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137-550: Inspired by the Space Race , Fireball XL5 was created by the husband-and-wife team of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and filmed by their production company AP Films (APF) for ITC Entertainment . It was APF's final black-and-white series and the third to be made in what the Andersons dubbed " Supermarionation ": a style of production in which the characters were played by electronic marionettes whose mouth movements were synchronised with

274-608: A ballistic re-entry capsule launched on a derivative Atlas missile , and selecting a group of nine candidate pilots. After NASA's creation, the program was transferred over to the civilian agency's Space Task Group and renamed Project Mercury on November 26, 1958. The Mercury spacecraft was designed by the STG's chief engineer Maxime Faget . NASA selected a new group of astronaut (from the Greek for "star sailor") candidates from Navy , Air Force and Marine test pilots, and narrowed this down to

411-618: A colourised version of the episode "A Day in the Life of a Space General" was released on Blu-ray Disc. In 2021, Network Distributing released the full series on Blu-ray. Space Race The Space Race (Russian: Космическая гонка [kɐsˈmʲitɕɪskəjə ˈɡonkə] ) was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union , to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in

548-761: A US network: NBC , which aired it as parts of its Saturday morning children's block from 1963 to September 1965. In the UK, the series was regularly repeated on the ITV network until 1974, followed by an additional re-run in 1985. In June 2023, the British channel Talking Pictures TV began re-broadcasting the series. Whilst in the United States the series, along with other Anderson Supermarionation series, will be shown on MeTV Toons from July 25th. According to Jim Sangster and Paul Condon, authors of Collins Telly Guide , "the sheer ambition of

685-484: A few minutes later. This "fellow traveler", as the name is translated in English, was a small, beeping ball, less than two feet in diameter and weighing less than 200 pounds. But the celebrations were muted at the launch control center until the down-range far east tracking station at Kamchatka received the first distinctive beep ... beep ... beep sounds from Sputnik 1 ' s radio transmitters, indicating that it

822-471: A follow-up series. One of these, titled Century 21 (the original name of the spaceship), was commissioned and produced as Fireball XL5 . The rejected proposal, Joe 90 , was about a boy called Joe who dreams of carrying out daring space missions as an astronaut codenamed "Joe 90". Unlike Century 21 , this concept had a hybrid format – the fantasy sequences being filmed with puppets while the framing stories used live actors. The only creative element shared by

959-522: A group of seven for the program. Capsule design and astronaut training began immediately, working toward preliminary suborbital flights on the Redstone missile , followed by orbital flights on the Atlas. Each flight series would first start unpiloted, then carry a non-human primate, then finally humans. The Mercury spacecraft's principal designer was Maxime Faget , who started research for human spaceflight during

1096-473: A head adapted from a plastic tumbler . He was the only regular in a Gerry Anderson puppet series to be voiced by Anderson himself, who "spoke" the robot's lines (as well as those of supporting robot characters) through an artificial larynx . As remembered by Anderson in a deleted scene of the documentary Filmed in Supermarionation (2014): ... [I]t was very, very difficult, if not impossible, to produce

1233-601: A micrometeorite gauge and a Geiger-Müller tube . It passed in and out of the Earth-encompassing radiation belt with its 194-by-1,368-nautical-mile (360 by 2,534 km) orbit, therefore saturating the tube's capacity and proving what Dr. James Van Allen , a space scientist at the University of Iowa , had theorized. The belt, named the Van Allen radiation belt , is a doughnut-shaped zone of high-level radiation intensity around

1370-486: A moment that America would be successful". On January 31, 1958, nearly four months after the launch of Sputnik 1 , von Braun and the United States successfully launched its first satellite on a four-stage Juno I rocket derived from the US Army's Redstone missile, at Cape Canaveral. The satellite Explorer 1 was 30.66 pounds (13.91 kg) in mass. The payload of Explorer 1 weighed 18.35 pounds (8.32 kg). It carried

1507-577: A mysterious barrier between the space program and the Soviet populace. The program's nature embodied ambiguous messages concerning its goals, successes, and values. The program itself was so secret that a regular Soviet citizen could never achieve a concrete image of it, but rather a superficial picture of its history, present activities, or future endeavors. Launchings were not announced until they took place. Cosmonaut names were not released until they flew. Mission details were sparse. Outside observers did not know

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1644-780: A national hero of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and a worldwide celebrity. Moscow and other cities in the USSR held mass demonstrations, the scale of which was second only to the World War II Victory Parade of 1945 . April 12 was declared Cosmonautics Day in the USSR, and is celebrated today in Russia as one of the official "Commemorative Dates of Russia." In 2011, it was declared the International Day of Human Space Flight by

1781-606: A second satellite was sent into orbit with augmented cosmic ray instruments. On April 2, 1958, President Eisenhower reacted to the Soviet space lead in launching the first satellite by recommending to the US Congress that a civilian agency be established to direct nonmilitary space activities. Congress, led by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson , responded by passing the National Aeronautics and Space Act , which Eisenhower signed into law on July 29, 1958. This law turned

1918-418: A seven-foot-long (2.1 m) version, which was used for close-up shots, and two smaller ones measuring 24 inches (61 cm) and five inches (13 cm). XL5 ' s rocket sled launch was based on rumoured Soviet plans to fire craft into space on a track ending in a ramp. Although the 1951 film When Worlds Collide had featured a similar concept, Gerry Anderson denied that XL5 ' s launch method

2055-493: A single, 108-minute orbit around the Earth in a craft called Vostok 1 . They dubbed Gagarin the first cosmonaut , roughly translated from Russian and Greek as "sailor of the universe". Gagarin's capsule was flown in automatic mode, since doctors did not know what would happen to a human in the weightlessness of space; but Gagarin was given an envelope containing the code that would unlock manual control in an emergency. Gagarin became

2192-485: A slight overlap. These were mounted in the retrograde section of the adapter module, located just behind the capsule's heat shield. For lunar flights, the Apollo command and service module did not require retrorockets to return the command module to Earth, as the flight path took the module through the atmosphere , using atmospheric drag to reduce velocity. The test flights in Earth orbit required retrograde propulsion, which

2329-615: A spacecraft he named Freedom 7 . Though he did not achieve orbit like Gagarin, he was the first person to exercise manual control over his spacecraft's attitude and retro-rocket firing. After his successful return, Shepard was celebrated as a national hero, honored with parades in Washington, New York and Los Angeles, and received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal from President John F. Kennedy . Retro-rocket A retrorocket (short for retrograde rocket )

