by Robert Stone
Shortly after V-E Day, it appeared that Lasser’s fortunes in Washington might be improving, as memory of his ridicule in the House began to fade. The Truman administration asked him to assist with the rebuilding of Europe under the Marshall Plan, offering him a position as a consultant to the secretary of commerce. Ironically, at nearly the same moment that American military and intelligence officers were quietly obscuring the past histories of former Nazi Party engineers, David Lasser’s political opponents began circulating false rumors about his alleged past association with subversive political organizations, in an effort to tarnish his reputation. They questioned his loyalty and argued that his “contrary views” posed a serious security risk.
Lasser was incredulous at the coordinated smear campaign. “I kept asking myself, what kind of government would do these things? What kind of people were we that this sort of thing happened?” Despite vigorous support from prominent politicians, the accusations and rumors effectively blacklisted Lasser from any further government employment. Far less renowned than the Hollywood Ten or writers like Howard Fast or Arthur Miller, David Lasser, one of the country’s first space advocates and the author of The Conquest of Space, became one of the first victims of the Red Scare.
The Conquest of Space author David Lasser (center) and a fellow labor organizer meet with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington. Not long afterward, Lasser was ridiculed on the floor of the House of Representatives as “a crackpot with mental delusions that we can travel to the Moon!”
The War Department’s decision to bring scientists and engineers from Hitler’s Third Reich to work for the U.S. government did not go unopposed. Prominent physicists such as Albert Einstein and Hans Bethe as well as former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt criticized Operation Paperclip. But the larger looming reality of the Soviet Union’s brutal domination of Eastern Europe, legitimate fears of domestic espionage, and reports of a possible Russian nuclear-weapons program silenced most public resistance to the program. No congressmen delivered speeches questioning whether the German scientists posed a security risk or held contrary political views. Instead, the White House asked the Department of Commerce to issue reports that would explain to ordinary Americans how their daily lives would benefit from wondrous German technological breakthroughs in food preparation and the manufacture of cheaper, stronger clothing, such as run-free nylons and unlimited yeast production.
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DESPITE THEIR FRIGHTENING close encounter with the V-2 in London, Arthur Clarke and the other directors of the British Interplanetary Society were optimistically anticipating the coming rocket age. In particular, they wondered if an increased interest in rockets and space might affect their post-war careers or lead to entrepreneurial opportunities. Clarke’s mind turned in this direction when contemplating possiblities for radio and television communication stations in space.
Early in 1945 he wrote a letter to the magazine Wireless World, in which he proposed a novel idea. If three geosynchronous satellites were placed in stationary orbits above fixed points on the globe, each would act like a radio mast erected 22,300 miles above the Earth. Signals sent from a ground station could be received by the satellite in orbit and then amplified and retransmitted over a third of the globe. His letter persuasively argued that a technology ostensibly developed for war could also have peaceful applications far more beneficial to humanity.
During that summer he expanded the idea into a four-page article, “The Future of World Communications,” which, after being cleared by RAF censors and re-titled “Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World-Wide Radio Coverage?”, was published in the October issue of Wireless World. Its publication was the first to outline a geosynchronous communications-satellite network and is now considered one of the landmark technical publications of the twentieth century.
Clarke later jokingly noted that his article was met with monumental indifference and earned him a total income of fifteen pounds. But, in fact, it was read in the right places. Copies circulated in offices of the United States Navy and within a newly created private nonprofit called Project RAND, an American think tank designed to coordinate military planning with research and development.
A second, less historically important technical article written by Clarke had far greater immediate personal impact on its author. Shortly before Clarke was demobilized in 1946, “The Rocket and the Future of Warfare” was published in The Royal Air Force Quarterly. He sent a copy to a young Labour MP, who upon reading it said he wanted to meet its author. Coincidentally, their meeting occurred just after Clarke had been deemed ineligible for a university educational grant. In the course of their conversation at the House of Commons, twenty-eight-year-old Clarke told the MP about his predicament. “In a very short time, my grant was approved and I applied for admission to King’s College, London.” Rockets had not taken Clarke into outer space, but they indirectly propelled the farm boy toward a university education.
In addition to their technical publications and books of nonfiction,Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, and Ley had written works of science fiction to popularize their ideas of space travel. A similar impetus prompted Clarke to begin work on a second novel. Between semesters, Clarke set aside his studies in physics and math to write Prelude to Space. It wouldn’t be published for another five years, but it was his first attempt to articulate his optimistic vision of the coming space age.
The most commercially successful American work of space advocacy published during the late 1940s was an oversized book written by Willy Ley and illustrated by artist Chesley Bonestell titled, in tribute to David Lasser, The Conquest of Space. While its objective paralleled that of Lasser’s book published nearly two decades earlier, the Viking Press volume found a much larger readership curious to learn the fundamentals of rocket science and the promise of the coming space age. Bonestell’s scientifically accurate astronomical paintings were already familiar to readers of Life magazine and Collier’s, another mass circulation weekly. His work was also known to American moviegoers, though his efforts in Hollywood remained largely unheralded at the time: He had created the architectural renderings of Xanadu in Citizen Kane and the futuristic skyscrapers in the film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.
