OCTOBER
SKY
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T
he day was the 4th of October 1957. Suddenly a huge noise came at 10.29 p.m. from
the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the world’s first operational space launch facility, which is
situated in Southern Kazakhstan, owned by Roscosmos (the Russian State cooperation
for space activities) and Russian aerospace forces. After the Second World War, this was not
another blast of a nuclear bomb. It was the launching sound of the rocket that carried the first
man-made satellite, Sputnik 1 to space.
Until this historical moment, the night sky was still, calm and quiet. But suddenly, the October
sky became active with a tiny shining star moving from west horizon to the east horizon.
What history of science and engineering brought humankind this memorable day? The aim
of this article is to go through that.
Greek stories tell about a man named Archytas who lived in the city of Tarentum, now a part
of southern Italy. He has built some kind of machine called “The flying pigeon”. But the history
is somewhat unclear about that. The well-known facts about the beginning of rocket building
come from Chinese history. After the invention of gunpowder, Chinese built firecrackers to
beautify religious and cultural festivals at night. Later, they used this mechanism in arrows
to be used in wars. They were called Chinese fire arrows. The rocket history began with this
invention.
In 1898, with the article published by Russian,
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the story of modern
rocket began. He came to be known as the
father of modern astronautics. This article
had numerous facts about liquid propellants
that can be used in rockets and mathematical
relationships on exhaust velocities.
In 1919, American Scientist Robert H. Goddard
(1882-1945) began experiments on rockets and
propellants. In the early stages, he used solid
propellants but with the failures in practices,
GAUGE Magazine University of Peradeniya
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