2466-428: A spacecraft in orbit is slowed sufficiently, its altitude decreases to the point at which aerodynamic forces begin to rapidly slow the motion of the vehicle, and it returns to the ground. Without retrorockets, spacecraft would remain in orbit until their orbits naturally slow, and reenter the atmosphere at a much later date; in the case of crewed flights, long after life support systems have been expended. Therefore, it

2603-436: A spacecraft to enter an orbit around such a body, when otherwise it would scoot past and off into space again. As pointed out above (in connection with Project Apollo ) the main rocket on a spacecraft can be re-oriented to serve as a retrorocket. The Soyuz capsule uses small rockets for the last phase of landing. New uses for retro-thrust rockets emerged since 2010 for reusable launch systems . After second stage separation,

2740-685: A successor to the R-1, the R-2 with an extended frame and a new engine designed by Glushko, which entered service in November, 1951, with a range of 600 kilometres (370 mi), twice that of the R-1. This was followed in 1951 with the development of the R-5 Pobeda , the Soviet Union's first real strategic missile, with a range of 1,200 km (750 mi) and capable of carrying a 1 megaton (mt) thermonuclear warhead. The R-5 entered service in 1955. Scientific versions of

2877-529: A tabloid article about the " Mercury 13 " group of women wanting to become astronauts, and got the mistaken idea that NASA was actually entertaining this. Five months after her flight, Tereshkova married Vostok 3 cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev , and they had a daughter. The US Air Force had been developing a program to launch the first man in space, named Man in Space Soonest . This program studied several different types of one-man space vehicles, settling on

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3014-418: A transparent, anthropomorphic robot who often exclaims " ON-OUR-WAY-'OME! " as XL5 returns to base. XL5 patrols Sector 25 of charted interstellar space and is one of at least 30 "Fireball XL" vessels (an XL30 is mentioned in the episode "The Firefighters"). The ship has a "gravity activator" for artificial gravity and consists of two detachable sections. A winged nose cone dubbed Fireball Junior houses

3151-508: A unit vacated one of the puppet stages, it was set up for the other unit to start or resume filming on another episode. The concept brochure for Century 21 described Colonel Zodiac and Dr Venus as the "Mr and Miss America " of 2962. Venus' face was modelled on her voice actor, Sylvia Anderson. Character dialogue was recorded at a studio in Borehamwood . Robert the Robot had a Perspex body with

3288-466: Is a rocket engine providing thrust opposing the motion of a vehicle, thereby causing it to decelerate. They have mostly been used in spacecraft , with more limited use in short-runway aircraft landing. New uses are emerging since 2010 for retro-thrust rockets in reusable launch systems . Rockets were fitted to the nose of some models of the DFS 230 , a World War II German Military glider . This enabled

3425-599: Is based at Space City, located on an unnamed island in the South Pacific Ocean . The organisation is headed by Commander Zero, assisted by Lieutenant Ninety. For unspecified reasons, the city's 25-storey, T-shaped control tower is seen to rotate (in one episode ("Dangerous Cargo"), a character (Zoonie the Lazoon) accidentally causes it to turn fast enough for those inside to suffer vertigo ). XL5 ' s deep-space patrols are missions of three months' duration; between missions,

3562-528: Is contested by some historians, whilst space historian Asif A. Siddiqi proposed a more balanced view. The USSR continued to pursue crewed lunar programs to launch and land on the Moon before the US with its N1 rocket but did not succeed, and eventually canceled it to concentrate on Salyut , the first space station program, and the first landings on Venus and on Mars . Meanwhile, the US landed five more Apollo crews on

3699-525: Is critical that spacecraft have extremely reliable retrorockets. Due to the high reliability demanded by de-orbiting retrorockets, Mercury spacecraft used a trio of solid fuel, 1000  lbf (4.5  kN ) thrust retrorockets that fired for 10 seconds each, strapped to the heat shield on the bottom of the spacecraft. One was sufficient to return the spacecraft to Earth if the other two failed. Gemini used four rockets, each 2,500 pounds-force (11 kN), burning for 5.5 seconds in sequence, with

3836-533: Is criticised for not fetching coffee fast enough and later, when she praises Steve's heroism, he replies, 'Thanks, I think you're cute, too.'" O'Keefe also comments that the series "doesn't seem concerned with the morality or the larger social implications of space travel. Just as Dr Venus is constantly written off as a woman, the aliens we meet speak an uncomfortably foreign language and are painted as maniacal terrorists willing to go on suicide missions to destroy Earth [...] There's no nuance, but then, that clearly wasn't

3973-435: Is one of several APF series to feature capable female characters who are weakened by negative gender stereotypes. Peel describes medical expert Dr Venus as being "relegated to secondary chores", calling this an example of "standard Anderson sexism". Writing for Decider.com , Meghan O'Keefe praises Fireball XL5 ' s humour and special effects but criticises the series' "almost incomprehensible level of misogyny [...] Dr Venus

4110-507: The Apollo programme . Patrick Moore was scientific advisor on the production. Fireball XL5 also spawned tie-ins including toys, an MPC playset with rocket ship and figures, model kits, puppets, ray guns, water pistols, comic strips, and annuals. A black-and-white comic strip, drawn by Neville Main, was printed in TV Comic from 1962 to 1964. In January 1965, the strip moved to the newly-launched TV Century 21 comic, where it remained for

4247-422: The ITV network ) on 28 October that year. It was also purchased by NBC in the United States , becoming the only Anderson series to air on an American network. The TV episodes were supplemented by an audio play , comic strips in TV Comic and TV Century 21 , and other tie-ins including books, toys and model kits. The series was regularly repeated on British TV until 1974 and has since been released on DVD in

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4384-542: The Moon , Venus , and Mars , and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and ultimately to the Moon. Public interest in space travel originated in the 1951 publication of a Soviet youth magazine and was promptly picked up by US magazines. The competition began on July 30, 1955, when the United States announced its intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year . Four days later,

4521-521: The National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C., with a paper titled "Satellite Over the Planet", on October 6, 1957. Korolev anticipated that von Braun might launch a Jupiter-C with a satellite payload on or around October 4 or 5, in conjunction with the paper. He hastened the launch, moving it to October 4. The launch vehicle for PS-1 was a modified R-7 – vehicle 8K71PS number M1-PS – without much of

