by Von Hardesty
Launch control centers were built like armored bunkers to protect them in case of launch disasters. Igloo-like concrete shells covered many of the control centers along “Missile Row” at the Cape. Mere concrete and armor, however, would not be enough in the face of a colossal moon rocket explosion. The launch control center at LC-39 had to be located more tha three miles from the pads to survive the blast radius of a Saturn V explosion. Fortunately, not one of von Braun’s Saturn rockets ever failed.
Von Braun’s close-knit rocket team developed strict and cautious countdown and launch site protocols that recognized the tremendous danger inherent in rockets. Despite dozens of disasters, no Cape personnel were injured or killed by rocket explosions.
The Soviets were less fortunate. Late in 1960, a new intercontinental ballistic missile sat on its pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The R-16 ICBM used propellant chemicals that were so potent and reactive that they needed no spark to ignite: “Hypergolic” in nature, they burned fiercely and instantly on contact with each other. Highly toxic and highly corrosive, the fuel mixture was called “devil’s venom” by the Soviet technicians. On October 24, 1960, the R-16 stood on the Site 41 launch pad fully fueled, while a large group of harried technicians worked in the gantries under the eyes of their frustrated engineer-supervisors and the personal gaze of the commander of the Soviet nuclear missile program, Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin. The standard safety protocol required draining the R-16 of fuel before allowing personnel near it to continue work, but the de-fueling would seriously delay the intended launch schedule, and so Marshal Nedelin had ordered the launch crew out to the pad.
An electrical error opened the valves of the rocket’s second stage engine. The hypergolic chemicals ignited almost instantly, firing into the first stage below it and detonating that fuel tank as well. The men on the gantries were incinerated. Flames poured out of the rocket as the ground crew ran for their lives, showered by the “devil’s venom,” burning and choking to death on the toxic gas as they struggled to tear off their burning clothes. A wire fence entangled some of the men as the fireball expanded to engulf them. Others found too late that an asphalt pathway had melted into tarry glue, which held them like flypaper. Temperatures may have reached some 3,000°F. The whole scene was recorded by automatic cameras set to film the glorious launch.
We will never know all the details owing to Soviet secrecy, but the death toll was about 130 people, including the marshal at his ringside seat. This horrific accident killed not only highly trained pad technicians but also many of the Soviet Union’s best rocket engineers, a substantial loss of expertise at a critical point in the space race. The Nedelin disaster illustrates the danger of overriding engineering judgment in this inherently dangerous field. The Soviet system allowed for autocratic military power to run roughshod, and the launch team at Site 41 paid the price. Only hard-earned experience, meticulous engineering, and tremendous care makes rockets anything but very expensive bombs.
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A U.S. Army Redstone missile, developed by von Braun and his team, is launched at Cape Canaveral.
2
SPACE AND THE COLD WAR
The decade of the 1950s signaled a period of deepening tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Americans felt a growing alarm over the perceived global threat of communism. The fear of domestic spying became a powerful force in American life in the postwar era, as shown in the celebrated case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed as Soviet spies. In Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union consolidated its power with the creation of communist-run states, prompting Winston Churchill to refer to an “iron curtain” descending across the continent. In 1948, a coup brought Czechoslovakia into the Soviet bloc. The Berlin Airlift that same year successfully blunted a Soviet move to isolate and seal off the former German capital city, then under four-power occupation. During these turbulent times, the administration of President Harry S. Truman used the Marshall Plan to assist European democracies in economic recovery, offering financial aid with the aim of assuring political stability. No less important, the so-called “Truman Doctrine” mobilized direct economic and military assistance to assist Greece in fighting a communist insurgency. These successes, however, were dwarfed in 1949 with the triumph of communism in China under Mao Zedong. The decision of North Korea to invade South Korea in 1950, which sparked the Korean War, only deepened fears of continued communist expansion.1
The Soviet Union appeared to most Americans as a new and formidable military threat. By this time the Communist state possessed the atomic bomb (first tested in 1949), a developing fleet of long-range bombers, and an active program of missile development, the latter based on their own exploitation of the German V-2 rocket technology. When Dwight D. Eisenhower assumed the presidency in January 1953, he made a renewed effort to counter this extraordinary threat from the Soviet Union and its allies. Eisenhower sought international agreements to ban the testing of nuclear weapons, pursued new initiatives to gain intelligence on Soviet technology and military intentions, and began to expand experimental work in missile development. Eisenhower faced the dilemma of providing for a robust national defense and at the same time maintaining the delicate peace with the Soviet Union.
