Sept 20th the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...&refer=muse

 

Sputnik Fueled Cold War, Sent Critters Into Orbit, Matched Wits

 

By Celestine Bohlen

 

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- When the Soviet Union launched the world's first manmade satellite on Oct. 4, 1957, the initial reaction in the U.S. was more awe than shock.

 

Americans -- including President Dwight Eisenhower -- were impressed by Sputnik and not very worried about its implications for national security. Alarm and panic came afterward.

 

Half a century later, it can be said that the space race helped frame the Cold War. Scientific competition in the heavens fueled political rivalry on earth, loosing a torrent of money, propaganda and weapons that kept mankind on edge for decades.

 

Two books timed for the Sputnik anniversary retell the tale of this extraordinary matchup of superpower wits and will, though from different perspectives.

 

``Red Moon Rising'' by Matthew Brzezinski puts Sputnik in a geopolitical context, offering eyewitness accounts of Kremlin intrigues and Pentagon wrangling, interwoven with the stories of legendary rocket scientists Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun.

 

In ``A Ball, a Dog and a Monkey,'' by contrast, Michael D'Antonio presents more of a ground-level account of a jumble of people who watched or participated in the U.S. attempts to match the Soviet success. The approach sometimes makes for irrelevance, with excruciating accounts of failed launches at Cape Canaveral, and not-so-fascinating details about life in nearby Cocoa Beach.

 

Laika and Gordo

 

As his title suggests, D'Antonio also collects stories of animals in space. These range from the cute Russian mongrel Laika, whose death several hours after her launch in November 1957 was kept secret for decades, to Gordo, the placid American squirrel monkey who survived his launch into space in December 1958, only to die when his capsule disappeared into the ocean.

 

In his opening chapter, D'Antonio describes how backward the U.S.S.R. looked to visiting Americans in the 1950s. In fact, those impressions provided a perfect cover for the Soviets' scientific prowess. Brzezinski, too, spots this misreading.

 

Americans ``failed to understand that the conditions that made Communism wholly unsuited as a producer of quality goods made it an ideal system for promoting scientific breakthroughs,'' he writes.

 

The Sputnik story is ultimately the story of its creator, Korolev, identified then as the Chief Designer because his name was a state secret. D'Antonio gives him a passing mention, while Brzezinski, a former Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, provides fascinating detail about this man, who had survived Stalin's labor camps and was known to his terrified staff as the Iron King. The Kremlin gave him something close to a carte blanche.

 

Former Nazi

 

Back in North America, von Braun, a former Nazi recruited to work on the U.S. Army's missile program, had less luck in getting political support. His team, caught in a bitter interservice rivalry, was vindicated on Jan. 31, 1958, when its Juno rocket put the first U.S. satellite, Explorer, into orbit.

 

Both Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev were late in understanding the importance of the space race. The day after Sputnik's launch, the lead story in Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, was headlined ``Preparations for Winter.'' The Western press was quicker to see that the Soviet success undermined U.S. claims to superiority in science and technology.

 

In the end, the Soviet Union lost both the space race and the Cold War. The missile that launched Sputnik proved a dud as a strategic weapon. The Americans were the first to land a man on the moon in 1969: By then, Kremlin bosses were focusing more on security than on prestige.

 

The death of Korolev in 1966, at age 59, was also a factor, writes Brzezinski: ``Had he lived another five years, perhaps history would have been rewritten: perhaps the hammer and sickle would have flown first on the moon, instead of the stars and stripes.''

 

``Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age'' is published by Times Books (322 pages, $26). ``A Ball, a Dog and a Monkey: 1957 -- The Space Race Begins'' is from Simon & Schuster (387 pages, $26).

 

(Celestine Bohlen writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

 

To contact the writer of this review: Celestine Bohlen in Paris at Cbohlen1@bloomberg.net .

[Kid Gleason]

 

 

[Brian]

With all that is wrong in the world, it is hard for me to believe that the launching of a satelite started so much. Just goes to show how different it was for me growing up compared to those 50 years ago.

[Yossarian]

October 4 is the anniversary, and yes it was quite the big deal way back then. One of the biggest things was that science and math were lagging behind in the US (sounds familiar). The whole moon landing thing was a come from way behind victory for the US. President Kennedy was a great inspiration for the US space program.