From Kazakhstan Into Space

On the subject of Kazakhstan, let's remember that the first human in space left from there. America ultimately reached the moon with astronauts, and it is only Americans that have been on the moon. But the Soviet Union put the first satellite in orbit, Sputnik, and then the first astronaut in orbit. His name was Yuri Gagarin. Both left from Kazakhstan, and both had long-term effects on the world.

THE SPUTNIK VECTOR 

There seems to me to have been a change of direction in America's attitude toward learning in the Sixties that I would like to term "The Sputnik Vector". This explains much about the U.S. and the world today. In 1957, the Soviet satellite Sputnik was launched as the first satellite to orbit the earth. America's reaction to it created the Sputnik Vector.

According to news reports, the American rocket community and those of other western countries did not really consider Sputnik as a big deal. It was an aluminum sphere about the size of a basketball with a radio transmitter emitting beeps as it orbited the earth. Amateur radio operators across the world tuned in to the beeps. But the media and the public perceived that Sputnik represented a falling behind in technical capability.

The result was a new emphasis in American learning on science and technology. A major step in the new emphasis on science and technology was the 1964 New York World's Fair. The Unisphere was the symbol of the World's Fair and is still there. It has the orbital paths of satellites around the earth. Image from Google Street View.

The most obvious result was the Apollo missions to the moon and the robot spacecraft missions to explore the planets. I actually see the most important result of space exploration not as the moon landings but as the Hubble Space Telescope, and now the James Webb Telescope. Back on earth, the media in the sixties manifested the Sputnik Vector with popular television shows like Lost in Space and Star Trek.

The Sputnik Vector ultimately returned to earth in the form of the internet. It became more about technology than science. The Sputnik Vector continued to produce terrestrial fruit with personal computers, global positioning systems, cell phones (just like on Star Trek) and satellite and cable TV.

But the Sputnik Vector did not come without a price. It came at the expense of history, geography and foreign languages in education. We had redistributed the learning pie in the direction of technology without increasing the pie. So, some things had to become comparatively more neglected.

The Vietnam War was very much affected by the Sputnik Vector. There was more emphasis on high-tech warfare than there was on understanding the people we were fighting with and against. The public reaction to the Communist Tet Offensive in early 1968 mirrored the reaction to Sputnik. The offensive was not really a military success but the public perceived it as a testament to the ineffectuality of the war effort.

I was caught up in the Sputnik Vector myself. I landed in the U.S. as an eight year old in the autumn of 1968. The space program was close to putting a man on the moon and I could not get enough of reading about space. The result is today the blog you are reading. But yet, I also consider it vital to understand the world and that is the reason for the weekly visits on this blog.

The Sputnik Vector created one America at the expense of another. In a way, the 9/11 attack was a clash between the two. If the Sputnik Vector had never come about and the non-Sputnik America had happened, we would have fewer technical capabilities than we do today and you may not be reading this blog now. But we would understand the world better and 9/11 may not have happened.

THE STORY OF YURI GAGARIN 

Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet cosmonaut and the first man in space. He never made another space flight and was later killed in a military plane crash. But Yuri Gagarin has a far-reaching story that, as I see it, really changed the world.

With a charming smile Yuri Gagarin was popular wherever he went. At the height of the Cold War he was really the Soviet Union's most effective weapon, and visited countries around the world.

He visited my native England. The initial plan was a visit to London but he accepted an invitation to Manchester, and charmed people wherever he went. The Queen and prime minister had originally not intended to meet him but, taken by surprise by his popularity, arranged a meeting.

John F. Kennedy was clearly alarmed by his popularity and he was barred from entering the United States. Yuri Gagarin spoke at the United Nations but he was taken there from the airport by helicopter so, not having gone through customs, he technically didn't enter the U.S.

America ended up landing the first astronaut on the moon. How much of a coincidence is it that Neil Armstrong bore a striking resemblance to Yuri Gagarin? The U.S. was well aware of Gagarin's popularity and was clearly trying to create it's own version of him in Neil Armstrong although Gagarin, by the time of Armstrong landing on the moon, had been killed in the plane crash.

After we had landed in the U.S., but before the astronauts landed on the moon, I remember my mother and father telling me about a man who had been in space and had visited our native England. Had I not been told that I might not have picked up a children's book titled "Space" in the 60th Street School library. This is what began my interest in science and without it I might not be writing this blog. 

More than twenty years after Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight times were changing. Mikhail Gorbachev took leadership of the Soviet Union in 1985. He began a "charm offensive", as well as extensive internal reforms.

Gorbachev's charm offensive took the world by surprise. It was clearly well-planned. I am sure that the earlier, highly successful, charm offensive of Yuri Gagarin, that was clearly feared by John F. Kennedy, was the model for Gorbachev's charm offensive. 

Gorbachev made the world a better place. I consider him as the world's most important person of the second half of the Twentieth Century. But since Gorbachev's policy abroad was modeled on Yuri Gagarin that means he changed the world in ways that go far beyond being the first man in space.

On 9 / 11 four passenger aircraft were hijacked and three were flown into buildings. On the fourth aircraft the passengers rallied and stormed the cockpit of the plane, overwhelming the terrorists. All were killed as the plane crashed into a field, but their actions saved whatever their target was, likely the U.S. Capitol.

As they stormed the cockpit the rallying cry of the heroic passengers was "Let's Roll". What I have never seen written about 9 / 11 is that "Let's Roll" was what Yuri Gagarin had said as his spacecraft was being launched.