Operation Moonglow

by Teasel Muir-Harmony

  With the aid of the USIA information system, the news also spread rapidly to all corners of the world. USIS Tehran created elaborate window displays with moving three-dimensional models of the satellite’s path for Iranian audiences. The display created traffic jams on the sidewalk as crowds of twenty to thirty people gathered in front of the windows throughout the day.31 In Japan, popular knowledge of Explorer 1 compared to that of the Sputniks. Although awareness was comparable, it was clear that the satellites were not equally impressive, according to public opinion polling. The Soviet Union led the space race in the eyes of the world, and many people thought the Soviets would maintain the lead for years to come. For the majority of those whom the USIA questioned, it was too late: the US was too far behind.32

  On February 6, 1958, a few weeks after the subcommittee released its report, Johnson shepherded a resolution through the Senate for the creation of the Special Committee on Space and Aeronautics. This committee would be charged with drafting legislation for a new space agency. As expected, Johnson became chairman after a unanimous vote, selected staff, and oversaw the committee’s agenda. Majority Leader John McCormack chaired the corresponding House committee. The Senate hearings would begin in early May.33

  By early February, it was clear that the United States would create a space agency. But the structure, location, and whether this new agency would be civilian or military were still uncertain. During a meeting at the White House on February 4, Vice President Nixon pointed out that the United States’ “posture before the world would be better” if the agency was separate from the military. Later in the meeting he reemphasized this point.34 Members of PSAC expressed serious concern over situating the American space program within the Pentagon, fearing that it would limit and militarize space research. The USIA’s new director, George V. Allen, recommended that the United States create a stand-alone civilian space agency. By separating military and civilian space activities, Allen argued, the United States would be in a better position to regain its prestige losses from Sputnik. At roughly the same time, the President’s Advisory Committee on Government Organization made a similar recommendation, which Eisenhower authorized and sent to the Bureau of the Budget to draft legislation. Not only did it propose the establishment of a new civilian space agency; it also gave the agency responsibility for civilian space science and aeronautical research, and called for a space advisory board. On April 2, Eisenhower presented this legislation to a joint session of Congress, calling for the establishment of a new civilian aerospace agency.35

  That same month, RAND released a report assessing the political implications of the Space Age. It concluded that Sputnik established that as with military power, prestige and national image mattered in the geopolitical arena. International alliances and alignment, the report stated, relied on positive perceptions of the United States: “From now on, the U.S. should recognize the need for restoring credibility in U.S. superiority, stress our peaceful intentions and their aggressive ones, and disclose and publicize U.S. outer space activities according, first and foremost, to the effect on the U.S. international position.”36

  Many USIA staff were of like mind with their contemporaries at RAND. They prepared extensive information programming to highlight the second successful US satellite placed in orbit: Vanguard 1. Although Soviet premier Khrushchev derided it, calling the small metal orb a “grapefruit,” American public diplomats heralded the satellite’s scientific impact.37 In its promotion of the mission, USIS Chile highlighted the work of a satellite tracking station outside Santiago. The agency sent a radio crew to the station to record the sound of Vanguard’s signal as it orbited over the country. Staff airmailed this recording to radio stations throughout Chile, from Arica in the north to Punta Arenas at the southern tip of the continent. Broadcasters notified listeners that they were not just listening to the signal of the satellite, but “the actual sound of Vanguard as it passed over Chile,” making a global event locally relevant.38

  A few months later, the Soviet Union launched its third satellite—this time the massive Object D scientific satellite—on May 15. Sedov, who had surprised the world in the summer of 1955 when he announced the Soviet Union would be launching satellites during the IGY, claimed that this satellite “could easily carry a man with a stock of food and supplementary equipment.”39 The implications of a 3,000-pound satellite seemed clear to many around the world: the Soviet Union had immense rocket thrust capabilities. But as Khrushchev later admitted, the early Soviet rockets “represented only a symbolic counterthreat to the United States.” In fact, the sizable Soviet rockets were the result of the inefficiencies of their design. They were unwieldy and lacked an inertial guidance system, which made them sufficient for launching satellites into orbit but not usable as strategic weapons.40 However, Khrushchev claimed publicly, to much effect, that the USSR had “outstripped the leading capitalist country—the United States—in the field of scientific and technical progress.”41

  Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 16, and President Eisenhower signed it into law on July 29. The law led to the formation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) the following October. The 1958 Space Act—negotiating the interests of the administration, the Department of Defense (DoD), Congress, and the scientific community—became the core statement guiding US civil space policy. In addition to giving NASA direction over civilian space efforts, including the research that was undertaken at three former National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) facilities, the Space Act called for a council to advise the president on space exploration, and it created a civilian-military liaison committee to coordinate NASA and DoD projects. Although NASA was not officially in operation, Eisenhower assigned the new agency the task of developing a human spaceflight program in August 1958. In December the newly formed Space Council granted what became known as Project Mercury “highest priority” status so that the United States could put humans into Earth orbit as soon as possible.42

