NASA History Office, in cooperation with the National Air and Space Museum

of the Smithsonian Institution, the Space Policy Institute of George
Washington University, and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian
Studies of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, is pleased
to announce the program and to invite registration for a symposium,
"Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite." This
symposium will be held at the S. Dillon Ripley Center Auditorium,
Smithsonian Institution, on September 30-October 1, 1997.  The brochure for
this symposium is now available on the World Wide Web at URL:

        http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/sputconf.htm

We will also be mailing copies of this brochure within a week to those on
our mailing list.  As the agenda changes, and we all know it will change if
only a little, we will add more details and updates to the Web site.  If
you have any questions or concerns please contact the NASA History Office.

Roger D. Launius, Ph.D
NASA Chief Historian
NASA History Office
Code ZH
Washington, DC, 20546
Voice 202-358-0383
Fax 202-358-2866
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/history.html

In November 1996, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies hosted two space history sessions organized by William Barry. Soviet space history from Sputnik to the N1 was addressed in 5 papers:

• The Missile Designers and Soviet Piloted Spaceflight Policy, William Barry (USAF Academy)
• The Road to Object-D: Early Satellite Studies in the Soviet Union 1947-1957, Asif Siddiqi (Univ. Massachusetts)
• Women in the Early Soviet Human Spaceflight Program, Debra Facktor (ANSER) & Valentine Ponomareva (Moscow Inst. of History of natural Sciences and Technology).
• The Political Decisions Behind the Soviet Lunar Program, Peter Gorin
• Echoes of the Space Race: The Soviet N-1 Moon Rocket, Rob Landis (Space Telescope Science Institute)

Barry's paper is a comprehensive study of missile and space design bureau and institutes showing their evolution from the 1950's to 1970's. It shows the governmental controls over industry and the industries internal controls. As the industry expanded more businesses were started to compete with the originals, and the largest split into pieces to do specialized work. One topic of study is the competition of the Korolev and Chelomie design bureau's and discussion of this was of prime interest to most of the participants. Another main topic is the unique circumstance Korolev exploited in the 1950's to advance his personal agenda of advancing spaceflight. The unique combination of his management skill, patronage of the highest political offices, and the militaries weapons requirements all coincided to allow the development of spaceflight and then manned spaceflight in an amazingly short period of time.

 

Siddiqi's paper is a review of known Soviet studies into Earth satellites before the launch of Sputnik. The surprising story is the similarity of US and Soviet studies from almost immediately after World War 2 and into the 1950's. Recently revealed US studies into satellites in the 1940's had counterparts in the USSR. Political and governmental reaction was similar also as support was hard to find for the projects. Over and over proponents pushed their ideas for satellites and their missions just to be ignored by the leadership. Concepts of using satellites for military missions, Earth observations, scientific research, manned flight and other applications were developed in these years. Eventually, Korolev was able to get support in a project for a large complicated satellite only for it to fall behind schedule so that the simple sphere of Sputnik-1 had to be developed to make history.

 

Factor's paper tells the story of a female cosmonaut's struggle to fly in space. In the story, Valentine Ponomareva describes the process of selection, training, politics and work in the cosmonaut corp in the 1960's. Struggles to be one of those selected, to pass training, to pass tests, the personal sacrifice, and competition are all described. The struggle to justify women making spaceflights to the leadership proved to be one of the most elusive. The original female cosmonauts were officially disbanded in 1969, only to see the formation of a new team in 1980. In both cases it is personal and political patronage that made women's flights possible, and even today there appears to be no established system for Russian women to follow to fly into space.

 

Gorin's paper delves deep into the Soviet moon landing program of the 1960's and finds new details of Korolev's plans. Chief among these is Korolev's basic approach to make rockets first for spaceflight and then to optimize them for military use. It is only through making 'dual use' of military contracts to aid in space development that spaceflight could be justified. Korolev's main competitor Chelomie took the opposite approach of making military missiles first and adapting them to spaceflight. The UR series rockets were the result among which the UR-500 Proton still flies today. Gorin shows that Korolev planned to develop and test technology for the N1 rocket on the GR-1 competing for the SS-9 project. The GR-1 was to test the engine for the N1 and develop a restartable upper stage which was precursor to the N1's Block-D. But the effort failed to win approval as the military saw the Yangel R-36 as the better rocket for their needs, forcing Korolev to abandon the GR-1 and embrace 'all-up' testing of the N1 ultimately crippling the moon project.

