Russian resurgence on the back of

Oct 8 2007 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

THIS could be a revelation that hoists me by own petard into outer space, but there was a suggestion prior to my birth in 1957 that I could be nicknamed “Sputnik”, inspired by the successful Russian launch of the first man-made satellite.

The horror of this was enough, I think, to make my mother carry me full-term until delivered on November 14. Meantime, Sputnik celebrated its 50th anniversary last Thursday and I feel a faint connection with this space-travelling, earth-orbiting, shiny, tiny, tinnily-beeping, basketball-sized silver satellite with its four trailing antennae which changed our world.

Sputnik’s presence in the West was first detected by a radio ham as it orbited the globe every 98 minutes. Transmission continued for three weeks until its batteries failed and the satellite burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Intriguingly, while this Soviet triumph both amazed and frightened the western world at the height of the Cold War, it went practically unnoticed back in the USSR. It was only the US and British papers splashing the story across their front pages proclaiming “Sputnik shock” which alerted the Soviets to the satellite’s full propaganda value. Pravda, the official Soviet newspaper, in contrast, had carried only a brief report of its launch on October 4, 1957.

As a result of the worldwide palaver, President Kruschev ordered a second satellite launch for the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7 and Sputnik 2 was duly launched. This carried an unfortunate dog called Laika, which was the world’s first animal in space, although it was revealed she died shortly after take-off. True to our stereotypical image, Britain complained to the Soviets about this animal cruelty. Boris Chertok, now aged 95, one of the Sputnik project’s scientists, said: “The country of Isaac Newton was the only one in the world to protest.”

US humorists meantime hailed this satellite as “Muttnik”. Incidentally, Sputnik’s fame caused the writer Herb Caen to coin the name “beatnik” in a San Francisco Chronicle feature about the Beat Generation. Along with Sputnik’s creator, Sergei Korolyov, Chertok and other Sputnik scientists’ identities were kept secret. Poor old Korolyov had been sentenced under Stalin to hard labour in a Siberian labour mine and was rehabilitated for the project.

Simultaneous to Sputnik, US scientists were beavering away on their own satellite, Vanguard, which exploded on take-off and immediately was branded “Flopnik” by the press.

It was the launch of Sputnik (which means “travelling companion”) on a Soviet R-7 rocket that scared the US into thinking the USSR had an intercontinental ballistic nuclear capability that could reach North America thus starting the space race.

Sputnik’s success empowered the Soviets to send the first man into space – Yuri Gagarin, in 1961 – and the first unmanned moon probe. Sputnik also caused the creation of the American space agency Nasa in 1958 and President Kennedy, goaded by the Soviet successes, announced that the US would have a man on the moon during the 1960s, which was achieved by Neil Armstrong in July, 1969.

It all seems a very long time ago, although Sputnik 41, carrying a transmitter, was launched in 1998. Since the 1970s, much of the excitement has faded, in spite of the Hubble telescope and Mars probes.

But now Russia is re-surging. Furious at being treated like a remedial child by Europe and the West, since the fall of Communism due to its hopeless economy, Russia is now cash-rich from rocketing energy prices and bristling for a payback on its international reputation.

President Putin is backing big state spending to restore Russia’s international prestige. Roskosmos, the Russian equivalent to Nasa, will build a new launch base in 2020, to replace the former Soviet cosmodrome it now has to rent in Kazakhstan.

There are plans for a manned Moon landing in 2025. Before that, there is a joint project with the Chinese to send a probe to Mars in 2009. So if you were a Van Winkle-nik, who’d dozed off and woken half a century later last week wondering where we were in the space race, you’re in time for the next relay.

peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk