A little bit of engineering (562404), страница 23

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The Patriot is a missile designed to destroy smaller ballistic missiles. Technology of this type continues to be used as the basis of research to counter ICBMs as well as short-range ballistic missiles, like the Scud missile used by Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The United States also indirectly defends against some missiles through the antisubmarine warfare combination of radar, aircraft, missiles, attack submarines and surface ships that track Russian ballistic missile submarines. While none of these weapons have the capability to intercept an enemy missile once launched, they can track and destroy the submarine itself.

With the end of the Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States, the threat of an all-out nuclear attack has diminished. It is unlikely that Russia would undertake a massive first strike against the United States, and both countries have significantly reduced their nuclear forces. Still, the threat of nuclear war and the spread of nuclear weapons remains, evidenced by the nuclear tests of India and Pakistan in 1998. Five other nations admit to having nuclear weapons (their estimated quantity is indicated in parentheses): China (434), France (482), Russia (13,200), the United Kingdom (200) and the United States (15,500). Israel is known to have the capability to deploy nuclear weapons, and still other countries, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea, are known to have nuclear weapons programs. See also Arms Control, International, Air Warfare.

Space Exploration

Space Exploration, quest to use space travel to discover the nature of the universe beyond Earth. Since ancient times, people have dreamed of leaving their home planet and exploring other worlds. In the later half of the 20th century, that dream became reality. The space age began with the launch of the first artificial satellites in 1957. A human first went into space in 1961. Since then, astronauts and cosmonauts have ventured into space for ever greater lengths of time, even living aboard orbiting space stations for months on end. Two dozen people have circled the Moon or walked on its surface. At the same time, robotic explorers have journeyed where humans could not go, visiting all but one of the solar system’s major worlds. Unpiloted spacecraft have also visited a host of minor bodies such as moons, comets, and asteroids. These explorations have sparked the advance of new technologies, from rockets to communications equipment to computers. Spacecraft studies have yielded a bounty of scientific discoveries about the solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy, and the universe. And they have given humanity a new perspective on Earth and its neighbors in space.

The first challenge of space exploration was developing rockets powerful enough and reliable enough to boost a satellite into orbit. These boosters needed more than brute force, however; they also needed guidance systems to steer them on the proper flight paths to reach their desired orbits. The next challenge was building the satellites themselves. The satellites needed electronic components that were lightweight, yet durable enough to withstand the acceleration and vibration of launch. Creating these components required the world’s aerospace engineering facilities to adopt new standards of reliability in manufacturing and testing. On Earth, engineers also had to build tracking stations to maintain radio communications with these artificial “moons” as they circled the planet.

Beginning in the early 1960s, humans launched probes to explore other planets. The distances traveled by these robotic space travelers required travel times measured in months or years. These spacecraft had to be especially reliable to continue functioning for a decade or more. They also had to withstand such hazards as the radiation belts surrounding Jupiter, particles orbiting in the rings of Saturn, and greater extremes in temperature than are faced by spacecraft in the vicinity of Earth. Despite their great scientific returns, these missions often came with high price tags. Today the world’s space agencies, such as the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), strive to conduct robotic missions more cheaply and efficiently.

It was inevitable that humans would follow their unpiloted creations into space. Piloted spaceflight introduced a whole new set of difficulties, many of them concerned with keeping people alive in the hostile environment of space. In addition to the vacuum of space, which requires any piloted spacecraft to carry its own atmosphere, there are other deadly hazards: solar and cosmic radiation, micrometeorites (small bits of rock and dust) that might puncture a spacecraft hull or an astronaut’s pressure suit, and extremes of temperature ranging from frigid darkness to broiling sunlight. It was not enough simply to keep people alive in space—astronauts needed to have a means of accomplishing useful work while they were there. It was necessary to develop tools and techniques for space navigation, and for conducting scientific observations and experiments. Astronauts would have to be protected when they ventured outside the safety of their pressurized spacecraft to work in the vacuum. Missions and hardware would have to be carefully designed to help ensure the safety of space crews in any foreseeable emergency, from liftoff to landing.

The challenges of conducting piloted spaceflights were great enough for missions that orbited Earth. They became even more daunting for the Apollo missions, which sent astronauts to the Moon. The achievement of sending astronauts to the lunar surface and back represents a summit of human spaceflight.