By 1950, Arthur C. Clarke was a frequent guest on the BBC, explaining to British audiences the probable reason for the sudden increase in reports of UFO sightings, how humans might travel to other planets, and differing theories of a fourth dimension.
For many children growing up in the early 1950s, the imaginary yet scientifically accurate images in The Conquest of Space served as their visual introduction to spaceflight. The book’s success led to public-speaking engagements for Ley, including appearances on the emerging medium of television, where he explained what the recent talk about space travel could mean for the future. In his role as a popular science writer, authority on space, and debunker of pseudoscientific fads and occultist beliefs, Ley served as a voice of avuncular reason amid a flood of sensational UFO reports that appeared frequently in newspapers and magazines during the early Cold War era.
Across the Atlantic, producers at the BBC had similar programming needs. When they wanted someone who could clearly communicate scientific ideas to the general public, Arthur Clarke was the person they repeatedly called upon, and he soon established himself as a minor national TV personality. Now living in North London within walking distance of the BBC’s television broadcast studio, Clarke appeared not only in his role as the spokesperson for the British Interplanetary Society but also as a frequent guest whenever a producer required someone on short notice to speak about astronomy, space science, physics, or even the fourth dimension. These early appearances occurred at roughly the same moment as the publication of Clarke’s first nonfiction book, Interplanetary Flight, a short volume advocating for space exploration.
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IN RAHWAY, NEW Jersey, the son of a garment worker from the Ukraine read about Clarke’s new book in an ad published in the latest issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The sixteen-year-old was fascinated by news articles about flying-saucer sightings and became intrigued by the possibility of life on other planets. But he knew little of the fundamentals of rocket science or planetary astronomy, so he ordered a copy of Interplanetary Flight via mail order from an address in the magazine.
Two decades after Clarke discovered The Conquest of Space in the bookstore window, it was his book that fell into the hands of another impressionable teenager. The high school senior, Carl Sagan, would later speak of reading Interplanetary Flight as the “turning point in my scientific development,” the moment that solidified the course of his life, leading him to become not only a noted astrophysicist but the most recognized popularizer of science in the United States during the last quarter of the twentieth century.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON
(1952–1960)
ON A THURSDAY evening in March 1952, viewers of NBC’s Camel News Caravan were introduced to a man who, in the next few years, would be celebrated as a national hero for ushering America into the space age, becoming his adopted country’s most widely recognized man of science. That only a decade earlier Wernher von Braun had overseen Adolf Hitler’s most ambitious weapons program is among the strangest and most confounding ironies of twentieth-century history.
It’s no surprise that von Braun’s affiliation with the Third Reich was not mentioned on the evening of his national TV debut. The handsome forty-year-old wore a tailored double-breasted suit and might have been mistaken for a crusading district attorney in a Hollywood film noir. But in no screen thriller did a DA ever speak in such a distinctly Teutonic accent or display the fantastic props that von Braun held onscreen. Viewers were told that these were models of space vehicles that would transport humans into the cosmos within a few years and bring an end to threats from Iron Curtain nations around the globe. Von Braun was on TV to launch a nationwide publicity campaign for the mass-circulation magazine Collier’s and, in particular, its latest issue, with a cover that proclaimed, MAN WILL CONQUER SPACE SOON!
In the spring of 1952, television sets were a fixture in one out of every three American households, an increase of 200 percent in the past twenty-four months. The new medium’s first users were predominantly upper-middle-class families living near cities with network-affiliate stations. For most of these viewers, von Braun’s spaceships were not a new sight. Adventure series such as Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and Captain Video were already competing against small-screen Westerns to capture the imaginations of young audiences. But von Braun’s NBC appearance that evening was intended for their parents, many from the generation of recent war veterans who were redefining America as it assumed its position as a global economic and military superpower. Indeed, the editorial introducing the new issue of Collier’s delivered an urgent Cold War warning: If the United States did not immediately establish its dominance in space, it would lose this high ground to the Soviet Union. Not only was America’s destiny in outer space but the nation’s security depended on mastering the science and technology to get us there.
Collier’s readers were introduced to von Braun as the technical director of the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Guided Missile Development Group. “At forty, he is considered the foremost rocket engineer in the world today. He was brought to this country from Germany by the U.S. government in 1945.” Further details about his wartime work were carefully omitted. He was pictured at the head of a table next to his first tutor and mentor in rocket research, Willy Ley. Shortly after the Peenemünde team arrived in the United States, Ley had cautioned friends to be wary of von Braun’s seductive charisma. By the early 1950s, von Braun’s charm, as well as his considerable political savvy and innate talent to inspire, had worked magic on his former enemies.