SPACE IN THE POPULAR IMAGINATION
Despite the pall cast by Soviet military might, the decade of the 1950s would also give birth to a supernova of imaginative thinking about space travel, in books, magazines, radio and television, and the cinema. In contrast to the 19th-century visions of Jules Verne in From Earth to the Moon (1865) and H. G. Wells in War of the Worlds (1898)—which were shaped by sheer fantasy—this new generation of space enthusiasts envisioned the dream of space travel from the perspective of modern science and technology. These latter-day visionaries—a diverse group of artists, scientists, philosophers, rocket engineers, and science-fiction writers—offered plausible ways for humans to escape Earth’s gravity and explore outer space. Civilization, in their view, was on the cusp of a new age of exploration. And the script for this epoch was clear in broad outline: building an orbiting space station, landing on the moon, and trekking to Mars and beyond. The prospect of future space travel had been heralded by the V-2 rocket. Modern rocketry soon held promise for both military and civilian uses. The idea of reaching outer space appeared concrete and imminent, no longer a fantastic dream or the stuff of science fiction. The space age had arrived.
The first important salvo of the new consciousness came in 1949 with the appearance of a small book, The Conquest of Space, written by Willy Ley with illustrations by Chesley Bonestell.2 Robert A. Heinlein, the celebrated science fiction writer, reviewed the illustrated book in The Saturday Review, where he greeted it as the “Baedeker of the Solar System.” For Heinlein, the book represented the “next best thing to interplanetary flight.” Ley, an émigré German engineer and popularizer of space travel, had come to the United States in the 1930s, after participating briefly in Germany’s pioneering rocket community. Along with Bonestell’s imaginative paintings, Ley wrote a vivid text showcasing futuristic scenes of the human exploration of the cosmos. Putting this remarkable new book in proper perspective, Heinlein noted that atomic energy had made a recent and profound impact on his generation, but The Conquest of Space suggested that yet “another revolutionary thing [was] about to happen to the human spirit: space travel.”3
In March 1952, Collier’s, a national weekly boasting a circulation of four million, inaugurated a series of six articles on rocketry and space exploration. George Manning, the magazine’s managing editor, played a key role in conceptualizing the series, titled “Man Will Conquer Space Soon!” Later, Cornelius Ryan joined the project as the chief editor. The origins of the Collier’s series had in part grown out of a symposium on space travel at New York’s Hayden Planetarium, launched the previous year by Ley, fittingly on Columbus Day. For the magazine, the undertaking was a bold move, representing a major breakthrough in the popularization of m
odern rocketry. A number of eminent scientists and rocket engineers participated as consultants and writers, most notably Wernher von Braun, then working in the Army missile program at Huntsville, Alabama. Others joined von Braun: Willy Ley, Harvard astronomer Fred Whipple, physicist Joseph Kaplan, and Heinz Habler, an expert on flight medicine, among others. The assemblage of such technical expertise gave the series an air of authority and relevance.4
Collier’s, with its vast popular readership, took pains to give the sequence of articles on space a stunning visual appeal. Here imagination blended harmoniously with existing science and rocket technology to fashion a compelling view of the future. Many who read the Collier’s articles were awestruck by the illustrations: the celestial vistas, the elaborate architecture (often with cutaways) of orbiting space stations, the precise and technically informed renditions of future multistage rockets, and the imaginative, often cinematic, portrayal of future missions to the moon and Mars.
