97. National Security Council—Executive Secretary, “Report to the National Security Council on Basic National Security Policy,” NSC 162/2, Oct. 30, 1953; paras. 2, 13c, fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-162-2.pdf (accessed Apr. 24, 2017).
98. Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 3–6; McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 335ff.
99. Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 88; Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (New York: Doubleday, 1935; Signet Classics, 1970, 2014), 138.
100. Quoted in LaFeber, America, Russia, 204; McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 138.
101. Quoted in McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 114.
102. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” Jan. 10, 1957, at Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=11029 (accessed Apr. 24, 2017). McDougall contends that Eisenhower profoundly hoped to “open up” the Soviet Union, and that “[i]f it could be done voluntarily in the context of arms control, Eisenhower was even willing to forego a purely national space program” (Heavens and Earth, 127–28).
103. “Report by the Technological Capabilities Panel of the Science Advisory Committee,” Feb. 14, 1955, S/S–RD Files: Lot 71 D 171; Top Secret; Restricted Data; available with omissions; Office of the Historian, US Department of State, history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v19/d9 (accessed Apr. 24, 2017); McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 115–18.
104. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Radio and Television Address to the American People on Science in National Security,” Nov. 7, 1957, at Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10946 (accessed Apr. 24, 2017); National Security Council, “Preliminary Policy on Outer Space,” NSC 5814/1, para. 30.
105. See full text of “National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 (Unamended),” NASA, history.nasa.gov/spaceact.html.
106. For detailed discussion of “spies in the skies” and “the reconnaissance war,” see Burrows, This New Ocean, 225–58; Jeffrey T. Richelson, America’s Space Sentinels: The History of the DSP and SBIRS Satellite Systems, 2nd ed. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012).
107. Earth takes twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes to complete one rotation relative to the stars. This is the precise orbital period of a geostationary (also called geosynchronous) satellite. The higher the orbit, the longer it takes; satellites that live in low Earth orbit (LEO), such as the Hubble Telescope and the International Space Station, take ninety minutes to complete one orbit. Arthur C. Clarke first made a brief, offhand mention of the possibility of geosynchronous communications satellites in a letter to the editor, “V2 for Ionosphere Research,” Wireless World, Feb. 1945, 58. Less than a year later came his fully formulated proposal: “Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?,” Wireless World, Oct. 1945, 305–308. Facsimiles of the letter and the article are at lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/ (accessed Nov. 7, 2017). Clarke would later collaborate with director Stanley Kubrick on the 1968 science fiction film classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, released the year before the first Moon landing. “Live via satellite” TV broadcasts also began in 1968, the onscreen note to viewers a proud indicator that space was enabling the future. By the late 1970s the note had disappeared: live satellite broadcasts had become the new normal. Robert Yowell, “Splashdown, Live Via Satellite,” AirSpaceMag.com, Apr. 13, 2016, www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/splashdown-live-satellite-180958760/ (accessed Nov. 7, 2017).
108. See Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, chap. 2 passim, 47–57, 71–73; Preston et al., Space Weapons Earth Wars, 9–12; Burrows, This New Ocean, 226–68. Also relevant is Augenstein, “Evolution of the U.S. Military Space Program,” an early overview of the multiplicity of postwar military space projects, by a key figure in the RAND and Lockheed Corporations as well as the DoD. For Dyna-Soar, see McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 339–41, and Chris Bergin, “The Story of the Dyna-Soar,” NASASpaceflight.com, Jan. 7, 2006, www.nasaspaceflight.com/2006/01/the-story-of-the-dyna-soar/ (accessed Nov. 7, 2017); for the X-15 and Dyna-Soar, see Burrows, This New Ocean, 249–55. A photo of the X-15 is at Burrows, fourth page of illustrations following p. 206; the accompanying caption states that “USAF and NASA markings reflect the symbiotic relationship between the military and civilian space programs.”
109. One historian contends, “All actions of Congress with regard to space between 1957 and 1961 can be attributed to Johnson, who worked hard to demonstrate that the Democrats in general, and he in particular, were the leading forces in Congress for stepped-up efforts in space exploration.” He also characterizes Johnson as “probably the first who understood that space was the ideal ‘battleground’ of the cold war, that by competing with the Soviet Union for technical leadership and peaceful dominance in space, the United States could show that it was the superior nation.” Andreas Reichstein, “Space—the Last Cold War Frontier?” Amerikastudien/American Studies 44:1 (1999), 115–16. A more nuanced, and lively, exploration of this moment in US history can be found in Gaskin, “Senator Lyndon B. Johnson,” 341–61, esp. 347ff. One political insider relayed to Johnson advice from another political insider that the Sputnik hearings “if properly handled, would blast the Republicans out of the water, unify the Democratic Party and elect you President.” The strategic recommendation was that Johnson “should plan to plunge heavily into this one” (348).