This wasn’t the first meeting on American soil of the two former colleagues. It was on a December evening in 1946 that Ley and von Braun had looked each other in the face for the first time in more than a decade and a half. Their post-war experiences in their adopted country had differed dramatically. Ley was the son of a traveling salesman; von Braun had been born into privilege, an aristocrat whose father was a politician, jurist, and bank official. Von Braun grew up with a sense of entitlement, which, when combined with his innate charisma, effortlessly opened doors. Physically, he could have been mistaken for a matinee idol; Ley once described von Braun’s appearance as “a perfect example of the type labeled ‘Aryan Nordic’ by the Nazis.” In affect and appearance, Ley, on the other hand, personified the “absentminded professor” stereotype. He wore thick-lens eyeglasses and spoke with a heavy accent, which peppered a discussion about UFOs with references to “flyink zauzers.” Nevertheless, Ley was a talented communicator with an ability to convey his curiosity and fascination about scientific subjects to audiences, which found his passions infectious. Unfortunately, he was less successful when attempting to find rocketry-related work in the United States in spite of his expertise, while von Braun charmed his way into new opportunities.
Their reunion had occurred when von Braun made his first visit to New York City, to attend an American Rocket Society conference, accompanied by his entourage of military minders. The presence of von Braun’s escort didn’t prevent Ley from extending an invitation to dinner at his apartment in Queens. Over glasses of wine, the two men talked until nearly 3:00 A.M., catching up on fifteen years of history during a discussion Ley later described as both tense and informative. Von Braun revealed the history of the Nazi rocket program and how he had come to lead it. However, he was less forthcoming about some crucial details that became more widely known only decades later.
Von Braun disclosed the circumstances behind his abrupt disappearance from the Verein für Raumschiffahrt in the fall of 1932. A captain in the German Army’s weapons department, Walter Dornberger, had personally recruited von Braun to research the development of liquid-fuel rockets as ballistic weapons. Dornberger set up a small lab at Kummersdorf, a secluded estate south of Berlin, and gave von Braun a stipend, a stationary rocket-engine testing stand, and an assistant. They imposed total secrecy on von Braun’s work since all Army-funded research was classified. While at Kummersdorf, the young scientist—then age twenty—was allowed to pursue his doctoral studies in physics and engineering at the University of Berlin. It was while he was at work on his dissertation that the Nazis removed Jewish professors and academics with suspected leftist political leanings, and burned books at the public rallies. Von Braun admitted to Ley that he had focused exclusively on his studies and was oblivious to the political significance of what was happening around him. When von Braun’s dissertation was finished, the German Army demanded it be titled “About Combustion Tests,” in an attempt to disguise the fact that it included detailed information about his liquid-fuel-rocket research at Kummersdorf.
Von Braun explained to Ley how by 1937 the German Army had financed the development of the world’s most powerful rocket of that time, a towering twenty-one-foot liquid-fuel missile, which they secretly launched from a remote island on the Baltic Sea. During Germany’s period of rearmament, von Braun said, he also worked on developing rocket-assisted airplane takeoffs for the air force, the Luftwaffe. Not long after, a competition ensued between the different branches of the German armed forces, with the Luftwaffe offering von Braun five million marks to establish a new facility for rocket development, and the Army coming up with six million more. The Army’s additional one million marks ensured that Dornberger would continue as von Braun’s superior and would exert greater control over the combined eleven-million-mark Luftwaffe-Army project. Von Braun couldn’t believe his good fortune. “We hit the big time!” he said, and was then tasked with finding the perfect location for his new facility.
Von Braun continued his story as he told Ley ho
w he had searched for a remote secure location near a large body of water. Sensing the coming war, he also thought it should be a site strategically situated for future rocket launches against the Allies. His mother suggested Peenemünde, a relatively uninhabited pine-covered island on the Baltic, where his father used to go duck hunting. The Luftwaffe funded the luxurious facilities, and by 1938 the island had a brand-new town, a chemical-manufacturing facility, a power plant, and its own railway. At full capacity it would house twelve thousand employees.
As their conversation continued into the night, von Braun went on to vividly describe the first test of the A-4 rocket in October 1942. Listening attentively, Willy Ley attempted to mentally record as much information as he could. He had published Rockets: The Future of Travel Beyond the Stratosphere only two years earlier and realized the history section of his book was now unacceptably obsolete. Von Braun said the A-4—the rocket that became better known by its propaganda name as the V-2—had been designed to carry a one-ton warhead two hundred miles. Von Braun revealed that the first A-4 had been decorated with a painted insignia that depicted a long-legged nude woman with a rocket sitting upon the crescent moon, a reference to Fritz Lang’s Frau im Mond. The first test of the A-4 had gone far better than any of his team had expected. It reached an altitude of almost sixty miles. At a celebration after the launch, von Braun said Colonel Dornberger had looked around the room and remarked, “Do you realize that today the spaceship was born?”