One image in particular captured the attention of readers: the vision of a future space station, featuring a ferry rocket and astronauts walking in space. The huge three-deck station, as described in the magazine, was the shape of an enormous wheel, measuring 250 feet in diameter, and orbited at an altitude of 1,075 miles. It rotated at three revolutions per minute, to simulate one-third of Earth’s gravity. The station would be a permanent fixture, with its elaborate living and work areas, self-sustaining solar-powered boiler and turbine plant, sophisticated navigational and surveillance instruments, and docking bay for visiting spaceships. Most important, the futuristic space station would become a launching pad for missions to the moon and Mars.5
On October 18, 1952, Collier’s published the second installment in the space program series, in this case an anthology of three articles under the general heading “Man on the Moon.” In the accompanying editorial, “Next Comes the Moon,” the magazine took note of the fact that the initial installment in the series, published the previous March, had coincided with an important international conference on space exploration in Stuttgart, Germany. More than 200 scientists had gathered at this conclave to discuss the optimal design and time factors involved in the building of a space rocket, the feasibility of artificial satellites, and unresolved questions regarding the application of international law to outer space. The editor took pride in the fact that von Braun, one of the key contributors to the Collier’s anthology on the moon, had been a major voice at the Stuttgart conference. “The very fact that the word astronautical exists in our language,” the text of the editorial noted, “seems proof enough to us that space travel had passed from the realm of conjecture to the field of rather imminent reality.”6
Yet, at the heart of the series was a powerful undertow of Cold War anxieties. This haunting sense of external danger, even the fear of nuclear annihilation, was expressed on the editorial page of Collier’s on October 18, 1952. After describing the series themes, the editor concluded that the development of rockets, upon which any future space travel would depend, had been “born of the desire for destruction and conquest in World War II.” The Soviet Union—viewed as a country where science had been subordinated to an aggressive political ideology—was actively pursuing its own rocket program. No real international cooperation was possible. Collier’s called upon the United States to press forward with space exploration, developing all the essential rockets and associated technologies to achieve dominance. In the words of the editor, “the first power that builds and occupies a space satellite will hold the ultimate military power over the Earth.”7
A key element in the conquest of space was the rocket envisioned by von Braun, a three-stage behemoth with a winged upper stage. On the cover of the March 22, 1952, issue, Chesley Bonestell portrayed the futuristic rocket, firing its second stage as it passes through the upper atmosphere into orbit above Earth. The 265-foot rocket, in many ways, became a signature image for the new space age. Interest in the extraordinary rocket design prompted the Hayden Planetarium to construct a 13-foot scale model under the direction of the planetarium’s chief artist and special-effects creator, Walter Favreau. Exhibited in 1952, the scale model, with its special cutaways showing the rocket engines and multiple stages, drew a wide audience, especially young people attracted to the vision of space travel. Von Braun also employed illustrations to capture the special rocket design required for a journey to the moon, a celestial voyage of nearly 240,000 miles. The spaceship, by design, would be huge, a projected 160 feet tall (nine feet higher than the Statue of Liberty), 110 feet in diameter, and powered by 30 rocket engines. At the top would be a sphere housing the crew; beneath the sphere would be two long arms (to serve as cranes) set on a circular track to allow a full 360-degree rotation. The lunar rocket, once assembled at an orbiting space station, would become a spacecraft without streamlining or wings, an aggregation of spheres, tanks, antennae, moving arms, and engine nacelles that could move effortlessly through the vacuum of space. For the long lunar journey, the spacecraft would require huge fuel tanks, carrying 800,000 gallons of liquid propellants. A projected crew of 20 would maintain the spaceship. Solar power, advanced guidance and navigation systems, and radio communications gear would enable the rocket to make the safe round-trip passage to the moon.8
Still more imaginative was the Collier’s piece “Can We Get to Mars?,” published in April 1954. Von Braun, in collaboration with Cornelius Ryan, prepared this elaborate blueprint for an expedition to the red planet. A great deal of mystery surrounded the geology and atmosphere of Mars—including the question of life on the planet—so Collier’s employed the astronomer Fred Whipple to serve as a consultant. As the primary writer for the concluding installment, von Braun himself was intrigued by the idea of a Martian trip. He had worked out the technical details six years earlier (published in a German-language spaceflight periodical). The enormity of the undertaking would give any space visionary doubts concerning its feasibility, even if the technological advances in rocketry and space sciences continued unabated. The trip itself would take eight months, necessitating in von Braun’s reckoning a huge flotilla of 10 spaceships. The rockets, to be assembled and launched from an orbiting space station, would be carefully stocked with all essentials for long-term survival, from logistics to fuel to the vehicles for the actual exploration of the Martian surface. The landing on Mars would take place at a polar ice cap, via a “ski-equipped plane.” From this base camp, a team of explorers would travel overland to the Martian equator, living in inflatable and pressurized spheres mounted on tractor vehicles.
