THE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE SPUTNIK SENDS

By J. H. Bradley Tue Soyiet artificial satellite makes it clear that Russia’s rocket claims are fully justified. The satellite needs far higher speeds and better guidance than any weapon.

A sphere is used because the resistance of the air can be calculated for it, independently of whether it happens to be spinning. Measurements of the slowing down give information about the thinness of the air. and these are of great interest to the designers of both spaceships and longTange rockets.

The sphere weighs at least 400 Ib., and is obviously full of instruments; this is confirmed by the need for a protective cone.

What kind of information can a radio transmitter inside the satellite send back to the earth? Information about pressure, temperature, amount of sunlight, light reflected from the earth, cosmic radiation and rays from the sun (both of which are heavily absorbed in the air).

It is almost certain that the sphere stores up information and releases it on a signal from the earth. In this way information can be obtained far from any recording station.

There ‘is a rather uncertain report that pictures of ‘the earth are being transmitted. Alternatively, instruments and cameras could be ejected by explosive charge backwards along the orbit, so that their speed would be low enough to land by parachute.

Sputnik 1 has drawn a squawk from Stewart Alsop of the New York Herald Tribune. He complains that it may be locating American installations more accurately than was possible before. :

In fact, according to International Geophysical Year data, the uncertainties in present mapping are about 300 ft, between continents.

The IGY is planning to reduce the error to about 100 ft. In neither case would the difference matter to an H-bomb.

Alsop claims that ‘infra-red devices’ can locate geographical features. He does not explain why anybody should use infra-red when ordinary light is more effective.

of the Open Skies Pla What is interesting is that this cry comes from the land i THE SPUTNIK, THE BRITISH STALINISTS AND ‘For a régime that bases its reason for existence on improving the condition of the working class, a space rocket is a spectacular irrelevance, That the splendid achievement of Soviet scientists—based on the international development of science during the last half-century. with contributions by German, Russian and other research workers, and on the similar international advance of technology—owes a great deal to the adyantages of the Soviet system. even in its distorted Stalinist form, it would be idle to deny.

Absence of crippling rivalries What is perhaps especially important in this connexion is the comparative absence—thanks to the nationalized property relations and economic planning inherited from the October Revolution and the Left Opposition platform—of the kind of crippling rivalries between separate ‘interests’ that have hindered progress in the same field in the USA.

But to draw simplistic, straight-line conclusions from Soviet scientific leadership in this field about the social and political set-up in the USSR would be as misleading as was the treatment by R. P. Dutt in his ‘Fascism and Social Revolution” of the alleged negative prospect of scientific and technical achievement in nazi Germany.

We learnt the hard way how remote from reality that was. during World War II.

One remembers also the crude deduction made by so many betore the Russians how to utilize atomic energy, therefore eople in 1945 that because the Americans had discovered monopoly capitalism's superiority had been demonstrated beyond further dispute.

(The Russians rightly dwell upon the pioneer role played in rocket engineering and astronautics by their own Tsiolkoysky. the centenary of whose birth was celebrated not long ago. His research was well advanced before the Revolution, in spite of tsarist oppression.)

Odd contrast with Montagu The World News editorial comment on Dudintsev contrasts oddly with the review of “Not by Bread Alone’ that appeared in the previous (October 5) issue of that journal, from the pen of Ivor Montagu.

He wrote that ‘we British readers must be glad to have this novel. which. carefully studied, reveals to us much. It is a ‘good book’, we learnt, with characters, settings and rela-