by Robert Stone
Von Braun’s onscreen presence in the Disney programs coincided with his appearance in another far less visible film. Released in late 1955, the low-budget black-and-white Department of Defense film Challenge of Outer Space recorded an “officers’ conference” in which von Braun addressed a classroom of officers from various branches of the armed services. The content of his presentation paralleled the Disney films—and even included Collier’s illustrations. However, von Braun approached it almost entirely in terms of Cold War military superiority, something that was never mentioned in the “Man in Space” program. When discussing his space station, von Braun described it as something of “terrific military importance both as a reconnaissance station and as a bombing platform” with “unprecedented accuracy.”
Seated in front of an American flag, von Braun answered rehearsed questions from the officers, such as “Dr. von Braun, can you explain why it would be easier to bomb New York from a satellite than from a plane or a land-launched guided missile?” His response to such sobering questions was in marked contrast to his demeanor in the Disney production. He didn’t resort to colorful language to appeal to his listeners’ sense of wonder or innate desire to explore the unknown; there were no mentions of a “Columbus of space” or allusions to humanity’s evolutionary leap when first entering the cosmos. From his past experience, von Braun well knew that delivering his message to a room of grim-faced men wearing campaign ribbons necessitated very different rhetoric. He framed his talk entirely in terms of adversarial conflict and achieving strategic advantage and concluded with a note of warning: “The Russians are already hard at work, and if we are to be first, there is no time to lose.”
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IN THE SPRING of 1955, the Eisenhower White House approved a proposal for the United States to orbit the world’s first satellite during the upcoming scientific International Geophysical Year. Modeled on International Polar Years of the past, the IGY would involve scientists from forty-six countries taking part in global geophysical activities and experiments from July 1957 through December 1958. The Soviet Union was believed to be on the verge of announcing its own satellite program, so the United States was attempting to stake its claim as well.
Very real Cold War concerns lay behind what appeared to be a purely scientific initiative. Since the beginning of the escalating nuclear-arms race, the two superpowers had been seeking a method to monitor the progress of their opponent’s weapons programs and their compliance with international agreements. Rather than using a high-altitude spy aircraft, which ran the risk of being shot down, the influential global-policy think tank, the RAND Corporation, proposed a space-age alternative: an unpiloted orbiting observational satellite that would either transmit video images or return exposed film reels via automated reentry capsules.
President Eisenhower believed that if a scientific research satellite was placed in an orbit that passed over the airspace of a Soviet Eastern Bloc country, this action would establish a precedent for orbital overflight, thus opening up space for observational reconnaissance. But from a diplomatic perspective this was an unsettled matter of international law. Eisenhower listened to other advisers, who cautioned that if the United States became the first to orbit an object over another nation’s sovereign territory, it risked international condemnation. They thought it wiser for the United States to hold off being first.
Von Braun’s secret Project Orbiter proposal was vying against two alternative plans, developed by the Air Force and the Navy. Orbiter was generally acknowledged to be the most sophisticated, practical, and reliable of the three proposals, but it was the Naval Research Laboratory’s Project Vanguard that got the official nod in late July 1955 when the White House made its announcement. (The projected launch wouldn’t occur until late 1957 or 1958.) Von Braun believed Project Orbiter had lost out to the Navy specifically because he had been involved. He wondered whether professional jealousy, his recent celebrity status, and prejudice about his German past, combined with the ever-present interservice rivalry, had contributed to his satellite’s rejection. Von Braun was so sensitive about reports of antagonism against him in Washington that when he learned that Disney’s publicists were planning to promote a rebroadcast of “Man in Space” with an ad line suggesting that the TV show led directly to the White House’s recent action, he vehemently implored them not to do so, fearing that some in Washington would assume he was using his Hollywood connections to take credit. “The statement would hurt the cause far more than it would help,” he told Disney’s producer.
In fact, a more important factor was involved in the selection. Giving the project to the Naval Research Laboratory was intended to deemphasize military and strategic implications, since the lab already had a reputation for conducting basic scientific research, unlike the Ordnance Guided Missile Center at Redstone Arsenal. The Navy planned to use modified research rockets with an established pedigree from past scientific-research experiments. In contrast, the Army intended to use a modified Redstone, which had been expressly developed to carry a nuclear explosive.
A memo written by Eisenhower’s secretary of defense, Charles Wilson, clarifying the nation’s missile-development responsibilities, only made matters worse for von Braun’s team. Wilson gave the Air Force responsibility for all future land-launched space missiles and limited the Army’s work to surface-to-surface battlefield weapons with a range of less than two hundred miles. At Redstone Arsenal and in the city of Huntsville, morale plummeted.
Four days after the White House’s announcement of Project Vanguard, Soviet space scientist Leonid I. Sedov addressed reporters at his country’s embassy in Copenhagen, where the annual congress of the International Astronautical Federation was being held. Much as the White House had expected, Sedov announced that the Russians would possibly launch a satellite in the next two years. When asked by a journalist about any German rocket specialists employed in Russia, Sedov adamantly insisted that none were working there.
