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Talk:American History Lecture Twelve (view source)
Revision as of 15:54, December 3, 2008
, 15:54, December 3, 2008→Sputnik (1957) is not Vostok (1961)
:Great catch. Thanks!--[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] 10:08, 3 December 2008 (EST)
:Great catch. Thanks!--[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] 10:08, 3 December 2008 (EST)
::A minor point, but 'Sputnik'' was the name of the satellite carried by the rocket, not the name of the rocket itself. Names like Sputnik, Vostok, Pioneer, etc. referred payloads carried into space by any number of launch platforms. --[[User:DinsdaleP|DinsdaleP]] 10:54, 3 December 2008 (EST)
==Other Space Race Notes==
I didn't recall significant opposition to the U.S. working to achieve parity with the Soviets in the space race over it being a "wild goose chase", but I'd be interested in reading about it if you can provide a reference. The concerns about lagging the Soviets were very real at the time, because being able to launch satellites was seen as the first step towards putting intelligence-gathering cameras and then nuclear weapons in space - the ultimate form of air superiority. At the time, we were reliant on risky, limited aerial reconnaissance approaches like the U-2 planes,and one of the first priorities in developing space capabilities was the creation of imaging spy satellites. It may also be worth tying in the concept that a key priority of the arms-limitations treaties in that era was to prevent the deployment of weapons in space.
The Soviets were actually quite serious about going for the moon, but they were never able to perfect the heavy-lift rocket technology required to propel large vehicles out of Earth orbit, as the American Saturn-V platform eventually did. (In layman terms, our approach was to build a single incredibly-powerful base stage, and the Soviet's was to cluster several smaller ones for the same effect, but the clustering proved too complex and failure-prone).
What would be worth mentioning in a brief look at the dawn of the space age is that the achievements in unmanned space technology during the 1960's were ultimately more important the the manned achievements. That era gave us communication, imaging and navigation satellites, and your students enjoy digital TV, better weather forecasting, Google Earth and GPS as a result. --[[User:DinsdaleP|DinsdaleP]] 10:54, 3 December 2008 (EST)