110. Gaskin, “Senator Lyndon B. Johnson,” 348.
111. For the maneuvers that created Johnson’s opportunity to speak before the United Nations, see Gaskin, “Senator Lyndon B. Johnson,” 349–51.
112. This quotation is a composite of extracts from Eilene Galloway, “Organizing the United States Government for Outer Space: 1957–1958,” conference paper presented at “Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite,” Washington, DC, Sept. 30–Oct. 1, 1997, gos.sbc.edu/g/galloway2.html (accessed Apr. 24, 2017); “In Essentials, Unity,” op-ed, New York Times, Nov, 18, 1958, 36; and Thomas J. Hamilton, “Johnson Tells the U.N. Nation Is United on Space,” New York Times, Nov. 18, 1958, 1, 10.
113. Moltz, Politics of Space Security, 71.
114. Dolman, Astropolitik, 87.
115. Moltz, Politics of Space Security, 121, 90.
116. Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, US Senate, Staff Report: Documents on International Aspects of the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, 1954–1962, May 9, 1963, 182, www.spacelaw.olemiss.edu/library/space/US/Legislative/Congress/88/Senate/reports/docno18.pdf (accessed Apr. 24, 2017).
117. During the election, Kennedy attacked the Eisenhower administration for allowing a missile gap to develop, even though US intelligence sources had already revealed the nonexistence of such a gap. “In fact . . . overflights, still highly classified at the time, showed that the United States had a commanding lead in deployed nuclear-tipped missiles.” See Moltz, Politics of Space Security, 105–106, 106 n. 157; Peebles, High Frontier, 4, 9–10. LaFeber writes that Khrushchev called the ICBM the “ultimate weapon” and exploited the imaginary Soviet lead by quoting “the West’s own greatly exaggerated views of Soviet missile capacity, thereby reinforcing the exaggerations.” He also notes that the US nuclear arsenal tripled, from six thousand to eighteen thousand weapons, between 1958 and 1960—including fourteen Polaris nuclear submarines that each carried sixteen missiles (America, Russia, 202–205). See also detailed discussion in McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 226–31. Khrushchev quote from Pravda, Jan. 28, 1959, quoted in McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 240.
118. McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 346–48, 335; Burrows, This New Ocean, 241.
119. Moltz, Politics of Space Security, 111–12, 107; Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 69–71, 76–79; Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Table 1.1 (“Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits (–): 1789–2021”) and Table 4.1 (“Outlays by Agency: 1962–2021”
), www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals (accessed Jan. 2, 2017; by Apr. 24, 2017, link was disabled; by Apr. 10, 2018, link was restored and updated).
120. John F. Kennedy, “Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs,” May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/United-States-Congress-Special-Message_19610525.aspx (accessed Apr. 24, 2017).
121. Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 97–100.
122. John F. Kennedy, “Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort,” Sept. 12, 1962, transcript, www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/MkATdOcdU06X5uNHbmqm1Q.aspx (accessed Apr. 29, 2017).
123. Office of the Historian, US Department of State, “Draft Proposals for US–USSR Cooperation,” Apr. 13, 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. 25, doc. 387, history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v25/d387 (accessed Apr. 24, 2017). Quote from the general in McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 342.
124. The two large 1962 US nuclear tests were Sedan (ground-based) and Starfish Prime (high-altitude). For a discussion of the AEC’s project in Alaska, see Douglas L. Vandegraft, “Project Chariot: Nuclear Legacy of Cape Thompson,” Proceedings of the US Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee Workshop on Arctic Contamination, Session A: Native People’s Concerns about Arctic Contamination II: Ecological Impacts, May 6, 1993, Anchorage, Alaska, arcticcircle.uconn.edu/VirtualClassroom/Chariot/vandegraft.html (accessed Apr. 24, 2017). See also Ronald E. Doel and Kristine C. Harper, “Prometheus Unleashed: Science as a Diplomatic Weapon in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration,” in “Global Power Knowledge: Science and Technology in International Affairs,” Osiris 21:1 (2006), 70 n. 22. It was already clear that extensive, durable harm could result from a range of advanced technologies, and efforts at prevention were under way. In April 1963, for instance, the president issued National Security Action Memorandum 235/1, requiring agencies such as the CIA and the State Department to do an advance review of any large-scale, potentially controversial experiments that could conceivably have adverse effects on the environment.
