Today, space exploration is hurtling forward at maybe a little less than light-speed. A dozen men have been on the moon. There exists space probes beyond our solar system and dozens of rovers on other planets. There are asteroid samples on their way back to Earth. High-power telescopes are analyzing thousands of planets for habitability and there are plans for landing on Mars in just a few decades. The vast horizons laid out in front of humanity are both exhilarating and terrifying. Everything is to be considered: ethics, technicalities, and timelines, but only a sliver of history ago, it wasn’t even a possibility.
The atmosphere used to be the limit. Gravity had humans penned on Earth like a paddock of advanced sheep. But on October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik I, into space. It was, arguably, a greater leap for humankind than landing a man on the moon and an unforgettable historical milestone. But it was a century earlier that the dreams of space first began and the idea of Sputnik I began to emerge.
A common view of Sputnik I is that it was a deliberate political move by the Soviet government to one-up America. While Sputnik I certainly did succeed in the tense political climate and the world of the Cold War, its development and roots were entrenched in much less cynical desires than scientific superiority. Culturally, Russia is a country steeped in cosmism, which focused and enthused on space and space exploration. Amateur spaceflight groups had long thrived and been in passionate correspondence with each other.
In the mid-1800s, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian school teacher, was the first to prove the mathematical possibility of spaceflight. In the 1920s, anarchist-biocosmists believed that space had to be explored so that when the dead rose back to life, they would have somewhere to live. It was then that Friedrich Zander founded and headed the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD), which would eventually design Sputnik. GIRD, despite the government’s retroactive attempts to claim it as their own, was so neglected and out of the Soviet focus that the men involved had to scavenge for desperately-needed silver from thimbles and crucifixes.
Later, the infamous Purges sent progress to a halt, as Sergei Korolev, lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer, was placed in a Siberian Gulag. There were also internal rifts over what kind of fuel to use and other petty disagreements, but the space program was revived after World War II and the new advancements made in rocketry, specifically inspired by the design of the German V-2 rocket. After World War II, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were high. In order to receive funding, Soviet engineers argued that launching Sputnik I would be politically influential and necessary to beat the Americans in the “Space Race.” They succeeded. The government sponsored the development and Sputnik I was launched.
Still, Nikita Khruschev, who was party leader at the time, had no idea of the implications of Sputnik I’s launch. He was completely baffled by the media’s following uproar and the global response to this feat. Not even the media could know the true influence of Sputnik I. Today, there are 2,271 satellites orbiting Earth. Without them, a lot of facets of modern-day life would come screeching to a halt. All of them are descendants of Sputnik I, our first fellow traveler. Sputnik I was our first companion, hovering above us like a benevolent protector or a dark omen of Soviet superiority. As technology grows ever more powerful, satellites can become more helpful or dangerous. Sputnik I was Earth’s first foray out of its bounds and a hallmark of a new age; an age in which we were not confined to the atmosphere. We have always looked up, but in October of 1957, we began to step out.