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During the first night, the sputnik's familiar beep-beep must have been heard by radio or TV, by a great part of the world's population tone music-minded Swedish radio listener firmly asserted that the beep is in A-flat). U.S. experts could not tell at first whether the signal, which alternates between 20 and 40 megacycles, is a mere series of beeps, or whether it carries coded information from instruments in the satellite.
So far, the Russians have not told much except the sputnik's weight and speed (about 18,000 m.p.h.). It circles the earth, they say, every 96.2 minutes. The plane of the orbit stands fixed in space while the earth rotates inside it, so successive trips carry the sputnik over different territory. General Anatoly Arkadievich Blagonravov, head of a three-man Russian delegation to last week's satellite convention in Washington, says that it has four radio antennae and that the power of the radio signal is one watt (enough for a U.S. radio ham to talk with Australia). He estimates that the satellite's batteries will keep its transmitter beeping for about three weeks. There was nothing on board this first sputnik, said Blagonravov except the batteries and transmitter.
Blagonravov, who was accompanied to Washington by Sergei M. Poloskov and A. M. Kasatskin, is a lieutenant general of artillery in the Red army and a member of the Soviet Academy of Science. He is best known in Russia as an authority on weapons, but he has written a great deal about space travel, and some but not all authorities on Russia believe that he is head of Soviet space rocket research. At 63, he is not likely to be the originator of new and daring technology.
New Generation. American scientists have verified most of the meager information coming from the Russians, but many believe that the whole story has not been told. One bit of news from Russia backs this suspicion. Soviet Scientist Yury Dmitrievich Boulanger said on the Moscow radio that the sputnik was radioing information about its encounters with micro-meteors. If so, it is probably making other observations too.
The reason for the U.S. defeat in the race toward space is fairly obvious: instead of having the use of big military rockets, U.S. Project Vanguard was forced to depend on the Navy's Viking research rocket, whose thrust is only 27,000 lbs. Even if working perfectly, a Viking is barely strong enough to place a 21½-lb. satellite on its orbit. There is no margin for less-than-perfect performance. The Russians, according to General Blagonravov, used their most powerful rocket to launch the sputnik. Their launching vehicle must have taken off with at least 200,000 lbs. of thrust.
The flight of the sputnik meant that Russian science had matured and that, very likely a new generation of Russian scientists had come of age. German specialists have been employed in Russia, as in the U.S., but most of them have by now been sent home or are being used as teachers. Russian missile technology has risen far above the wartime German level. The Russians are now on their own.
* Satellite; literally, "fellow traveler."