Sedov’s assertion was largely correct, despite published rumors to the contrary. The full story didn’t emerge for decades. Joseph Stalin had personally authorized that nearly five hundred of the remaining rocket engineers from Peenemünde be forcibly transported to Russia in 1946. They were confined to isolated communities with little more than standard amenities, where they were subject to constant surveillance and the enmity of their Russian counterparts.
The Soviet Union’s closest equivalent to von Braun was Sergei Korolev, a Ukrainian-born engineer and strategic planner who, despite having spent six years in one of Stalin’s gulags, had risen to prominence as the chief rocket designer. Korolev distrusted the German engineers living in Russia, fearing that if they attained positions of importance they could possibly thwart his own ambitions and undermine the authority of his handpicked team of designers. Nevertheless, by the mid-1950s, and after wasting years working on projects of little importance, most of the captured Germans were finally allowed to return to the West.
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A RINGING PHONE in the darkness immediately woke him. Arthur Clarke reached for his glasses and rose from the bed in his Barcelona hotel room to catch the call. The man’s voice on the other end of the line said he was calling from London. It was a journalist from the Fleet Street tabloid the Daily Express, requesting a quotation in reaction to the breaking news. The reporter informed Clarke that minutes earlier the Soviet news agency, Tass, announced that Russia had successfully launched an artificial moon weighing 184 pounds into orbit around the Earth.
It was approaching midnight on October 4, 1957. Clarke was in Spain to attend that year’s International Astronautical Federation conference, and the call from London placed him in a privileged position among those who had arrived. Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s regime maintained an international news blackout; nothing appeared in newspapers or on the radio until it had been cleared for public release. Most o
f the other conference delegates remained ignorant of the Soviet Union’s triumph until those arriving late brought the news of the outside world with them. But within a few days everyone knew a new Russian word, “Sputnik,” meaning “fellow traveler.” The provocative response that Clarke gave to the reporter that night received attention in newspapers around the world as well: “As of Saturday the United States became a second-rate power.”
Clarke’s words did not sit well with William Davis, an American Air Force colonel. “I heard that and I didn’t like it! Space is the next major area of competition. If this one is lost, we might as well quit.” Colonel Davis suggested the United States should counteract the Soviet propaganda by readying its own space vehicle, with a human on board.
Missing from the Barcelona conference was Wernher von Braun. It was still Friday evening in Huntsville when a British journalist called his office at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, the successor to the Ordnance Guided Missile Center. Von Braun had feared this day would come, and his sense of disappointment was mixed with anger. He had no doubt that had the United States government given him the opportunity, he would have placed the first artificial satellite in orbit.
At a press conference a few days later, President Eisenhower congratulated the Soviets but dismissed the idea of a race with Russia. He emphasized that both superpowers were engaged in an international program of scientific research. Eisenhower attempted to explain the Soviets’ success by casually noting that “the Russians captured all the German scientists at Peenemünde,” a remark that astounded many in Huntsville, as it was an outright lie. Unstated by Eisenhower was his relief that Russia had established the controversial precedent of orbital overflight. In the future, neither the Soviets nor other nations could voice their diplomatic objections when the United States eventually orbited its planned surveillance satellites.
The American media’s reaction to Sputnik was far less measured than the president’s. Columnists bemoaned the shocking loss of national prestige and criticized Eisenhower’s blasé reaction as lack of leadership. Opposition politicians appeared on television, expressing fear that the Soviets might use their powerful rockets to position a nuclear sword of Damocles above any nation.
Overshadowed by the news of Sputnik was another event at the Barcelona astronautical conference that captured the Cold War zeitgeist. Dr. S. Fred Singer, a young Austrian-born physicist noted for his work in cosmic radiation, was there to deliver a provocative paper. One of von Braun’s Project Orbiter colleagues and a leading member of the American Astronautical Society, Singer had also cultivated a talent for getting his name into print by fearlessly saying things his more prudent scientific colleagues would avoid.
Singer’s paper was titled “Interplanetary Ballistic Missiles: A New Astrophysical Research Tool” and argued in favor of exploding thermonuclear bombs on the Moon as a way to conduct scientific research. It was an idea that, he said, was “not only peaceful, but also useful, and, therefore, worthwhile.” This proposal, he believed, might lead to other experiments, such as exploding thermonuclear devices on the planets or an attempt to create a new star. But more immediately, Singer suggested, this initiative would promote world peace, as “the H-bomb race between the big powers would then be reduced to the much more tractable problem of seeing who could make the bigger crater on the Moon.” He was especially excited by the possibility of rearranging lunar geography. “The idea of creating a permanent crater as a mark of man’s work is an appealing one,” he said. “One is left with a nice crater on the Moon which is unnamed and therefore provides unique opportunities for perpetuating the names of presidents, prime ministers, and party secretaries.”
The Soviet delegates sitting in the lecture hall listened to Singer’s proposal with understandable astonishment and outrage. However, Singer later remarked that the Soviet reaction to his paper was “blown out of proportion.”
