[HN Gopher] A Drunk Driver Led to the Birth of Russia's Sputnik 1
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       A Drunk Driver Led to the Birth of Russia's Sputnik 1
        
       Author : samclemens
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2022-10-04 00:37 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
        
       | gregschlom wrote:
       | Interesting story, but the drunk driver angle is irrelevant and
       | only there for clickbait purposes. During the development of the
       | project, a drunk driver crashed while delivering an early
       | prototype of Sputnik that was not going to fly anyway because it
       | was too heavy and complicated. Ok, the drunk driver "led" to the
       | birth of Sputnik.
        
         | trollerator23 wrote:
         | Thank you!
        
         | wdvwdvw wrote:
         | I was thinking the same thing.
         | 
         | If you're into this stuff I can highly recommend this book.
         | Tons of fun anecdotes.
         | 
         | https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/348190.Red_Moon_Risin...
        
           | trollerator23 wrote:
           | Or they can go to the source material for this clickbait
           | article and read Rockets and People, by Chertok.
        
         | netsharc wrote:
         | The paragraphs relevant to the title:
         | 
         | > But work on 'Object D' had been repeatedly delayed; as a
         | result, the launch date had now slipped to April 1958. Fearing
         | the Americans would soon launch again and steal the USSR's
         | glory, Korolev decided to push his luck: he ordered Object D,
         | ready or not, delivered to his launch site immediately.
         | 
         | > That's where our driver comes in. The Ministry of Defence
         | Industry's facility, glad to be rid of the bulky and
         | troublesome package, assigned a truck driver to deliver it to
         | the airport. Rocket engineer Boris Chertok recalls the drunken
         | man driving "like a maniac", unaware of the precision
         | instruments aboard, and finally crashing into a tree.
         | 
         | > When Korolev finally laid his eyes on the bulky satellite, he
         | was incandescent with rage. It was too big, too complicated
         | and, now, too damaged. One of his engineers, Mikhail
         | Tikhonravov, suggested they instead fly a radio beacon: a
         | simpler, smaller package with just antennas and a transmitter,
         | weighing much less. Then they could beat the Americans.
         | 
         | Who knows, maybe they were stuck in institutional thinking. The
         | deliverable was stupid and not workable, but no one dared to
         | say "We need to scrap this and start from the beginning.". Only
         | when it was totally wrecked did they have a chance to do so.
        
       | dmitrygr wrote:
       | > his American counterpart, Wernher von Braun
       | 
       | What now? Pretty sure he was German, given the choice of a trial
       | or working for the American space program.
        
         | anamexis wrote:
         | As part of that deal, he became an American citizen in April
         | 1955.
         | 
         | Regardless, von Braun was certainly Korolev's counterpart in
         | the American space program.
        
           | juujian wrote:
           | Yup, and he suddenly wasn't a nazi anymore, too, somehow.
        
             | vanattab wrote:
             | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
             | 
             | Song about Von Brun
        
       | GuB-42 wrote:
       | Somewhat related: one of my favorite anecdotes is that early
       | V2-style rocket used a water/ethanol mix as fuel. Yep, these
       | rockets ran on vodka, and as some point they had to put an
       | additive to deter the crew from drinking the fuel.
        
       | trollerator23 wrote:
       | My god this is dumb. Seriously? Who believes this clickbait bs?
        
       | avmich wrote:
       | Early space exploration is very tightly coupled with politics.
       | Given the USA capabilities, it can be argued that the first
       | satellite being Soviet was a result of political bureaucracy of
       | USA. They explicitly denied von Braun's request to fly Jupiter
       | rocket - which were in relatively good shape - to reach an orbit.
       | On the other hand, subsequent first man in space and first man on
       | the Moon both shown strengths of respective countries'
       | technology. Even after 1975 Apollo-Soyuz flight healthy
       | competition remained - it is colorfully demonstrated in the
       | series "For All Mankind", which just had its 3rd season.
       | 
       | Now, 65 years later, we're getting into commercial space space.
       | Politics get a bit less important, but there's still a long way
       | to go.
        
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       (page generated 2022-10-06 23:01 UTC)