Figure 4. This iconic image was taken at a press conference at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C., after the launch of Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958. Pictured holding up a model of the rocket are, from left, William Pickering, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lead on the science effort for Explorer 1; James Van Allen, scientific principal investigator for the mission; and Wernher von Braun, technical director of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which built and launched the Juno rocket that placed Explorer 1 into orbit.
Achieving “Freedom of Space”
The launch of Sputnik 1 helped to establish for the Eisenhower administration “freedom of space” in international law. Accepted practice—not universally accepted—allowed nations legally to board and confiscate vessels within territorial waters near their coastlines and to force down aircraft flying in their territorial airspace. But space was a territory not defined as yet, and the U.S. position was that it should be recognized as free territory not subject to the normal confines of territorial limits. An opposite position, however, argued for the extension of territorial limits into space above a nation into infinity. Eisenhower pursued a freedom of space accord on July 21, 1955, when he met the Soviets in a Geneva, Switzerland, summit, but they quickly rejected his proposal.
But when Sputnik overflew the United States and other nations of the world, it defined a de facto principle of freedom of space, what Eisenhower sometimes referred to as the “Open Skies” doctrine. On October 8, 1957, Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald A. Quarles told the president: “The Russians have . . . done us a good turn, unintentionally, in establishing the concept of freedom of international space.” Eisenhower immediately grasped this serendipitous victory as a means of pressing ahead with the launching into orbit of any type of satellite, including those designed for reconnaissance. The pattern held for later satellites, and by the end of 1958 a tenuous “Open Skies” precedent had been established. By happenstance, the Russian space program had set in order the U.S.-backed claim to free access.
Some have speculated that Eisenhower might actually have held back the U.S. effort to launch an orbital satellite to allow the Soviets to do so first, thereby letting them stumble onto this all-important principle of overflight. After all, had the United States launched before the Soviet Union, Khrushchev might have protested the flight as a violation of his nation’s airspace. This could have thrown the freedom of space concept into years of intense and confrontational international negotiation. While this is a fascinating possibility, there is no evidence to believe that the Eisenhower administration conspired to lose the race to launch the first satellite. Through serendipity, Eisenhower achieved the right of overflight because of Sputnik.
The Birth of NASA
Some of the political pressure on the Eisenhower administration to respond to the Soviet success with Sputnik eased with the launch of Explorer 1. But not enough to prevent a transformation in the structure of government. As a direct outgrowth of this crisis in the winter of 1957–1958, the administration worked with congressional leaders to draft legislation creating a permanent federal agency dedicated to exploring space. Numerous proposals surfaced during that winter, the least acceptable, at least from Eisenhower’s perspective, a plan sponsored by two Democrats, Representative John L. McClellan of Arkansas and Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, to create a Department of Science and Technology. But Eisenhower resisted other less ambitious plans as well.
A turning point came on February 4, 1958, when he finally capitulated and asked his science adviser, James R. Killian, to convene the President’s Science Advisory Committee to come up with a plan for a new spaceflight organization. Quietly considering the creation of a new civil space agency for several months, PSAC worked with staff members from Congress and quickly came forward with a proposal that placed all nonmilitary efforts relative to space exploration under a strengthened and renamed National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
Established in 1915 to foster aviation progress in the United States, the NACA had long been a small, loosely organized, and elitist organization known for both its technological competence and its apolitical culture. It had begun moving into space-related areas of research and engineering during the 1950s, through the work of an organization under the leadership of Robert R. Gilruth. Although it was a civilian agency, the NACA also enjoyed a close working relationship with the military services, helping to solve research problems associated with aeronautics and also finding application for them in the civilian sector. Its civilian character, its recognized excellence in technical activities, and its quiet, research-focused image all made it an attractive choice. It could fill the requirements of the constrained job Eisenhower envisioned without exacerbating Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union.
Eisenhower accepted PSAC’s recommendations and sponsored legislation to expand the NACA into an agency charged with the broad mission to “plan, direct, and conduct aeronautical and space activities,” to involve the nation’s scientific community in these activities, and to widely disseminate information about these activities. An administrator appointed by the president was to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). During the summer of 1958 Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, and the president signed it into law on July 29, 1958. This ended the debate over the type of organization to be created, and other plans died a quiet death. The new organization started functioning on October 1, 1958, less than a year after the launch of Sputnik 1. Its first task became the development of a human space-exploration program, Project Mercury. NASA has continued to direct the human space-exploration initiatives of the United States ever since.
