The agreement put the two-hundred-inch telescope under the direct management of an institution that Hale had been instrumental in developing during his time in Pasadena—the California Institute of Technology. In 1907, Hale had joined the board of trustees of the small Throop Polytechnic Institute and begun the process of transforming it into a university that focused on scientific and technical excellence. Hale had already managed to entice famed American physicist Robert Millikan to Caltech and now had lured in the largest telescope in the world as well, provided that the institute could raise a sufficient endowment to cover the annual operating funds of the observatory. Although such an endowment was a tall order for the young university, Hale and Millikan had long cultivated a relationship with Henry M. Robinson, chairman of the First National Bank of Los Angeles and Caltech trustee. They were able to convince him to commit to provide for the estimated $1.5-million annual operating expenses.129 It had taken Hale less than four months, from his meeting with Rose on March 14, 1928, to Robinson’s announcement of support on June 11 of the same year, to secure the funding for his largest and most expensive observatory.
Hale’s relationship with Robinson has been one of the least investigated in the secondary literature, despite the importance of their connection in securing the final funding for the two-hundred-inch telescope. It bears further investigation. It began with a gift-giving letter from Hale to Robinson in 1915, in which Hale offered a directorship position in the Pasadena Music and Art Association, one of the many societies Hale was involved with.130 The two began to correspond regularly, with Hale providing a mentorship role in scientific matters to the intellectually curious Robinson, advising him to join the American Association for the Advancement of Science and continuing to provide Robinson with prestigious gifts, such as a letter of recommendation for admission to the University Club of New York. In return, Robinson performed a rather unique service for the ever-scheming Hale: he used his authority as chairman of the First National Bank of Los Angeles to provide Hale with extensive private financial reports on high-net-wealth individuals in the Los Angeles area.131 For over a decade, Hale cultivated his relationship with Robinson to the point where they were sufficiently close as friends and colleagues—borderline partners in crime even—so that when the time came for a major financial request for Hale’s last great project, the response from Robinson was sure to be quick and positive.
Although the financing was in place, there were still decades of labor and crises to endure before the 200-inch telescope saw first light in 1948. The technical challenges that had to be surmounted were immense: the fabrication of the giant mirrors, the first space exploration “clean-room” at the grinding laboratory, the transport of the mirrors across the continent with crowds flocking to the railroad tracks to watch them pass, and the twenty-year struggle to make the observatory a reality.132 The technological complexity and the popular response to the 200-inch reflector shows how the observatories were beginning to approach the drama of the earliest space probes, which began to fly into orbit less than ten years after the Palomar Observatory’s completion. This timing highlights the continuum in the narrative of space history. There was institutional continuity as well. The California Institute of Technology would go on to develop the principal NASA center for robotic space exploration, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, assisted in part by the expertise in space research and project management that Hale and the Palomar Observatory had nucleated. The 200-inch reflector, named the Hale Telescope in honor of the man whose vision created it but who did not live to see it in operation, would maintain its supremacy as the world’s largest reflecting telescope well into the Space Age. It was not until 1976 that it was finally surpassed in size—if not necessarily in observing quality—by the 236-inch Bol’shoi Teleskop Azimultal’nyi in the Soviet Union. The Palomar Observatory is a true embodiment of economic, institutional, and motivational continuity between the history of American astronomy and the Space Age.
The Palomar Observatory also represents the end of an era, however, as it was the last major observatory to be built by private sources in America for almost half a century. With an increase in government sources of science funding during and after World War II, and with the formation of the National Science Foundation and NASA, astronomers began to rely principally on government funds, often secured through academic coalitions like the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).133 Between the completion of the two-hundred-inch telescope in 1948 and completion of the first W. M. Keck Observatory in 1992, there were no new large privately financed observatories in America, although there were a number of significant ground-based and space-based observatories funded through government programs. When private financing for large astronomical observatories reemerged, it took on a familiar tone. In 1985, the W. M. Keck Foundation, established out of the wealth of Superior Oil Company founder William Myron Keck, gave $70 million, nearly a fourth of its assets, to Caltech to finance the design and construction of the world’s largest telescope on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.134 As in the case of the Palomar Observatory, one foundation trustee in particular had been instrumental in steering the foundation toward the telescope project—Simon Ramo, cofounder of the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, which had served as lead contractor on the Atlas rocket that launched John Glenn into space.135 The model of privately funded, foundation-supported astronomy, which Hale had been so instrumental in developing at the beginning of the twentieth century, would be employed to build in America the largest telescope in the world once again.