This fanciful projection of a future Mars expedition did not ignore some of the anticipated problems associated with prolonged weightlessness. Von Braun acknowledged the problem of crew members facing muscle atrophy in outer space. He admitted that no clear remedy was apparent to him or other space visionaries in the 1950s. However, he speculated that this problem—as with the extreme dangers for space travelers from cosmic rays—would be solved in the course of time by means of an exercise regimen or perhaps the creation of “synthetic gravity.”9
The impact of the Collier’s series was immense. Never had the prospect of space travel received such systematic and dramatic treatment. Von Braun found himself suddenly catapulted to national fame. In the years that followed, he would emerge as an authoritative spokesman for America’s embryonic space program. One concrete measure of von Braun’s growing celebrity was an invitation from Walt Disney to assist in the creation of a new TV series on space exploration. Ward Kimball, a producer at Disney, had read the Collier’s articles with fascination, seeing immediately the potential for a television version. In 1955, the first of three Disney shows, titled “Man in Space,” aired nationally. A second program, “Man and the Moon,” followed later in the year. The final segment, “Mars and Beyond,” aired in 1957. Von Braun served as a key technical consultant for the Disney series, taking pains to assure that every detail was “science factual.” The Disney Studios demonstrated great skill in dramatizing future
space travel to the moon and Mars. These televised films dovetailed with the opening of Disneyland, where “Tomorrowland” became a popular attraction in the theme park.10
Popular interest in space also swept the American cinema. A number of remarkable and memorable films expressed the theme of space travel. Robert Heinlein’s tale Destination Moon was adapted for the silver screen in 1951. Another film, now a classic, was The Day the Earth Stood Still, a melodrama about a visitor from a distant world who arrives in a flying saucer on the Mall in Washington, D.C. The visitor, Klaatu, warns earthlings that their violent ways could lead to the destruction of the planet. Other films such as The War of the Worlds, The Thing, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers portrayed more malevolent and threatening types of alien visitation. This was also the era of the flying saucer sightings, the Roswell incident, and the emergence of the U.S. government’s mysterious and top-secret Area 51 test site in Nevada. Television offered young people the adventures of space heroes Captain Video and Tom Corbett. These popular films and programs ran parallel to the more scientifically based projects of Collier’s and Disney Studios.
In the realm of science fiction, a number of popular writers gained prominence in the decade of the 1950s, using imaginative literature to showcase the compelling themes associated with the new space age. Three men stood out as talented contributors to this genre: Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Heinlein became a prolific writer of science fiction, attracting a wide audience. A number of youths who read Heinlein in that decade became scientists as adults, some directly involved in the space program. Asimov also emerged in the 1950s as an important science fiction writer with his fanciful tales of clashing civilizations in space. Clarke, an Englishman, worked as a radar specialist during World War II and developed the concept of a geosynchronous communications satellite, but eventually turned to writing. His short story “The Sentinel” became the basis for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.11