Space exploration is all that involves our familiarity with space and everything that lies beyond the lower layers of the Earth's atmosphere. Robotic travel to Mars and other planets, sending probes beyond the solar system, exploring fast, cheap and safe ways for people to go into space and colonize other planets - all this is space exploration. Through the efforts of brave people, brilliant engineers and scientists, as well as space agencies around the world and private leading corporations, humanity will very soon begin to explore space by leaps and bounds. Our only chance to survive as a species is colonization, and the sooner we realize this (and hope it's not too late), the better it will be.
We take for granted that we live on a planet rich in life. With 14 million identified species, the enormous biodiversity on Earth is simply astonishing. We depend on this diversity for food and resources, which in turn allows us to thrive and spread across the planet. However, once you leave the Earth's fragile atmosphere, this symbiotic relationship will cease to exist.
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Books
- Space Exploration, Liz Barneu. Space has always fascinated me and made me dream. But it was only in the middle of the 20th century that the first astronauts finally flew into space. The Space Exploration Atlas takes us on an incredible adventure...
- , <не указано>. The publication includes sections: - Ten most important terms - Earth's atmosphere - The most important dates of space exploration - Getting to the Moon - The first man in space - The first man on…
Sergey Kalenik writes: “There is a well-known paradox - if you are inside a spaceship flying almost at 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, sweeping 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 “progress” it will always seem as if we are crawling like turtles. Hand on heart, which of us considers the USSR to be the best state in the world that has done the impossible throughout its history?
1. Gagarin, Sputnik, Lunokhod - hackneyed cliches. Like Che Guevara T-shirts. Space has turned into a boring routine - now there are dozens of people constantly in orbit and no one cares about them. But the conquest of space is perhaps the most exciting journey in human history. Fascinating if you know the true story and not the 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 was then condemned by its descendants.
How will the USSR be remembered in history?
In total, there were three mega-projects in the twentieth century: the creation of the atomic bomb, the space race and the computer revolution. We won space in a clear way - the American program ended with the collapse of the shuttles and since 2011, “all space” has been transferred to the Russians. Russian is the only official language of space; anyone leaving our planet is now required to know it (oh, it’s a pity Men in Black was filmed too early).
Moreover, all the space technologies in the world are now ours - I bet we are selling fifty-year-old rockets and ships, and in France we are building a new cosmodrome in Kourou, which is a complete copy of Baikonur. The earth makes 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'll take a look behind the scenes of history, politics, art and the world as you know it. In short, you already understand that now everyone will receive butthurt.
First Space Velocity: 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, the flights themselves are very expensive and dangerous to life, and what is going 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 weapon. This is a dead-end branch of progress and there is nothing more to come up with here. There is not much difference between Chinese fireworks and a rocket to the moon. This is a primitive, albeit functional, weapon.
Therefore, all ideology, all projects, all the drive of the cosmic extravaganza are a thing of the past. By inertia, the space theme will always be interesting, but the peak of the 50-70s has passed. All science fiction works have been written on this topic.
All that remains is tourism and this can be seen throughout space fiction - the hero of 2001: A Space Odyssey is clearly a tourist. And the alien heroine of the film seems to be visiting the pyramids of ancient Egypt. I’m not even talking about Star Trek or Starship Troopers.
There's just one catch. Remember how they didn’t want to let the first tourists into space? I think the point here is that everyone who has flown into space receives a special status and joins some closed club, the members of which do not complain about life. And then someone wants to buy himself a membership in it... just like some moneybag decided to buy himself a membership in the club of those who climbed Everest. But the rules are just that, to change them - tourism is the only future of space, there is nothing else to do there. But to stand on a par with Gagarin... not many people understand what this means.
4. Yuri Gagarin is the greatest person in history, his name will be remembered even when the others are forgotten, because he is the first person to leave the earth. To appreciate this phrase, imagine that our civilization will perish, but what may remain from it is the memory of one person, whose name this will be?
5. Here is a monument erected in honor of Columbus 600 years after his voyage.
No less majestic buildings stand in all countries of the new world. Columbus is their main historical and epic character, like 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 humanity. 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 attractiveness of space - you cannot go to a new world on the same ship with Columbus and then boldly say I was there. You cannot again be the first to climb Everest or reach the North Pole or sink to the bottom of the Mariana Trench; there is nothing exceptional about that anymore. Space is so far from everything that we have seen and know that a flight to the stars will probably always be a mystical event. I don't mind spending any money on the flight to Gagarin.
But in space, money doesn't matter. This is why Roscosmos, being a space monopolist, simply doesn’t care about the opportunity to earn trillions from tourism and blocks its development in the West for the same reasons as the applicants for space tourists. And without Roscosmos, the very idea of tourism will remain at the level of naive crafts of those same failed tourists.
It turns out that a person is superfluous in space, but maybe a cold vacuum is suitable for war?
Second Space Velocity: The SDI Program and Star Wars
The Cold War began with Churchill's famous Fulton speech. The USA and the USSR spent half a century on an arms race. A kind of war of attrition, when both countries produced thousands of tanks, planes and missiles. which did not even fire - they were simply written off to the reserve to make room for new models. And so on for fifty years until one of the players breaks down.
6. This is a key moment in the history of space, so I will dwell on it in more detail.
In Fulton, Churchill proposed that the Americans divide the world and rule as three - the USA, England and the USSR. America decided to be the mistress of the sea and did not really calculate its strength. For such a decision, the states had an atomic bomb, a hundred aircraft carriers and a fleet of jet aircraft giving complete air supremacy. It seems like world domination is guaranteed...
Only now, in the Korean War of the fifties, everything became clear - instead of an easy expeditionary walk, American troops were surprised to discover that the Koreans had ultra-modern MIG-15 jet fighters - made in the USSR but with English engines. Appreciate the English treachery - English units stood in South Korea side by side with the Americans, 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 sarcastically 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 that can hit every city in America faster than you can refuel 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 turned out to be not the best vehicles for long duty missions and began to fall. Fully loaded with atomic bombs.
Over the seven years of the program, five planes crashed, the last incident being the finale of the program.
In 1968, a fire broke out on board one of the cars - the third pilot placed three soft foam pillows under his seat, which blocked the ventilation of the heating system and ignited. The crew ejected and the plane crashed onto the ice near Greenland. There were four hydrogen bombs of one and a half megatons each on board - 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 - this is where the help for global terrorism lies. The Chrome Dome then had to be collapsed 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. It’s not because America has 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 in the very basis of the national character.
By the early 1980s, a brilliant idea had matured in America to transfer the Cold War from earth to space. After watching Star Wars, President Reagan announced the launch of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Its essence is terribly simple - we are building a fleet of hundreds of super-powerful combat lasers that will shoot down ballistic missiles on takeoff.
The idea, by the way, is very sound, because missiles such as the SS-18 can only be intercepted on takeoff; after ten minutes of flight, its warhead is divided into 200 parts that are constantly maneuvering and evading interception - it is no longer possible to shoot them down. To the lasers - a fleet of Shuttle shuttles that service the lasers and can also carry a supply of nuclear missiles on board. Despite the Hollywood scale, it was the swan song and the last breakthrough of the states - which led to complete defeat.
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 the construction of hundreds of nuclear submarines, a huge army or an ocean-going fleet - all this without mobilization and martial law.
Let me explain with an example. Under Khrushchev, they somehow became concerned about housing for workers, and within a decade, the majority of the country’s residents 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 were built. One meter for every resident of the country.
So, Khrushchevkas are temporary housing for workers in which they were supposed to live until 1980, when communism came. “Temporary housing” is tin houses for migrant workers building Moscow City skyscrapers. Now imagine the scale of these tin houses in the land of the Soviets and you can imagine the skyscraper that these workers built. With such a scale of the economy, the “shuttle” is one tooth long. The USSR built an entire fleet of nuclear submarines and did not notice it. And one such boat costs as much as the average European country.
9. Already in 1987, the Energia launch vehicle launched the Polyus combat laser into orbit - it was immediately drowned in the ocean, so as not to escalate the conflict - the USSR was then conducting propaganda under the slogan “no weapons in space,” etc. Next year, Buran makes its only flight, and does so in fully automatic mode without a crew.
Unmanned mode is not just a triumph of engineering that has not yet been achieved by anyone, but an unambiguous signal to the states. Indeed, in 1984, a Soviet laser locator “highlighted” a flying shuttle with its guidance system - the shuttle lost contact with the ground, all electronics turned off, and the crew “felt acutely unwell.” Those. even tracking the target disabled the “space bomber”, what can we say about the consequences of a combat salvo?
Suddenly it turned out that the Americans had nothing to catch in space - the USSR had 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 exchange, the United States accepts the Fulton proposal and abandons the idea of world domination. Not even 40 years have passed!
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 is wiping its feet on the Americans - this is the result of the entire space race.