To establish a clear direction for the agency, NASA’s leadership staff developed a ten-year plan for space exploration. It emphasized the scientific and technological developments to be attained through the effort in each of the following areas: space vehicle development, human spaceflight, engineering and scientific research, and spaceflight operations. The ten-year program called for an expenditure of approximately $12.5 billion in 1959 dollars (equivalent to more than $100 billion in 2019) to accomplish a hefty scientific probe program and a human spaceflight program that would launch its first astronaut in 1961 and achieve a lunar landing at some unspecified time in the post-1970 period. It also provided for the development of new launch boosters that would give the United States a decided edge in long-term space activities. It was a modest but reasonable and optimistic program, and the Eisenhower administration accepted the funding priorities. NASA’s first administrator, T. Keith Glennan, wrote in his diary, “Ike and I agreed that we were mature enough as a nation not to let some other country determine our behavior and policy. Hence, we opposed a ‘Space Race,’ and while we wanted to advance rapidly, not to do foolish things just because the Russians were doing them.” At the same time, Glennan recognized that the United States could not operate in a “business as usual” mode while the Soviets were influencing world opinion in their favor by executing “space spectaculars.” He told the president in November 1959:
Personally, I do not believe we can avoid competition with the Soviets in this field. I do not believe we should want to avoid that competition. But I do believe that we can and should establish the terms on which we are competing. We could thus place the “Space race” in proper perspective with all the other activities in the competition between the US and USSR. In doing this, thoughtful consideration should be given to the particular and dramatic role occupied by space activities in the whole gamut of international competition.
Glennan opted for a deliberate program with clear objectives and a lengthy timetable.
TWO
The First Race to the Moon
Between 1958 and 1960 the United States went head-to-head with the Soviet Union in a robotic race to the Moon—and lost. The lure of the Moon was irresistible. In 1958, eager to demonstrate leadership in space technology, the United States started an expedite
d effort to send a series of spacecraft named Pioneer to the Moon. The air force prepared three and the army two Pioneer spacecraft for the Moon flights. During the winter of 1958–1959 the United States made four attempts to send a Pioneer probe to the vicinity of the Moon. None reached its destination. Indeed, none succeeded in escaping Earth’s orbit, but two produced the first information about the outer regions of the Van Allen belts. In contrast, after some false starts in the fall of 1958, the Soviet Union succeeded in launching several successful probes to the Moon.
This success rested on the early capability of Soviet engineers under the leadership of Korolev and Glushko to build large rockets with significant payload capacity, something not yet accomplished in the United States. In January 1959 the Soviets sent Luna 1 past the Moon and into orbit around the Sun, following up with Luna 3 to transmit pictures of the far side of the Moon—thereby giving the Soviets an important “first” in lunar exploration. American efforts lagged the Soviets’, but the work of von Braun and Gilruth proved significant in helping the Americans catch up. Eventually, Pioneer 5 finally flew past the Moon, much too late to assuage America’s loss of pride and prestige. Thus ended the first phase of lunar exploration, with the Soviet Union a clear winner.
Dreams of Luna
What is it about the Moon that captures the fancy of humankind? A silvery disk hanging in the night sky, it conjures up images of romance and magic. It has been credited with foreshadowing important events, both good and ill, and its phases for eons served as humanity’s most accurate measure of time. Since ancient times, people have watched the Moon wax (appear to grow larger) and wane (appear to shrink), and have wondered at its beauty and mystery. The Moon holds an important place in many of the world’s religions, and once had a part in other religions—such as Christianity—that no longer assign it special significance. Many religions have seen the Moon as a deity, with many names and many incarnations.
The Moon is by far the most dominant and changeable element in the night sky. It has kindled enthusiasm, joy, lust, fear, and horror upon generations of peoples of all races and cultures who have lived out their lives under its silvery reflected light. Defining the Moon differently from culture to culture and age to age, humankind remains captivated by its power. We have characterized it by its features, by its phases, and by its influence over earthly entities. Moon-gazing remains one of the oldest pastimes in the human experience. Ancient civilizations assigned the Moon dominion over human lives through supernatural intervention; more recent ones have envisioned it as a home for extraterrestrial life. It inspires poets and artists, scientists and engineers, creators and destroyers. With the invention of the telescope at the turn of the seventeenth century—coinciding with the rise of the scientific revolution—the Moon took on new meaning as a tangible place with mountains and valleys and craters that could be named, geological features and events that could be studied.
With the scientific revolution, as the Moon came to be considered a place with firm ground, many people began to speculate on the potential of visiting. Johannes Kepler, a pathbreaking astronomer in the seventeenth century, wrote a novel, Somnium (Dream), that was published posthumously in 1634. The work recounts a dream of a supernatural voyage to the Moon in which the visitors encounter serpentine creatures. Kepler also included much scientific information in the book, speculating on the difficulties of overcoming Earth’s gravitational field, the nature of the elliptical paths of planets, the problems of maintaining life in the vacuum of space, and the geographical features of the Moon.
