58. James Clay Moltz, Crowded Orbits: Conflict and Cooperation in Space (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 148, 151.
59. David S. F. Portree, “NASA’s Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age,” Monograph 10, NASA History Division, 2005, www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/40thann/nasaorigins.htm. For the Soviet approach to IGY and the Rome meeting, see Asif A. Siddiqi, “Korolev, Sputnik, and the International Geophysical Year,” in Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite, ed. Roger D. Launius, John M. Logsdon, and Robert W. Smith (Australia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), 47, history.nasa.gov/sputnik/siddiqi.html (accessed Apr. 23, 2017). See generally Walter A. McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 118–24, 134.
60. In the 1920s and 1930s, Russian rocket pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky had considered two versions of the multistage rocket. One was sequential—a “rocket train,” with the successive stages one behind the other. The other was an array—a “rocket squadron.” Soviet space exploration advocate Mikhail Tikhonravov, who edited Tsiolkovsky’s writings in the late 1920s, believed that the multistage rocket had numerous advantages over a single giant rocket and strongly supported the “rocket package” approach: a cluster of identical, not-giant rockets that could easily be mass-produced and, depending on how many were in the cluster, could provide various levels of thrust. See Asif A. Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 252–54.
61. In 2003, NASA’s Space Infrared Space Telescope Facility, tuned specifically to the infrared part of the spectrum, would be renamed the Spitzer Space Telescope in his honor.
62. As the very first Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Herbert York, wrote in Making Weapons, Talking Peace: “Unnecessary duplication was rife, and vicious interservice struggles over rules and missions were creating confusion.” Quoted in James Clay Moltz, The Politics of Space Security: Strategic Restraint and the Pursuit of National Interests (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 95. The Air Force also began to attract lavish funding: in 1948, shortly after the fall of Czechoslovakia, “a supposedly penny-proud Congress” voted for 25 percent more funding for the Air Force than had been requested by the secretary of defense. This vote took place during the “war scare” of 1948 and the resultant call for a military buildup—a buildup that was partly a response to active lobbying by US aircraft manufacturers. Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–2006, 10th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2006), 79–80.
63. Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 19–25.
64. Siddiqi, Red Rockets’ Glare, 244–46; Stalin quote originally from David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956.
65. Siddiqi, Red Rockets’ Glare, 201–206, 241–89. For Korolev’s modus operandi within the constraints of Soviet bureaucracy under Stalin and Khrushchev, see Slava Gerovitch, “Stalin’s Rocket Designers’ Leap into Space: The Technical Intelligentsia Faces the Thaw,” Osiris 23:1 (2008), 189–209.
66. Siddiqi, Red Rockets’ Glare, 290–331.
67. James Clay Moltz, Asia’s Space Race: National Motivations, Regional Rivalries, and International Risks (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 46–48, 73–75; Evan Osnos, “The Two Lives of Qian Xuesen,” New Yorker, Nov. 3, 2009, www.newyorker.com/news/evan-osnos/the-two-lives-of-qian-xuesen; Michael Wines, “Qian Xuesen, Father of China’s Space Program, Dies at 98,” New York Times, Nov. 3, 2009 (accessed July 5, 2016). See also Iris Chang’s biography, Thread of the Silkworm (New York: BasicBooks, 1995), in which the scientist’s name is spelled Tsien Hsue-shen. During Qian’s Immigration and Naturalization Service hearings in 1950–51, when interrogated about his loyalty in the event of a potential US–China conflict, Qian said, “My essential allegiance is to the people of China. If a war were to start between the United States and China, and if the United States war aim was for the good of the Chinese people, and I think it will be, then, of course, I will fight on the side of the United States” (Chang, 170). Also, as Chang writes, “INS officers failed to see the irony of deporting a scientist accused of Communist leanings to a Communist country—especially when this scientist was a world-renowned expert in ballistic missile design” (193).
68. LaFeber, America, Russia, 62, 73ff. Quote re American consensus is from hearings of the Committee on Foreign Relations (92).
69. LaFeber, America, Russia, 45, 62; Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 27–28, 41, 110–33.
70. National Security Council—Executive Secretary, “Report to the National Security Council on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” NSC 68, Apr. 14, 1950, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/10-1.pdf (accessed Apr. 23, 2017).