With our review of the economic history of American astronomical observatories from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries now complete, it is worth comparing it to the history of funding for scientists and scientific research in astronomy during the same period. Although astronomy was a popular subject for private support in nineteenth-century America, it was the visible, physical infrastructure of astronomy—not the scientists—that received the vast majority of the funding. Indeed, even the emphasis in the literature on the support for the “practical aspects” of American astronomical sciences is shown to be somewhat misplaced in economic context: although there was some interest in the practical applications of astronomy, most notably from the government, the most significant early support for astronomical activities came largely from nonpractical intrinsic interests and signaling. As has been noted by John Lankford, the volatile and often piecemeal nature of research funding—practical or otherwise—meant that the growth of the astronomical community in America lagged far behind the development of its physical infrastructure for much of the nineteenth century.136 Edward Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory, observed that there were far too many instances “of observatories without proper instruments, large telescopes idle for want of observers, and able astronomers unprovided with means of doing useful work.”137 Although America had 102 observatories by 1907, it did not have a single general endowment fund for astronomical or astrophysical research.138 While the history of science literature has tended to see this as a “failure” of the funding process, as did the scientists at the time, it is possible to have another perspective on it—that the interest and popular enthusiasm that drove the early economic history of astronomy was not in astronomy as a science but in the exploration of the heavens as a symbolic and personally enjoyable activity.
The exception that proves the rule on this point is provided by the case of Catherine Wolfe Bruce. From 1889 to 1900, she gave $174,275 for astronomical and astrophysical research.139 She received little public attention but was acclaimed privately by astronomers on her death as “one of the most sympathetic and generous patrons astronomy has ever known.”140 Indeed, she emphatically avoided the public eye, seldom leaving her house or receiving visitors, living in obscurity on her family fortune, and explicitly rejecting publicity. She gave fifty-four grants from $50 to $25,000 and even assumed the responsibility for Professor Frost’s salary at the Yerkes Observatory when Yerkes hi
mself refused. Importantly, all of her donations were made during her lifetime, with her will containing only personal bequests.141 She subsidized publications and investigators and focused on the needs of astronomy that, unlike telescopes and observatories, would not raise public notice. She also differed from the majority of other philanthropic benefactors of astronomy in her intense personal involvement, making her a classic example of the role that intrinsic interest in astronomy played in its financing. Her very uniqueness, however, also presents important evidence for the limited interest in the funding of astronomical activities unrelated to signaling during the period.
The dominant role of signaling interests rather than scientific interests for the observatory patrons of the nineteenth century underlines the importance of the “astronomical entrepreneurs”—individuals such as Mitchel and Hale—who were able to enter into exchanges with patrons interested in monuments and the personal exploration of the heavens and, on occasion, to use those interests to secure support for their personal interest in scientific research. It also emphasizes the vital role of government support for scientific research in astronomy that ultimately emerged in the twentieth century. Although government patrons are also susceptible to prioritizing prestige over pure science, the scientific peer networks that are more habitually relied upon by government institutions as advisory boards in funding decisions make for strong advocates for funding research, scientific equipment, and the general support of scientists. Thus, while private patronage is a long-standing and robust phenomenon in the history of American astronomy, it is important to remember that it is also a phenomenon that had a tendency to privilege edifices over edification.
The economic information presented here also situates the history of American astronomy within the overall context of American space history and space exploration activities. Understanding space exploration within this wider context reorients a basic assumption of the literature. An evaluation of American space history that includes an analysis of the funding of American observatories will see a more nuanced picture—one that shows private funding to have been dominant for over a century—than an evaluation of American space history that begins its analysis of space exploration activities with Sputnik and the dominantly governmental support for space exploration in the Cold War space race. Motivating forces similar to those behind the funding of astronomical observatories—intrinsic interest and signaling—would propel space exploration into the Space Age. It is the demonstration of a comparable scale in expenditures between astronomical observatories and modern space exploration projects, however, that gives real economic meaning to the suggestion of a continuum in space history between telescopic and rocket-based space exploration. That American observatories in the nineteenth century were as resource-intensive, relative to the scale of the economy at the time, as even large American space missions in the twentieth century is an important fact that has received little attention to date. It is also true, however, that even the most expensive projects of the earlier era—the Lick and Palomar Observatories—had expenditures that were two orders of magnitude smaller than those of the Apollo program. The continuum of space expenditure thus still shows a significant step change in the mid-twentieth century due to the signaling context being elevated from the level of individuals and urban communities to the level of competition between superpower nation-states. Nonetheless, following the threads of space exploration back to the origins of American astronomical observatories provides a much richer historical context for understanding the development of twentieth- and twenty-first-century space exploration, as well as a number of instructive precedents.
