Space Exploration

The book I read to research this post was Space Exploration for Dummies by Shana  Priwer et al which is an excellent book & I bought it from kindle. The russians & the americans harnessed the know how of the germans who were behind the V2 for their space programs. Until the russians sent sputnik up the americans had no space program & the americans were playing catch up until they put a man on the moon. One of the most important people in the american space program was Wernher Von Braun & I did a post on him a while back. To many people putting a man on the moon was mankinds greatest achievement. Most people know about the 2 mishaps involving the space shuttles often especially in the cold war the russian fatalities were hushed up. Most of the fatalities have been either during lift off or returning, one exception being Soyuz 11 whose hatch malfunctioned in deep space & blew off. Apparently the crew were dead within 40 seconds. As a result of that the crews had to wear pressurized suits in the space craft. Soyuz 1 crashed when there was a problem with the main parachute on re entry & when the reserve chute was used it became tangled with the main chute. When it hit the ground the impact was at over 90 mph.

The russian space station Salyut 3 had a particle cannon which apparently destroyed a test satellite when tested. Since glasnost the russians & americans have collaborated quite a lot ie on the mir space station. The european space agency uses spacelab not to be confused with the similiar sounding skylab used by the americans in the 70's. Cassini which explored several planets used more than half its onboard fuel in slowing down & going into orbit around saturn such was the huge gravitational pull of the planet. There was a lot of controversy as well because onboard was over 70 pounds of plutonium.