71. NSC, “Report on US Objectives,” NSC 68, 5–6, 35, 11, 39.
72. NSC, “Report on US Objectives,” NSC 68, 54ff. For an analysis of NSC 68 in historical context, see LaFeber, America, Russia, 103–105 and generally chap. 4, “The ‘Different World’ of NSC-68 (1948–1950),” 83–105.
73. Office of the Historian, “Milestones: 1945–1952—NSC 68, 1950,” US Department of State, history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/NSC68 (accessed Apr. 23, 2017); LaFeber, America, Russia, 147.
74. National Science Foundation and National Academy of Sciences, “Plans for Construction of Earth Satellite Vehicle Announced,” press release, July 29, 1955, www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/igy/1955_7_29_NSF_Release.pdf; “The White House, statement by James C. Hagerty,” press release, July 29, 1955, www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/igy/1955_7_29_Press_Release.pdf (accessed Apr. 23, 2017). However, as Kalic points out in Presidents and the Militarization of Space, while Eisenhower touted the scientific and civilian character of the Vanguard satellite program in public, the Department of Defense carried out most of the work (33).
75. Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 31–34. Wernher von Braun was at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Alabama and continued to push for support. In 1954 he requested $100,000 to launch a satellite using existing technology—“a tiny price to pay given that ‘a man-made satellite, no matter how humble (five pounds), would be a scientific achievement of tremendous impact’ ” (McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 118–19). Everett Dolman, in Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2002), cites a claim from the respected Spaceflight Directory that “von Braun was fully prepared to launch a satellite into orbit on a Redstone rocket in September 1957” (109). William E. Burrows, in This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age (New York: Random House, 1998), writes that von Braun “was not engaging in idle promises”—that in September 1956 his team at the Redstone Arsenal had test-launched an eighty-four-pound payload more than three thousand miles over the Atlantic; had the trajectory been upward rather than downrange, von Braun maintained, the Redstone rocket could have launched a satellite into orbit (188).
76. Bernard Lovell, The Story of Jodrell Bank (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 187. Lovell goes on to say that John Hagen, director of Project Vanguard, told him in August 1957 that no Vanguard launch could possibly be attempted until several months in the future, whereupon Lovell quotes himself saying, “Then you will certainly be beaten by the Russians.” Hagen replied that “he did not believe there was the slightest chance of this: the Russians were known to be encountering severe difficulties and were attending a conference in the U.S. in early October to discuss them.” That same week, news of a successful Soviet test of an ICBM appeared. Lovell then assumed that Hagen’s statement amounted to a form of secrecy, and that “Vanguard was much more nearly ready than Hagen had publicly indicated. Unfortunately, as was soon to be revealed, Vanguard was not only late but ne
arly a total failure. The U.S. had failed to give the project the priority and support which was necessary” (190–91).
77. Dolman, Astropolitik, 106; Siddiqi, Red Rockets’ Glare, 290. Re the unprecedented nature of Korolev’s presentation, Siddiqi writes, “With few exceptions, in the 1940s and 1950s, almost no one from the defense industry—from the lowest mechanic to the highest chief designer—was allowed to write publicly under his or her own name or to reveal the place of his or her employment. Weapons research institutes or design bureaus were openly identified only with a post office box number” (293). Nor was Korolev’s work ascribed to him by name; instead he was generally referred to as the Chief Designer; as one journalist put it, “he was never named in state communiqués because of official disapproval of ‘the cult of personalities.’ ” Robin McKie, “Sergei Korolev: The Rocket Genius Behind Yuri Gagarin,” Guardian, Mar. 12, 2011.
78. Siddiqi, “Korolev, Sputnik,” 51; Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 33, 92.
79. Dolman, Astropolitik, 107–109; Burrows, This New Ocean, 187; Curtis Peebles, High Frontier: The U.S. Air Force and the Military Space Program (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1997), 10; McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 123–24, 134.
80. For details on the R-7, see Siddiqi, “Korolev, Sputnik,” 45–56.
81. “A few days ago a super-long-range, multistage intercontinental ballistic missile was launched. The tests of the missile were successful; they fully confirmed the correctness of the calculations and the selected design. The flight of the missile took place at a very great, hitherto unattained, altitude. Covering an enormous distance in a short time, the missile hit the assigned region. The results obtained show that there is the possibility of launching missiles into any region of the terrestrial globe.” Quoted in Siddiqi, “Korolev, Sputnik,” 58. Siddiqi notes that it was highly unusual for the Soviet Union to publicize military successes.
