Happy 50th b-day, Sputnik

MOSCOW. When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph.

But 50 years later, it emerges that the first artificial satellite in space was a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, slapped together a satellite and persuaded a dubious Kremlin to open the space age.

And that winking light that crowds around the globe gathered to watch in the night sky? Not Sputnik at all, as it turns out, but just the second stage of its booster rocket, according to Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space program.

Chertok couldn’t whisper a word about the project through much of his lifetime. His name, and that of Sergei Korolyov, the chief scientist, were a state secret. Today, at age 95, Chertok can finally give full voice to his pride at the pivotal role he played in the launch of Sputnik, which weighed 184 pounds, he said, and was built in less than three months.

“Each of these first rockets was like a beloved woman for us,” he said of the huge ballistic missile that carried it into space. “We would give our hearts and souls to see it flying.”

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