America at a technological crossroads for space travel

Perhaps it’s merely coincidental with Oct. 4 recognition of the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, but the Peoples Republic of China launched a reconnaissance probe towards the moon last month.

Sputnik changed society and ushered in the modern world. The first human-made satellite broadcast a steady artificial heartbeat back to any shortwave receiver within range. America was listening, after a startled awakening from unconsciousness.

It should have been us.

Wehrner von Braun and his team of German rocket ex-patriots had wanted to orbit a satellite in 1956, as a contribution to the planet’s Geophysical Year celebrations. President Dwight Eisenhower had put the kibosh on a worthless stunt. The United States was left wondering how the Soviets had gotten ahead with a worthwhile achievement of technical importance.

You know how the story goes. The Soviets beat us to the first satellite, the first living being in space, a dog named Laika, and finally Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin trumped the Mercury astronauts while American rockets kept blowing up on the pad. At last, Von Braun got the go ahead to put Explorer 1 into space, then a chimpanzee, and finally the “original seven” astronauts. President John F. Kennedy upped the ante to a moon race, where U.S. technology got to stretch its legs and beat the other guys at their own game.

We made it to the moon first because of two space tragedies, one American, one Soviet, and the fact that the Soviet moon booster was a plumber’s nightmare which shook apart every time a launch was attempted.

Then a funny thing happened after the first two lunar landings. America lost its will to live on the moon. The last three missions were cancelled, the Saturn V’s mounted as museum pieces and we got interested in low Earth orbit once more with the space shuttle. We’ve stuck to that vehicle, occasionally hitching rides with our partners (the Russians!). The space shuttle is a 1977 space vehicle, regularly updated, but also ready to be retired.

In case you missed it, on April 24, 1970, the Chinese orbited their first satellite, which chirped out the first stanza of the national anthem, “The East is Red.” Then in 2003 (again, in October), the People’s Republic orbited its first Taikonaut, announcing at the close of the mission that the PRC is bound for the moon. The Shenzhou spacecraft is a direct copy of the Soviet Soyuz design, which continues to shuttle Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

If history has taught us anything about space travel, it isn’t merely that April and October are months to watch. We need to be aware that space technology, and the desire to use it, emanates from many nations around this planet, and those countries which don’t stay on the cutting edge of that effort, fall behind.

America is at a technological crossroads we have put in our own path. The space shuttle has been a great test bed for electronics, duration in space, and it has served usefully as a truck for delivery of space probes like Galileo and the fantastic eye in deep space of the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA has been charged with replacing the shuttle and journeying back into deep space. Once we get back to the moon, we stay there. Many eyes are turned towards Mars, and Orion, a new vehicle, once tested and wrung out in lunar transit, should be capable of leading flights toward the red planet.

It cost the United States $30 billion dollars to start from Von Braun’s Explorer satellite until the close of Apollo 17, and since the “golden age of space flight” we have reached a rapprochement with China.

These days, I kind of like looking up at the moon at night, very proud to know who has walked in that dust and left six tiny bases preserved in the lunar vacuum. I am not suggesting the moon to be U.S. property (“We came in peace, for all mankind”) as the Russians recently have done to the Arctic Ocean seabed. I am saying that history repeats itself when we allow ourselves to be lulled into a pleasant slumber of complacency, such as the Eisenhower administration found itself in 1957. Our former rivals, the Chinese, have squarely focused their sites on occupying the moon, and utilizing exported technology from Russia and the United States, is putting the moon within their reach.

The chief lesson of Sputnik for the United States is to listen for the footsteps behind us, lest they overtake us. While those footsteps may be treading on soft padded slippers, they are most certainly present and moving progressively forward.

Richard Glueck of Winterport is a science teacher at Orono Middle School.