Other writings sparked by the invention of the telescope and the success of Somnium also described fictional trips into space. Cyrano de Bergerac, for example, wrote Voyage dans la Lune (The Voyage to the Moon, 1649), describing several attempts by the protagonist to travel to the Moon. First, he ties a string of bottles filled with dew around himself, so that when the heat of the Sun evaporates the dew he will be drawn upward, but he makes it only as far as Canada. Next, he tries to launch a vehicle from the top of a mountain by means of a spring-loaded catapult, “but because I had not taken my measures aright, I fell with a slosh on the Valley below.” Returning to his vehicle, Cyrano’s hero finds some soldiers mischievously tying firecrackers to it. As they light the fuse, he jumps into the craft and tier upon tier of explosives ignite like rockets and launch him to the Moon. Thus Cyrano’s hero becomes the first flyer in fiction to reach the Moon by means of rocket thrust, presaging Newton’s third law of gravity, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Once on the Moon, Cyrano’s protagonist has several adventures, and later he journeys to the Sun.
While these early fictional accounts were not scientifically accurate, later science fiction writers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells strove for greater accuracy. Both were well aware of the scientific underpinnings of spaceflight, and their speculations reflected reasonably well what was known at the time about the nature of other worlds. Both Wells and Verne incorporated into their novels a much more sophisticated understanding of the realities of space than had been seen before. Their space vehicles became enclosed capsules powered by electricity and reflecting relatively sound aerodynamic principles. Most of Wells’s and Verne’s concepts stood up under some, although not all, scientific scrutiny.
For example, in 1865 Verne published De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon). The scientific principles informing this book were reasonably accurate for the period, even though Verne took a measure of dramatic license. The novel describes the problems of building a vehicle and launch mechanism to visit the Moon. At the end of the book, Verne’s characters are shot into space by a nine hundred–foot–long cannon. Verne picked up the story in a second novel, Autour de la Lune (Around the Moon), describing a lunar orbital flight, but he did not allow his characters to land. Likewise, Wells published The War of the Worlds in 1897 and The First Men in the Moon beginning in 1900, using sound scientific principles to describe space travel and encounters with aliens.
In 1902 French filmmaker Georges Méliès filmed the first story of lunar exploration, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A trip to the Moon). Incorporating elements from the fiction of both Wells and Verne, it became a classic almost immediately. An ailing Jules Verne even visited the set. Méliès’s film was a highly entertaining story of scientists shot out of a cannon to explore the Moon. They encountered life on the Moon and eventually had to escape back to terra.
Beginning in the 1920s, a space craze gained popularity worldwide as science fiction and science fact reinforced each other to make the dreams of spaceflight seem more real than ever. While meanings shifted significantly over time—in ways that reflected similar shifts in politics, culture, and society—the level of interest and excitement for the possibilities of spaceflight remained constant until the robotic race to the Moon.
The space craze consumed the revolutionary Soviet Union as well. Aleksey Tolstoy’s 1923 novel Aelita, or The Decline of Mars, was adapted into one of the earliest state feature films. Directed by Yakov Protazanov and made at the Mezhrabpom-Rus studio in 1924, Aelita tells the story of Los, who flies to Mars by rocket, meets his love—Queen Aelita—and leads a revolt against the ruling Elders. In the process, they establish on Mars a “workers’ state” modeled on the Soviet Union. The early example of a science fiction feature film was popular in the Soviet Union for several years.
At about the same time in Germany, Hermann Oberth published his classic book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The rocket into interplanetary space). The book explained the mathematical theory of rocketry, applied it to possible designs for practical rockets, and considered the potential of space stations and human travel to other planets.
The success of Oberth’s 1923 book prompted silent movie maker Fritz Lang to film an adventure story about space travel. The result was the 1929 feature Die Frau im Mond (The woman in the Moon). Lang wanted his movie set to be technically correct so he asked Oberth to be his technical adviser. Oberth and science write
r Willy Ley helped Lang with his sets and built a spacecraft that looked realistic. Ever the dramatist, Lang even invented the countdown to increase tension for the audience and to add spectacle to the rocket flight. As a publicity stunt for Lang’s film, Oberth agreed to build an actual rocket that would be launched at the premier of Die Frau im Mond. Two days before the premier, however, Oberth discovered that the rocket could not be completed in time. Regardless, the movie and the envisioned trip to the Moon served as a powerful merging of space technology with imagination.
Other representations of spaceflight also captured the imagination of many people in this era. Capitalizing on the success of Buck Rogers—a fictional space hero in newspaper comic strips, books, films, and memorabilia beginning in the late 1920s—in 1934 Alex Raymond created the Flash Gordon comic strip, and a host of toys, games, movies, and other items appeared thereafter.
This mixture of science fiction with science fact illustrates how closely the dominant trends in science fiction literature and film shaped public perceptions and public understanding about space exploration. As reality and perceptions converged, they influenced public expectations that in turn encouraged the pursuit of aggressive space-exploration agendas in both the Soviet Union and the United States, with the Moon as the first target.
Reaching for the Moon Page 4