After the Apollo program, the emphasis in piloted missions shifted to long-duration spaceflight, as pioneered aboard Soviet and U.S. space stations. The development of reusable spacecraft became another goal, giving rise to the U.S. space shuttle fleet. Today, efforts focus on keeping people healthy during space missions lasting a year or more—the duration needed to reach nearby planets—and in lowering the cost of sending satellites into orbit.

The desire to explore the heavens is probably as old as humankind, but in the strictest sense, the history of space exploration begins very recently, with the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, which the Soviets sent into orbit in 1957. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space just a few years later, in 1961. The decades from the 1950s to the 1990s have been full of new “firsts,” new records, and advances in technology.

Although artificial satellites and piloted spacecraft are achievements of the later 20th century, the technology and principles of space travel stretch back hundreds of years, to the invention of rockets in the 11th century and the formulation of the laws of motion in the 17th century. The power of rockets to lift objects into space is described by a law of motion that was formulated by English scientist Sir Isaac Newton in the 1680s. Newton’s third law of motion states that every action causes an equal and opposite reaction. As predicted by Newton’s law, the rearward rush of gases expelled by the rocket’s engine causes the rocket to be propelled forward. It took nine centuries from the invention of rockets and almost three centuries from the formulation of Newton’s third law for humans to send an object into space. In space, the motions of satellites and interplanetary spacecraft are described by the laws of motion formulated by German astronomer Johannes Kepler, also in the 17th century. For example, one of Kepler’s laws states that the closer a satellite is to Earth, the faster it orbits.

Rockets made their first recorded appearance as weapons in 12th-century China, but they probably originated in the 11th century. Fueled by gunpowder, they were launched against enemy troops. In the centuries that followed, these solid-fuel rockets became part of the arsenals of Europe. In 1814, during an attack on New Orleans, Louisiana, the British fired rockets—with little effect—at American troops.

In Russia, nearly a century later, a lone schoolteacher named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky envisioned how to use rockets to voyage into space. In a series of detailed treatises, including “The Exploration of Cosmic Space With Reactive Devices” (1903), Tsiolkovsky explained how a multi-stage, liquid-fuel rocket could propel humans to the Moon.

Tsiolkovsky did not have the means to build real liquid-fuel rockets. Robert Goddard, a physics professor in Worcester, Massachusetts, took up that effort. In 1926 he succeeded in building and launching the world’s first liquid-fuel rocket, which soared briefly above a field near his home. Beginning in 1940, after moving to Roswell, New Mexico, Goddard built a series of larger liquid-fuel rockets that flew as high as 90 m (300 ft). Meanwhile, beginning in 1936 at the California Institute of Technology, other experimenters made advances in solid-fuel rockets. During World War II (1939-1945), engineers developed solid-fuel rockets that could be attached to an airplane to provide a boost during takeoff.

The greatest strides in rocketry during the first half of the 20th century occurred in Germany. There, mathematician and physicist Hermann Oberth and architect Walter Hohmann theorized about rocketry and interplanetary travel in the 1920s. During World War II, Nazi Germany undertook the first large-scale rocket development program, headed by a young engineer named Wernher Von Braun. Von Braun’s team created the V-2, a rocket that burned an alcohol-water mixture with liquid oxygen to produce 250,000 newtons (56,000 lb) of thrust. The Germans launched thousands of V-2s carrying explosives against targets in Britain and The Netherlands. While they did not prove to be an effective weapon, V-2s did become the first human-made objects to reach altitudes above 80 km (50 mi)—the height at which outer space is considered to begin—before falling back to Earth. The V-2 inaugurated the era of modern rocketry.

During the years following World War II, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) engaged in efforts to construct intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of traveling thousands of miles armed with a nuclear warhead. In August 1957 Soviet engineers, led by rocket pioneer Sergei Korolyev, were the first to succeed with the launch of their R-7 rocket, which stood almost 30 m (100 ft) tall and produced 3.8 million newtons (880,000 lb) of thrust at liftoff. Although its primary purpose was for use as a weapon, Korolyev and his team adapted the R-7 into a satellite launcher. On October 4, 1957, they launched the world’s first artificial satellite, called Sputnik (“fellow traveler”). Although it was only a simple 58-cm (23-in) aluminum sphere containing a pair of radio transmitters, Sputnik’s successful orbits around Earth marked a huge step in technology and ushered in the space age. On November 3, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik 2, which weighed 508 kg (1,121 lb) and contained the first space traveler—a dog named Laika, which survived for several days aboard Sputnik 2. Due to rising temperatures within the satellite, Laika died from heat exhaustion before her air supply ran out.

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