The third cosmic speed: 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 TV. Remember what became the 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 - what could be purer, more romantic and sublime than this monument to humanity? To all enthusiasts, researchers, mad scientists and tireless designers who have laid down their lives on the altar of space for generations. 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:
The first time I experienced horror - real horror, not an encounter with demons or ghosts living in my imagination - was one 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 playing, and the fact that it was shown, and not a Randolph Scott western or a John Wayne action film, turned out to be quite appropriate. The Saturday afternoon when the real horror hit me was Earth vs. the 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 went dark. The cinema was packed with children, but, strangely enough, everyone was quiet. If you think back to the days of your youth, you will remember that a crowd of kids have many ways to express their irritation if a movie is interrupted or starts late: rhythmic clapping; the great cry of the children's tribe “We want cinema! We want a movie! We want a movie!”; candy boxes flying into the screen; pipes made from popcorn bags, and who knows what else. If someone has a firecracker in their pocket since the Fourth of July, he will certainly take it out, show it to his friends so that they will approve and admire it, and then light it and throw it towards the ceiling.
But on that October day, nothing like that happened. And the film didn't break - they just turned off the projector. And then something unheard of happened:
The lights were turned on in the hall. We sat, looking around and blinking from the Bright light, like moles. The manager came onto the stage and raised his hand, asking for silence - a completely unnecessary gesture.
[…]
We sat on chairs like mannequins and looked at the manager. He looked worried and sick - or maybe it was the lighting that was to blame. We wondered what kind of disaster had forced him to stop the film at the most tense moment, but then the manager spoke, 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 had just discovered Chuck Berry and Little Richards and listened to New York radio stations in the evenings with such bated breath, as if they were signals from another planet. We grew up watching Captain Video and Terry and the Pirates! We admired in comics how the hero Casey throws around a whole bunch of Asians like skittles. We saw Richard Carlson in I Lived a Triple Life catching dirty communist spies by the thousands. We paid a quarter to see Hugh Marlowe in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and received this damning news as a free supplement.
I remember very clearly: the terrible dead silence of the cinema hall was suddenly broken by a lonely 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 came from, and for some reason that was the worst part. This was proof. The Russians are ahead of us in space. Somewhere above our heads, squeaking triumphantly, is an electronic ball, designed and launched behind the Iron Curtain. Neither Captain Midnight nor Richard Carlson could stop him. He flew up there... and they called him "satellite." The manager stood still a little longer, looking at us; he seemed to be looking for something else to add, but couldn’t find it. Then he left and the film soon resumed.
13. If the Russians were able to put a satellite into orbit, then America is defenseless against a sudden nuclear strike from the sky. This simple conclusion had far-reaching consequences.
The fear was so strong that in the first days of October 1957, particularly hotheads from the Pentagon proposed “closing the sky,” that is, throwing 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 the orbit, or copy Soviet space technology, he copied the Soviet system itself.
14. Based on Soviet models, a single NASA space ministry was created, which was finally headed behind the scenes by the German shadowy genius Wernher Von Braun - he was recruited back in early 1943, but it was painfully contradictory to entrust the American space program to the most famous SS man in the world.
In addition to the creation of NASA, another little-known but key reform for American history was carried out - education reform. The National Defense Education Act copied the Soviet system of higher education, its purpose was to create a single Ministry of Education that selected talented schoolchildren from all over the country to technical universities - this is how the Massachusetts and California Technical Universities, Stanford, Harvard and many other universities acquired their current appearance and fame. Yes, these universities existed before, but until 1958 they were more private shops incapable of solving large-scale problems.
All of them were united into a single “military-industrial-academic complex” and solved clearly assigned tasks - 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 any rankings of the hundred best world universities it is invariably in the honorable 50th place - it’s just theirs alma mater and the entire American education system are rooted in this building on Vorobyovy Gory.
15. Simply put, the real space race began with this reform.
Fourth space: Have the Americans been on the moon?
A little higher, I already noted that the purpose of the race was a propaganda effect - for some reason it was believed that success in space is the primary evidence of the “correctness” of a particular government system.
It may seem crazy now, but crazy people couldn't send a probe to Venus and walk on the moon. There really are two healthy grains in this idea, I will talk about the first below, and the second is precisely the national character.
16. Don’t think that we are talking about some kind of metaphysics, everything here is extremely simple - Russians are natural-born cosmonauts. We live on the moon for nine months a year and wear spacesuits. Hence the utmost rationalism, even critical realism if you like. With us, everything is strictly logical and to the point, not because we are so smart, it’s just that the conditions are like this - I forgot to put on my 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 at the global level - Russians have composure, ingenuity and endless resistance to stress.
Watch this video from the space station. It first shows the station's spacious American segments. Then the narrow metal Russian ones - they look miserable, but it is in the Russian module that there is an on-board computer, a bathroom, a docking module, emergency systems and rescue modules. Actually, the entire ISS is located in our modules, the rest are not significant.
When the cameraman enters the central hall of the Russian sector, two cosmonauts naturally sit at a table and drink tea under a portrait of Gagarin. These are the Americans on a space expedition - and ours are here at home.
17. When Leonov made his first spacewalk in 1965, a defect in the spacesuit appeared - due to the lack of external pressure, it inflated like a balloon and did not allow him to return to board the ship. There was only air for 30 minutes, and by this time 20 had already passed. Over the next ten minutes, Leonov received the Hero star.
Without being confused, he realized that there was no way out and caused the pressure suit to depressurize, vented the air and climbed headfirst into the airlock chamber. Further more - during landing the automation failed and they had to land the capsule 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 landing site for a helicopter in a dense forest.
But the Americans' first spacewalk showed a completely different national character. America is warm, and therefore has a southern mentality - when any mistake is not fatal and everything can be replayed. American folk hero is the Big Lebowski and Homer Simpson.
18. On June 3, 1965, the crew of Gemeni 4 was preparing for the first American spacewalk. This was the first multi-day flight of the Americans and the task was too large - to work out all the elements of a long-term stay in space in order to make sure that a flight to the moon was possible and to identify possible problems. And 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 become noticeably nervous. The task was canceled and they decided to move straight to spacewalk. But due to the onset of a panic attack, Edward White had to postpone this task for the third orbit around the earth.
White was nervous for good reason - the entire flight was plagued by 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 an inflating spacesuit, but clearly overestimated their capabilities and made the exit hatch completely metal. Instead of rubber gaskets like our ships, they adjusted all the parts to each other with micron precision. Cool, yeah?
19. On the test bench, everything worked perfectly 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 down with a crowbar to get out, and poor White became very nervous when, upon his return, the hatch could not be opened for more than 10 minutes.
Poor White died on the ground during the first flight of Apollo 1 - the engineers again made an unforgivable mistake and, to save weight, made the ship an atmosphere of pure oxygen - how they came to this decision is unknown, because in a pure oxygen atmosphere any material becomes especially flammable. Three astronauts died instantly, burning alive in the cabin. NASA management was removed from their positions, and all flights were stopped for half a year.
And this was at the apogee of the lunar race, when the month turned into a year. But who knows, maybe without this failure everything would have only been worse. NASA seriously revised its approach to the matter 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, landing. Surprisingly, everything went without disaster and even the infamous Apollo 13 was able to return home.
20. The Soviet lunar program floundered precisely for this reason - no one dared to guarantee the safety of the cosmonauts - 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 characteristics of the trajectory on the way back from the moon, the capsule could only land in the equator region; in order to land on the territory of the USSR, it was necessary to first make a braking dive into the atmosphere, slow down to the first escape velocity, rise into space again, and only after that go to landing.
21. Don’t forget that at the technological level we are talking about a Volkswagen beetle that is shot 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 landed on the moon. Then two ships were sent to the moon - one with astronauts, the other as a reserve - both came in to land at the beacon's signal. In case of problems, the cosmonauts calmly boarded the lunar rover and drove to the spare ship.
Such caution is understandable - Gagarin’s unsuccessful flight would, of course, have caused a stir and greatly damaged the image of the USSR, but still would not have been a disaster - it simply would not have been 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 exists 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 risk - they launched their ships without any safety net.
It was not by chance that I mentioned the possibility of Gagarin’s death at the start. This is why almost all the video footage of Gagarin’s launch was filmed after his return. Otherwise, the very existence of such materials would be an extremely dangerous weapon against Soviet power.
22. This is where the legs of the lunar conspiracy grow - undoubtedly, a noticeable part of the video materials from the moon filmed by Apollo 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 “moon conspiracy” look naive not because it is obvious. “Filming” is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of media preparation for the moonwalk. The moon landing is all that will remain of America in history forever, but it will always be secondary to the first flight. Therefore, in the information space it was important to fulfill two tasks - to snatch as much glory as possible from Gagarin and to have maximum informational influence. Simply put, it was necessary to show humanity a brighter fireworks display despite the second-rate event, and here the entire advertising genius of America appeared.
