Accessory to War

by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

  In NSC 68, the United States has a lofty “fundamental purpose”: “to assure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual,” while the Soviet Union has an insidious “fundamental design”: “to retain and solidify their absolute power, [which] calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world.” Once the usual paeans to freedom have been reiterated in a suitable number of paragraphs, hardly a page omits mention of the pressing need to increase US military power as a counterweight to the USSR’s program for “world domination.” The Soviet Union’s increased “atomic capability” and pursuit of militarization combine to “back up infiltration with intimidation.” On the one hand, the report acknowledges, “Resort to war is not only a last resort for a free society, but it is also an act which cannot definitively end the fundamental conflict in the realm of ideas”; on the other hand, “Only if we had overwhelming atomic superiority and obtained command of the air might the U.S.S.R. be deterred from deploying its atomic weapons as we progressed toward the attainment of our objectives.”71

  What to do? Business as usual won’t work, isolationism won’t work, negotiation on its own won’t really work (though we must appear willing to participate), and outright war would be unpalatable to the population. The only sensible course of action is a “rapid build-up of political, economic, and military strength in the free world.” The United States will need a “military shield” to shelter all nonmilitary initiatives.72

  Which is exactly what happened: US military spending soon tripled, from 5 percent of gross domestic product in 1950 to more than 14 percent of a growing economy in 1953—a tripling concurrent with the Korean War, often called the first hot conflict of the Cold War. For its part, from 1951 to 1952 the Soviet Union almost doubled the size of the Red Army and increased military spending by 50 percent.73

  On July 29, 1955, nine months after the Rome resolution, the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences issued a joint press release declaring the United States’ intention to construct “a small, unmanned, earth-circling satellite vehicle to be used for basic scientific observations during the forthcoming International Geophysical Year.” The target of those observations would be “extraterrestrial radiations and geophysical phenomena.” On the same day, echoing the NSF/NAS press release, Eisenhower’s press secretary announced the president’s approval of plans for “the launching of small unmanned earth-circling satellites” so that “scientists throughout the world [could] make sustained observations in the regions beyond the earth’s atmosphere.”74 Soon afterward, the Navy’s satellite proposal, Project Vanguard, beat out those of the Army and the Air Force—even though the Army, which had rocket scientist Wernher von Braun on its payroll, may well have had a better shot at succeeding. Within a year, Vanguard was incurring cost overruns and technical problems. Various Eisenhower administration officials, however, now convinced of the importance of being the first nation to place a satellite in orbit, fought its termination.75

  Once the Americans had declared their intent, the Soviets visibly quickened their pace. As Bernard Lovell, director of Britain’s Jodrell Bank radio-telescope observatory and witness to the first months of the space race, later wrote, “At that stage no one could accuse the Soviet Union of lacking in frankness about its space programme.”76 On July 30, 1955, just one day after the NSF/NAS announcement, the Soviet Union came out with a similar announcement. On September 25, Sergei Korolev gave an unprecedented public lecture at which he proclaimed that his country’s goals should rightly be “that the first artificial satellite of the Earth be Soviet, created by the Soviet people[, and] to have Soviet rockets and rocket ships be the first to fly in the limitless expanse of the universe!”77

  The year 1957 was mentioned far and wide as the target date. At the end of January 1956, the USSR’s Council of Ministers decreed that the country would launch an artificial satellite sometime in 1957. In late 1956, the CIA warned the president that the Soviet Union “would orbit a satellite any time after early 1957” and alerted the National Security Council in early 1957 that the Soviets had tested a “one to five kiloton atomic weapon affixed to a missile”—a missile powerful enough to launch a satellite.78 The early October launch of Sputnik erased all remaining doubts.

  Some analysts maintain that the Eisenhower administration, intentionally or inadvertently, either allowed the Soviet Union to go first or was hugely relieved when it did so, because the historic flight of the first world-circling satellite effectively resolved the fraught issue of “freedom of space”: whether flights through the airspace above the territory of another country violated that country’s sovereignty. Insistence on “vertical sovereignty” and prohibitions against overflights would mean that a country deemed military satellite reconnaissance illegal. But now, having launched the first satellite, the “Soviets had unwittingly placed themselves in a position where they could hardly argue the illegality of the trespass of their own Sputnik.”79 Thenceforth, in principle, anyone could go anywhere in space.

  Whatever machinations and mishaps may or may not have taken place behind the scenes, Sputnik was a world-changing, banner-headline event.

  The first phase of its success was the perfection of an extremely powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7 rocket. On August 21, 1957, the rocket flew four thousand miles to the remote northeastern Kamchatka Peninsula.80 Once the USSR had mastered the means of transport—pointedly announced by the Soviet news agency, TASS, as a military achievement81—it could focus more intensively on the new payload: a satellite rather than a bomb.

