days of creation.

The cosmos reveals its secrets

Academician Blagonravov dwelled on some of the new achievements of Soviet science: in the field of space physics.

Starting from January 2, 1959, during each flight of Soviet space rockets, a study of radiation at large distances from the Earth was carried out. The so-called outer radiation belt of the Earth, discovered by Soviet scientists, has undergone a detailed study. The study of the composition of the particles of the radiation belts with the help of various scintillation and gas-discharge counters, located on satellites and space rockets, made it possible to establish that electrons of significant energies up to a million electron volts and even higher are present in the outer belt. When braking in the shells of spacecraft, they create intense penetrating X-ray radiation. During the flight of an automatic interplanetary station towards Venus, the average energy of this X-ray radiation at distances from 30 to 40 thousand kilometers from the center of the Earth was determined, which is about 130 kiloelectronvolts. This value changed little with distance, which makes it possible to judge the constant energy spectrum of electrons in this region.

Already the first studies have shown the instability of the outer radiation belt, the displacement of the maximum intensity associated with magnetic storms caused by solar corpuscular streams. The latest measurements from an automatic interplanetary station launched towards Venus showed that although intensity changes occur closer to the Earth, the outer boundary of the outer belt, in a calm state of the magnetic field, remained constant both in intensity and in spatial arrangement for almost two years. Recent studies have also made it possible to construct a model of the Earth's ionized gaseous envelope on the basis of experimental data for a period close to the maximum of solar activity. Our studies have shown that at altitudes less than a thousand kilometers, atomic oxygen ions play the main role, and starting from altitudes between one and two thousand kilometers, hydrogen ions predominate in the ionosphere. The extent of the outermost region of the ionized gaseous shell of the Earth, the so-called hydrogen "corona", is very large.

The processing of the results of measurements carried out on the first Soviet space rockets showed that at altitudes of about 50 to 75 thousand kilometers outside the outer radiation belt, electron flows with energies exceeding 200 electron volts were detected. This made it possible to assume the existence of the third outermost belt of charged particles with a high flux intensity, but a lower energy. After the launch of the American space rocket "Pioneer V" in March 1960, data were obtained that confirmed our assumptions about the existence of a third belt of charged particles. This belt, apparently, is formed as a result of the penetration of solar corpuscular streams into the peripheral regions of the Earth's magnetic field.

New data were obtained regarding the spatial arrangement of the Earth's radiation belts, and an area of increased radiation was discovered in the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, which is associated with the corresponding magnetic terrestrial anomaly. In this area, the lower boundary of the internal radiation belt of the Earth drops to 250 - 300 kilometers from the Earth's surface.

Flights of the second and third satellite ships provided new information that made it possible to map the distribution of radiation in terms of ion intensity over the surface of the globe. (The speaker demonstrates this map to the audience).

For the first time, currents created by positive ions, which are part of the solar corpuscular radiation, were registered outside the Earth's magnetic field at distances of the order of hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the Earth, using three-electrode charged particle traps installed on Soviet space rockets. In particular, at the automatic interplanetary station launched towards Venus, traps were installed oriented towards the Sun, one of which was intended for recording solar corpuscular radiation. On February 17, during a communication session with an automatic interplanetary station, its passage through a significant flow of corpuscles (with a density of about 10 9 particles per square centimeter per second) was recorded. This observation coincided with the observation of a magnetic storm. Such experiments open the way to establishing quantitative relationships between geomagnetic disturbances and the intensity of solar corpuscular streams. On the second and third satellite ships, the radiation hazard caused by cosmic radiation outside the earth's atmosphere was studied in quantitative terms. The same satellites were used to study the chemical composition of primary cosmic radiation. The new equipment installed on the spacecraft included a photographic emulsion device designed to expose and develop stacks of thick-layer emulsions directly on board the spacecraft. The results obtained are of great scientific value for elucidating the biological effect of cosmic radiation.

Flight technical problems

Further, the speaker dwelled on a number of significant problems that ensured the organization of manned space flight. First of all, it was necessary to resolve the issue of methods for launching a heavy ship into orbit, for which it was necessary to have powerful rocket technology. We have created such a technique. However, it was not enough to inform the ship of a speed exceeding the first space one. It was also necessary to have high accuracy in launching the ship into a pre-calculated orbit.

It should be borne in mind that the requirements for the accuracy of movement along the orbit will increase in the future. This will require the correction of movement with the help of special propulsion systems. The problem of trajectory correction is related to the problem of the maneuver of directed change of the spacecraft flight trajectory. Maneuvers can be carried out with the help of impulses communicated by a jet engine in separate specially selected sections of the trajectories, or with the help of thrust that acts for a long time, for the creation of which electric propulsion type engines (ion, plasma) are used.

As examples of a maneuver, one can indicate a transition to a higher lying orbit, a transition to an orbit entering the dense layers of the atmosphere for braking and landing in a given area. The maneuver of the latter type was used during the landing of Soviet satellite ships with dogs on board and during the landing of the Vostok satellite ship.

