June 27, 1954: World’s First Nuclear Power Plant Opens

Obninsk APS-1 was the first nuclear power plant in the world. Courtesy: ictj.org

1954: The first nuclear power plant to be connected to an external grid goes operational in Obninsk, outside of Moscow.

The nuclear reactor, used to generate electricity, heralded Obninsk’s new role as a major Soviet scientific city, a status it retains in the Russian Federation where it carries the sobriquet of First Russian Science City.

Obninsk, population 108,000, currently houses no fewer than 12 scientific research institutions and a technical university. Research is focused on nuclear-power engineering, nuclear physics, radiation technology, the technology of non-metallic materials, medical radiology, meteorology and environmental protection.

Since the plant opened in 1954, most of the industrialized West, along with countries like India and China, have embraced nuclear power. But the backlash against this energy source continues in the wake of accidents such as those that occurred at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, in addition to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Obninsk claims Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as a sister city — another town that has more than a passing relationship with nuclear power.

(Source: Various)

This article first appeared on Wired.com July 4, 2008.

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June 25, 1997: Minor Collision Doesn’t Dull Cargo Ship’s Luster

Russian Progress cargo freighter in space. Photo: spacetoday.org

1997: An unmanned “Progress” spacecraft collides with the Mir space station while attempting to dock.

Although the collision was relatively minor, it was remarkable for being the only accident involving a Progress ship. Human error — a fumble in coordination between ground control in Moscow and the cosmonauts aboard Mir — was probably to blame.

Despite the accident, the Progress in all its variations has proven to be a durable and reliable supply ship since becoming operational in 1978, and has served every Russian space station since Salyut 6. Designed as an expendable vehicle, Progress ships carry out their supply missions and then are burned up upon reentering the atmosphere.

Progress is basically a Soyuz capsule that has been stripped bare of human life-support systems and reconfigured to carry supplies. Several upgrades have maintained the craft’s effectiveness over the years.

When the U.S. space-shuttle fleet was grounded in the wake of the Columbia accident, Progress ships stepped into the breach, providing the sole support for cosmonauts and astronauts serving aboard the International Space Station until the shuttles were cleared to fly again.

For all its dependability, however, the days of this workhorse are numbered. The Russians, like the Americans, are developing new-generation supply ships in both manned and unmanned versions. A major milestone came in May of 2012, when the SpaceX Dragon successfully docked with the International Space Station, transferring cargo before detaching and returning safely to Earth.

(Source: Various)

This article first appeared on Wired.com June 25, 2007.

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June 20, 1963: Cuban Missile Crisis Spurs Moscow-D.C. ‘Hot Line’

Photo: Daniel2005/Flickr

1963: A “hot line” is established between the White House and the Kremlin. Now, the leaders of the two most powerful nations on Earth can communicate quickly in a crisis.

In the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, which brought the United States and Soviet Union to the brink of war, it was recognized on both sides that the lag time in communication between President Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had contributed to the escalating situation in Cuba. They were obliged to talk with each other through intermediaries, leading to delays and misunderstandings as events unfolded.

Determined to prevent this kind of situation from arising again, Kennedy suggested the establishment of a “hot line” between Washington and Moscow. The Russians, who referred to it as the “red telephone,” readily agreed.

The original hot line was, in fact, not a telephone but a teletypewriter, typically found in telegraph offices of the time. There were still intermediaries — messages had to be translated, then typed and transmitted by operators — but at least the process had been sped up.

The hot line was used for the first time during the Six-Day War in 1967, where the United States backed Israel while the Soviets supported the Arab nations.

A direct line, employing two satellite systems and an undersea cable, was finally established during the 1970s, when Leonid Brezhnev occupied the Kremlin’s top chair.

Even with the fall of the Soviet Union, the line remains in use to this day.

(Source: CNN.com)

This article first appeared on Wired.com June 20, 2007.

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June 19, 240 B.C.: The Earth Is Round, and It’s This Big

A modern illustration shows how Eratosthenes actually calculated the circumference of the Earth. Courtesy NOAA Ocean Service Education

240 B.C.: Greek astronomer, geographer, mathematician and librarian Eratosthenes calculates the Earth’s circumference. His data was rough, but he wasn’t far off.

Eratosthenes was an all-around guy, a Renaissance man centuries before the Renaissance. Some contemporaries called him Pentathalos, a champion of multiple skills. The breadth of his knowledge made him a natural for the post of librarian of the library of Alexandria, Egypt, the greatest repository of classical knowledge.

His detractors, however, mocked Eratosthenes as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. They called him Beta, because he came in second in every category.

Envy? Perhaps. He invented the Sieve of Eratosthenes, an algorithm for finding prime numbers still used in modified form today. He sketched the course of the Nile from the sea to Khartoum, and he correctly predicted that the source of the great, life-giving river would be found in great upland lakes.

Eratosthenes knew that at noon on the day of the summer solstice, the sun was observed to be directly overhead at Syene (modern-day Aswan): You could see it from the bottom of a deep well, and a sundial cast no shadow. Yet, to the north at Alexandria, a sundial cast a shadow even at the solstice midday, because the sun was not directly overhead there. Therefore, the Earth must be round — already conventionally believed by the astronomers of his day.

What’s more, if one assumed the sun to be sufficiently far away to be casting parallel rays at Syene and Alexandria, it would be possible to figure out the Earth’s circumference. Eratosthenes computed the shadow in Alexandria to be 1/50 of a full 360-degree circle. He then estimated the distance between the two locations and multiplied by 50 to derive the circumference.

Of course, his measurements were slightly off. Alexandria was not due north of Syene, but 2 degrees of longitude off. Syene was not precisely on the Tropic of Cancer but 39 minutes of latitude north of it. The distance between the cities was an estimate. The Earth is not a perfect sphere, but an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles.

And we don’t know today the exact size of the measurement unit Eratosthenes was using when he came up with the final figure of 252,000 stades. (We know he knew it was just a rough estimate, because he adjusted his initial number of 250,000 upward by 2,000 — or 0.8 percent — to make it divisible by 60 or 360 for easy computation.)

So how big is 252,000 stades? Depending on which classical source you trust, it’s somewhere between 24,663 and 27,967 miles. The accepted figure for equatorial circumference today is 24,902 miles. Pretty darn good for a guy without modern measurement tools.

Eratosthenes went further and computed the tilt of the Earth’s axis to within a degree. He also deduced the length of the year as 365¼ days. He suggested that calendars should have a leap day every fourth year, an idea taken up two centuries later by Julius Caesar.

Grade-school tales aside, it was thus known long before Columbus that the Earth was round and even how big it is, approximately. But it was just not widely known among the masses in 15th-century Europe. One reason is that Eratosthenes’ very own library of Alexandria had been destroyed, and there was no complete backup of its data.

Source: Cartographic Images, others

This article first appeared on Wired.com June 19, 2008.

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June 18, 1983: Sally Ride, the First American Woman Into Space

Image: Wikimedia

1983: Sally Ride becomes the first American woman to travel into space.

Ride, who hoped to become a professional tennis player before deciding she wasn’t good enough, became a physicist instead and joined NASA in 1978 as part of the first astronaut class to accept women.

After the usual training, Ride joined ground control for the second and third space shuttle missions, serving as communications liaison between the shuttle crews and mission control. She was also involved in developing the robot arm used aboard the shuttle craft to deploy and retrieve satellites.

Ride’s turn to go into space came at the shuttle program’s seventh mission, as a crew member aboard Challenger. She was aboard Challenger for her second flight as well, an eight-day mission in 1984. In all, Ride logged around 345 hours in space.

While it was a milestone for the U.S. space program, the Soviet Union’s Valentina Tereshkova preceded Ride into space by almost exactly 20 years. On June 16, 1963, the former textile worker went aloft aboard Vostok VI.

Ride was training for her third mission when Challenger blew up in January 1986, killing everyone on board. With all training suspended in the wake of the accident, Ride was appointed to the presidential commission charged with investigating the causes of Challenger’s demise.

She retired from NASA in 1987 to return to Stanford University, her alma mater. She later joined the faculty at UC San Diego as a physics professor.

Since leaving NASA, Ride has remained active in the academic side of space exploration, taking a special interest in attracting more women to the sciences in general, and the space program in particular.

(Sources: NASA, Lucidcafe.com)

This article first appeared on Wired.com June 18, 2007.

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