4658-576: The National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It also created a Civilian-Military Liaison Committee, appointed by the President, responsible for coordinating the nation's civilian and military space programs. On October 21, 1959, Eisenhower approved the transfer of the Army's remaining space-related activities to NASA. On July 1, 1960,

4795-590: The RS-82 and RS-132 missiles , which became the basis for the Katyusha multiple rocket launcher , During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's, but Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge from 1936 to 1938 severely damaged its progress. In 1945 the Soviets captured several key Nazi German A-4 ( V-2 ) rocket production facilities, and also gained the services of some German scientists and engineers related to

4932-507: The S-IC and S-II stages off from the rest of the vehicle after their respective shutdowns during the Saturn V's launch to Earth orbit. Meanwhile, the succeeding stage may have posigrade ullage rockets , both to aid separation and ensure good starting of liquid-fuel engines. Retrorockets are also used in landing spacecraft on other astronomical bodies, such as the Moon and Mars , as well as enabling

5069-513: The United Nations . The USSR demonstrated 24-hour launch pad turnaround and launched two piloted spacecraft, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 , in essentially identical orbits, on August 11 and 12, 1962. The two spacecraft came within approximately 6.5 kilometers (3.5 nautical miles) of one another, close enough for radio communication, but then drifted as far apart as 2,850 kilometers (1,540 nautical miles). The Vostok had no maneuvering rockets to keep

5206-544: The ballistic missile -based nuclear arms race between the two nations following World War II and had its peak with the more particular Moon Race to land on the Moon between the US moonshot and Soviet moonshot programs. The technological advantage demonstrated by spaceflight achievement was seen as necessary for national security and became part of the symbolism and ideology of the time. The Space Race brought pioneering launches of artificial satellites , robotic space probes to

5343-649: The hostages in Iran resulted in the construction of two modified Lockheed C-130 Hercules , designated YMC-130H, which featured retro-rockets to allow it to perform extremely short landings. As part of the plan, these aircraft would land in the Shahid Shiroudi Stadium near the US Embassy in Tehran and use the retrorockets to come to a stop. One aircraft was destroyed in a crash during a test flight without any fatalities, and

5480-404: The "hardware" as "pretty retro even by 1962 standards", adding that the overall production "looks more like Rocky Jones, Space Ranger than Thunderbirds ." On the writing, he notes that while earlier episodes are mostly "strange-planet/Earth-under-threat-type stories", there is an increasing focus on character development as the series progresses. Mavis argues that the characters are limited by

5617-401: The 1957–58 International Geophysical Year launches to establish this principle in international law. Eisenhower also feared that he might cause an international incident and be called a "warmonger" if he were to use military missiles as launchers. Therefore, he selected the untried Naval Research Laboratory 's Vanguard rocket , which was a research-only rocket. This meant that von Braun's team

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5754-405: The 1960s. They cloaked the program in a shroud of secrecy; public pronouncements were uniformly positive. As far as the public knew, the Soviet space program had never experienced failure. According to historian James Andrews, "With almost no exceptions, coverage of Soviet space exploits, especially in the case of human space missions, omitted reports of failure or trouble". Dominic Phelan says in

5891-590: The APF productions. (Spooner, however, had submitted unfilmed scripts for Supercar .) Script supervision was performed by series co-creators and voice artists Gerry and Sylvia Anderson , who also wrote the first episode ("Planet 46") and "Space Monster". Filming at APF's studios on the Slough Trading Estate began in February 1962. Three stages were used: two for puppet filming (permanent sets on one stage, one-offs on

6028-574: The Air Force PGM-11 Redstone rocket family at Cape Canaveral. By 1957, a descendant of the Air Force MX-774 received top-priority funding. and evolved into the Atlas-A , the first successful American ICBM. The Atlas made use of a thin stainless steel fuel tank which relied on the internal pressure of the tank for structural integrity, this allowed an overall lighter weight design. WD-40

6165-541: The Army's first operational medium-range ballistic missile, the Redstone rocket , derivatives of which launched both America's first satellite, and the first piloted Mercury space missions. It became the basis for both the Jupiter and Saturn family of rockets . Each of the United States armed services had its own ICBM development program. The Air Force began ICBM research in 1945 with the MX-774 . In 1950, von Braun began testing

6302-537: The Council of Ministers to build a Prosteishy Sputnik (PS-1), or simple satellite. The council also decreed that Object D be postponed until April 1958. The new Sputnik was a metallic sphere that would be a much lighter craft, weighing 83.8 kilograms (185 lb) and having a 58-centimeter (23 in) diameter. The satellite would not contain the complex instrumentation that Object D had, but had two radio transmitters operating on different short wave radio frequencies,

6439-403: The Earth above the magnetic equator. Van Allen was also the man who designed and built the satellite instrumentation of Explorer 1 . The satellite measured three phenomena: cosmic ray and radiation levels, the temperature in the spacecraft, and the frequency of collisions with micrometeorites. The satellite had no memory for data storage, therefore it had to transmit continuously. In March 1958

6576-597: The Earth" before the end of the decade. Both countries began developing super heavy-lift launch vehicles , with the US successfully deploying the Saturn V , which was large enough to send a three-person orbiter and two-person lander to the Moon. Kennedy's Moon landing goal was achieved in July 1969, with the flight of Apollo 11 . The conclusion of Apollo 11 is regarded by most as ending the Space Race with an American victory. This view

6713-540: The European Commission 's RETALT project and the China National Space Administration 's Long March 8 are also pursuing retro-thrust re-entry for reusable boosters. New Shepard is a reusable single-stage suborbital rocket where the booster uses its main engine to land again after a flight. The capsule slows its descent with parachutes and uses retrorockets to slow down just before reaching

6850-502: The Jetmobiles. The opening theme music features saxophones as well as series composer Barry Gray 's first use of an Ondes Martenot . The closing theme song – "Fireball", arranged by Charles Blackwell and performed by Don Spencer – was a minor hit in the UK, spending 12 weeks on the music charts, peaking at number 32 in March 1963. Fireball XL5 was the only Anderson series to be sold to

6987-459: The Moon and continued exploration of other extraterrestrial bodies robotically. A period of détente followed with the April 1972 agreement on a cooperative Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), resulting in the July 1975 rendezvous in Earth orbit of a US astronaut crew with a Soviet cosmonaut crew and joint development of an international docking standard APAS-75 . Being considered as the final act of