It’s not noticeable now, but the Americans came in with their crowning number: We speak on behalf of all humanity, not America. Kennedy initially suggested that Khrushchev fly to the moon together, Armstrong should also plant the UN flag, and next to the flag leave a sign with messages from the leaders of 73 countries on 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. Small flags of the 135 UN member countries, as well as the United Nations itself and all US states and territories, will be carried in the lunar module and returned to Earth.
23. The flag of the USSR that flew 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.
It was also planned to send two full-size US flags on the flight with a return flight, which the fighter would first fly over both buildings of the US Congress (they had to be in the command module at all times), a special postmark for cancellation, a “moon letter” in the form of an envelope with a sample a stamp that will be canceled by the crew during the flight, and a cliche for subsequent printing of the commemorative stamp “The First Man on the Moon.”
In addition to the flag, two more objects were supposed to remain on the Moon: a small silicon disk with a diameter of 3.8 cm with miniature statements of 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 NASA-related laws and the names of senior NASA officials, active and retired, as well as a commemorative metal plaque affixed to one of the Eagle landing stage legs. 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 need to be added to the flight, so astronauts can take personal items with them on the flight. Armstrong's personal belongings included a wooden fragment of the left propeller and a piece of fabric from the left upper wing of the Wright brothers' Flyer. Aldrin, at the request of his father, took with him a miniature (5 cm x 7.6 cm in size) autobiography of the “American Tsiolkovsky” Robert Goodard, published in 1966. It became the first book to land on the moon.
25. Someone forgot his family on the moon
The scenarios of all television broadcasts on the ground, the flight emblem, all names and call signs were thought out in detail. There shouldn't be anything stupid or comical 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 carried 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, local parishioners there take part in the Lunar Eucharist service. Also in the pockets of the astronauts' suits 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 other three, which the astronauts would bring to their wives, and silicon disk with messages from presidents. All this was left at the lunar module landing site. With all this, the crew of Apollo 11 had only one off-ship camera. Therefore, studio “imitations” were shown on American television so that viewers could better imagine the exit process itself.
But have you ever wondered what the results of the Apollo mission were?
Yes, the Americans overtook us at the cost of enormous risk, but the Apollo program had to be curtailed quite quickly - it turned out that there was nothing to do on the moon, the technology of the sixties did not even allow one to stay on the surface for a couple of days.
26. From the heights of today, it is clear that the space race was about forty years ahead of its time. Like an atomic bomb. The very early flight in the era of punched cards and magnetic tapes only delayed the real exploration of the moon - now no one is ready to return to the moon. For the same reason, the construction of the ISS is so slow and the development of the entire astronautics is slowing down - all the prizes were already taken in the sixties. It seems that space will remain an uninhabited desert... even NASA 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 that we have come to the end of our journey, but there is clearly some understatement. Something important is missing, and that important thing is propaganda.
I already said above that the entire space project was built based on the television picture. But this is not the first time that the topic of space has appeared in government propaganda.
27. All Hollywood directors from Kubrick to Lucas were devoted fans of Soviet science fiction. They watched films about the pioneers' journeys to other planets thousands of times 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 shot his Space Odyssey in frame-by-frame imitation of the Soviet blockbuster Road to the Stars, and Star Wars is based on Lucas's 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 colleagues? Of course yes, because Hollywood itself is a Russian product, it was created by Stanislavsky, who wrote his “system” specifically for the Americans. But the matter here is still somewhat deeper - in the communist ideology itself.
29. It is mistakenly believed 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 particularly exciting, so they were wrapped in space travel with blasters and beautiful aliens who would be taught earthly love. In general, everything that teenagers love.
The main body of 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 ever-beggar crazy blogger who went for very crazy ideas like Newton's church, which should replace Catholicism and spread to the entire universe. People fly to the planet and the first thing they do is build a church of science named after Newton. All this under the guise of a sexual revolution with common wives and sexual adventures.
As a result, by the 1830s, “Saint-Simonism” had become all the rage. Being a socialist was as cool as being a Beatles fan a century later. In Moscow, a girl could give herself up 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 connection between socialism and space arose. This is precisely why the Soviet government was always tinkering with space, planetariums and Tsiolkovsky, and made a mountain of films about the conquest of interplanetary space. This was her invisible backbone.
But in the same way, the socialist core was forever entrenched in science fiction. You will not be able to come across a single work of science fiction where you do not stumble upon socialist ideas. Even if it is a gloomy post-apocalypse like Fallout or a futuristic Avatar, everywhere you will see the kind squint of Grandfather Lenin with freedom-equality-brotherhood.
It’s not surprising that the socialist space program turned out to be better than the capitalist one - it’s just that it’s already two hundred years old. The space fashion of the 1960s is just an echo and shadow of the space hysteria of the early 19th century.
Fifth space: the speed of light is not a redistribution?
All that remains is to look back at the fourteen previous pages and ask the question – what’s next? Spacewalk, orbital station and flight to the moon - is this the limit? 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 adopted seemingly far-fetched decisions on a new classification of planets. After all, what difference does it make whether Pluto is considered a planet or just a “double planetoid”?
But we are talking here about changing the entire picture of the world. Previously it was believed that the solar system was the Star itself and the planets circling in close orbits. And somewhere very far away, 40 trillion kilometers away, is the nearest star Proxima Centauri; it probably has the same planets in small orbits. But between the two solar systems is the emptiness 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 limit of the solar system. However, the researchers were further horrified to discover that the aphelion of Sedna’s orbit (maximum distance from the Sun) is 930 AU (139 billion kilometers). The planet's orbital period with such an elongated orbit is more than 10,000 years.
Sedna's habitat is traditionally called the Kuiper Belt. Initially it was believed that this is the location of the bulk of the solar system's comets, that is, objects ranging in size from several tens of meters to several kilometers. Currently, more than 400 objects have been opened in this area, the dimensions of which exceed 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". This hypothetical spherical shell, surrounding the solar system at a distance of about one light year, was thought to contain billions of comets with a total mass equal to the mass of the Earth. The cloud's coordinates were calculated speculatively by extrapolating the trajectories of known comets.
What is the hypothetical limit of disturbance 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 studied by stunned humanity.
33. Our neighbors
That is, the very first serious study of our own star system radically changed our understanding of the universe - it turned out that space is evenly seeded with matter, only here and there illuminated by the lights of stars. And our own solar system is by no means independent, but is physically united with nearby stars forming a single planetary system.
From here there are two conclusions: space is saturated with planets. Star systems are much closer than we thought and common objects often travel between them.
From which it follows that space is filled with life and makes contacts between civilizations possible 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 nuclear engine.
34. Main nuclear engine of US ships NERVA
And such spaceships have already been laid down. The program for their construction is the second bottom of the space race. If you've played Civilization, 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 unexpectedly terminated immediately after positive test results were obtained from the NERV and RD-0410 engines. Apparently they postponed it until better times, but already in the 1970s the USSR built a series of military guidance satellites “legend” with low-power nuclear installations on board. And apparently we are still significantly ahead of America in this area, it’s a pity that the area is classified and what is actually happening there is unknown.
35. The latest public 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 engines. However, already in March 2013, an interview with Denis Kovalevich, head of the Skolkovo space cluster, began to circulate online, 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 there. “This is a Russian project,” said D. Kovalevich.
36. This was the beginning of the 21st century. We began the 20th century with an attempt at flight and quickly changed our understanding of the world. Our century begins with a revolution in astronomy and the construction of real starships. So is the theme of space dead?
Cosmonautics as a science, and then as a practical branch, was formed in the middle of the 20th century. But this was preceded by a fascinating history of the birth and development of the idea of flying into space, which began with fantasy, and only then did the first theoretical works and experiments appear.
Thus, initially in human dreams, flight into outer space was carried out with the help of fabulous means or forces of nature (tornadoes, hurricanes). Closer to the 20th century, technical means were already present in the descriptions of science fiction writers for these purposes - balloons, super-powerful guns and, finally, rocket engines and rockets themselves. More than one generation of young romantics grew up on the works of J. Verne, G. Wells, A. Tolstoy, A. Kazantsev, the basis of which was a description of space travel.Everything described by science fiction writers excited the minds of scientists. So, K.E. Tsiolkovsky said: “First inevitably come: thought, fantasy, fairy tale, and behind them comes precise calculation.” The publication at the beginning of the 20th century of the theoretical works of astronautics pioneers K.E. Tsiolkovsky, F.A. Tsandera, Yu.V. Kondratyuk, R.Kh. Goddard, G. Ganswindt, R. Hainault-Peltry, G. Aubert, V. Homan to some extent limited the flight of fancy, but at the same time gave rise to new directions in science - attempts appeared to determine what astronautics can give to society and how it affects him.
It must be said that the idea to connect the cosmic and terrestrial directions of human activity belongs to the founder of theoretical cosmonautics K.E. Tsiolkovsky. When a scientist said: “The planet is the cradle of reason, but you cannot live forever in a cradle,” he did not put forward alternatives - either the Earth or space. Tsiolkovsky never considered going into space as a consequence of some hopelessness of life on Earth. On the contrary, he spoke about the rational transformation of the nature of our planet by the power of reason. People, the scientist argued, “will change the surface of the Earth, its oceans, atmosphere, plants and themselves. They will control the climate and will rule within the solar system, as on the Earth itself, which will remain the home of humanity for an indefinitely long time.”
In the USSR, the beginning of practical work on space programs is associated with the names of S.P. Koroleva and M.K. Tikhonravova. At the beginning of 1945 M.K. Tikhonravov organized a group of RNII specialists to develop a project for a manned high-altitude rocket vehicle (a cabin with two cosmonauts) to study the upper layers of the atmosphere. The group included N.G. Chernyshev, P.I. Ivanov, V.N. Galkovsky, G.M. Moskalenko and others. It was decided to create the project on the basis of a single-stage liquid rocket, designed for vertical flight to an altitude of up to 200 km.
This project (it was called VR-190) provided for the solution of the following tasks:
- study of weightlessness conditions in short-term free flight of a person in a pressurized cabin;
- studying the movement of the center of mass of the cabin and its movement around the center of mass after separation from the launch vehicle;
- obtaining data on the upper layers of the atmosphere; checking the functionality of the systems (separation, descent, stabilization, landing, etc.) included in the design of the high-altitude cabin.
The VR-190 project was the first to propose the following solutions that have found application in modern spacecraft:
- parachute descent system, soft landing braking rocket engine, separation system using pyrobolts;
- electric contact rod for pre-ignition of the soft landing engine, non-ejection sealed cabin with a life support system;
- cabin stabilization system outside the dense layers of the atmosphere using low-thrust nozzles.
In general, the VR-190 project was a complex of new technical solutions and concepts, now confirmed by the progress of development of domestic and foreign rocket and space technology. In 1946, the materials of the VR-190 project were reported to M.K. Ti-khonravov I.V. Stalin. Since 1947, Tikhonravov and his group have been working on the idea of a missile package and in the late 1940s - early 1950s. shows the possibility of obtaining the first cosmic speed and launching an artificial Earth satellite (AES) using the rocket base being developed at that time in the country. In 1950-1953 the efforts of the M.K. group employees Tikhonravov were aimed at studying the problems of creating composite launch vehicles and artificial satellites.
In a report to the Government in 1954 on the possibility of developing satellites, S.P. Korolev wrote: “On your instructions, I present the report of Comrade M.K. Tikhonravov “On an artificial Earth satellite...” In the report on scientific activities for 1954, S.P. Korolev noted: “We would consider it possible to carry out a preliminary design development of the project of the satellite itself, taking into account the ongoing work (the work of M.K. Tikhonravov is especially noteworthy...)."
Work began to prepare for the launch of the first satellite PS-1. The first Council of Chief Designers was created, headed by S.P. Korolev, who later managed the space program of the USSR, which became the world leader in space exploration. Created under the leadership of S.P. The Queen of OKB-1 - TsKBEM - NPO Energia has been around since the early 1950s. center of space science and industry in the USSR.
Cosmonautics is unique in that much that was predicted first by science fiction writers and then by scientists has truly come true at cosmic speed. Only forty years have passed since the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, on October 4, 1957, and the history of astronautics already contains a series of remarkable achievements achieved initially by the USSR and the USA, and then by other space powers.
Already many thousands of satellites are flying in orbit around the Earth, the devices have reached the surface of the Moon, Venus, Mars; scientific equipment was sent to Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn to obtain knowledge about these distant planets of the solar system.
The triumph of astronautics was the launch of the first man into space on April 12, 1961 - Yu.A. Gagarin. Then - a group flight, manned spacewalk, the creation of the Salyut and Mir orbital stations... The USSR for a long time became the leading country in the world in manned programs.
Indicative is the trend of transition from the launch of single spacecraft to solve primarily military problems to the creation of large-scale space systems in the interests of solving a wide range of problems (including socio-economic and scientific) and to the integration of space industries of different countries.
What has space science achieved in the 20th century? Powerful liquid rocket engines have been developed to propel launch vehicles to cosmic velocities. In this area, the merit of V.P. is especially great. Glushko. The creation of such engines became possible thanks to the implementation of new scientific ideas and schemes that practically eliminate losses in the drive of turbopump units. The development of launch vehicles and liquid rocket engines contributed to the development of thermo-, hydro- and gas dynamics, the theory of heat transfer and strength, metallurgy of high-strength and heat-resistant materials, fuel chemistry, measuring technology, vacuum and plasma technology. Solid propellant and other types of rocket engines were further developed.
In the early 1950s. Soviet scientists M.V. Keldysh, V.A. Kotelnikov, A.Yu. Ishlinsky, L.I. Sedov, B.V. Rauschenbach et al. developed mathematical laws and navigation and ballistic support for space flights.
The problems that arose during the preparation and implementation of space flights served as an impetus for the intensive development of such general scientific disciplines as celestial and theoretical mechanics. The widespread use of new mathematical methods and the creation of advanced computers made it possible to solve the most complex problems of designing spacecraft orbits and controlling them during flight, and as a result, a new scientific discipline arose - space flight dynamics.
Design bureaus headed by N.A. Pilyugin and V.I. Kuznetsov, created unique control systems for rocket and space technology that are highly reliable.
At the same time, V.P. Glushko, A.M. Isaev created the world's leading school of practical rocket engine building. And the theoretical foundations of this school were laid back in the 1930s, at the dawn of domestic rocket science. And now Russia’s leading positions in this area remain.
Thanks to the intense creative work of the design bureaus under the leadership of V.M. Myasishcheva, V.N. Chelomeya, D.A. Polukhin carried out work on creating large-sized, especially durable shells. This became the basis for the creation of powerful intercontinental missiles UR-200, UR-500, UR-700, and then manned stations “Salyut”, “Almaz”, “Mir”, twenty-ton class modules “Kvant”, “Kristall”, "Nature", "Spectrum", modern modules for the International Space Station (ISS) "Zarya" and "Zvezda", launch vehicles of the "Proton" family. Creative cooperation between the designers of these design bureaus and the machine-building plant named after. M.V. Khrunichev made it possible by the beginning of the 21st century to create the Angara family of launch vehicles, a complex of small spacecraft and manufacture ISS modules. The merger of the design bureau and the plant and the restructuring of these divisions made it possible to create the largest corporation in Russia - the State Space Research and Production Center named after. M.V. Khrunicheva.
Much work on the creation of launch vehicles based on ballistic missiles was carried out at the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, headed by M.K. Yangel. The reliability of these light-class launch vehicles has no analogues in the world astronautics. In the same design bureau under the leadership of V.F. Utkin created the Zenit medium-class launch vehicle - a representative of the second generation of launch vehicles.
Over four decades, the capabilities of control systems for launch vehicles and spacecraft have increased significantly. If in 1957-1958. When placing artificial satellites into orbit around the Earth, an error of several tens of kilometers was allowed, then by the mid-1960s. The accuracy of the control systems was already so high that it allowed a spacecraft launched to the Moon to land on its surface with a deviation from the intended point of only 5 km. Design control systems N.A. Pilyugin were one of the best in the world.
Great achievements of astronautics in the field of space communications, television broadcasting, relaying and navigation, the transition to high-speed lines made it possible already in 1965 to transmit photographs of the planet Mars to Earth from a distance exceeding 200 million km, and in 1980 an image of Saturn was transmitted to Earth from distances of about 1.5 billion km. The Scientific and Production Association of Applied Mechanics, headed for many years by M.F. Reshetnev, was originally created as a branch of the S.P. Design Bureau. Queen; This NPO is one of the world leaders in the development of spacecraft for this purpose.
Satellite communication systems are being created that cover almost all countries of the world and provide two-way operational communication with any subscribers. This type of communication has proven to be the most reliable and is becoming increasingly profitable. Relay systems make it possible to control space groups from one point on Earth. Satellite navigation systems have been created and are being operated. Without these systems, it is no longer conceivable today to use modern vehicles - merchant ships, civil aviation aircraft, military equipment, etc.
Qualitative changes have also occurred in the field of manned flights. The ability to successfully operate outside a spacecraft was first proven by Soviet cosmonauts in the 1960s-1970s, and in the 1980s-1990s. the ability of a person to live and work in conditions of weightlessness for a year was demonstrated. During the flights, a large number of experiments were also carried out - technical, geophysical and astronomical.
The most important are research in the field of space medicine and life support systems. It is necessary to deeply study man and life support equipment in order to determine what can be entrusted to a person in space, especially during a long space flight.
One of the first space experiments was to photograph the Earth, showing how much observations from space could provide for the discovery and wise use of natural resources. The tasks of developing complexes for photo- and optoelectronic earth sensing, mapping, research of natural resources, environmental monitoring, as well as creating medium-class launch vehicles based on R-7A missiles are carried out by the former branch No. 3 of the OKB, transformed first into TsSKB, and today into GRNPTS "TSSKB - Progress" headed by D.I. Kozlov.
In 1967, during the automatic docking of two unmanned artificial Earth satellites “Cosmos-186” and “Cosmos-188”, the largest scientific and technical problem of meeting and docking spacecraft in space was solved, which made it possible to create the first orbital station in a relatively short time (USSR) and choose the most rational scheme for the flight of spacecraft to the Moon with the landing of earthlings on its surface (USA). In 1981, the first flight of the reusable space transport system "Space Shuttle" (USA) was made, and in 1991 the domestic system "Energia" - "Buran" was launched.
In general, solving various problems of space exploration - from launching artificial Earth satellites to launching interplanetary spacecraft and manned spacecraft and stations - has provided a lot of invaluable scientific information about the Universe and the planets of the Solar System and has significantly contributed to the technological progress of mankind. Earth satellites, together with sounding rockets, have made it possible to obtain detailed data about near-Earth space. Thus, with the help of the first artificial satellites, radiation belts were discovered; during their research, the interaction of the Earth with charged particles emitted by the Sun was further studied. Interplanetary space flights have helped us to better understand the nature of many planetary phenomena - solar wind, solar storms, meteor showers, etc.
Spacecraft launched to the Moon transmitted images of its surface, including photographing its side invisible from Earth with a resolution significantly superior to the capabilities of terrestrial means. Samples of lunar soil were taken, and automatic self-propelled vehicles "Lunokhod-1" and "Lunokhod-2" were delivered to the lunar surface.
Automatic spacecraft have made it possible to obtain additional information about the shape and gravitational field of the Earth, to clarify the fine details of the shape of the Earth and its magnetic field. Artificial satellites have helped to obtain more accurate data about the mass, shape and orbit of the Moon. The masses of Venus and Mars were also refined using observations of spacecraft flight trajectories.
The design, manufacture and operation of very complex space systems have made a major contribution to the development of advanced technology. Automatic spacecraft sent to the planets are, in fact, robots controlled from Earth via radio commands. The need to develop reliable systems for solving problems of this kind has led to a better understanding of the problem of analysis and synthesis of various complex technical systems. Such systems are used both in space research and in many other areas of human activity. The requirements of astronautics necessitated the design of complex automatic devices under severe limitations caused by the carrying capacity of launch vehicles and space conditions, which was an additional incentive for the rapid improvement of automation and microelectronics.
Design bureaus led by G.N. made a great contribution to the implementation of these programs. Babakin, G.Ya. Guskov, V.M. Kovtunenko, D.I. Kozlov, N.N. Sheremetyevsky and others. Cosmonautics gave birth to a new direction in technology and construction - spaceport construction. The founders of this direction in our country were teams led by prominent scientists V.P. Barmina and V.N. Solovyova. Currently, there are more than a dozen cosmodromes operating in the world with unique ground-based automated complexes, test stations and other complex means of preparing spacecraft and rocket launch vehicles for launch. Russia is intensively launching from the world-famous Baikonur and Plesetsk cosmodromes, and also conducts experimental launches from the Svobodny cosmodrome being created in the east of the country.
Modern needs for communications and remote control over long distances have led to the development of high-quality command and control systems that have contributed to the development of technical methods for tracking and measuring spacecraft over interplanetary distances, opening up new applications for satellites. In modern cosmonautics this is one of the priority areas. Ground-based automated control complex developed by M.S. Ryazansky and L.I. Gusev, and today ensures the functioning of the Russian orbital group.
The development of work in the field of space technology has led to the creation of space weather support systems that, with the required frequency, receive images of the Earth's cloud cover and conduct observations in various spectral ranges. Weather satellite data are the basis for making operational weather forecasts, primarily for large regions. Currently, almost all countries of the world use space weather data.
The results obtained in the field of satellite geodesy are especially important for solving military problems, mapping natural resources, increasing the accuracy of trajectory measurements, and also for studying the Earth. With the use of space assets, a unique opportunity arises to solve the problems of environmental monitoring of the Earth and global control of natural resources. The results of space surveys turned out to be an effective means of monitoring the development of agricultural crops, identifying vegetation diseases, measuring some soil factors, the state of the aquatic environment, etc. A combination of various satellite imaging methods provides virtually reliable, complete and detailed information about natural resources and the state of the environment.
In addition to the already defined directions, new directions for the use of space technology will obviously develop, for example, the organization of technological production that is impossible under terrestrial conditions. Thus, weightlessness can be used to obtain crystals of semiconductor compounds. Such crystals will find application in the electronics industry to create a new class of semiconductor devices. In zero-gravity conditions, freely floating liquid metal and other materials are easily deformed by weak magnetic fields. This opens the way to obtaining ingots of any predetermined shape without crystallizing them in molds, as is done on Earth. The peculiarity of such ingots is the almost complete absence of internal stresses and high purity.
The use of space assets plays a decisive role in creating a unified information space in Russia and ensuring global telecommunications, especially during the period of mass introduction of the Internet in the country. The future in the development of the Internet is the widespread use of high-speed broadband space communication channels, because in the 21st century the possession and exchange of information will become no less important than the possession of nuclear weapons.
Our manned space mission is aimed at further development of science, rational use of the Earth's natural resources, and solving problems of environmental monitoring of land and ocean. This requires the creation of manned means both for flights in near-Earth orbits and for realizing the age-old dream of mankind - flights to other planets.
The possibility of implementing such plans is inextricably linked with solving the problems of creating new engines for flights in outer space that do not require significant reserves of fuel, for example, ion, photon, and also using natural forces - gravity, torsion fields, etc.
The creation of new unique samples of rocket and space technology, as well as space research methods, conducting space experiments on automatic and manned spacecraft and stations in near-Earth space, as well as in the orbits of the planets of the Solar System, is fertile ground for combining the efforts of scientists and designers from different countries.
At the beginning of the 21st century, tens of thousands of objects of artificial origin are in space flight. These include spacecraft and fragments (last stages of launch vehicles, fairings, adapters and separable parts).
Therefore, along with the urgent problem of combating pollution of our planet, the issue of combating the pollution of near-Earth space will arise. Already at the present time, one of the problems is the distribution of the frequency resource of the geostationary orbit due to its saturation with satellites for various purposes.
The problems of space exploration have been and are being solved in the USSR and Russia by a number of organizations and enterprises headed by a galaxy of heirs to the first Council of Chief Designers Yu.P. Semenov, N.A. Anfimov, I.V. Barmin, G.P. Biryukov, B.I. Gubanov, G.A. Efremov, A.G. Kozlov, B.I. Katorgin, G.E. Lozino-Lozinsky and others.
Along with development work, serial production of space technology also developed in the USSR. To create the Energia-Buran complex, more than 1,000 enterprises participated in the cooperation for this work. Directors of manufacturing plants S.S. Bovkun, A.I. Kiselev, I.I. Klebanov, L.D. Kuchma, A.A. Makarov, V.D. Vachnadze, A.A. Chizhov and many others quickly adjusted production and ensured production. It is especially necessary to note the role of a number of space industry leaders. This is D.F. Ustinov, K.N. Rudnev, V.M. Ryabikov, L.V. Smirnov, S.A. Afanasyev, O.D. Baklanov, V.Kh. Doguzhiev, O.N. Shishkin, Yu.N. Koptev, A.G. Karas, A.A. Maksimov, V.L. Ivanov.
The successful launch of Cosmos-4 in 1962 began the use of space in the interests of the defense of our country. This problem was solved first by NII-4 MO, and then TsNII-50 MO was separated from its composition. Here, the creation of military and dual-use space systems was justified, to the development of which the famous military scientists T.I. made a decisive contribution. Levin, G.P. Melnikov, I.V. Meshcheryakov, Yu.A. Mozzhorin, P.E. Eliasberg, I.I. Yatsunsky et al.
It is generally accepted that the use of space assets makes it possible to increase the effectiveness of the actions of the armed forces by 1.5-2 times. The peculiarities of waging wars and armed conflicts at the end of the 20th century showed that the role of space in solving problems of military confrontation is constantly increasing. Only space means of reconnaissance, navigation, and communications provide the ability to see the enemy to the entire depth of his defense, global communications, and high-precision operational determination of the coordinates of any objects, which makes it possible to conduct combat operations almost “on the move” in militarily unequipped territories and remote theaters of military operations. Only the use of space assets will ensure the protection of territories from nuclear missile attacks by any aggressor. Space is becoming the basis of the military power of every state - this is a bright trend of the new millennium.
Under these conditions, new approaches are needed to the development of promising models of rocket and space technology, radically different from the existing generation of space vehicles. Thus, the current generation of orbital vehicles is mainly a specialized application based on pressurized structures, tied to specific types of launch vehicles. In the new millennium, it is necessary to create multifunctional spacecraft based on unpressurized platforms of modular design, and develop a unified range of launch vehicles with a low-cost, highly efficient system for their operation. Only in this case, relying on the potential created in the rocket and space industry, Russia in the 21st century will be able to significantly accelerate the process of development of its economy, ensure a qualitatively new level of scientific research, international cooperation, solutions to socio-economic problems and the tasks of strengthening the country’s defense capability, which in will ultimately strengthen its position in the world community.
Leading enterprises in the rocket and space industry played and are playing a decisive role in the creation of Russian rocket and space science and technology: GKNPTs im. M.V. Khrunichev, RSC Energia, TsSKB, KBOM, KBTM, etc. This work is managed by Rosaviakosmos.
Currently, Russian cosmonautics is not going through its best days. Funding for space programs has been sharply reduced, and a number of enterprises are in an extremely difficult situation. But Russian space science does not stand still. Even in these difficult conditions, Russian scientists are designing space systems for the 21st century.
Abroad, space exploration began with the launch of the American Explorer 1 spacecraft on February 1, 1958. The American space program was headed by Wernher von Braun, who was one of the leading specialists in the field of rocket technology in Germany until 1945, and then worked in the USA. He created the Jupiter-S launch vehicle based on the Redstone ballistic missile, with the help of which Explorer 1 was launched.
On February 20, 1962, the Atlas launch vehicle, developed under the leadership of K. Bossart, launched the Mercury spacecraft into orbit, piloted by the first US astronaut J. Tlenn. However, all these achievements were not complete, since they repeated the steps already taken by the Soviet cosmonautics. Based on this, the US government has made efforts aimed at gaining a leading position in the space race. And in certain areas of space activity, in certain sections of the space marathon, they succeeded.
Thus, the United States was the first to launch a spacecraft into geostationary orbit in 1964. But the greatest success was the delivery of American astronauts to the Moon on the Apollo 11 spacecraft and the access of the first people - N. Armstrong and E. Aldrin - to its surface. This achievement was made possible thanks to the development, under the leadership of von Braun, of Saturn-type launch vehicles, created in 1964-1967. under the Apollo program.
The Saturn launch vehicles were a family of two- and three-stage launch vehicles of the heavy and super-heavy class, based on the use of standardized blocks. The two-stage version of Saturn-1 made it possible to place a payload weighing 10.2 tons into low-Earth orbit, and the three-stage Saturn-5 - 139 tons (47 tons on the flight path to the Moon).
A major achievement in the development of American space technology was the creation of the reusable Space Shuttle space system with an orbital stage with aerodynamic quality, the first launch of which took place in April 1981. And, despite the fact that all the capabilities provided by reusability were never fully realized used, of course, this was a major (albeit very expensive) step forward on the path of space exploration.
The early successes of the USSR and the USA prompted some countries to intensify their efforts in space activities. American carriers launched the first English spacecraft "Ariel-1" (1962), the first Canadian spacecraft "Alouette-1" (1962), the first Italian spacecraft "San Marco" (1964). However, launches of spacecraft by foreign carriers made the countries that own the spacecraft dependent on the United States. Therefore, work began on creating our own media. France achieved the greatest success in this field, already in 1965 it launched the A-1 spacecraft with its own Diaman-A launch vehicle. Subsequently, developing this success, France developed the Ariane family of launch vehicles, which is one of the most cost-effective.
The undoubted success of the world cosmonautics was the implementation of the ASTP program, the final stage of which - the launch and docking in orbit of the Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft - was carried out in July 1975. This flight marked the beginning of international programs that successfully developed in the last quarter of the 20th century. century and the undoubted success of which was the manufacture, launch and assembly in orbit of the International Space Station. International cooperation in the field of space services has acquired particular importance, where the leading place belongs to the State Research and Production Space Center named after. M.V. Khrunicheva.
In this book, the authors, based on their many years of experience in the field of design and practical creation of rocket and space systems, analysis and generalization of the developments known to them in astronautics in Russia and abroad, set out their point of view on the development of astronautics in the 21st century. The near future will determine whether we were right or wrong. I would like to express my gratitude to academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences N.A. for valuable advice on the content of the book. Anfimov and A.A. Galeev, Doctors of Technical Sciences G.M. Tamkovich and V.V. Ostroukhov.
The authors thank Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor B.N. for assistance in collecting materials and discussing the manuscript of the book. Rodionov, candidates of technical sciences A.F. Akimova, N.V. Vasilyeva, I.N. Golovaneva, S.B. Kabanova, V.T. Konovalova, M.I. Makarova, A.M. Maksimova, L.S. Medushevsky, E.G. Trofimova, I.L. Cherkasov, candidate of military sciences S.V. Pavlov, leading specialists of the Research Institute of CS A.A. Kachekana, Yu.G. Pichurina, V.L. Svetlichny, as well as Yu.A. Peshnina and N.G. Makarov for technical assistance in preparing the book. The authors express their deep gratitude for valuable advice on the content of the manuscript to candidates of technical sciences E.I. Motorny, V.F. Nagavkin, O.K. Roskin, S.V. Sorokin, S.K. Shaevich, V.Yu. Yuryev and program director I.A. Glazkova.
The authors will gratefully accept all comments, suggestions and critical articles, which, we believe, will follow after the publication of the book and will once again confirm that the problems of astronautics are truly relevant and require the close attention of scientists and practitioners, as well as all those who live in the future.
In the second half of the 20th century. Humanity has stepped onto the threshold of the Universe - it has entered outer space. Our Motherland opened the road to space. The first artificial Earth satellite, which opened the space age, was launched by the former Soviet Union, the world's first cosmonaut is a citizen of the former USSR.
Cosmonautics is a huge catalyst for modern science and technology, which in an unprecedentedly short time has become one of the main levers of the modern world process. It stimulates the development of electronics, mechanical engineering, materials science, computer technology, energy and many other areas of the national economy.
Scientifically, humanity strives 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 planets and the structure of space, 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, humanity will have to explore various areas of outer space: the Moon, other planets and interplanetary space.
Photo active tours, holidays in the mountains
The current level of space technology and the forecast for 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 connections 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 influence of flight duration on the human body and its performance.
In principle, the development of space technology should be ahead of the “Demand” associated with solving pressing national economic problems. The main tasks here are launch vehicles, propulsion systems, spacecraft, as well as supporting facilities (command and measurement and launch complexes, equipment, etc.), ensuring progress in related branches of technology, directly or indirectly related to the development of astronautics.
Before flying into outer space, it was necessary to understand and use in practice the principle of jet propulsion, learn how to make rockets, create a theory of interplanetary communications, etc. Rocketry is not a new concept. Man went to the creation of powerful modern launch vehicles 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 is its movement under the influence of recoil force, the reaction of a stream of particles thrown away from the rocket. In a rocket. those. In a device equipped with a rocket engine, escaping gases are formed due to the reaction of the oxidizer and fuel stored in the rocket itself. This circumstance makes the operation of a rocket engine independent of the presence or absence of a gaseous environment. Thus, the rocket is an amazing structure, capable of moving in airless space, i.e. not 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 in the history of science and technology. Having extensive and deep knowledge of mathematics, physics and especially chemistry, Kibalchich made homemade shells and mines for the Narodnaya Volya members. The "Aeronautical Instrument Project" was the result of Kibalchich's long-term research work on explosives. He, essentially, was the first to propose not a rocket engine adapted to any existing aircraft, as other inventors did, but a completely new (rocket-dynamic) device, the prototype of modern manned spacecraft, in which the thrust of rocket engines serves to directly create lift. force supporting the aircraft in flight. Kibalchich's aircraft was supposed to function on the principle of a rocket!
But because Kibalchich was imprisoned for the attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II, but the design 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 flight 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 reactive 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 construct a liquid rocket design. Tsiolkovsky's ideas received universal recognition back in the 1920s. And the brilliant successor of his work, S.P. Korolev, a month before the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, said that the ideas and works of Konstantin Eduardovich would attract more and more attention as rocket technology developed, in which he turned out to be absolutely right!
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, obtain data on the propagation of radio signals in the ionosphere, work out issues of insertion 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 of length 2. 4-2.9 m. The satellite’s sealed housing housed equipment and power supplies. The initial orbital parameters were: perigee altitude 228 km, apogee altitude 947 km, inclination 65.1 deg. On November 3, the Soviet Union announced the launch of a second Soviet satellite into orbit. In a separate hermetic cabin there was a dog Laika and a telemetry system to record its behavior in zero gravity. The satellite was also equipped with scientific instruments to study solar radiation and cosmic rays.
On December 6, 1957, the United States attempted to launch the Avangard-1 satellite using a launch vehicle developed by the Naval Research Laboratory. After ignition, the rocket rose above the launch table, but a second later the engines turned off and the rocket fell onto the table, exploding on impact .
On January 31, 1958, the Explorer 1 satellite was launched into orbit, the American response to the launch of Soviet satellites. In terms of size and weight, it was not a candidate for record holder. 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 and final 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 external and internal temperature sensors, erosion and impact sensors to detect micrometeorite flows, and a Geiger-Muller counter to record penetrating cosmic rays.
An important scientific result of the satellite's flight was the discovery of the radiation belts surrounding the Earth. The Geiger-Muller counter stopped counting when the device was at apogee at an altitude of 2530 km, the perigee altitude was 360 km.
On February 5, 1958, the United States made a second attempt 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 place Avangard 1 into orbit, only three of which were successful.
Between December 1957 and September 1959, eleven attempts were made to place the Avangard into orbit.
Both satellites introduced a lot of new things into 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 United States made the first attempt to send satellites from Cape Canaveral to the vicinity of Moon probe with scientific equipment. It turned out to be unsuccessful. The rocket took off and flew only 16 km. The first stage of the rocket exploded 77 minutes into the flight. On October 11, 1958, a second attempt was made to launch the Pioneer 1 lunar probe, which was also unsuccessful. The next few launches also turned out to be unsuccessful, only on March 3, 1959, Pioneer-4, weighing 6.1 kg, partially completed its task: it flew past the Moon at a distance of 60,000 km (instead of the planned 24,000 km).
Just as with the launch of the Earth satellite, priority in launching the first probe belongs to the USSR; on January 2, 1959, the first man-made object was launched, which was placed on a trajectory passing fairly close to the Moon into the orbit of the Sun's satellite. Thus, Luna 1 reached the second escape velocity for the first time. 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. The 390.2-kilogram sphere contained instruments that showed that the Moon does not have a magnetic field or radiation belt.
The 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 reverse side, invisible from Earth. Photographing was carried out on October 7 for 40 minutes from an altitude of 6200 km above the Moon.
Man in space
On April 12, 1961, at 9:07 a.m. Moscow time, several tens of kilometers north of the village of Tyuratam in Kazakhstan, at the Soviet Baikonur Cosmodrome, the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile was launched, in the bow compartment of which the manned spaceship “Vostok” was located with Air Force Major Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin on board. The launch was successful. The spacecraft was put into orbit with an inclination of 65 degrees, a perigee altitude of 181 km and an apogee altitude of 327 km and completed one orbit around the Earth in 89 minutes. At 108 minutes after launch, it 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 human flight into outer space.
The spacecraft consisted of two compartments. The descent module, which was also the cosmonaut's cabin, was a sphere with a diameter of 2.3 m, coated with an ablative material for thermal protection during reentry. The spacecraft was controlled automatically and by the astronaut. During the flight it was continuously maintained with the Earth. The atmosphere of the ship is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen under a pressure of 1 atm. (760 mmHg). 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 Earth orbit, it rose above the Earth to an altitude of about 186 km. Shepard, launched from Cape Canaveral into 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 conditions of weightlessness can exercise manual control of a spacecraft. The Mercury spacecraft was significantly different from the Vostok spacecraft.
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 sealed nickel alloy shell had a titanium lining to protect it from heating during reentry. The atmosphere inside Mercury consisted of pure oxygen under a pressure of 0.36 at.
On February 20, 1962, the United States reached low-Earth orbit. Mercury 6, piloted by Navy Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn, was launched from Cape Canaveral. Glenn spent only 4 hours 55 minutes in orbit, completing 3 orbits before a successful landing. The purpose of Glenn's flight was to determine the possibility of a person working in the Mercury spacecraft. The last time Mercury was launched into space was May 15, 1963.
On March 18, 1965, the Voskhod spacecraft was launched into orbit with two cosmonauts on board - the ship's commander, Colonel Pavel Ivarovich Belyaev, and the co-pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov. Immediately after entering orbit, the crew cleared themselves of nitrogen by inhaling pure oxygen. Then the airlock compartment was deployed: Leonov entered the airlock compartment, closed the spacecraft hatch cover 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, at times 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 an astronaut staying and working outside the spacecraft was practically confirmed.
On June 3, the spacecraft Gemeny 4 was launched with captains James McDivitt and Edward White. During this flight, which lasted 97 hours and 56 minutes, White exited the spacecraft and spent 21 minutes outside the cockpit testing the ability to maneuver in space using a hand-held compressed gas jet gun.
Unfortunately, space exploration was not 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, burning out in 15 seconds in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee became the first American astronauts to die on space mission. On April 23, the new Soyuz-1 spacecraft was launched from Baikonur, piloted by Colonel Vladimir Komarov. The launch was successful.
On the 18th orbit, 26 hours 45 minutes after launch, Komarov began orientation to enter the atmosphere. All operations went well, but after entering the atmosphere and braking, the parachute system failed. The astronaut died instantly when the Soyuz hit the Earth at a speed of 644 km/h. Subsequently, Space 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 faces a number of global problems, the solution of which requires the united efforts of all peoples. These are problems of raw materials resources, energy, environmental control and biosphere conservation, and others. Space research, one of the most important areas of the scientific and technological revolution, will play a huge role in their fundamental solution. Cosmonautics clearly demonstrates to the whole world the fruitfulness of peaceful creative work, the benefits of combining the efforts of different countries in solving scientific and economic problems.
What problems do astronautics and the astronauts themselves 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 spacecraft. such conditions that would provide the crew with sufficient performance to complete the assigned task and a minimum likelihood of pathological changes occurring in the human body. How to do it? It is necessary to significantly reduce the degree of human exposure to 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 food; remove waste products of the body and substances harmful to health released during the operation of spacecraft systems and equipment; provide human needs for movement, rest, external information and normal working conditions; organize medical monitoring of the crew’s health status and maintain it at the required level. Food and water are delivered into space in appropriate packaging, and oxygen is delivered in a chemically bound form. If you do not restore waste products, 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 throughout the year?!
In the near future, regeneration systems will make it possible to almost completely reproduce oxygen and water on board the station. They began to use water after washing and showering, purified in a regeneration system, a long time ago. The exhaled moisture is condensed in the refrigeration-drying unit and then regenerated. Breathable oxygen is extracted from purified water by electrolysis, and hydrogen gas reacts with carbon dioxide coming from the concentrator to form water, which powers 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 works.
Space science
Space exploration helps in many ways in the development of sciences:
On December 18, 1980, the phenomenon of the flow of particles from the Earth's radiation belts under negative magnetic anomalies was established.
Experiments carried out on the first satellites showed that the near-Earth space outside the atmosphere is not “empty” at all. It is filled with plasma, permeated with streams of energy particles. In 1958, the Earth's radiation belts were discovered in near space - giant magnetic traps filled with charged particles - protons and high-energy 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 of the first K.K. during flights was completely unexpected. areas of intense radiation at altitudes up to 200-300 km. It turned out that this is due to anomalous zones of the Earth's magnetic field.
The study of the Earth's natural resources using space methods has spread, which has greatly contributed to the development of the national economy.
The first problem that faced 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 multispectral video information and their use in solving problems in the geosciences and economic sectors. These tasks include: studying the 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 earthly 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 their dynamics.
A distinctive feature of the third problem is the focus on 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 for monitoring the condition of agricultural land, forests and other natural resources of the Earth only a few years after the advent of the space age. It began in 1960, when, with the help of the Tiros meteorological satellites, map-like outlines of the globe lying under the clouds were obtained. These first black-and-white TV images provided very little insight into human activity, but it was nonetheless 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 make maximum use of these capabilities were the Landsat type. For example, Landsat-D, the fourth in the series, observed the Earth from an altitude of more than 640 km using advanced sensors, allowing consumers to receive significantly 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 developed areas of the world, were drawn inaccurately. Landsat images have helped correct and update some existing US maps. In the USSR, images obtained from the Salyut station turned out to be indispensable for calibrating the BAM railway line.
In the mid-70s, 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 crops. Around the same time, in the USSR, observations of agricultural crops were carried out from satellites of the Cosmos, Meteor, Monsoon series and Salyut orbital stations.
The use of satellite information has revealed its undeniable advantages in estimating the volume of timber in vast areas of any country. It has become possible to manage the process of deforestation and, if necessary, make 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 “crown-shaped” ones, characteristic of the western regions of North America, as well as the regions of Primorye and the southern regions of Eastern Siberia in Russia.
Of great importance for humanity as a whole is the ability to observe almost continuously the vastness of the World Ocean, this “forge” of weather. It is above the layers of ocean water that monstrous hurricanes and typhoons arise, causing numerous casualties and destruction for coastal residents. 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 bend, 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 quantities, causing irreparable damage to the fisheries of many countries, including Russia. Large concentrations of single-celled marine organisms increase fish mortality, possibly due to the toxins they contain. Satellite observations help reveal the vagaries of such currents and provide useful information to those who need it. According to some estimates by Russian and American scientists, fuel savings, combined with the “additional catch” due to the use of satellite information obtained in the infrared range, gives an annual profit of $ 2.44 million. The use of satellites for survey purposes has facilitated the task of plotting the course of sea vessels . Satellites also detect icebergs and glaciers that are 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 arid territories are developed, the need for water increases sharply.
The cosmonauts' help was invaluable in creating the largest cartographic work - the Atlas of Snow and Ice Resources of the World.
Also, with the help of satellites, oil pollution, air pollution, and minerals are found.
Space Science
Within a short period of time since the beginning of the space age, man has not only sent robotic space stations to other planets and set foot on the surface of the Moon, but has also brought about a revolution in space science unmatched in the entire history of mankind. Along with great technical advances brought about by the development of astronautics, new knowledge was gained about planet Earth and neighboring worlds. One of the first important discoveries, made not by 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 W.F. Hess, who launched a gas balloon with equipment to high altitudes in 1946.
In 1952 and 1953 Dr. James Van Allen conducted research on low-energy cosmic rays during launches of small rockets to an altitude of 19-24 km and high-altitude balloons in the area of the Earth's north magnetic pole. After analyzing the results of the experiments, Van Allen proposed placing cosmic ray detectors that were fairly simple in design on board the first American artificial Earth satellites.
With the help of the Explorer 1 satellite, launched by the United States into orbit on January 31, 1958, a sharp decrease in the intensity of cosmic radiation was discovered at altitudes above 950 km. At the end of 1958, the Pioneer-3 AMS, which covered a distance of over 100,000 km in one day of flight, recorded, using the sensors on board, a second, located above the first, Earth’s radiation belt, which also encircles the entire globe.
In August and September 1958, three atomic explosions were carried out at an altitude of more than 320 km, each with a power of 1.5 kt. The purpose of the tests, codenamed "Argus", was to study the possibility of loss of radio and radar communications during such tests. The study of the Sun is the most important scientific task, to the solution of which many launches of the first satellites and spacecraft are devoted.
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 Intercosmos series were launched to study the Sun and circumsolar space.
Black holes
Black holes were discovered in the 1960s. It turned out that if our eyes could only see x-rays, the starry sky above us would look completely different. True, X-rays emitted by the Sun were discovered even before the birth of astronautics, but they were not even aware of other sources in the starry sky. We came across them by accident.
In 1962, the Americans, having decided to check whether X-ray radiation was emanating from the surface of the Moon, launched a rocket equipped with special equipment. It was then that, when processing the observation results, we became convinced that the instruments had detected 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 into sources of X-rays in the universe, went into orbit - the American Uhuru and the Soviet Cosmos-428.
By this time, things had already begun to become clear. Objects emitting X-rays have been linked to barely visible stars with unusual properties. These were compact clots of plasma of insignificant, of course by cosmic standards, sizes and masses, heated to several tens of millions of degrees. Despite their very modest appearance, these objects possessed a colossal power of X-ray radiation, several thousand times greater than the full compatibility of the Sun.
These are tiny, about 10 km in diameter. , the remains of completely burnt out stars, compressed to a monstrous density, had to somehow make themselves known. That is why neutron stars were so readily “recognized” in X-ray sources. And everything seemed to fit. But the calculations refuted expectations: newly formed neutron stars should have immediately cooled down and stopped emitting, but these ones emitted x-rays.
Using launched satellites, researchers discovered 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 this way, one of which periodically eclipsed the other. This has been proven by observation through telescopes.
Where do X-ray sources get their colossal radiation energy? The main condition for the transformation of a normal star into a neutron star is considered to be the complete damping of the nuclear reaction in it. Therefore nuclear energy is excluded. Then maybe this is the kinetic energy of a rapidly rotating massive body? Indeed, it is great for neutron stars. But it only lasts for a short time.
Most neutron stars do not exist 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 substance of the disk falls onto its surface, and the energy acquired by the gas is converted into X-ray radiation.
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 tens of times. Scientists called the sources of X-ray flares BURSTERS. They are also associated with binary systems. The most powerful flares in terms of energy fired are only several times inferior to the total radiation of hundreds of billions of stars located in our galaxy.
Theorists have proven that “black holes” that are part of binary star systems can signal themselves with X-rays. And the reason for its occurrence is the same - gas accretion. True, the mechanism in this case is somewhat different. The internal parts of the gas disk settling into the “hole” should heat up and therefore become sources of X-rays. By transitioning to a neutron star, only those luminaries whose mass does not exceed 2-3 solar ones end their “life”. Larger stars suffer the fate of a “black hole”.
X-ray astronomy told us about the last, perhaps the most rapid, stage in the development of stars. Thanks to her, we learned about powerful cosmic explosions, about gas with temperatures of tens and hundreds of millions of degrees, about the possibility of a completely unusual superdense state of substances in “black holes.”
What else does space give us? For a long time now, television programs have not mentioned that the transmission is carried out via satellite. This is further evidence of the enormous 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 Wireless World magazine. presented his concept of a communications relay station located at an altitude of 35,880 km above the Earth.
Clark's merit was that he determined the orbit in which the satellite is stationary relative to the Earth. This orbit is called geostationary or Clarke orbit. When moving in a circular orbit with an altitude of 35880 km, one revolution is completed in 24 hours, i.e. during the period of 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 communications satellite, Telstar-1, was launched into low Earth orbit with parameters of 950 x 5630 km; this happened on July 10, 1962. Almost a year later, the Telstar-2 satellite was launched. The first telecast showed the American flag in New England with the Andover station in the background. This image was transmitted to Great Britain, France and to the American station in the state. New Jersey 15 hours after satellite launch. Two weeks later, millions of Europeans and Americans watched negotiations between people on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. They not only talked but also saw each other, communicating via satellite. Historians can consider this day the birth date of space TV. The world's largest state satellite communications system was created in Russia. It began in April 1965. the launch of Molniya series satellites, placed into highly elongated elliptical orbits with an apogee over the Northern Hemisphere. Each series includes four pairs of satellites orbiting at an angular distance from each other of 90 degrees.
The first long-distance space communications system, Orbita, was built on the basis of the Molniya satellites. In December 1975 The family of communications satellites was replenished with the Raduga satellite operating in geostationary orbit. Then the Ekran satellite appeared with a more powerful transmitter and simpler ground stations. After the first development of satellites, a new period began in the development of satellite communications technology, when satellites began to be placed 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 Sinkom, Airlie Bird and Intelsat, and the Russian Raduga and Horizon satellites.
A great future is associated with the placement of antenna complexes in geostationary orbit.
On June 17, 1991, the ERS-1 geodetic satellite was launched into orbit. The satellites' primary mission would be to observe the oceans and ice-covered land masses to provide climatologists, oceanographers, and environmental groups with data on these little-explored regions. The satellite was equipped with state-of-the-art microwave equipment, thanks to which it is ready for any weather: its radar "eyes" penetrate through fog and clouds and provide 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 subsequently help avoid many disasters associated with collisions of ships with icebergs, etc.
With all that, the development of shipping routes is, figuratively speaking, only the tip of the iceberg, if we only remember the decoding of ERS data on the oceans and ice-covered spaces of the Earth. We are aware of alarming forecasts of the overall warming of the Earth, which will lead to the melting of the polar caps and rising sea levels. All coastal areas 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 by ERS-1 and its subsequent ERS-2 satellite in late autumn 1994 provide data from which inferences can be made about these trends. They are creating an "early detection" system in the case of 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. This way, 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 whether it is the “imprint” of a mountain on the bottom.
Although the ERS-1 satellite was originally designed for ocean and ice observations, it quickly proved its versatility over land. In agriculture, forestry, fisheries, geology and cartography, specialists work with data provided by satellites. Since ERS-1 is still operational after three years of its mission, scientists have a chance to operate it together with ERS-2 for shared missions, as a tandem. And they are going to obtain new information about the topography of the earth's surface and provide assistance, for example, in warning about possible earthquakes.
Given the many global environmental problems that both ERS-1 and ERS-2 must provide fundamental information to address, planning shipping routes seems to be a relatively minor output of this new generation of satellites. But this is one of the areas where the potential for commercial use of satellite data is being exploited particularly intensively. This helps in funding other important tasks. And this has an effect on environmental protection that is difficult to overestimate: faster shipping routes require less energy consumption. Or let’s remember the oil tankers that ran aground during storms or broke up and sank, losing their environmentally hazardous cargo. Reliable route planning helps avoid such disasters.