60 Years Since Sputnik

The one piece of Soviet space tech that didn't look like a horrendous piece of junk. The Communist mind doesn't have a gift for design. That defect shows up in most Russian art and architecture with the exception of their propaganda posters but that skill they learned from the Nazis. Sputnik I was the rare exception. It looked cool. It beeped all around the earth and freaked out the Americans to the point that they pushed their program forward so that they could get anything "quick and dirty" into space to keep up with the Soviet threat from the skies. The Space Race had begun.

 

 

Called PS-1, or the “Simple Satellite,” the new design consisted of a metal sphere holding three batteries and a radio transmitter, plus four antennas. All it did was transmit “bleeps” at two different radio frequencies. It was made so quickly that there were no formal drawings of the design. The technicians building it worked from sketches and verbal instructions, with the engineers more or less making things up as they went along.

Korolev was acutely aware of the propaganda value of having a satellite in orbit and wanted his satellite to be as visible as possible when it circled the globe. The metal sphere was polished to a bright, shining silver. Then, to maximize visibility, reflective prisms were added to the outside of the final stage of the R-7 rocket, as it would also go into orbit.

http://listverse.com/2017/10/05/10-fascinating-60th-anniversary-facts-about-sputnik-1/