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7124-531: The Moon. The 730-pound (330 kg) Ranger 4 became the first US spacecraft to reach the Moon, but its solar panels and navigational system failed near the Moon and it impacted the far side without returning any scientific data. Ranger 5 ran out of power and missed the Moon by 725 kilometers (391 nmi) on October 21, 1962. The first successful Ranger mission was the 806-pound (366 kg) Block III Ranger 7 which impacted on July 31, 1964. Ranger had three successful impactors out of nine attempts. In 1963,

7261-487: The Moon. The fifth attempt on June 18 also failed at launch. The 390-kilogram (860 lb) Luna 2 successfully impacted the Moon on September 14, 1959. The 278.5-kilogram (614 lb) Luna 3 successfully flew by the Moon and sent back pictures of its far side on October 7, 1959. The US first embarked on the Pioneer program in 1958 by launching the first probe , albeit ending in failure. A subsequent probe named Pioneer 1

7398-459: The R-1, R-2 and R-5 undertook various experiments between 1949 and 1958, including flights with space dogs . Design work began in 1953 on the R-7 Semyorka with the requirement for a missile with a launch mass of 170 to 200 tons, range of 8,500 km and carrying a 3,000 kg (6,600 lb) nuclear warhead, powerful enough to launch a nuclear warhead against the United States. In late 1953

7535-680: The Redstone Arsenal became NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center , with von Braun as its first director. Development of the Saturn rocket family , which when mature gave the US parity with the Soviets in terms of lifting capability, was thus transferred to NASA. In 1958, Korolev upgraded the R-7 to be able to launch a 400-kilogram (880 lb) payload to the Moon. The Luna program began with three failed secret 1958 attempts to launch Luna E-1 -class impactor probes. The fourth attempt, Luna 1 , launched successfully on January 2, 1959, but missed

7672-414: The Soviet Union responded by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The launching of satellites was enabled by developments in ballistic missile capabilities since the end of World War II. The competition gained Western public attention with the " Sputnik crisis ", when the USSR achieved the first successful satellite launch, Sputnik 1 , on October 4, 1957. It gained momentum when

7809-475: The Soviet Union's "2nd Generation" Luna programme was less successful, Luna 4 , Luna 5 , Luna 6 , Luna 7 , and Luna 8 were all met with mission failures. However, in 1966 Luna 9 achieved the first soft-landing on the Moon, and successfully transmitted photography from the surface. Luna 10 marked the first man-made object to establish an orbit around the Moon, followed by Luna 11 , Luna 12 , and Luna 14 which also successfully established orbits. Luna 12

7946-549: The Soviet embassy of his country's intention to launch a satellite as well, in the "near future". On August 30, 1955, Korolev managed to get the Soviet Academy of Sciences to create a commission whose purpose was to beat the Americans into Earth orbit: this was the de facto start date for the Space Race. The Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union began a policy of treating development of its space program as top-secret. When

8083-539: The Space Race, the competition was only gradually replaced with cooperation. The collapse of the Soviet Union eventually allowed the US and the newly founded Russian Federation to end their Cold War competition also in space, by agreeing in 1993 on the Shuttle– Mir and International Space Station programs . Although Germans, Americans and Soviets experimented with small liquid-fuel rockets before World War II, launching satellites and humans into space required

8220-510: The Sputnik project was first approved, one of the immediate courses of action the Politburo took was to consider what to announce to the world regarding their event. The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) established precedents for all official announcements on the Soviet space program. The information eventually released did not offer details on who built and launched the satellite or why it

8357-419: The U.S. In August 1949, the Soviet Union became the second nuclear power after the United States with the successful RDS-1 nuclear weapon test. In October 1957, the Soviet Union conducted the world’s first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), this was the R-7 Semyorka (also known as SS-6 by NATO) and was seen as capable of striking U.S. territory with a nuclear payload. Fears in

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8494-510: The UK, US, Canada and Australia. In June 2023 the British free-to-air vintage film and nostalgia television channel Talking Pictures TV commenced a rerun of the series on Saturday afternoons. Whilst in the United States the series, along with other Anderson Supermarionation series, will be shown on MeTV Toons from July 25th. Regarded by some commentators as a space opera or space Western , Fireball XL5 has been praised for its music; its closing theme – "Fireball", sung by Don Spencer –

8631-665: The US due to this perceived threat became known as the Missile gap . The first American ICBM, the Atlas missile , was tested in late 1958. ICBMs presented the ability to strike targets on the other side of the globe in a very short amount of time and in a manner which was impervious to air interception such as bombers might have been. The value which ICBMs presented in a nuclear standoff were very substantial, and this fact greatly accelerated efforts to develop rocket and rocket interception technology. The first Soviet development of artillery rockets

8768-440: The US, Gold Key Comics published a single-issue comic book in 1963; the following year, Little Golden Books published a colour illustrated storybook which was released in the UK under the title Fireball XL5 – A Big Television Book . The series was released on Region 1 DVD by A&E Home Video in 2003. A Region 2 box set with new bonus material was released in 2009, superseding a 2004 version which had no extras. Also in 2009,

8905-477: The USSR but did not take him seriously. The Soviet success raised a great deal of concern in the United States. For example, economist Bernard Baruch wrote in an open letter titled "The Lessons of Defeat" to the New York Herald Tribune : "While we devote our industrial and technological power to producing new model automobiles and more gadgets, the Soviet Union is conquering space. ... It is Russia, not

9042-422: The USSR had achieved a leading advantage in rocket technology. The dumbfounded CIA estimated the launch weight at 500 metric tons requiring an initial thrust of more than 1,000 tons and supposed the use of a three-stage rocket. In a secret report, it concluded that ″the launching of two earth satellites must have been a stupendous scientific achievement. ... Launching of these satellites does indicate, however, that

9179-500: The USSR has perfected an ICBM which they can put on any desired target with accuracy." In reality, the launch weight of the Soviet rocket was 267 metric tons with an initial thrust of 410 tons with one and a half stages. The CIA's misjudgement was caused by extrapolating the parameters of the US Atlas rocket developed at the same time (launch weight 82 tons, initial thrust 135 tones, maximum payload of 70 kg for low Earth orbit ). In part,

