The cosmic history of mankind will lose more and more details every decade. The more we succeed, the less significant the very important achievements of the past will seem. Perhaps, schools should study not the history of political confrontations, bloodshed and strife, but the impressive path of our scientific and technological progress
Over the past 70 years, mankind has sent many different devices into space. Few doubt that the future of our civilization is associated with space. Despite many troubles and conflicts, a huge number of various marketing and media "lures", space still "lures" the best minds of mankind. Moreover, it is a dream not only of the intellectual elite, but also of almost all children on the planet, which means that "the last frontier of humanity" will sooner or later be overcome. Let's try to consider some important milestones of the space route. Perhaps today many of them seem insignificant, and after the first interstellar flight they will become completely funny, like a wooden bicycle against the backdrop of a Formula 1 car. Nevertheless, it was these scientific and technological feats that showed what success an idea that captures the minds of many people can achieve.
Start, V-2
Perhaps someday we will be embarrassed to tell our brothers in mind about how our journey into space began. Like many of our best achievements, military technology has paved the way into space. The V-2 rocket, developed by the German Nazis, was the first aircraft capable of reaching near space.
The V-2 rocket became the basis for the development of the V-2 rocket, which shot the first video of Earth from space
After the war, on the basis of this rocket, the first American and Soviet rockets were created, capable of "bouncing" to an altitude of 200 km (the ISS orbit altitude is about 400 km).
Even before the launch of the first satellite, two dogs flew on the Soviet R-2A rocket on May 16, 1957 to an altitude of 210 km. Until 1960, a dozen such launches took place.
In the USA, on the basis of the same V-2, the V-2 rocket was created, which was also used to study near-earth space, and on an even larger scale. In total, from 1946 to 1951, the Americans performed more than 80 flights at an altitude of more than 160 km.
Some of these missions were particularly valuable, such as the first video of Earth from space received during one of them. Fruit flies, seeds of various plants, mice and macaques also flew into near-earth space on V-2 rockets.
These flights provided a wealth of scientific information about conditions at extremely high altitudes. Rockets designed for war have returned to Earth with valuable information about solar radiation, ionospheric parameters and the upper atmosphere. Without these data, further space exploration would have been impossible, because before the first rocket flights, practically nothing was known about it.
First satellite
Will the launch of a satellite be considered the first step of mankind into space in a few hundred years, or will this technological achievement seem too insignificant? It is difficult to answer this question, but today the first successful launch of a spacecraft into Earth's orbit is a very significant event. In many ways, this experiment is the foundation on which a modern powerful satellite constellation stands with all its outstanding advantages, such as GPS and global communications. Moreover, the satellite changed the history of the planet and became a powerful catalyst for scientific and technological progress.
The first satellite, the Soviet apparatus PS-1, was launched into space on October 4, 1957. A small device with a diameter of 58 cm carried on board the simplest radio transmitter by today's standards, which broadcast a simple "beep-beep". Nevertheless, the signals from this satellite made even more noise than the nuclear bomb test - for the first time humanity demonstrated its power over orbit.
The PS-1 satellite had a simple design, but it served as a powerful catalyst for the space race
During the Cold War, the launch of a Soviet satellite caused a very strong US reaction. American politicians were so frightened by the success of the USSR that they literally flooded their aerospace sector with money.
It was at that time that the Pentagon created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (later DARPA), and the US National Science Foundation quadrupled its budget. But, most importantly, a year after the launch of PS-1, one of the largest organizations engaged in the study of space was created: President Eisenhower signed a decree on the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - NASA.
After the launch of the Soviet satellite, US citizens willingly agreed to astronomical spending on the Apollo lunar program, which largely ensured its success and became the next most important technological achievement of mankind.
Saturn-V
After the first satellite, the development of orbit became a matter of time: spaceships were difficult for people, but it was already within the power of engineers. After the flight of Yuri Gagarin, the ways of fixing people in the Earth's orbit were outlined and all that remained was to develop the appropriate technologies.
But mankind has already set the next task, as always, it looked beyond the barely mastered horizon - to the Moon.
The main problem of a flight to the moon in those years was to create a sufficiently powerful launch vehicle that could lift a heavy spacecraft, a descent vehicle and, within an acceptable time frame, deliver them to the satellite of our planet and back.
In the USA it was the Saturn V rocket, and in the USSR it was the H1. Unfortunately, the Soviet project failed. Therefore, until now, Saturn V remains the largest, tallest, heaviest and most powerful launch vehicle that has ever taken off from the surface of the Earth. It was this rocket that brought people to the moon, which is so far the most outstanding achievement of manned astronautics.
