On the homepage today, Taylor Dinerman explains why the Soviet Union’s Sputnik flight of 1957, which seemed so worrisome at the time, actually benefited U.S. national security greatly — by establishing the right to fly satellites (including spy satellites) over other nations. Space-program insiders knew the U.S. had all the necessary rocketry to put a satellite in orbit built and tested a year before Sputnik, but intentionally chose not to launch one, for just that reason. In fact, as the technology historian T. A. Heppenheimer wrote a few years ago, an Army general had to personally order America’s top rocketeer, Wernher von Braun, to refrain from sending up a satellite before the Soviets:
ON SEPTEMBER 20, 1956, MORE THAN A YEAR before the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite, a four-stage Jupiter-C rocket stood on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral. It had three stages—sections that fire in turn and then are jettisoned. The rocket was almost identical to the one that would lift America’s first satellite into orbit 16 months later, and Wernher von Braun, director of development for the U.S. Army’s rocket program, was well aware of its capabilities. All he had to do was give it a functioning fourth stage, and with that much more power, the Jupiter-C could launch a small payload into Earth orbit—barely a decade after the end of World War II, and well ahead of anything the Soviet Union might accomplish.
But von Braun was not the only one who knew what the rocket could do. As he sat in his office overseeing the pre-launch preparations, the telephone rang. It was his boss, Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris. “Wernher,” said the general, “I must put you under direct orders personally to inspect that fourth stage to make sure it is not live.”
By the way, the first Sputnik flight was not as great a shock to Americans’ self-image as it is sometimes portrayed:
Ike held a press conference a few days after the Sputnik 1 launch and reassured the nation. He said that the Soviet achievement “does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota.” They had “put one small ball in the air.” Public opinion shared this lack of concern. In Boston, Newsweek found “massive indifference.” In Denver the magazine reported “a vague feeling that we have stepped into a new era, but people aren’t discussing it the way they are football and the Asiatic flu.” On October 5 the front-page headline in the Milwaukee Sentinel read: TODAY WE MAKE HISTORY. It referred to the first-ever World Series game played in that city.
It took Sputnik 2, a few weeks later, which was much bigger and carried poor, doomed, gallant Laika as a passenger, to shake up America’s science and education establishments. Today, of course, the most familiar application of spy-satellite technology is Google Earth — from a company co-founded by Sergey Brin, whose family fled the Soviet Union in 1979, when he was six years old.
greg muzingo
01/28/11 16:12
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I was ten years old at the first launch and I can still remember the angst associated with it, tied up with the cold war drills that found me and my pals scrambling under our smallish desks at school with our books and pencil boxes on our heads as some sort protection from the Bomb on top of that rocket! Although the scare was momentary, I was particularly greatful when we leaped froged over the Russians' space program.
DonM
01/28/11 16:06
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12 April, 1961: First man in space on Vostok 1
17 July, 1962: First US pilot in space on the X-15
Vastly different approaches, both successful
John Pfriem
01/28/11 15:44
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Nice that the American space program gets a little love during its darkest hour, at least for the manned component.
ChrisZ: this story does feature in a Blacky Oakes novel, it's "Who's On First", where Pres. Eisenhower's senior people allow the Soviets to steal a key technical component that permits their orbital shot.
Dennis Nicholls
01/28/11 15:21
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The original Sputnik scare caused the US government to support more teaching of math and science, and the graduation of thousands of scientists and engineers. This was the correct response.
Obama in a single speech called this another Sputnik moment - and a time to raise the number of H1-B visas.
He should have said this is another Sputnik moment - and that he was asking Congress to ELIMINATE ALL H1-B VISAS!
Steve100
01/28/11 15:03
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This story about deliberately holding back a satellite launch is pure mythology projecting more wisdom on the bungling bureaucrats of that era than warranted. The prior post about the competition between Vanguard and Von Braun's Jupiter is accurate. After successive and dramatic failures of Vanguard, Von Braun was given the desperate go-ahead to do the needed development of this Jupiter based effort. Its subsequent success hardly diminished the Soviet image as being superior. Indeed, Soviet follow ups with manned spacecraft that returned to Earth increased their reputation
01/28/11 14:03
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My recollection is that the US foot-dragging on the Jupiter-C rocket launch had a lot to do with infighting between various military branches. The Air Force was working on the new Atlas, The Navy had their Vanguard program, and the Army and Von Braun had the Jupiter, which evolved into the Redstone. Vanguard finally got the go-ahead for the first US launch, which failed spectacularly. All of this infighting helped lead to the creation of NASA, which as history has shown, was a mixed success at best (other than the moon landing).
Michael 1963
01/28/11 12:57
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Eloris, your grandfather's recollections are a little off. NASA did not exist until 1958, Van Braun was working for the Army at the time of Sputnik.
01/28/11 12:36
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@eloris: Seems like your dad's recollections are similar to the observations in the blog post. Overcautious and worried about perceptions, the bureaucrats took the the heavy-handed, over-bearning, "I don't trust you to do the right thing" approach with von Braun and others.
The bureaucrats never change, just the excuses..
01/28/11 12:26
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Interesting story about Werner von Braun. My grandfather was in NASA at the time and told the same story, but he never gave that reason. To him it was a story about overcautious, overbearing bureaucrats. That angle makes it look very different.
01/28/11 12:11
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This is exactly right. If you look at news coverage from this period all of the alarmism was from Democrats who wound up running for President in 1960. They needed SOME way to establish cold war bona fides and this was an easy way to do it. Sputnik was a red herring.
DWChu
01/28/11 12:06
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I think Messrs. Dinerman/Schwarz miss an important point, that Sputnik not so much demonstrated Soviet satellite technology as it did the Soviet's ability to launch a payload into space - in other words, ICBM technology, far more worrisome that any potential spy satellite.
01/28/11 11:56
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I would argue the most familiar application of spy-satellite technology, and the one that has by-far saved the most lives and changed how we humans live, is the weather satellite and its multi-spectral capabilities...
Google Earth is catching up though. When the government further relaxes the resolution limitations and provides more frequent updates, it'll really take off.
It is funny that Obama used a metaphor about the creeping dangers of World Socialism...OBAMA is our "Sputnik moment"...
01/28/11 11:44
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How things have changed. When sputnik went up, the local board of education decided it was time to start a "science track" in our high school. No asking DC, no grants from DC, they just got some science and math teachers together and did it. I went through that program and benefitted. Went on to get a degree in Chemistry. (By the way, there was no "affirmative action" or "diversity" program. We had black and Hispanic kids in the "science track", not because of their skin color, but because they were qualified and expected to meet the standards and they did.) Today, of course with Washington DC bureaucrats and politicians involved our math and science scores are in the dumper, skin color is used to let kids into programs, not ability. Perhaps abolishing the Department of Education and getting rid of Affirmative Action/Diversity quotas would be a good first step in regaining some ground in the math and science fields when compared to the rest of the globe?
ChrisZ
01/28/11 11:32
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Good post, good homepage article. The Soviet propaganda victory vs. American security victory angle would have made for a terrific Blackford Oakes novel. I don't recall Sputnik figuring in any of them (although Blacky did stand in for Gary Powers in story with a similar twist).