9316-489: The USSR sent animals into space to determine the safety of the environment before sending the first humans. The USSR used dogs for this purpose, and the US used monkeys and apes . The first mammal in space was Albert II , a rhesus monkey launched by the US on a sub-orbital flight on June 14, 1949, who died on landing due to a parachute malfunction. The USSR sent the dog Laika into orbit on Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957, for an intended ten-day flight. They did not yet have

9453-409: The USSR sent the first human, Yuri Gagarin , into space with the orbital flight of Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. These were followed by a string of other firsts achieved by the Soviets over the next few years. Gagarin's flight led US president John F. Kennedy to raise the stakes on May 25, 1961, by asking the US Congress to commit to the goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to

9590-465: The United States, who has had the imagination to hitch its wagon to the stars and the skill to reach for the moon and all but grasp it. America is worried. It should be." Eisenhower ordered project Vanguard to move up its timetable and launch its satellite much sooner than originally planned. The December 6, 1957 Project Vanguard launch failure occurred at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It

9727-463: The Vostok program was over. The craft consisted of a spherical descent module with a mass of 2.46 tonnes (5,400 lb) and a diameter of 2.3 meters (7.5 ft), with a cylindrical inner cabin housing the cosmonaut, instruments, and escape system; and a biconic instrument module with a mass of 2.27 tonnes (5,000 lb), 2.25 meters (7.4 ft) long and 2.43 meters (8.0 ft) in diameter, containing

9864-458: The ability to detect if a meteoroid were to penetrate its pressure hull, and the ability to detect the density of the Earth's thermosphere . Korolev was buoyed by the first successful launches of the R-7 rocket in August and September, which paved the way for the launch of Sputnik . Word came that the US was planning to announce a major breakthrough at an International Geophysical Year conference at

10001-576: The aircraft to land in more confined areas than would otherwise be possible during an airborne assault. Another World War II development was the British Hajile project, initiated by the British Admiralty's Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development . Originally a request from the British Army as a method to drop heavy equipment or vehicles from aircraft flying at high speeds and altitudes,

10138-447: The basis for the R-7 family which includes Sputnik , Luna , Molniya , Vostok , and Voskhod space launchers , as well as later Soyuz variants. Several versions are still in use and it has become the world's most reliable space launcher. Although American rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard developed, patented, and flew small liquid-propellant rockets as early as 1914, the United States

10275-586: The bold dream of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky will be realized within the next 10 to 15 years." From March 1952 to April 1954, the US Collier's magazine reacted with a series of seven articles Man Will Conquer Space Soon! detailing Wernher von Braun 's plans for crewed spaceflight. In March 1955, Disneyland's animated episode " Man in Space " in the US television with an audience of about 40 million people eventually fired

10412-522: The book Cold War Space Sleuths (Springer-Praxis 2013): "The USSR was famously described by Winston Churchill as 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma' and nothing signified this more than the search for the truth behind its space program during the Cold War. Although the Space Race was literally played out above our heads, it was often obscured by a figurative 'space curtain' that took much effort to see through". Initially, President Eisenhower

10549-508: The capsule was just large enough for a single astronaut. The first suborbital spacecraft weighed 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg); the heaviest, Mercury-Atlas 9, weighed 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg) fully loaded. On reentry, the astronaut would stay in the craft through splashdown by parachute in the Atlantic Ocean. On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, launching in a ballistic trajectory on Mercury-Redstone 3 , in

10686-533: The captured V-2s and began a program of launching them and instructing American engineers in their operation. These tests led to the first photos of Earth from space , and the first two-stage rocket, the WAC Corporal - V-2 combination, in 1949. The German rocket team was moved from Fort Bliss to the Army's new Redstone Arsenal , located in Huntsville, Alabama , in 1950. From here, von Braun and his team developed

10823-410: The cockpit and serves as a self-contained short take-off and vertical landing craft for exploring planets. The main, larger section contains a navigation bay, laboratory, workshops, lounge and crew quarters, together with the rocket motors that enable interstellar travel. On arrival at an alien world, the main section usually remains in orbit while Fireball Junior travels down to the surface. The WSP

10960-506: The development of larger ballistic missiles such as Wernher von Braun 's Aggregat-4 (A-4) , which became known as the Vergeltungswaffe 2 (V-2) developed by Nazi Germany to bomb the Allies in the war. After the war, both the US and USSR acquired custody of German rocket development assets which they used to leverage the development of their own missiles. Public interest in space flight

11097-437: The engine system and propellant. After reentry, the cosmonaut would eject at about 7,000 meters (23,000 ft) over the USSR and descend via parachute, while the capsule would land separately, because the descent module made an extremely rough landing that could have left a cosmonaut seriously injured. The "Vostok spaceship" was first displayed at the July 1961 Tushino air show , mounted on its launch vehicle's third stage, with

11234-507: The episodes with humour, lace them with action and tie them up with Barry Gray 's fantastic music, the result transcends the show's rudimentaries, transforming it into something enduringly special." Comparing it to the Andersons' follow-up, Stingray , which he considers to be very similar, Clark describes Fireball XL5 as "[p]erhaps [...] a little more playful and a little less slick, but what it lacks in polish it more than makes up for in energy and pace." According to Paul Mavis of DVD Talk,

11371-562: The fact that they were purposely conceived as "action/adventure stereotypes". On the writing generally, he considers the "old-school comic book"-style plots to be "less sophisticated than the production design, frequently falling into the same pattern: the UN -like World Space Patrol recognizes a threat from an alien civilisation, sending in Steve Zodiac and team to neutralise it ... before almost getting themselves killed." For John Peel , Fireball XL5

11508-592: The far side of the moon. In late 1966, Luna 13 became the third spacecraft to make a soft-landing on the Moon, with the American Surveyor 1 having now taken second. Later on, to aid the Apollo missions, the Surveyor program was conducted by NASA, with five successful soft landings out of seven attempts from 1966 to 1968. The Lunar Orbiter program had five successes out of five attempts in 1966–1967. The US and

11645-544: The favourable data of the Soviet launcher was based on concepts proposed by the German rocket scientists headed by Helmut Gröttrup on Gorodomlya Island , such as, among other things, the rigorous weight saving, the control of the residual fuel quantities and a reduced thrust to weight relation of 1.4 instead of usual factor 2. The CIA had heard about such details already in January 1954 when it interrogated Göttrup after his return from

