Comments on: 50 years after Explorer 1

By: Tom Marking

Tom Marking — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:13:59 +0000

“Gagarin - first man in orbit??? Hmmm read those….”

Interesting article. It does verify something I had read a long time ago, which was that Gagarin was trained as a parachutist. During re-entry at some point he popped open the hatch of his Voshkod capsule and jumped into the wild blue yonder. Not sure at what altitude this took place at or whether he was still wearing his space suit, but it’s definitely a strange re-entry scenario. I don’t know if they were afraid of the final impact speed killing the cosmonaut or what, but this seems to be the re-entry mode for the first few Soviet manned flights. They mentioned this in the article about Ilyushin so it lends credibility to it.

By: Tom Marking

Tom Marking — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:06:28 +0000

I’m curious about one thing concerning the Explorer I launch. If the discovery of the Van Allan radiation belts came as a big surprise then how did physicists explain the aurora borealis prior to 1958? Did they think it was a purely high altitude meteorological phenomenon and not related to anything happening in outer space?

By: penny

penny — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 12:05:57 +0000

In fact, I was ok. The effect is called
NUCLEAR Inverse Compton Scattering, and Bremstralung is an example of it.

Terminology-yechh!

Formulas, math, principles!

Penny

By: penny

penny — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:16:59 +0000

A correction:
It seems that Bremstrallung is used to denote x-rays from electrons scattering near a nucleus, and the inverse
Compton effect is used to denote X-rays from electrons scattering off a photon. The photon gains energy.
So, I was wrong in my terminology.

I apologise. In my (weak) defense, they are basically similar and are just terms in the feynman diagram expansion for simple scattering.

Penny

By: penny

penny — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:03:50 +0000

I suspect that Von Braun got his idea on building a space station back in the forties
before transistor circuits and it became an obsession.

It was an old science fiction trope–dating back to “The Brick Moon” by Nathan Hale!!
( which you can find on the net). There, of course, there was no electronics and humans were needed. They were to send messages via heliostat.

Penny

By: penny

penny — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:00:39 +0000

Jack,
I missed your post about the Nova episode or my post could have been shorter!
Penny

One poster suggested that we could have had a space station had we followed VON Braun–but why would that have been important?
The main reason for a space station was to do what unmanned satellites do–before we had transistor circuits. Someone had to be up there to change the tubes!!
Space stations are scientifically worthless.
Our current one is a huge boondoggle–as the National Academy of Science has assured us again and again.

And, what exactly is the advantage of building a space ship piece by piece up in space at the space station? You still have to drag the parts up there–and the fuel too.
One could do that –if one wishes too–with the shuttle.

By: penny

penny — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:50:19 +0000

Alex,
Speaking of German terms, do you recall
Bremenschloss? This was a term used in
“Rockets, Missiles and Space Travel” by Ley and Von Braun, which I owned as a child.
Bremstrallung is very pretty, but my favorite is Zitterbewegnung, which you probably also know.
Die Deutsche Sprache sind viel schone fur Naturalwissenshaft.
Penny