125. One commonly acknowledged positive component of America’s conduct during the missile crisis was the Kennedys’ decision to respond favorably to a first letter from Khrushchev and to ignore a second, problematic one that arrived shortly afterward. One relatively unheralded positive component on the Soviet side was an intervention on Oct. 27 by a Soviet officer on submarine B-59, who urged his fellow officers not to execute an order to fire their ten-kiloton nuclear-tipped torpedo at a US warship that was bombarding them with depth charges. The firing required approval from three officers; Vasili Arkhipov refused to be the third. This piece of the story became generally known only forty years afterward, at a 2002 conference at Brown University on the crisis; an oft-repeated quote from that conference comes from Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive: “a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world.” Marion Lloyd, “Soviets Close to Using A-bomb in 1962 Crisis, Forum Is Told,” Boston Globe, Oct. 13, 2002; Edward Wilson, “Thank You Vasili Arkhipov, the Man Who Stopped Nuclear War,” Guardian, Oct. 27, 2012; Neil Genzlinger, “Same Cuba Crisis, Different Angles: 50 Years Later—Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited on PBS,” New York Times, Oct. 22, 2012.
126. Quoted in McDougall, Heavens and Earth, 331. Canadian Nobel laureate and prime minister Lester Pearson may have originated the phrase “balance of terror” in 1955. President Kennedy used it in his inaugural address in 1961:
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. . . . [O]nly when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course—both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.
127. Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water, Aug. 5, 1963, UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/test_ban/text (accessed Apr. 24, 2017). This treaty is known by more than one name, including the Limited Test Ban Treaty, or LTBT, and the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, or PTBT.
128. UN General Assembly, Resolution 1884 (XVIII): Question of General and Complete Disarmament, Oct. 17, 1963, www.un-documents.net/a18r1884.htm (accessed Apr. 24, 2017). For a detailed account of the moves toward Res. 1884, written by a US diplomat closely involved in the entire chain of events, see Garthoff, “Banning the Bomb in Outer Space,” 25–37.
129. Miroslav Gyu˝rösi, “The Soviet Fractional Orbital Bombardment System Program,” Air Power Australia, Technical Report APA-TR-2010-0101, Apr. 2012, www.ausairpower.net/APA-Sov-FOBS-Program.html (accessed Apr. 24, 2017).
130. Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 77–78, 85–88.
131. Lyndon Baines Johnson, speech at the opening and dedication of Florida Atlantic University, Oct. 25, 1964, www.fau.edu/fiftieth/speech.php (accessed Apr. 25, 2017).
132. On Dec. 8, 1953, Eisenhower addressed the UN General Assembly on the topic of “atomic danger and power,” referring early in this famous speech to a “United States stockpile of atomic weapons, which, of course, increases daily” and noting that “atomic weapons have virtually achieved conventional status within our armed services. In the United States, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marine Corps are all capable of putting this weapon to military use.” Toward the end of the speech, he mentions the “atomic armaments race which overshadows not only the peace, but the very life, of the world” and, though acknowledging the existence of the Disarmament Commission, asserts, “The United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes. It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.” The vision presented here is that “[e]xperts would be mobilized to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.” For full text, see “Atoms for Peace Speech,” International Atomic Energy Agency, www.iaea.org/about/history/atoms-for-peace-speech (accessed Apr. 25, 2017).
133. Paul R. Josephson, “Atomic-Powered Communism: Nuclear Culture in the Postwar USSR,” Slavic Review 55:2 (Summer 1996), 297–324: “[I]n both the USSR and the United States the atom was ‘domesticated’ for popular consumption. As nuclear culture developed, images of the atom associated with myriad applications for peaceful purposes and the betterment of humankind supplanted those of nuclear weapons” (298). “Soviet engineers also spoke hopefully about . . . using peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs) ‘to increase man’s control over the environment,’ just as in the United States where plans for ‘Project Plowshares’ included nuclear detonations for a plowshare harbor at Ogoturuk, Alaska, and for the ‘Panatomic Canal’ at the Panamanian isthmus” (306). Josephson quotes the overblown claims of US nuclear physicist Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and of America’s PNE program—“ ‘We can build harbors, dig sea level canals, deflect rivers, throw off overburden from deep mineral deposits, and thereby increase our wealth and the wealth of other nations. The explosives can operate in a very clean way’ ”—and asks “why would the USSR treat the promise of PNEs any differently than the United States?” (306). See also Ed Regis, “What Could Go Wrong? The Insane 1950s Plan to Use H-bombs to Make Roads and Redirect Rivers,” Slate, Sept. 30, 2015, www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/09/project_plowshare_the_1950s_plan_to_use_nukes_to_make_roads_and_redirect.html (accessed A
pr. 25, 2017).
134. Doel and Harper, “Prometheus Unleashed,” 66–85. Also see, e.g., Lyndon B. Johnson, “Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty,” Feb. 8, 1965, at Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27285 (accessed Nov. 12, 2017).
135. The phrase “world domination” recurs often in NSC 68 and elsewhere from the late 1940s onward—for example, in a press release from an emphatically pro-McCarthy Republican senator from New Hampshire, issued a month after Sputnik: “The Russian challenge is a dead earnest one in its constant quest for world domination.” Quoted in Kalic, Presidents and Militarization of Space, 95.
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