 

Landis's paper documents the results of the N1 project in historical photos and current museum pieces showing the results of most of the project. Museums preserve the spacecraft of the project to use as teaching tools for todays student engineers. The N1 itself shows up in unexpected places, such as a Block-D tank in a monument near the cosmonaut training center. The remaining N1's remain where they were assembled, at Baykonur and Leninsk, scattered in pieces, from storage shed's to playground equipment.

 

Soviet/Russian space conferences are rare events in the USA and this was the AAASS's first, although a second may be organized in 1997. Periodically, the Society for the History of Technology hosts space sessions, all other events are special and not repeating. In the UK, the British Interplanetary Society hosts annual Soviet Astronautics meetings. In Russia, FPSPACE hosts annual conference/tours for western participants with the next in April 1997 (For information contact jlgreen@clark.net).

Caption: Sergei Khrushchev makes a point about a paper presented at the AAASS conference in Boston in November 1996.

FPSPACE 96

Society for the History of Technology - 1995

 

The World Space Congress was the first joint meeting of the annual IAF (International Astronautical Federation) and COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) meetings in Washington D.C. from August 28 to September 5, 1992. The WSC was big, unbelievably BIG, because there were many groups holding meetings including an International Space Exhibition trade show, the Association of Space Explorers symposium, the Planetary Society's Rover Expo, Space Agency Forum on the ISY, Symposium on Life Sciences, Symposium on Space Technology in Developing Countries, Symposium on SETI, and other private international scientific working group meetings.

The WSC was held in the Washington convention center, and two adjacent hotels. After arrival at the convention center, and check in, everyone was given a packet of invitations and other goodies in a nice nylon carrying case. The case came filled with a 700 page book of Abstracts, a 200 page guide to sessions, a metal paper weight made of a meteorite, material flown on a Space Shuttle and a Soyuz TM flight, a 100 page list of conference attendees who pre-registered, and other odds and ends. Dozens of nations were represented at the conference and several thousand people attended, so it was not at all uncommon to wind up setting next to a Russian or European.

The biggest problem was deciding which of the up to 25 parallel sessions being held each morning and afternoon to attend. This was made more difficult since they were spread out over 2 hotels and the convention center, and IAF meetings were not as precisely scheduled as the COSPAR sponsored events. This, combined with last minute changes in speaker order and cancelled presentations, made attending any specific presentation almost a roll of the dice.

IAF sponsored sessions included Space Station Operations, International Programs, History, Advanced Propulsion, Personal Communications, Lunar and Mars Exploration, Launch and Reentry Systems, Earth Observation, Space Structures, etc... (this is a brief overview of the first few days)

COSPAR sessions were more research oriented and included topics like the Venus and Mars Atmospheres and Lithospheres, small bodies in the solar system, many different types of astronomy, the Origins of Life, Scientific Ballooning, the Solar Corona, Space Plasmas, Closed Loop Life Support Systems, Plant Growth, Life on Mars, Material Sciences, Global Change, Solar Wind and Radiation, Space Debris, etc...

On the second day the industry trade show opened on the convention center upper level. Over 100 companies set up elaborate mockups and models including from Canada's shuttle manipulator arm, to Boeing's SS Freedom Laboratory module, and various satellites. The NASA and ESA booths were the largest, and NASA's was showing a continous flashy media presentation promoting Mars and other SEI missions using several dozen arrayed television sets. The Japanese and Chinese and the big US corporations were well represented also. One could try out a virtual reality EVA around the Columbus space station module and Hermes shuttle, or watch an engineer suiting up in a shuttle EVA suit or try it for yourself, check out samples of nuclear particle bed reactor material, watch a seemingly endless number of videos from French cosmonaut training to the latest in advanced test facilities from Sandia National Labs, or just go around a collect free booklets, posters, pens, and other propaganda.

When not in a lecture, participants spent time shopping at the AIAA's temporary book shop, and looked through about a thousand stacks of the IAF papers being presented at the conference that were for sale, reading the dozens of posted papers which couldn't get scheduled for presentation, talking to each other in the hallways, reading special newsletters printed just for the WSC or some of the dozens of free samples of magazines and news letters, looking at the nice JPL exhibit displaying 3-D Magellan maps and films of Venus, or going on trips to the Intelsat control center, Goddard space center, National Institute of Health, and other locations.

The Russians were represented in force at the WSC including the head of the newly formed Russian Space Agency, the director of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, former director of the Korolev Design Bureau and head of the

1960's manned lunar landing project-Vasili Mishin, the director of the Energia NPO-Yuri Semenov, a hand full of former cosmonauts, and dozens of scientists and engineers presenting everything from rocket engine injector designs to planetary exploration philosophy. The fact that Yuri Semenov missed some of his presentations is testament to the fact that he was too busy wheeling and dealing