Kettering Cosmos

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Kettering Cosmos: How school children exposed Soviet secret

The Cuban Missile Crisis had pushed the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon and no footprint had yet been left on the Moon. Yet one of the more peculiar twists of the Cold War involved a physics lesson at a provincial grammar school.

The Doppler effect is usually explained by the changing sound a police car siren makes as it approaches and passes the listener.

Back in 1966, a science teacher at Kettering Grammar School, in Northamptonshire, came up with another way of explaining this shift in wave frequency.

The teacher's name was Geoff Perry and he was fascinated by space satellites.

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[DeeSember]

I like to read stories like these. Normal people stumble into something incredible.

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

This reminds me that much of the math that forms the basis of space exploration was in fact thought out by the Russian school teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

He deserves a lot more recognition that he is usually given, so here is a little reading on this visionary man: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/tsiolkovsky.html

[Derek Willis]

I like to read stories like these. Normal people stumble into something incredible.

The West was spending billions during the Cold War on radar and spy satellites in an attempt to discover what the Soviet Union was up to, and a bunch of school kids using some second hand equipment discover an unknown rocket facility. I think the taxpayers back then were being short changed.

Edit: Of course there is always the possibility that NATO knew about the Plesetsk rocket base but didn't want the Soviets to know that they knew.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Derek Willis

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Of course there is always the possibility that NATO knew about the Plesetsk rocket base but didn't want the Soviets to know that they knew.

I suspect that is the reality of the situation.