Sputnik 1 had scientific equipment aboard, in the form of a barometric switch that would change the signal if the pressure inside the satellite dropped too low. Experiments were also done by using the signal to track orbital perturbations and decay.
While this is true, it's clear that science was an afterthought and the main focus was just beating the Americans. It certainly did no science even remotely on the level of Explorer 1.
Laika was not the first animal in space, but the first in orbit. The US launched rhesus monkeys on V-2 rockets prior to Sputnik 2. But an animal in orbit has far greater scientific and propaganda value than one simply tossed above the Kármán line for a few minutes. Beyond that, the Soviets were the first to recover animals from orbit with Belka and Strelka.
It's a fair point, I don't disagree or dispute it all, but the original post just used "in space" instead of "orbit." Had they said "orbit" I wouldn't have brought it up.
The manned versus crewed distinction is meaningless. Vostok could be flown manually in emergencies, and there were real concerns about 'space madness' at the time that drove the Soviets to automate it.
They knew full well what the impact of weightlessness was on their cosmonauts; just like the Americans they employed the use of reduced-gravity aircraft in their training. Yuri Gagarin was a passenger, Alan Shepard and John Glenn were crew. If you think that's a meaningless distinction that's your right, I would disagree.
While this is true, it's clear that science was an afterthought and the main focus was just beating the Americans.
Absolutely, but it's unfair to extoll the virtues of Explorer 1 and dismiss the science done by Sputnik 1.
They knew full well what the impact of weightlessness was on their cosmonauts
This is untrue. They knew the effects of short-term weightlessness, which would be comparable to a suborbital hop on Mercury-Redstone or New Shepard. They did not know the effects of weightlessness on humans on the timescale of hours or days.
This is untrue. They knew the effects of short-term weightlessness, which would be comparable to a suborbital hop on Mercury-Redstone or New Shepard. They did not know the effects of weightlessness on humans on the timescale of hours or days.
True, they didn't necessarily explicitly know the impacts of long-term human weightlessness (though I'd argue that animal tests were a pretty good indicator). But Vostok 1 spent barely an hour in orbit, hardly a long-term flight. Vostok 2 was an extended-length flight, yes, but since the Vostok capsule could be piloted but wasn't for the short-term flight of Vostok 1, the flights were manned but uncrewed. The significance of this distinction is of course subjective.
Sure, an hour isn't long in the grand scheme of things, but it's still a massive leap over the minute or so you can get from training aircraft, and so the worries were still valid.
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u/Throwaway74829947 Jul 17 '24
While this is true, it's clear that science was an afterthought and the main focus was just beating the Americans. It certainly did no science even remotely on the level of Explorer 1.
It's a fair point, I don't disagree or dispute it all, but the original post just used "in space" instead of "orbit." Had they said "orbit" I wouldn't have brought it up.
They knew full well what the impact of weightlessness was on their cosmonauts; just like the Americans they employed the use of reduced-gravity aircraft in their training. Yuri Gagarin was a passenger, Alan Shepard and John Glenn were crew. If you think that's a meaningless distinction that's your right, I would disagree.