11782-463: The film Destry Rides Again (1939). According to Fryer, the series adapts Western stock characters to create an air of "warmth and familiarity". The series' music has been positively received. According to Clark, the closing theme song's opening lyric, "I wish I was a spaceman", had a "timely resonance" for audiences of the early Space Age . Describing the series overall as "better than a lot of live-action movies", Mark Voger of NJ.com argues that

11919-497: The first stage of SpaceX 's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets uses one to three of the main engines in order to decelerate for propulsive landing . The first stage is then recovered, refurbished and prepared for the next flight. The boosters of other orbital rockets are routinely destroyed after a single use by atmospheric reentry and high-speed impact in the ocean. Companies like Blue Origin with their New Glenn , Link Space with their New Line 1 and national projects like

12056-403: The go-ahead to launch their Jupiter-C rocket as soon as they could. In Britain, the US's Western Cold War ally, the reaction was mixed: some celebrated the fact that the Soviets had reached space first, while others feared the destructive potential that military uses of spacecraft might bring. The Daily Express predicted that the US would catch up to and pass the USSR in space; "never doubt for

12193-463: The goal. Anderson was clearly trying to make an entertaining show, and it's very, very amusing." Ian Fryer characterises the series as a Space Western , arguing that Steve Zodiac essentially plays the role of an interstellar sheriff . Fryer also compares David Graham's voice for Professor Matic to that of Western actor "Gabby" Hayes and the French-born Venus to Marlene Dietrich as Frenchy in

12330-410: The ground. SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle recovers its Super Heavy booster in a similar manner to Falcon 9, lighting thirteen engines, before shutting down ten of these engines for the final descent. The second stage, after reentry, lights its three inner engines and descends to either a splashdown or a catch. Operation Credible Sport , a plan put forward by the US government in 1979 to rescue

12467-463: The mission to justify the death of the dog...". On August 19, 1960, the dogs Belka and Strelka were sent into orbit aboard Sputnik 5 and safely returned. The Americans sent the chimpanzee Ham on a suborbital flight of the Mercury capsule on Mercury-Redstone 2 and recovered him safely on January 31, 1961. The chimpanzee Enos was launched on Mercury-Atlas 5 on November 29, 1961, into what

12604-428: The more action-packed episodes featured as many as "40 to 50" effects shots. The rotating Space City control tower, whose filming model was made of wood and card, was inspired by contemporary revolving restaurants . Fireball XL5 was the first TV series to employ front projection -based visual effects. The XL5 spaceship was designed by associate producer and former APF art director Reg Hill . Three models were made:

12741-462: The music "would be at home in any live-action thriller." The TV series was supplemented by an audio play , Journey to the Moon , which was produced by APF in association with Pye Records . Written by Alan Fennell and released as a 7-inch vinyl EP in February 1965, this was a semi-educational adventure about a sleeping boy who has a dream in which he meets the XL5 crew, who teach him about spaceflight and

12878-568: The next five years. The comics adventures, written by Tod Sullivan and drawn by Mike Noble , were printed in colour until 1968, when it evolved into a text feature. Four annuals, featuring comic strips and text stories, were published by Collins between 1963 and 1966. The Fireball XL5 strips from TV Century 21 were reprinted in Countdown (later named TV Action ) in 1971 and 1972 and again in Engale Marketing's Action 21 in 1988 and 1989. In

13015-424: The nose cone in place concealing the spherical capsule. A tail section with eight fins was added in an apparent attempt to confuse western observers. This also appeared on official commemorative stamps and a documentary. The Soviets finally revealed the true appearance of their Vostok capsule at the April 1965 Moscow Economic Exhibition. On April 12, 1961, the USSR surprised the world by launching Yuri Gagarin into

13152-450: The other) and another for special effects. To speed up production, two puppet filming units were created to allow episodes to be shot in pairs by different crews, who alternated on the first two stages while the effects crew used the third. The production of each episode consisted of a week's principal photography on the main puppet stage followed by inserts -filming on the secondary stage, coinciding with two weeks of effects shooting. After

13289-418: The project turned out to be a disaster and was largely forgotten after the war. Although some of the tests turned out to be successful, Hajile was too unpredictable to be used in conventional warfare, and by the time the war drew to a close, with no chance to put the project into action, it was shelved. Later Soviet experiments used this technique, braking large air-dropped cargos after a parachute descent. When

13426-607: The project. A-4s were assembled and studied and the experience derived from assembling and launching A4 rockets was directly applied to the Soviet copy, called the R-1 , with NII-88 chief designer Sergei Korolev overseeing the R-1's development., The R-1 entered into service in the Soviet Army on 28 November 1950. By the latter half of 1946, Korolev and rocket engineer Valentin Glushko had, with extensive input from German engineers, outlined

13563-430: The proposed US satellites, having a weight of 1,400 kilograms (3,100 lb), of which 300 kilograms (660 lb) would be composed of scientific instruments that would photograph the Earth, take readings on radiation levels, and check on the planet's magnetic field. However, things were not going along well with the design and manufacturing of the satellite, so in February 1957, Korolev sought and received permission from

13700-523: The public enthusiasm for space travel and raised government interest, both in the US and USSR. Soon after the end of World War II, the two former allies became engaged in a state of political conflict and military tension known as the Cold War (1947–1991), which polarized Europe between the Soviet Union's satellite states (often referred to as the Eastern Bloc ) and the states of the Western world allied with

13837-408: The same time, the "United States Space Patrol" became the "World Space Patrol" and the name of Colonel Zodiac's spaceship (as well as the series itself) was changed first to Nova X 100 , then Fireball XL5 . The "XL" of the final title was taken from " Castrol XL" engine oil. Thirty-seven of the series' 39 episodes were written by Alan Fennell , Anthony Marriott or Dennis Spooner , all newcomers to

13974-453: The series as "simple, clean, clearly delineated fun" and "the perfect type of children's entertainment: it doesn't talk down to its audience, it doesn't bog down the characters with a faux sophistication or glib hipness, and it has enough dazzle, charm, and imagination to make the show enjoyable and entertaining for adults." For Anthony Clark, Fireball XL5 "marks the start of the truly great Anderson-produced puppet show [...] [W]hen you sprinkle

14111-454: The series is "not as ambitious ideas-wise" as Stingray yet "still charms, thanks to its simple yet nicely designed production and that velvety, strangely ethereal black-and-white world it creates." He also states that "while there aren't nearly as many elaborate 'hardware' set-ups as later Anderson outings [...] the budget-imposed simplicity adds an amusingly ironic, sleek modernist tone" to the series. In contrast, Stuart Galbraith IV describes