The threads of this Long Space Age perspective are many. The threads are individuals and institutions: the astronomer Samuel Pierpont Langley, director of the Allegheny Observatory, who became a crucial figure in early American aeronautics and is the namesake of NASA’s Langley Research Center; government astronomer Simon Newcomb, who organized the 1872 American transit of Venus expeditions and wrote spaceflight fiction; the Smithsonian, born from John Quincy Adams’s passion for astronomy, which would be the first institution to provide funding for Robert Goddard’s work in liquid-fuel rocketry; George Ellery Hale, inspired by Verne’s tale of space travel, who not only built his era’s most powerful instruments of space exploration but who supported Goddard’s work and shaped the small Throop Polytechnic Institute into Caltech, from which emerged NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The threads are also the motivating trends: of nations, communities, and individuals looking to signal their development through space exploration; of the wealth of self-made industrialists, whether from the railroads or the Internet, being dedicated to establishing organizations that would contribute to the exploration of the heavens; of individual astronomers and engineers dedicating their lives and intellects to the mobilization of the resources required to achieve their visions. The threads are also economic: the comparable economic significance of nineteenth-century observatories and modern spacecraft, and the progressively increasing complexity of space exploration projects. These threads must be woven together and the history of American space exploration examined in its entirety if we are to fully appreciate the long-run forces propelling our voyage out into the solar system. In the long historical perspective, the trend in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries toward increased funding for space exploration projects coming from the private sector—specifically from wealthy individuals such as Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk—is understood not as a new emerging phenomenon but rather as the reemergence of a dominant thread in space exploration that dates back to over a hundred years before Sputnik. Incorporating the history of astronomical observatories into the overall narrative of American space history shows that, in fact, it has been private sources that have supplied the resources for the nation’s exploration of the solar system and the universe for most of its history to date.
3
SPACEFLIGHT, MILLIONAIRES, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE: ROBERT GODDARD’S FUND-RAISING PROGRAM
The salvation of the planet, as everybody was now convinced, depended upon the successful negotiation of a gigantic war fund, in comparison with which all the expenditures in all of the wars that had been waged by the nations for 2,000 years would be insignificant.
—Garrett P. Serviss, Edison’s Conquest of Mars, 1898
“In the history of rocketry, Dr. Robert H. Goddard has no peers. He was first. He was ahead of everyone in the design, construction, and launching of liquid-fuel rockets which eventually paved the way into space.”1 So testified Wernher von Braun to the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences in 1970. Although modern historiography has positioned Goddard as one of the three “fathers” of spaceflight—along with the German-Romanian Hermann Oberth and the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky—his contribution to liquid-fuel rocketry development was of a different order of significance. While the contributions of Oberth and Tsiolkovsky were largely theoretical and cultural, Goddard was the first to achieve flight with a liquid-fuel rocket, as well as the first to develop a spaceflight technology development program worthy of the name. Goddard was also ahead in another important aspect that is not well recognized: he was the first to acquire and apply significant financial resources to the problem of spaceflight.
Goddard has hardly suffered from a lack of historical investigation. A number of expert essays and books on Goddard have been written, including the notable biographies by Milton Lehman and David Clary.2 Here we will build on these works and focus on his career from an economic perspective. Goddard was internally driven from an early age to dedicate his effort and intellect to the problem of spaceflight. He was also fortunate in having found others—most notably Charles Lindbergh and Harry Guggenheim—who shared these motivations and supported his projects out of personal interest. Historians have focused on the importance of these benefactor relationships in painting a picture of Goddard as the consummate lone inventor, dedicated to spaceflight, unwilling to compromise on
his projects, and reliant on those generous private patrons for support.
While Goddard was indeed dedicated to spaceflight and relied on private patronage for much of his career, he was in fact quite entrepreneurial and pursued one source of support above all others—military funding. Goddard’s first approach to the Smithsonian was prompted by his bid for support from the navy in the First World War and, during that war, he was the first to use an expansion in armaments expenditure to fund spaceflight work. He also continued to pursue military contracts between the wars and made the choice to leave the comfort of his Guggenheim-funded project to pursue instead large military contracts in the Second World War. This chapter compiles a more complete record of Goddard’s funding history than has previously been available, illustrating that his total military funding, which he received for only a few years of his career, rivaled the entirety of his funding from other private and public sources. In short, it argues that Goddard’s “spaceflight fatherhood” peers could more properly be considered to be Wernher von Braun in Germany and Sergei Korolev in Russia—not only because they all led their nations in the early practical development of liquid-fuel rocketry but also because they all saw an exchange of their services with the military for financial support as the quickest path to the stars.
At the age of sixteen, in 1898, Robert Goddard read the Boston Post’s serialized version of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, in which the events had been transposed to Boston from London. Wells’s realism in describing an advanced space-faring race from Mars made a deep impression on Goddard. Within a year of reading Wells’s story, on October 19, 1898, while lying in the branches of a small cherry tree on his family’s property, Goddard had a vision of a spacecraft flying to Mars, which resulted in a lifelong commitment to the development of a machine that could make that vision a reality.3 So goes the traditional narrative of Goddard’s decision to pursue spaceflight. Goddard was also inspired, however, by another work of fiction, one that has received almost no attention in the literature and that would have presented a striking picture of the economics of spaceflight to the young space pioneer.
The Long Space Age Page 13