  At 22:28:34 Moscow time on October 4, 1957, very early in IGY and three years to the day after the Rome resolution, the Soviet Union launched the first Sputnik, a glossy, silvery, radio-beeping, 184-pound sphere the size of a beach ball. The front page of Pravda called it “A Great Victory in the Global Competition with Capitalism.”82 A month later, the Soviets launched a second Sputnik, six times as heavy as the first. The score was now USSR 2, USA 0.

  Three days later, President Eisenhower announced the appointment of America’s first science advisor, a post that could almost have dated from the days of President Lincoln. In 1863, with much to distract him, Lincoln nonetheless signed into existence the National Academy of Sciences, an association of independent scientists whose task, then and still, was to provide informed advice to the executive and congressional branches of the government. America’s agenda in space demanded a more sharply defined role for science. Eisenhower, who had served as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces during World War II, recognized that no modern country could be militarily preeminent without also being scientifically eminent.

  On the last day of January 1958, the US Army successfully launched its Explorer 1 satellite. A couple of months later, the US Navy’s Vanguard 1 reached orbit as well.83 Americans who had been paying attention “as one American rocket after another turned into a greasy fireball down in Florida” could now hold their heads a little higher. But multiple failures followed in the wake of the first successes. The Cold War was in high fever. America’s pundits, policymakers, and professors were suddenly, justifiably frantic. Space journalist William E. Burrows caustically frames the situation: “Not only were the Reds militarily muscular and infinitely devious, but it turned out that they were apparently superbly educated as well, particularly in science and engineering.” Every Soviet student took five years each of physics and math, it was reported, while a mere quarter of “their lackluster American counterparts” took one lone course in physics.84

  Time for some government mobilization. Early in 1958, mere months after Sputnik, brand-new standing committees on space and aeronautics were rushed into existence in both houses of Congress, with Lyndon Johnson, then Senate majority leader, as chair of the upper chamber’s committee.85 In February, the Advanced Research Projects Agenc
y (ARPA, soon to become DARPA, with a “D” for “Defense”) was established, serving as America’s de facto national space agency until the beginning of October, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) opened for business.86 At the end of July, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 was passed. In mid-August the National Security Council issued its secret “Preliminary U.S. Policy on Outer Space,” which unequivocally stated that any use of outer space, “whatever the purpose it is intended to serve, may have some degree of military or other non-peaceful application.”87 In September the National Defense Education Act, emphasizing support for math and science, was signed into law. Not since the influential 1945 report to the president, Science, The Endless Frontier, had the link between science education and national security, and the necessity of government support for science, been so explicitly formulated. Finally, in October 1958, came the official launch not only of NASA but of America’s first Pioneer space probe.

  Science, The Endless Frontier, written by the director of the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development, had flatly declared that science “is a proper concern of government” and that it was essential to create a civilian-controlled organization funded by Congress, committed to freedom of inquiry, and empowered to “initiate military research which will supplement and strengthen that carried on directly under the control of the Army and Navy.”88 The result was the creation of the National Science Foundation in 1950. Thinking along similar lines specifically about space, Eisenhower was convinced that “the highest priority should go of course to space research with a military application.” But, he added, “because national morale, and to some extent national prestige, could be affected by the results of peaceful space research, this should likewise be pushed.” The way to push it, urged his vice president, Richard Nixon, would be to set up a separate agency.89 That separate agency was NASA, the most peaceable version of a space agency that a nuclear superpower could be expected to create.

  At the same time, the Eisenhower administration funded investigations into new antimissile technologies under the umbrella of a new venture, Project Defender. One Defender proposal was known by the name of a sweet little Disney deer: BAMBI, the acronym for Ballistic Missile Boost Intercepts. Envisioned as hundreds of space-based battle stations that would use infrared to track enemy missile exhaust and then release a rocket-propelled weapon, BAMBI was anything but sweet. To help disable the ascending enemy missile, the weapon would release a huge rotating wire net studded with steel pellets. Although canceled in 1963, BAMBI presaged Star Wars’ Brilliant Pebbles two decades later. Another Project Defender aspirant was an orbiting battle station with several thousand nuclear weapons.90

  While all this space activity was happening in Washington, on the other side of the planet the Soviet Union was no less busy, launching its third Sputnik in May 1958 and preparing its Luna satellites. One of them would orbit the Moon, another would land on the Moon, a third would photograph the Moon—all during 1959. By then, some US space scientists had ceded space preeminence to the Soviets, as evidenced in a formerly top-secret report on lunar research submitted to the Air Force Special Weapons Center in 1959. The report suggests that US scientific committees shouldn’t concern themselves with potential lunar contamination by visiting astronauts, “since the first moonfall is very likely to be by a Soviet vehicle.”91

  The space racers had good reason to fear each other. Bombardment satellites were on both sides’ agendas, as were plans to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon. Four decades later, the primary author of that top-secret 1959 US report on lunar research said in an interview:

  It was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of one-upmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on earth. . . . The US was lagging behind in the space race.

