24 Oct 1946 -- 66 years ago
 

24 Oct 12 marks the 66th anniversary of the first picture of the earth taken from space.

The United States placed a 35mm movie camera in the payload area of a German V-2 Rocket. The rocket achieved an altitude of 65 miles.

The Karman line establishes the boundary to space at 100km or about 63 miles.

This made it the first space craft to take a picture of the earth. Since the V-2 had no re-entry or recovery system, the film of the movie camera was moved to a heavy steel case after being exposed. When the V-2 rocket crashed to the New Mexico desert at about 350mph, the recover team went to the crater and were surprised to find that the steel case survived and so did the film.


Prior to this 1946 experiment, the highest altitude photograph was taken by the Explorer II balloon which reached an altitude of just over 13 miles in 1935.

Between 1946 and 1950 more than 1,000 pictures of the earth were taken by V-2 rockets. One reached an altitude of 100 miles. Pretty good for the late 1940's :yeah:

http://media.airspacemag.com/images/...-388-jan07.jpg

First picture of the earth taken from space. :salute:

Interesting post it is nice to see something about the first half of the space race.I always think that the famous era from Sputnik and after gets a little too much attention and the early and very important years get largely ignored.

I am guessing that those V-2s where launched from the White Sands area my dad had a friend a who had been stationed there in 45,46,47 with the Army.If I recall didn't they end up raising the altitude that was considered space at some point?I seem to recall that they considered early U2 pilots astronauts until they later determined that space was in fact a bit higher they actually fly at the edge of space of course those early U2 pilots received no public attention thier duties being highly classified at the time so they could not even tell their wives "hey I was an astronaut until they learned that I really was not operating in space but in fact the edge of space."

At least the US found a 'good' use for the rocket....interesting, first I've heard of it.

This is so interesting due to the path the mind of man has taken from a little over
a year after the end of WWII to till today, ever wanting to know more, ever reaching,
gaining another grasp on where we live.

Good find :yep:

The Karman Line of 100km(63mi) is the most common boundary of space.

The United States Air Force, while trying to "Aim High" actually aims a little lower. 80 KM (50mi) can earn you an Astronaut badge.

No one has raised the boundary of space, but there is talk about, in the future, raising it to either 130km (80mi). This is actually coming from COPUS - Committee for the Peaceful Use of Space, specifically the Report of the Legal Subcommittee on its forty-eighth session, held in Vienna from 23 March to 3 April 2009.


But nothing came of it. Besides 100km is a lot easier to remember than 139km. :up:

Actually this started before WWII had even ended and even Wernher von Braun always had the ultimate goal of space travel even before WWII had started.Some where testing rockets with the goal of space travel even in the 1920s. If anything WWII boosted in an inhumane way the progress and also introduced rockets as a weapon of mass destruction. Wernher von Braun actually got the attention of the Gestapo because it was felt that he was more concerned with using the V-2 for space travel rather than as a weapon.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

Let us not forget that our own "space race" had little to do with science and the betterment of humanity but more for the development of ICBM technology and political one-up-manship with the ruskies.

Unfortunately, our history shows that innovation is often spurred by war and finding out cooleo ways of killing people.

War, even a cold one, is good for science.

Oh I have no doubt of this even during the space race each rocket was first developed as a deployment system for nuclear warheads the Redstone and Titians Mercury missions used Redstones and the Gemini missions used Titians and then the Minuteman is a solid fuel rocket and was developed in 1962 before the Saturn rocket was designed so the weaponry was always the first priority.The Saturn of course was the only rocket not also used as a weapon.The Titian had much longevity and was used until 2005 as a payload rocket so it saw much more use as a payload carrier of peaceful purposes than it did as a weapon of war.The Minuteman will be around for along time as well but as a weapon it even outlasted its newer counter part the Peacemaker though they have since converted some Peacemakers into payload rockets as well.


The same of course can be said of Soviet rockets.

Wars have done us alot of good when it comes to medical science as well.

Speaking of which the Russians have figured out how to reload their missile
silos after lauching a first strike and we haven't.

Does that mean we need more medical science?

I'm not sure but if they indeed have then it may mean you'll need more medical doctors :03:

What difference does that make seeing as the first targets of either side are all known enemy missile silos.Meaning that we'd launch our missiles at their silos and many would be destroyed before they would have enough time to reload one. You mean to tell me that the Russians can reload a missile tube and launch another one in less than 30 minutes? I highly doubt it.That process takes much longer than 30 minutes.

Did you hear that on Russia Today? Show me where you get this information from I find it very hard to believe even with a solid fuel rocket there is no way they can reload a missile tube that fast in the time to be able to launch before it gets destroyed no way that is not possible it would have to take less than 10 minutes to be reloaded and ready for launch no way Jose.I know because the silo itself gets damaged a bit by each launch even if you did a cold launch you'd need all that compressed gas back in a very short time span not to mention the actual loading of the tube and there is simply no way that that can be done effectively in such a short time as to allow a second launch from the same silo before it got destroyed by a counter strike.Why even risk such a thing in the first place and leave a silo open all that time exposed to certain destruction at least with it close up it would take a direct or very close hit with the thing open and crew trying to reload it leaves the entire thing exposed and the MIRV could be of by miles and still kill the loading crew and the exposed missile and tube.

You most be thinking of their mobile ICBM platforms and even those dotn have that fast of a turn around.

I think we need less still in the Cold War thinking.