14248-437: The ship is on call at Space City. The ship blasts off from a mile-long launch rail ending in a 40-degree incline. On its return to Space City, it lands vertically in a horizontal attitude using underside-mounted retro-rockets . Until the episode "Faster Than Light", XL5 travels through space at sub-light speeds. Its rocket motors, powered by a "nutomic" reactor, provide a maximum safe speed of "Space Velocity 7", allowing

14385-515: The ship to reach the outlying star systems of charted space within a few months. The crew do not wear spacesuits outside the ship: instead, they take "oxygen pills" to survive the vacuum while using thruster packs to manoeuvre. The ship's "neutroni" radio enables virtually instantaneous communication with Space City and other space vessels over vast distances. After making Supercar , production company AP Films (APF) presented its investor – Lew Grade of Associated Television – with two ideas for

14522-426: The show is its charm." Matthew Millheiser of review website DVD Talk praises the series: " Fireball XL5 might be kitschy, might be chock-full of scientific inaccuracies and glaring anachronisms that was par-for-the-course for cheesy sci-fi of the time, and even might have a few clunker episodes in the mix. But the care, innovation, and sheer imagination in each episode are positively infectious." He goes on to describe

14659-476: The size or shape of their rockets or cabins or most of their spaceships, except for the first Sputniks, lunar probes, and Venus probe. The Soviet military maintained control over the space program; Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau was subordinated under the Ministry of General Machine Building , tasked with the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and continued to give its assets random identifiers into

14796-453: The sort of robot voice which would have to be a monotone. So we found out that at Edinburgh University , they were creating the human voice artificially. They gave us a vibrator – of course, everybody smiled at that – not that kind of vibrator ! And it was a vibrator that people who had their larynx removed through cancer would be able to put under their chin, and it made a constant buzz. [Makes buzzing noise.] And then, of course, that sound

14933-697: The stage was set for nationalistic competition. On July 29, 1955, James C. Hagerty , President Dwight D. Eisenhower 's press secretary, announced that the United States intended to launch "small Earth circling satellites" between July 1, 1957, and December 31, 1958, as part of the US contribution to the International Geophysical Year (IGY). On August 2, at the Sixth Congress of the International Astronautical Federation in Copenhagen, scientist Leonid I. Sedov told international reporters at

15070-434: The surfaces of planets – were conceived as a way of limiting the number of scenes that showed the characters walking, thus helping to conceal their lack of realistic articulation. Originally the vehicles were to have been rocket-powered; however, tests with miniature explosives proved too destructive so the method of propulsion was changed. The characters of APF's later series Stingray and Thunderbirds use vehicles similar to

15207-506: The technology to return Laika safely to Earth, and the government reported Laika died when the oxygen ran out, but in October 2002 her true cause of death was reported as stress and overheating on the fourth orbit due to failure of the air conditioning system. At a Moscow press conference in 1998 Oleg Gazenko , a senior Soviet scientist involved in the project, stated "The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We did not learn enough from

15344-478: The test equipment and radio gear that was present in the previous launches. It arrived at the Soviet missile base Tyura-Tam in September and was prepared for its mission at launch site number one . The first launch took place on Friday, October 4, 1957, at exactly 10:28:34 pm Moscow time, with the R-7 and the now named Sputnik 1 satellite lifting off the launch pad and placing the artificial "moon" into an orbit

15481-475: The time of the NACA. It consisted of a conical capsule with a cylindrical pack of three solid-fuel retro-rockets strapped over a beryllium or fiberglass heat shield on the blunt end. Base diameter at the blunt end was 6.0 feet (1.8 m) and length was 10.8 feet (3.3 m); with the launch escape system added, the overall length was 25.9 feet (7.9 m). With 100 cubic feet (2.8 m ) of habitable volume,

15618-435: The two craft a controlled distance apart. Vostok 4 also set a record of nearly four days in space. The first woman, Valentina Tereshkova , was launched into space on Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963, as (possibly) a medical experiment. She was the only one to fly of a small group of female parachutist factory workers (unlike the male cosmonauts who were military test pilots), chosen by the head of cosmonaut training because he read

15755-399: The two ideas was the character of Professor Matic. APF would not revisit Joe 90 until 1967, when it developed a series of that title that bore little resemblance to the original idea. Century 21 drew inspiration from the Space Race of the early 1960s. Despite its title, it was originally to have been set in the 30th century , in the year 2962. This was subsequently changed to 2062. At

15892-426: The voice actors' pre-recorded dialogue. Zodiac was voiced by Paul Maxwell while two of his companions – XL5 co-pilot Robert the Robot and "space doctor" Venus – were voiced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson themselves. The series' scale model special effects were directed by Derek Meddings . Filming of Fireball XL5 ' s 39 half-hour episodes began in February 1962 and the series premiered on ATV London (part of

16029-445: The warhead's mass was increased to 5.5 to 6 tons to accommodate the then planned theromonuclear bomb . The R-7 was designed in a two-stage configuration, with four boosters that would jettison when empty. On the 21 August 1957 the R-7 flew 6,000 km (3,700 mi), and became the worlds's first intercontinental ballistic missile. Two months later the R-7 launched Sputnik 1 , the first artificial satellite, into orbit, and became

16166-485: Was a monumental failure, exploding a few seconds after launch, and it became an international joke. The satellite appeared in newspapers under the names Flopnik, Stayputnik, Kaputnik, and Dudnik. In the United Nations, the Soviet delegate offered the US representative aid "under the Soviet program of technical assistance to backwards nations." Only in the wake of this very public failure did von Braun's Redstone team get

16303-442: Was a satellite mission that failed, expedited plans to get his own satellite in orbit. Since the R-7 was substantially more powerful than any of the US launch vehicles , he made sure to take full advantage of this capability by designing Object D as his primary satellite. It was given the designation 'D', to distinguish it from other R-7 payload designations 'A', 'B', 'V', and 'G' which were nuclear weapon payloads. Object D dwarfed

16440-456: Was able to transmit detailed photography of the surface from orbit. Luna 10, 12, and Luna 14 conducted Gamma ray spectrometry of the Moon, among other tests. The Zond programme was orchestrated alongside the Luna programme with Zond 1 and Zond 2 launching in 1964, intended as flyby missions, however both failed. Zond 3 however was successful, and transmitted high quality photography from