  The explosion would obviously be best on the dark side of the moon and the theory was that if the bomb exploded on the edge of the moon, the mushroom cloud would be illuminated by the sun. . . .

  Thankfully, the thinking changed. I am horrified that such a gesture to sway public opinion was ever considered.92

  In any case, some sectors of public opinion were already heading in a more constructive direction. On November 14, 1957, within an overall disarmament resolution, Res. 1148, the UN General Assembly invoked outer space for the first time, calling for the “joint study of an inspection system designed to ensure that the sending of objects through outer space shall be exclusively for peaceful and scientific purposes.” On the same day, the General Assembly declared its general alarm in Res. 1149—“Collective Action to Inform and Enlighten the Peoples of the World as to the Dangers of the Armaments Race, and Particularly as to the Destructive Effects of Modern Weapons”—which called for a global publicity campaign to help alert the entire populace of the world that “the armaments race, owing to advances of nuclear science and other modern forms of technology, creates means whereby unprecedented devastation might be inflicted upon the entire world.” Thirteen months later, in December 1958, the General Assembly proposed and adopted its first resolution devoted specifically to space, Res. 1348—“Question on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space”—followed by more resolutions in 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1965, and 1966.93

  From the viewpoint of a US diplomat deeply involved in disarmament and space policy at the time, the two-year lead-up to the 1963 UN resolution was the breakthrough, setting the terms under which peace might be preserved in space.94 Although a resolution is less potent than a treaty, it may have been the more achievable option, given the prevailing political climate: hot on the heels of the terrifying superpower standoff known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, in the fall of 1962, and the Senate’s 80–19 approval in September 1963 of the groundbreaking Limited Test Ban Treaty, the very existence of which could be substantially chalked up to the near-catastrophe over Cuba.95

  At long last, in October 1967, during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the United Nations’ pioneering Outer Space Treaty (full title: Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) became international law. Space, it declared, would be “the province of all mankind.” Only peaceable and scientific activities would be acceptable—no weapons testing, no fortifications, no military maneuvers—although the “use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes” was to be permitted. The keyword here is “peaceful.” Like “defense,” it’s a slippery concept.96

  In their day, presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson wanted to differentiate the “non-aggressive militarization of space” from the “weaponization of space.” Their collective time in office was strongly shaped by America’s official identification of the Soviet Union as “the primary threat to the security, free institutions, and fundamental values of the United States” and by America’s identification of itself as “leader of the free world.”97 They wanted to distinguish between the right to use weapons under certain circumstances and the sustained condition of weaponization; between extensive military preparedness and militarism; between passive military satellites and active space weapons; between stabilizing deterrence and the proactive pursuit of dominance coupled with a readiness to destroy.98

  Juxtaposed with disarmament, such distinctions might seem overly subtle, maybe even duplicitous. But they’re not irrelevant. An unarmed US Air Force reconnaissance satellite, mindlessly collecting data as it circles Earth, is undoubtedly military but also, strictly in itself, nonaggressive. Its mission is information, not destruction. Whereas a US Air Force Space Command satellite circling nearby, if fitted with a constellation of interceptor missiles, could have lethal consequences for wide swaths of life and civilization from one moment to the next.

  During the lead-up to the Outer Space Treaty, all three presidents did what presidents often do: they operated simultaneously on multiple, often opposing tracks and on both
sides of almost every fence. As they gave something to this faction, then placated another faction, engaging in brinksmanship here, avoidance there, and accommodation in between, they maneuvered along a quasi-middle path through a dense forest of contradictions amid hundreds of simultaneous competing conflicts large and small. They pursued weapons along with diplomacy; they vociferously proclaimed the benefits of international cooperation along with the necessity for anti-Soviet mobilization; they tried, as one military historian put it, to “convince the world of America’s noble intentions while also ensuring that the United States maintained the ability to fight for the peaceful use of space.” In the words of Sinclair Lewis, from his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, “every statesman and clergyman praised Peace and brightly asserted that the only way to get Peace was to get ready for War.”99 All the while, close at hand, loomed the specter of nuclear confrontation between the superpowers. Only international cooperation on disarmament could banish it.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower—military but not militaristic, a five-star general who had served as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe from December 1943 through May 1945—wanted both peace and preparedness.

  Pre-Sputnik, Eisenhower dismissed huge expenditures on weaponry as “just negative stuff adding nothing to the earning capability of the country.” He maintained that he wanted to “get the Federal Government out of any unnecessary activity” and to stop the “hysterical approach . . . to cur[ing] every ill” through infusions of cash.100 In the spring of 1953, three short months into his first term, he told the American Society of Newspaper Editors: