Introduction

1.1 First Spacecraft The first spacecraft was a publicity stunt. At the conclusion of World War II, the United States and the USSR eyed each other across a destroyed Europe, neither trusting the other, both holding the recipe for the atomic bomb. It was clear, from captured German work, that it was feasible to design a ballistic missile capable of delivering the bomb anywhere in the world. It was also clear that if the USSR were first to have the capability, they could destroy the United States in a few hours without any possibility of retaliation during the "missile gap" before we finished our development. Both nations strained to develop the first intercontinental missile capability, and the USSR was first to have it. They could not just call the president and say "We've got it." They decided instead to make the announcement in a very dramatic way. It turns out that if you can put a given-size bomb on an intercontinental trajectory, you can put almost that much mass into low Earth orbit. The USSR announced their intercontinental missile capability to the world on 4 October 1957 by launching the world's first spacecraft, Sputnik I, into low Earth orbit. The impact of Sputnik (Fig. 1.1), on public opinion was immense. The airspace over the continental United States was never penetrated during World War II despite the efforts of the two largest air forces ever assembled. Now Sputnik cut through our airspace with impunity every 90 min. It had been our national outlook that technical superiority counterbalanced the huge human resources of the USSR. Suddenly and dramatically our technical superiority was undermined. President Eisenhower spoke on television, then new, to calm national fears. An outright race ensued between the two countries, which came to be called the "space race." Clearly, the USSR won the first inning. The spacecraft that changed world opinion was not impressive by today's standards. It was an 84-kg, 58-cm-diam ball that contained a battery, transmitter, and whip antenna. The transmitter produced a monotonous beep that could be readily received anywhere in the industrialized world. The beep continued incessantly until the spacecraft reentered in January 1958. After several embarrassing failures, the United States responded with the launch of our first spacecraft, Explorer I, on 31 January 1958. The 14-kg Explorer I is shown in Fig. 1.2; the lower half is actually a solid motor, which provided the final velocity increment. The spacecraft is the upper half, which consisted of a particles and fields experiment, micrometeorite experiment, cosmic ray detector, and a low power transmitter. Explorer I was in orbit for two months during which it discovered the Van Alien belt. By the late 1960s the United States spacecraft launch capability had grown from 14 to 56,000 kg, and we had sent manned spacecraft to the moon.