PBS Documentary, Sputnik

Sputnik

I watched the PBS documentary presentation last night
on sputnik-the First satellite launched into space by
the former Soviet Union. It had a considerable amount
of information presented that was news to me. To be
fair I did not grow up in the era and the space race
had long since finished with the US the apparent
winners-having reached the moon before anyone else
back in 1969. But the big picture was presented in the
program-who was working on what rocket program? What
was then US President Eisenhower doing about the
situation? Was the US really that far behind the
Soviets and if so why?
The reality of the situation was that the US was not
really behind the Soviets in rocket technology. The US
may have been ahead of the Soviets, or at the very
least at the same pace, but then President Eisenhower
had other concerns on his agenda-other than being the
first to send a satellite into orbit. Apparently
President Eisenhower wanted to use satellite
technology to observe-aka spy-on the Soviets to know
what they were doing in reference to missile
technology, where theirs was located, how many they
had and the type. Eisenhower apparently had to deal
with legal issues at the time-legal as in who owns
space? Is there space jurisdiction for each country?
Did the country have the right to deny a fly over by
satellites? Eisenhower was dealing with these issues
when sputnik went up and then solved a part of his
problem. If the Soviets could send a satellite into
orbit, and no one objected to the fly-over then the US
could do the same.
An additional problem at the time was which of two
teams would have their rocket be launched as the first
US rocket/satellite in to space? The US Navy had a
rocket and satellite project called Vangaurd and it
had nothing to do with missiles, bombs or former
German scientists from the Nazi era. There was a US
Army team that was lead by Wernher Von Braun.
Speculation is that Eisenhower did not wish to go with
Von Braun’s team as the rocket that they had developed
was a predecessor to the V2 Rocket that was used by
Germany during the Second World War to bomb Europe.
Allegedly if Eisenhower had gone with von Braun’s team
they could have launched a satellite over a year ahead
of sputnik.
Eisenhower’s main concern was intelligence for the US
to keep tract of and know if they were keeping pace
with the Soviet advances in military technology. Spy
satellites allowed the US to gather information on
their then enemies to know what they were doing and if
they were following peace treaties-such as SALT I and
SALT II treaties.
The question of who got to space first will always be
answered with the reply of sputnik. But stepping back
and looking at the bigger picture is sometimes  more
important a question.

NOVA | Sputnik Declassified | PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sputnik/?campaign=pbshomefeatures_2_novabrsputnikdeclassified_2007-11-06

Sputnik Biographies--Wernher von Braun (1912-1977)
http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/braun.html

Wednesday, November 7th,  2007

Pluto and Clyde Tombaugh

Is Pluto a Planet?

Have you ever stopped to think about what makes a planet? Or what IS a planet? Or even more so whether something should BE a planet? I studied existentialism when I was a philosophy major in undergrad school and I never thought that I’d be applying definitions of existence to planets and planetoid materials. But the Cosmology class I took my senior year definitely helped me when I watched a recent PBS show on Nova-the Pluto Files.

The show’s host-Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson claims that Pluto is simply not a planet and that it’s not big enough nor does it manage to “clear the neighborhood” of its orbit. I recall a lecture by one of my physics Profs in my first astronomy class-I minored in physics-and the thought at the time was that Pluto was most likely a former moon of the planet Neptune. Pluto was allegedly not very large-look at all the other planets after all! Pluto also was not in the elliptical plane that all the other planets orbited in and wasn’t in a circular orbit but an elliptical orbit that even brought it inside the orbit of Neptune.

Now we can debate the scientific aspects of the definition of whether Pluto is or is not a planet, but I will say that that man who actually discovered Pluto Clyde Tombaugh would probably be rather disappointed today if he were alive. I had the opportunity and pleasure of actually meeting the man. It was a lecture hall at the University of Windsor [Canada] in May of 1989 that he made a guest lecture appearance on a Friday night. Because where else do you expect science geeks to congregate on a Friday night but in a Canadian University!

I can remember several things about his lecture that night. That he spent many, many hours looking at glass slides of the stars looking for that one slide that had a change in it that signified a celestial body crossing the heavens. And that there were some 25,000 plates that he looked at as well as if anyone thought he missed something-like a tenth planet-then we were all welcome to look through those plates again! But he wasn’t planning on doing it!

More men have been to the moon than have discovered a planet. Pluto-planet or not-is a large mass that orbits our sun and was a major find and announcement back when it was discovered in 1930. No one can take away that from Clyde Tombaugh.

PBS-Pluto Files-March 2010
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pluto/

Nasa-Pluto the dwarf planet
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/pluto_worldbook.html

Tuesday, March 09, 2010