  The Space Act was internationalist in tone and vision, coupling the preeminence of US space activities with international cooperation and engagement. NASA, in concert with the State Department and Department of Defense, would proactively nurture and mold the development of space capabilities in foreign countries. As the first line of the Declaration of Policy and Purpose reads, “The Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.”43 The notion that the US space program should serve “all mankind” and not simply American citizens illustrates this internationalist vision, which had increasingly framed US grand strategy in the early cold war era.44 The Space Act also included a provision for the widespread dissemination of information. As Johnson and other leaders envisioned, NASA would not only send satellites into space; it would also be an arm of US foreign policy. The US space program would be part of a larger effort to unite the world—politically and culturally—through American technological and scientific leadership.45

  Nearly eight thousand people, coming from NACA research laboratories and the Navy Vanguard Project, became NASA employees on October 1, 1958.46 Within two years this number nearly doubled. In 1958 the United States sent four civilian satellites into orbit and two probes into outer space. A year later NASA successfully launched four more satellites and sent one space probe past the moon and on toward the sun. In 1959 NASA also began training seven astronauts for Project Mercury and testing Atlas boosters and capsule instruments to prepare for human spaceflight. Two monkeys, Able and Baker, rode into space on the Army’s Jupiter rocket and returned to Earth alive and well. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union launched a series of Luna probes, accomplishing the first impact on the moon and even capturing a photograph of its far side, among other firsts.47 Near the end of 1959, NASA’s formal plans adopted lunar exploration as a “long-term goal.” The goal of the near future, the 1960s, would be making “manned exploration of the Mo
on” feasible, launching a crewed circumlunar flight, and building an Earth-orbiting space station. Landing humans on the moon would happen in the future, sometime beyond the 1970s.48

  NASA worked closely with the USIA, the State Department, and the White House to ensure that the new civilian space program would serve foreign relations interests by promoting US space successes heavily abroad. The USIA became officially responsible for distributing information internationally about both civilian and military space activities, while NASA took charge of domestic public relations. NASA, the DoD, and the Atomic Energy Commission, along with other agencies involved in space exploration and research, supplied the USIA with material for crafting press releases, magazine reprints, pamphlets, photographs, radio and television broadcasts, films, and exhibits. The USIA also based a full-time liaison officer at NASA. Eventually, representatives from the USIA participated in some of the Space Council’s activities, especially meetings that focused on overall policy.49

  In late November 1958, USIA Science Advisor Hal Goodwin and NASA Office of Public Information Director Walter Bonney met to lay out an overall framework for space information programming. They agreed that the tone and methods that the agencies used would be critical. The agencies must present the US program as proactive and not reactionary. It was also important to frame each US launch as part of a larger program with larger aims, not as individual accomplishments. This approach was in direct response to the impact of Soviet space feats abroad and the damage that launch failures like Vanguard had inflicted on American prestige. In large part, what this plan did was offer an explanation or justification for the slower pace of US space exploration. NASA efforts, the USIA and NASA public affairs clarified, were rational, based on scientific motivations, and shared with all humankind. The USIA would not present space exploration as a race but instead as a rational pursuit of knowledge. Like research undertaken in a laboratory, space exploration was experimental, and not every “experiment” would work. Goodwin and Bonney’s approach stressed that the schedule of space shots, at least in information programming, had nothing to do with Soviet progress in space. They laid out this framework “in an attempt to define a way in which the public presentation of the civilian space program would be of maximum value to the USIA.”50

  The USIA’s general science program sought to strengthen ties between the United States and other countries by explaining how science and technology factored into American life and progress, not simply disseminating scientific and engineering information. Describing how science flourished under the US system and how Americans’ general welfare flourished with the aid of science, USIA programming attempted to demonstrate that American democracy was in line with foreign people’s “aspirations for freedom, progress and peace.”51 Shying away from a focus on space science and technology, the USIA stressed American scientific accomplishments in general. In his State of the Union address, Eisenhower called for extending the Atoms for Peace program to include other areas of science and medicine. Science for Peace, as the new initiative was named, became a priority theme for the USIA in 1958.52

  The Soviet Union, according to the USIA, was using its satellite launches to substantiate claims about the superiority of the Communist system. The tendency to equate accomplishments in space exploration with world leadership would only increase, thanks in large part to Soviet efforts to foster this correlation. USIA officials emphasized what they perceived as the major difference between American and Soviet science: the integration of science and technology in all areas of life. To make the point, Goodwin explained that in the Soviet Union an oxcart “may be seen moving on primitive roads in the vicinity of Soviet satellite launching complexes.”53 There were fundamental differences between the use of technology in various economic and political systems, according to the USIA. Economic competition within the United States, as stated by the USIA guidelines, stimulated a diversity of technological developments, which contributed to “the good life.”54