82. Siddiqi, Red Rockets’ Glare, 2.
83. An earlier Vanguard launch attempt, on Dec. 2, 1958, took place during post-Sputnik hearings by Lyndon Johnson’s Senate Armed Services subcommittee on preparedness. Journalists variously named the failure “Kaputnik,” “Stayputnik,” and “Flopnik.” See Thomas M. Gaskin, “Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, the Eisenhower Administration and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1957–60,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 24:2 (Spring 1994), 348. Also of note: five days after the launch of Sputnik 1, top officials at the Department of Defense who were involved in Vanguard rather boldly misrepresented the situation in a briefing for Senator Johnson’s subcommittee, saying that Vanguard and the US satellite program had very little to do with the US missile program and that they themselves could not offer an assessment of Sputnik’s “military significance.” Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 92–93.
84. Burrows, This New Ocean, x, 201. One of the innumerable despairing contemporary responses, this one from an aide to Senator Lyndon Johnson, inadvertently reveals the absence of science education via its use of “floating around” to mean “orbiting” and its reference to “universe”: “It is unpleasant to feel that there is something floating around in the air which the Russians can put up and we can’t. . . . It really doesn’t matter whether the satellite has any military value. The important thing is that the Russians have left the earth and the race for the control of the universe has started” (quoted in Peebles, High Frontier, 9).
85. Deborah D. Stine, “U.S. Civilian Space Policy Priorities: Reflections 50 Years After Sputnik,” Congressional Research Service, Feb. 2, 2009, 2–5, fas.org/sgp/crs/space/RL34263.pdf (accessed Apr. 23, 2017).
86. ARPA’s four space programs provide a good look at national priorities in the spring of 1958, specifically an emphasis on military goals and a de-emphasis of scientific goals: Missile Defense Against ICBMs, Military Reconnaissance Satellites, Developments for Application to Space Technology, and Advanced Research for Scientific Purposes. See Bruno W. Augenstein, “Evolution of the U.S. Military Space Program, 1945–1960: Some Key Events in Study, Planning, and Program Development,” Paper P-6814, RAND, Sept. 1982, 13, www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P6814.pdf (accessed Apr. 23, 2017).
87. “National Security Council Report: Statement of Preliminary U.S. Policy on Outer Space,” NSC 5814/1, Aug. 18, 1958, doc. 442, para. 26, Office of the Historian, US Department of State, history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v02/d442 (accessed Apr. 23, 2017). See discussion at McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 180–83.
88. Vannevar Bush, Science, The Endless Frontier: A Report to the President, July 1945, www.nsf.gov/about/history/nsf50/vbush1945_content.jsp#sect6_6 (accessed Oct. 26, 2017).
89. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace: The White House Years 1956–1961 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 257, quoted in Preston et al., Space Weapons Earth Wars, 9. By the early 1950s, American policymakers had come to regard both satellite reconnaissance and ballistic-missile defense systems as essential tools. Nevertheless, even though the United States initiated covert development programs for a number of military space projects, both nondestructive and weaponized, hot on the heels on Sputnik, Eisenhower’s science advisors “judged space to be an unsuitable arena for weapons, labeling space weapons ‘clumsy and ineffective ways of doing a job’ ” (10). Re Nixon, email from James Clay Moltz, Apr. 27, 2018.
90. William J. Broad, “ ‘Star Wars’ Traced to Eisenhower Era,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 1986; Johnson-Freese, Heavenly Ambitions, 4.
91. “Appendix II: Current Attitudes and Activities Regarding Biological Contamination of Extraterrestrial Bodies,” in Leonard Reiffel, A Study of Lunar Research Flights, vol. 1, AD 425380/AFSWC TR-59-39 (Kirtland AFB, NM: Air Force Special Weapons Center, June 19, 1959), 292, oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0425380 (accessed Apr. 23, 2017). Vol. 1 is now unclassified; vol. 2 remains unavailable and may have been destroyed. This study was one of a series of projects collectively labeled A119 that Reiffel directed between 1949 and 1962.
92. Antony Barnett, “US Planned One Big Nuclear Blast for Mankind,” Guardian, May 13, 2000. Compare the more neutral language in the 1959 report’s introduction:
Rapidly accelerating progress in space technology clearly requires evaluation of the scientific experiments or other human activities which might be carried out in the vicinity of the earth’s natural satellite. Among various possibilities, the detonation of a nuclear weapon on or near the moon’s surface has often been suggested. The motivation for such a detonation is clearly threefold: scientific, military and political.
The scientific information which might be obtained from such detonations is one of the major subjects of inquiry of the present work. On the other hand, it is quite clear that certain military objectives would be served since information would be supplied concerning the environment of space, concerning detection of nuclear device testing in space and concerning the capability of nuclear weapons for space warfare. . . . Obviously[,] specific positive effects would accrue to the nation first performing such a feat as a demonstration of advanced technological capability. (Reiffel, Lunar Research Flights, 2)
93. For text of disarmament resolutions 1148 and 1149, see UN General Assembly, Resolutions Adopted by the General Assembly During Its Twelfth Session, www.un.org/documents/ga/res/12/ares12.htm (accessed Apr. 23, 2017).
94. Raymond L. Garthoff, “Banning the Bomb in Outer Space,” International Security 5:3 (Winter 1980–81), 25–40.
95. In mid-October 1962, President Kennedy was given photographic proof, collected by an American U-2 spy plane, that—contrary to US official assumptions—the Soviet Union was constructing launch sites in Cuba for missiles with ranges of both one thousand and more than two thousand miles. Kennedy publicly announced this news on Oct. 22 as “provid[ing] a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere,” and the United States instituted a maritime blockade of “all offensive military equipment.” The actual launch of a nuclear missile from Cuba woul
d be regarded, declared the president, “as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.” He demanded the removal of the weapons, the two sides went on full nuclear alert, letters were exchanged and ignored and examined, bargains involving US missiles in Turkey were proposed, America organized around an air strike to take place on Oct. 30, and everybody remained terrified until Oct. 28, when Khrushchev agreed to the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba along with American missiles from Turkey. In 1992, Russia disclosed previously secret information showing that, contrary to the 1962 US assumption that nuclear warheads would not yet have been installed on the Cuban missiles, they in fact were: forty-two intermediate-range and nine short-range missiles, all with their warheads in place, guarded by forty thousand troops and ready for launch. It would have been possible to obliterate any site or city in America except those in Washington state. As Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said in 1992 upon learning this information, “It meant that had a U.S. invasion been carried out . . . there was a 99 percent probability that nuclear war would have been initiated.” See LaFeber, America, Russia, 221, 231–37. See also the detailed account by the Central Intelligence Agency, “Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, Value of Photo Intelligence,” May 8, 2007, www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v44i4a09p_0002.htm to –0015.htm (accessed Sept. 13, 2016; by Apr. 23, 2017, photos had been removed).
96. See, e.g., Edward R. Finch Jr., “Outer Space for ‘Peaceful Purposes,’ ” American Bar Association Journal 54:4 (Apr. 1968), 365–67. Finch argues that “peaceful” signifies “nonaggressive” rather than “nonmilitary,” and states: “In Russian the word for ‘military’ essentially means warlike rather than pertaining to the armed services of a country, while in English ‘peaceful’ is not regarded as the opposite of ‘military.’ ” The report of the Rumsfeld Space Commission concurs, saying that most nations agree that “peaceful” means “nonaggressive,” but goes much further: “There is no blanket prohibition in international law on placing or using weapons in space, applying force from space to earth or conducting military operations in and through space. . . . The U.S. must be cautious of agreements . . . that, when added to a larger web of treaties or regulations, may have the unintended consequences of restricting future activities in space,” which is of course precisely what the Outer Space Treaty is intended to do. See Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, Jan. 11, 2001, xviii. See also Andrew D. Burton, “Daggers in the Air: Anti-satellite Weapons and International Law,” Fletcher Forum of World Affairs (Winter 1988), 151–53; Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 81–82. Kalic quotes a Kennedy administration undersecretary of state who alerted the president in 1962 to the “ ‘widespread confusion over the distinction between peaceful and aggressive, and military and civilian’ ” uses of space, and advised him to make clear that “peaceful” was not synonymous with “civilian” nor “aggressive” synonymous with “military.”
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