Great efforts and resources were spent on the creation of Saturn V. In particular, a huge building with a height of 50 floors was built to assemble the rocket. This building, called the VAB (Vertical Assembly Building), has become the "home" for other major spacecraft, including the Space Shuttle.
Saturn V rockets were able to deliver people to the moon
Saturn V has a height of 111 m (36-storey building), weight 2800 tons, thrust 34.5 million newtons. The rocket could throw a record 118 tons of payload into low-earth orbit, and about 50 tons to the moon. The best modern heavy rockets cannot boast even half the payload values of the Saturn V.
Since the first unmanned test flights in 1967, the Saturn V has completed 13 successful launches. The rocket not only delivered people to the moon, but also put into orbit the first American space station - Skylab.
Apollo
The Apollo spacecraft is the first ship that brought people to the surface of another celestial body. Due to the imperfect technology of the 1960s, the creation of Apollo was a very difficult trade-off.
Apollo descent lunar module
Apollo consisted of a lunar descent module weighing 4, 8 tons and a 30-ton streamlined command and service module, the design of which today serves as the basis for many projects of "private" American spacecraft.
Inside the Apollo lunar module
The command and service module consisted of two parts: the service module itself and the apparatus designed to return to the earth's atmosphere from the lunar orbit at a very high speed - 39,000 km / h. The service module had a powerful engine for leaving lunar orbit. During the mission, the descent vehicle with two astronauts on board was separated from the command and service module, and the third crew member remained in the command module in orbit. After completing all the tasks on the lunar surface, the descent module took off, docked with the service one, and Apollo departed back to Earth.
Apollo spaceship
The Apollo lunar module turned out to be incredibly reliable, but the service module presented unpleasant surprises: it caused the death of the Apollo 1 crew and nearly killed the Apollo 13 crew. In the second case, people managed to hide and survive in the descent module.
Apollo service and command module in comparison with other ships
Fifty years ago, Apollo was the pinnacle of technical excellence, but the enormous risk to which astronauts were exposed, flying on such a primitive apparatus with a minimum of automatic devices and redundant systems, is obvious.
Venus and Vega
Today, not everyone will be able to answer the question: "On which planet did the first unmanned probes from Earth landed?" Many will say that to Mars, because they forgot about the incredible achievements of the Soviet space program, which for the first time in history was able to land terrestrial technology on a planet of the solar system, and not on Mars, but on Venus.
Between 1961 and 1984, the USSR sent 16 probes to Venus, 8 of which successfully landed on the planet's surface and transmitted information. In 1985, two more probes, Vega-1 and Vega-2, successfully landed on Venus. Thus, 10 unmanned aerial vehicles landed on Venus, but only 7 vehicles successfully landed on Mars.
The first soft landing on another planet was provided by the 1180-kg probe "Venera-7", which dropped a 500-kg lander into the atmosphere of Venus, which successfully landed and collected data on the conditions on the surface of the Earth's neighbor.
The Venera 13 spacecraft sent color images of the Venusian surface to Earth
The next probes, Venera 9 and Venera 10, took the first photographs of the surface of Venus, and Venera 13 and Venera 14 performed the first ever drilling on another planet.
Vega probes had unrivaled payload
The devices "Vega-1" and "Vega-2" are also unique. They photographed the comet's nucleus for the first time: the probes took 1,500 pictures of Halley's comet. In addition, the Vega spacecraft dropped two balloons with scientific equipment into the atmosphere of Venus. The balloons floated for two days in the atmosphere of Venus at an altitude of 54 km, collecting invaluable data on another planet. So far, these are the only balloons that have worked outside the Earth, on another planet. In addition, the Vega probes dropped descent vehicles, which successfully landed on the surface of Venus and operated for about 20 minutes.
Flight scheme of vehicles "Vega"
The Vega series devices were heavy "monsters" weighing almost 5000 kg. For comparison, the modern (launch in 1997), the largest American Cassini probe, weighed 5712 kg at the start.
Hundreds of dates and names
All this is just a tiny part of the vast experience of space exploration. Hundreds of projects, names, missions, thousands of discoveries and dozens of unique machines with "impossible" characteristics - all this is our way into space. Let's hope that in the end this path will become more important than political games, economic statistics and provide humanity with a golden age of peace and abundance.