To carry out a maneuver, perform a series of measurements, and for other purposes, it is necessary to ensure the stabilization of the spacecraft and its orientation in space, which is maintained for a certain period of time or changed according to a given program.

Turning to the problem of returning to Earth, the speaker focused on the following issues: deceleration of speed, protection from heating when moving in dense layers of the atmosphere, and ensuring a landing in a given area.

The deceleration of the spacecraft, which is necessary to dampen the cosmic velocity, can be carried out either with the help of a special powerful propulsion system, or by decelerating the spacecraft in the atmosphere. The first of these methods requires very large weight reserves. The use of atmospheric resistance for braking makes it possible to get by with relatively small additional weights.

The complex of problems associated with the development of protective coatings during vehicle deceleration in the atmosphere and the organization of the entry process with overloads acceptable for the human body is a complex scientific and technical problem.

The rapid development of space medicine has put on the agenda the question of biological telemetry as the main means of medical control and scientific medical research during space flight. The use of radio telemetry leaves a specific imprint on the methodology and technique of biomedical research, since a number of special requirements are imposed on the equipment placed on board spacecraft. This equipment should have a very small weight, small dimensions. It should be designed for minimum power consumption. In addition, the onboard equipment must work stably in the active section and during descent, when vibrations and overloads are in effect.

Sensors designed to convert physiological parameters into electrical signals must be miniature, designed for long-term operation. They should not create inconvenience to the astronaut.

The widespread use of radio telemetry in space medicine forces researchers to pay serious attention to the design of such equipment, as well as to matching the amount of information necessary for transmitting information with the capacity of radio channels. Since the new tasks facing space medicine will lead to further deepening of research, to the need for a significant increase in the number of recorded parameters, it will be necessary to introduce information storage systems and coding methods.

In conclusion, the speaker dwelled on the question of why the orbit around the Earth was chosen for the first space travel. This option represented a decisive step towards the conquest of outer space. They provided research into the issue of the effect of flight duration on a person, solved the problem of controlled flight, the problem of descent control, entry into the dense layers of the atmosphere and a safe return to Earth. Compared to this, a recent flight in the United States appears to be of little value. It could have been important as an intermediate option for checking the condition of a person during the stage of accelerating, during overloads during the descent; but after Yu. Gagarin's flight, there was no longer any need for such a check. In this version of the experiment, the element of sensation undoubtedly prevailed. The only value of this flight can be seen in the verification of the operation of the systems developed for re-entry and landing, but, as we have seen, the verification of such systems, developed in our Soviet Union for more difficult conditions, was reliably carried out even before the first human space flight. Thus, the achievements obtained in our country on April 12, 1961, cannot be put in any comparison with what has been achieved so far in the USA.

And no matter how hard, says the academician, people abroad who are hostile to the Soviet Union, by their fabrications, belittle the successes of our science and technology, the whole world evaluates these successes properly and sees how much our country has pulled ahead along the path of technical progress. I personally witnessed the delight and admiration caused by the news of the historic flight of our first cosmonaut among the broad masses of the Italian people.

The flight was extremely successful

A report on the biological problems of space flights was made by Academician N. M. Sisakyan. He characterized the main stages in the development of space biology and summed up some of the results of scientific biological research related to space flights.

The speaker cited the biomedical characteristics of Yu. A. Gagarin's flight. The cabin was maintained barometric pressure in the range of 750 - 770 millimeters of mercury, air temperature - 19 - 22 degrees Celsius, relative humidity - 62 - 71 percent.

In the prelaunch period, approximately 30 minutes before the launch of the spacecraft, the heart rate was 66 per minute, the respiratory rate was 24. Three minutes before the launch, some emotional stress manifested itself in an increase in the pulse rate to 109 beats per minute, breathing continued to remain even and calm.

At the time of launch of the ship and a gradual increase in speed, the heart rate increased to 140 - 158 per minute, the respiratory rate was 20 - 26. Changes in physiological parameters in the active part of the flight, according to telemetric recording of electrocardiograms and pneumograms, were within acceptable limits. By the end of the active phase, the heart rate was already 109, and respiration - 18 per minute. In other words, these indicators have reached values characteristic of the moment closest to the start.

During the transition to weightlessness and flight in this state, the indicators of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems consistently approached the initial values. So, already in the tenth minute of weightlessness, the pulse rate reached 97 beats per minute, breathing - 22. The efficiency was not disturbed, the movements retained coordination and the necessary accuracy.

On the descent section, when the apparatus was decelerating, when overloads arose again, short-term, quickly transient periods of increased respiration were noted. However, even when approaching the Earth, breathing became even, calm, with a frequency of about 16 per minute.

Three hours after landing, the heart rate was 68, breathing - 20 per minute, i.e., values characteristic of a calm, normal state of Yu. A. Gagarin.

All this testifies to the fact that the flight was exceptionally successful, the health and general condition of the cosmonaut in all parts of the flight was satisfactory. Life support systems worked normally.

In conclusion, the speaker dwelled on the most important current problems of space biology.