  Even though competition lay at the core of the USIA’s objectives, agency guidelines made sure that promotional material eschewed any suggestion that the United States was competing with the Soviet Union. Individual events should not be presented as markers of national superiority but instead as part of broader long-term objectives. The universal and international nature of science should be emphasized, international cooperative programs should be highlighted, and the areas of science and technology that could be applied to the modernization of underdeveloped nations were particularly meaningful and should be “presented with understanding, restraint, and a becoming humility.”55 Expressing a view consonant with modernization theory, a 1958 report on the USIA science program explained that “science and technology seem to hold special promise to the people of the less developed nations, since they see in modern science the means of bypassing the historically long, slow route to full realization of their national potential.”56 The USIA predicted that just as science and technology were developing at an exponential rate, global interest in these fields was also on the rise. For this reason, science and technology had to play a central role in USIA programming. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and the elaborate propaganda programs that ensued, the world became aware of Soviet capability. It was the USIA’s job to make sure that the international public was not only aware of American technological and scientific know-how but also about how within the US political system these advances contributed directly to the welfare of people around the globe.57

  The November 1958 election saw a crushing defeat for the Republican Party. Democrats won nearly fifty additional seats in the House of Representatives. The total number of Democratic victories in the Senate surpassed all previous records for any party in US history. The lagging economy combined with anxiety over the Eisenhower administration’s national security policy in the wake of Sputnik assured Democratic victory.58 Journalists Robert Novak and Rowland Evans called Johnson’s deft treatment of Sputnik that year a “minor masterpiece.” Not only did he assert his role as the national space expert, inserting himself even more prominently on the international stage; he also leveraged the hearings to sow doubt about the Eisenhower administration.59

  While Washingtonians debated spaceflight, psychological strategy, and US global power over lunch and in conference rooms, NASA and USIA staff also worked on the ground around the world, building a network of tracking stations, disseminating the latest information on the US space program, and creating exhibits that would appeal to broad audiences. Space exploration had become a major feature of USIA material. The USIA’s Press and Publications Service (IPS) produced news stories, speech texts, chronologies, bylined columns, pamphlets, photographs, picture stories, cartoon features, magazine articles, and a comic book titled “Man and Outer Space.” USIS posts translated and adapted this material for local audiences’ tastes and interests. Foreign press drew from this material and in some instances printed USIA news releases verbatim. The USIS posts kept careful track of when and how the foreign press used the media that they distributed and reported these results back to USIA headquarters. Noting that science and technology information was often more readily used by the foreign press than other material, USIA officials observed that in places such as Cuba and Venezuela, “we never have difficulty placing scientific photos.”60

  In the late 1950s the USIA did not have the budget to create an elaborate series of space-focused exhibits, so the agency offered NASA its network of USIS posts to distribute NASA material worldwide. Requesting models, drawings, and photographs for exhibits, the Exhibits Division of the USIA hoped to distribute this material to posts ahead of NASA launches.61 USIS posts often worked with foreign institutions, arranging for exhibits to be shown in local venues. The kit exhibits on Explorer I, a twelve-foot model of the Echo balloon satellite, and other satellite models were among the USIA’s most popular displays in 1959. At the Karachi National Science Fair in Pakistan, the USIA showed the “Space Unlimited” and “International Geoph
ysical Year” exhibits to the audience of 75,000. A “ladies only” showing attracted 2,000 women. These exhibits also drew thousands of people in Helsinki, Madras, Southern Rhodesia, and numerous other locations. The US Department of Defense exhibited models of the Explorer satellites to groups of South Vietnamese military. According to the DoD’s Psychological Warfare Service, “The soldiers got a great belief in the strength and science of the free world.”62 Similarly, USIS Tel Aviv circulated the exhibit among Army camps in Israel, while USIS Rangoon created a space exhibit for the Army, Navy, and Air Force Cadet Corps of Burma’s Defense Services Academy.63

  The USIA promoted spaceflight through cultural programming, but the agency also worked with NASA and the State Department on developing a global infrastructure of tracking stations. In 1959 the US reached new agreements with foreign nations to create an expansive system to support the upcoming Mercury human spaceflight program. This network, spread across the globe in Bermuda, the Bahamas, Grand Turk Island, Mexico, the Canary Islands, Nigeria, Tanzania, the Solomon Islands, Canton Island, Hawaii, and two stations in Australia, would provide necessary tracking, telemetry, and voice communications as the spacecraft traveled overhead, while simultaneously establishing a physical US footprint in other nations.64