From Red Star Rising to Rocket’s Red Glare: Space Travel the Early Years. Steven Chapman Institute of Education, University of London We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 12 th September 1962. Abstract It is now 50 years since the first artificial satellite was launched. This article looks at the early years of space travel and some of the key moments during that time. On October the 4 th 1957 a converted missile carrying a small metal ball called Sputnik (little traveller) blasted off from the Tyura-Tam range in Kazakhstan and headed for orbit. Inside the sphere was a small radio sending out a beep. That October morning changed everything, after Sputnik nothing would be the same, the human race had begun to voyage into space. The effects of Sputnik radiated out from Soviet Central Asia and around the world. In the United States, gripped in a world of Cold-War paranoia and with the anti- communist witch-hunts still fresh in the memory the effect was a cold slap in the face. In the rest of the world there was amazement at the achievement. How was it that a country wrecked by the most brutal war in history a mere fifteen years earlier was able to put little traveller above the heads of all Americans? The inference was clear if they could do this with a satellite they could do it with a hydrogen bomb. What happened to the United States vaunted technical hegemony? The effect was most keenly felt in Washington DC where President Eisenhower dismissed the launch as stunt. The R7 booster was actually an example of inferior Soviet technology. The Americans had been concentrating on reducing the size of their missiles in order to launch them from submarines. Unable to achieve this the Russians had instead developed a vast multi-engine rocket the R7. It was however able to lift giant payloads well in excess of anything the Americans could. However despite this technical confidence the psychological damage was great. An eerie example of this hold on the public was the spontaneous opening of automatic garage doors as Sputnik passed overhead. The R7 had been designed by Sergei Korolov Chief Designer of the OKB-1 design bureau. Kept secret to all but a few of his countrymen, lest the CIA assassinate him, he was in sole charge of the Soviet space effort. Korolov had been involved in rocketry since the 1930s, but had sat out the war in a gulag, a victim of Stalin’s purges. In the United States Eisenhower’s initial reaction was seen as complacency by the press. But stung by the criticism President acted swiftly. German scientist Werner von Braun headed the army rocket programme, based at Huntsville Alabama. Von Braun was a controversial figure, to say the least. He headed the team that had designed and built the V2 rocket (Vergeltungswaffen - revenge weapon). Hundreds