Inter-service Rivalry Research Articles

An Eventful Month

THE month of October has produced a number of events of different kinds with an aeronautical interest. First, the Russian satellite was launched with conspicuous success. We shall not here discuss its technical nature: such information as is available is already well known, and there is a wealth of apocryphal data which time will confirm or deny. Military implications it certainly has, but the crucial problem would seem to be the controlled re‐entry into the atmosphere without burning out, and the possibility of this has not yet been demonstrated. What does seem to us to be worth emphasizing is that it has now been shown without any possibility of convincing refutation that Russian technology has, in the twelve years since the war, advanced from a level where its work was largely crude and derivative, to one where it is fully able to challenge the best the West can achieve. This must be based, despite the acquisition of scientists from Germany after the war (a practice which has also benefited America and ourselves) on a sound system of technical education and of administration. While it would be foolish to generalize too far from one particular success, however spectacular, we can take it that a system of State control, without commercial competition or interservice rivalry, has made possible the achievement of one of the most technically impressive ‘firsts’ that there has ever been.