16577-656: Was carried out in the 1930s by the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD), where Soviet rocket pioneers Sergey Korolev , Friedrich Zander , Mikhail Tikhonravov and Leonid Dushkin launched GIRD-X , the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket in 1933. In 1933 the two design bureaus were combined into the Reactive Scientific Research Institute and produced the RP-318, the USSR's first rocket-powered aircraft and

16714-592: Was commercially released to moderate success in the UK charts. It is often confused with Space Patrol , a puppet series with a similar premise that was made by the Andersons' former collaborators Roberta Leigh and Arthur Provis . Set in the year 2062, the series follows the missions of Earth spaceship Fireball XL5 , commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of the World Space Patrol (WSP). Zodiac's crew comprises Dr Venus, an authority on space medicine ; engineer and navigator Professor Matthew Matic; and co-pilot Robert:

16851-400: Was copied from this. During the filming of the launch sequence, XL5 was pulled down its rail on wires by a technician running along a platform above the set. Fast cutting was employed to conceal the shaking of the model. Some of the series' rocket sound effects were created by recording a jet plane at a nearby airfield. The Jetmobiles – personal hovercraft that the XL5 crew use to explore

16988-581: Was developed to prevent rust on the Atlas rockets so that rust protecting paint could be avoided, in order to further reduce weight. A later variant of the Atlas, the Atlas-D , served as a nuclear ICBM and as the orbital launch vehicle for Project Mercury and the remote-controlled Agena Target Vehicle used in Project Gemini . In 1955, with both the United States and the Soviet Union building ballistic missiles that could be used to launch objects into space,

17125-425: Was first aroused in October 1951 when the Soviet rocketry engineer Mikhail Tikhonravov published "Flight to the Moon" in the newspaper Pionerskaya pravda for young readers. He described a two-person interplanetary spaceship of the future and the industrial and technological processes required to create it. He ended the short article with a clear forecast of the future: "We do not have long to wait. We can assume that

17262-472: Was in 1921 when the Soviet military sanctioned the Gas Dynamics Laboratory , a small research laboratory to explore solid-fuel rockets, led by Nikolai Tikhomirov , who had begun studying solid and liquid-fueled rockets in 1894, and obtained a patent in 1915 for "self-propelled aerial and water-surface mines. The first test-firing of a solid fuel rocket was carried out in 1928. Further development

17399-590: Was launched with the intention of orbiting the Moon only to result in a partial mission success when it reached an apogee of 113,800 km before falling back to Earth. The missions of Pioneer 2 and Pioneer 3 failed whereas Pioneer 4 had one partially successful lunar flyby in March 1959. The Ranger program was started in 1959 by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory . The Block I Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 suffered Atlas-Agena launch failures in August and November 1961. The 727-pound (330 kg) Block II Ranger 3 launched successfully on January 26, 1962, but missed

17536-399: Was launched. However, the public release is illuminating in what it does reveal: "there is an abundance of arcane scientific and technical data... as if to overwhelm the reader with mathematics in the absence of even a picture of the object". The Soviet space program's use of secrecy served as both a tool to prevent the leaking of classified information between countries, and also to create

17673-426: Was not allowed to put a satellite into orbit with their Jupiter-C rocket, because of its intended use as a future military vehicle. On September 20, 1956, von Braun and his team did launch a Jupiter-C that was capable of putting a satellite into orbit, but the launch was used only as a suborbital test of reentry vehicle technology. Korolev received word about von Braun's 1956 Jupiter-C test and, mistakenly thinking it

17810-427: Was on its way to completing its first orbit. About 95 minutes after launch, the satellite flew over its launch site, and its radio signals were picked up by the engineers and military personnel at Tyura-Tam: that's when Korolev and his team celebrated the first successful artificial satellite placed into Earth-orbit. At the latest, the successful start of Sputnik 2 with its weight of more than 500 kg proved that

17947-433: Was provided by the large Service Propulsion Engine on the service module. The same engine was used as a retrorocket to slow the spacecraft for lunar orbit insertion . The Apollo Lunar Module used its descent stage engine to drop from orbit and land on the Moon. The Space Shuttle Orbital Maneuvering System provided the vehicle with a pair of powerful liquid-fueled rockets for both reentry and orbital maneuvering. One

18084-522: Was rendered as " ON-OUR-WAY-'OME! ". Daniel O'Brien, author of SF:UK – How British Science Fiction Changed the World , describes Robert as a "very English homage" to the character Robby the Robot from the 1956 film Forbidden Planet . After working on the Andersons' earlier productions as a contractor, effects director Derek Meddings became a full-time employee of APF and formed his own unit with Brian Johnson as his assistant. According to Meddings, some of

18221-449: Was sufficient for a successful reentry, and if both systems were to fail, the reaction control system could slow the vehicle enough for reentry. To ensure clean separation and prevent contact, multistage rockets such as the Titan II , Saturn I , Saturn IB , and Saturn V may have small retrorockets on lower stages, which ignite upon stage separation. For example, they were used to back

18358-405: Was supposed to be a three-orbit flight. However, the mission was aborted after two orbits due to capsule overheating, and a malfunctioning "avoidance conditioning" test subjecting him to 76 electrical shocks. The Soviets designed their first human space capsule using the same spacecraft bus as their Zenit spy satellite , forcing them to keep the details and true appearance secret until after

18495-532: Was the only one of the three major allied World War II powers to not have its own rocket program, until Von Braun and his engineers were expatriated from Nazi Germany in 1945. The US acquired a large number of V-2 rockets and recruited von Braun and most of his engineering team in Operation Paperclip . The team was sent to the Army's White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, in 1945. They set about assembling

18632-399: Was transmitted to the air inside the mouth. And I was then able to modulate that by mouthing the words. So let's get this straight, fellas – it was not my voice. It was the sound of the vibrator which I modulated. Anderson also noted that due to the silent or aspirate nature of the letter "h", the larynx did not register its vocalisation; thus, Robert's customary cry of "On our way home!"

18769-471: Was worried that a satellite passing above a nation at over 100 kilometers (62 mi) might be seen as violating that nation's airspace. He was concerned that the Soviet Union would accuse the Americans of an illegal overflight, thereby scoring a propaganda victory at his expense. Eisenhower and his advisors were of the opinion that a nation's airspace sovereignty did not extend past the Kármán line , and they used

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