Richard Zurawski

One of the most popular topics that Andrew and I do on the Friday Science Files is space travel. It seems to resonate with just about everyone and every time we cover the topic we get a fabulous response.

Space travel and getting into orbit or to the moon or to the next planet and even the next star seems to touch the adventurer in us all. And as our technology grows we find that what was once the purview of science fiction and fantasy is in fact, reality.

Our efforts to conquer space is about our technology and how the pursuit of outer space in turn modifies and molds our society and even defines it. We can get a perspective of its dramatic effects by looking at the the changes that have been wrought on us by our pursuit of all things space. The past fifty years has been very instructive and enlightning.

Why is it that the United States was able to become the world’s preeminent country and pretty much the defacto global leader? It all has to do with a quirk of conquest and disadvantage turned into advantage. And all this is tied to the space race.

At the end of the Second World War Germany was an undisputed leader in rocket technology. The the best and brightest rocket scientists were German. As fate would have it, as the Soviets swept through the east towards Berlin it scooped up all the scientists it could, realizing that its future security lay in its ability to pilfer their discoveries. The US in turn got the leftovers.

The Soviets with their new found cache of knowledge in rocketry began to close the technological gap with the West with frightening rapidity. While the United States and the West languished in rocket science, the Soviets, with their captive German technology jumped into space. Fifty years ago the tiny bleep of Sputnik shocked the United States out of its complacency. If the Soviets were able to send a satellite into orbit they could also send nuclear tipped intercontinental rockets to the United States at hypersonic speeds and far outstrip the nuclear B-52s.

Because the US had an inferior rocket program, it was hopelessly outclassed in the ability to muscle payloads into orbit. It was forced to miniaturize. The Soviets had no such constraints. Its brute force ability meant it didn’t need to make small satellites. It could send huge payloads into orbit. A quick comparison between the total tonnage lifted into space tells a story. The USSR was on average sending satellites that were almost ten times as massive. It appeared that the US was outclassed by the once backward Soviets.

But, because the US was forced to miniaturize, in its never ending quest to downsize payloads, it developed transistors, then integrated circuits, then nano technology. In fact the whole computer revolution happened precisely because of the disadvantage. The USSR’s advantage became its Achille’s Heel. Its brute force meant its computer technology stagnated and stultified. Soon the average US home computer of the mid eighties has more processing power than Soviet mainframes. It was not enough to have massive rockets. Computers to model, modify, project,plan and virtually test gave the US a technological lead that has defined the past fifty years. Cell phones, ipods, fuel efficient transportation, nano technology, medicine have all benefited from a strange quirk of conquest. Imagine what Stalin would have done to the world if he had our modern technology.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.