As Sputnik dominated the headlines, newspapers gave less attention to the big story out of Little Rock, Arkansas, where a week earlier President Eisenhower had ordered 1,200 members of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to assist with the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. The day before Eisenhower’s order to mobilize the troops, more than a thousand white protesters had rioted to prevent nine black students from attending the school. After Sputnik was launched, Radio Moscow seized upon an opportunity to shame the United States for hypocritically calling itself “the land of the free”: It alerted its global listeners to the exact moment when the satellite would pass over Little Rock, news that was specifically intended to be heard in the emerging independent nations of Africa.
Incensed that he and his new boss at Huntsville’s Army Ballistic Missile Agency, General John Medaris, hadn’t been given an opportunity to ready a modified Redstone rocket to launch a swift response to Sputnik, von Braun covertly made his case in the media, despite having received orders from Washington not to make any public comments. Magazine features called him “The Prophet of the Space Age” and “The Seer of Space,” portraying him as the brilliant visionary whose bold ideas had been ignored by petty bureaucrats, unimaginative military officials, and cowardly politicians. And knowing that nothing motivated people as powerfully as fear, von Braun evoked the specter of atomic annihilation, arguing that it was imperative that the United States establish its superiority in space if the nation was to survive.
Eisenhower became increasingly irritated by von Braun’s arrogance, celebrity status, and self-serving pronouncements. In fact, the president’s growing frustration with von Braun likely accounted for his wildly inaccurate comment at his press conference about the Russians having all the German scientists. If it had been intended to belittle von Braun’s reputation and public profile, it backfired badly.
The media panic only increased when in early November the Soviets orbited Sputnik 2. A much heavier satellite, it carried the first living creature on a one-way trip into orbit, the photogenic husky-terrier mix, Laika. NBC’s Merrill Mueller, a reporter who had covered D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and the bombing of Hiroshima, grimly faced the television camera as he told viewers, “The rocket that launched Sputnik 2 is capable of carrying a ton-and-a-half hydrogen-bomb warhead.”
Democrats with eyes on the 1960 elections, and possibly the White House, added their dire voices to the chorus of doom. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson announced that this was the last chance to save Western civilization from annihilation, while Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson compared Sputnik to a cosmic Pearl Harbor, warning the nation that we “must go on a full, wartime mobilization schedule.”
Taking von Braun’s lead, Johnson forecast a sinister future vision that would delight the heart of a James Bond supervillain: “Control of space means control of the world,” he declared. “From space, the masters of infinity would have the power to control the Earth’s weather, to cause drought and flood, to change the tides and raise the levels of the sea, to divert the Gulf Stream and change temperate climates to frigid.”
Eisenhower scoffed at all the apocalyptic rhetoric, as well as at those who offered a variation on Fred Singer’s idea that the United States should respond to the Soviet Union’s presence in space by sending a rocket to the Moon armed with a warhead. In response, Eisenhower said he would rather have one nuclear-armed short-range Redstone rocket than an expensive and impractical moon rocket. “We have no enemies on the Moon,” he declared.
On Capitol Hill, Lyndon Johnson invited von Braun and General Medaris to testify before a Senate preparedness subcommittee inquiry. Johnson not only received the media exposure he desired, but the pair from Huntsville put the White House on the defensive with a few well-crafted lines for the newsreel and television cameras. “Unless we develop an engine with a million-pound thrust by 1961,” Medaris warned, “we will not be in space—we will be out of the race!” Von Braun raised the specter of a hammer and sickle hanging in the heavens, cautioning tha
t the country was “in mortal danger” if the Soviets conquered space. “They consider the control of space around the Earth very much like, shall we say, the great maritime powers considered the control of the seas in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. And they say, ‘If we want to control this planet, we have to control the space around it.’ ”
The country heard them testify to how the Army’s readiness had fallen victim to petty armed-service rivalries, bureaucratic lassitude, and indecisiveness, a situation that Johnson called “nothing short of disgraceful.” Von Braun once again hypnotized the press, particularly a New York Times journalist who described him as a “blonde, broad shouldered and square-jawed…youthful-looking German scientist” who “drew many sympathetic laughs as he smilingly grappled with questions.”
The nation’s attempt to rid itself of Sputnik anxiety came on a morning in December 1957, barely two months after the shocking news from Moscow. Journalists at Cape Canaveral all had their binoculars focused on Launch Complex 18. There had been no official announcement, but word had spread among the newsmen that this was the likely day; sources at the local motels, restaurants, and bars all said something was being planned for that morning.
Shortly before noon on December 6, a cloud of white smoke appeared at the base of the U.S. Navy’s Vanguard rocket as it began to move upward into the sky. CBS News’s Harry Reasoner observed the launch from a privileged position on the porch of a nearby beach house. At the first sign of smoke he shouted, “There she goes!” His assistant, who was inside the house, on the phone with the network’s New York newsroom, immediately conveyed the word. Once the message had been received, Reasoner’s New York colleague promptly put down the phone to get the news on the air. But by that moment Reasoner was shouting, “Hold it! Hold it!” as he watched the Vanguard fall back on the pad and collapse into an expanding fireball, its tiny satellite toppling out of its nosecone. CBS had beaten ABC and NBC in broadcasting the news from the Cape but had incorrectly reported that the launch had gone well.