It didn't work out that way.
The massive R-7 rocket had enjoyed three successful flights in a row—an aeronautical first in its own right. The Soviet Union was now the only country on the planet with proven heavy-lifting rocket capability, and almost no one was aware of it. Sergei scheduled the world's first satellite launch for October 6. Then a cable was received from Moscow: the IGY had scheduled a surprise meeting in Washington, DC, for the same date. According to the message, the highlight of the meeting would be a major announcement by the United States about an “American satellite.” Normal IGY protocol would require Korolev to be at that meeting, which would force him to postpone the launch of Sputnik. The coincidental timing, along with the cryptic nature of the Americans' “announcement,” drove Korolev into a state of anxiety and panic.
Why the sudden meeting? Why that particular date? Had the Americans gotten wind of his project? What did it mean? Were the Americans planning a satellite launch? Or perhaps they had already achieved orbit and were intending to announce it at the meeting.
No—there was no way they could have kept such an achievement secret. The announcement, Korolev concluded, must be about an impending launch, perhaps even on that very day. To convene the IGY on the same day the Americans reached orbit would have dramatic flair, the kind of flair the Americans had a reputation for. So concerned was he about the Americans and von Braun beating him into space that Sergei requested the assistance of the KGB. He asked them to find out if an American satellite launch was imminent. The KGB promised to have their spies and agents in the United States investigate.1
“We'll get back to you,” they said.
Sergei's space-travel fixation had always been more than the simple launching of a satellite. Even though most people were unaware of it, rocket technology had advanced to the point that any good team of engineers, with enough money and resources, could place a satellite into orbit. That's what was so scary—satellite-launch technology was low-hanging fruit, yet no one was reaching up to grab it. So putting a satellite into orbit was not the goal. In Korolev's view, the real goal was to launch the world's first satellite. Nothing else would matter. The first person to accomplish that milestone would not only make history but would achieve immortality. Whoever was number two would be quickly forgotten, ignored by history as nothing more than a statistical asterisk. Sergei Korolev refused to be a forgotten statistic.
The KGB sent him a cable: there was no immediate effort on the part of the Americans to launch a satellite. In fact, there seemed to be no feeling of urgency anywhere in government or among the citizenry for such a thing. To Korolev, this report meant that his fears were justified; whatever the Americans were up to, they were keeping it top secret. For far-sighted scientists like him, it was simply too far-fetched to think the Americans and their leaders would be more interested in the latest baseball scores than seeking the glory of space. The KGB assessment, he concluded, was wrong. Time was a monster—the kind of monster that gobbled up dreams rather than flesh. Time was Sergei Korolev's archenemy—it was always against him, always fighting him, always there to conquer and destroy his dreams. Time was the devil.
Korolev was a brave man. He had stood up to the Soviet military leaders and won. He had faced down the politburo and come out on top. He had overcome the doubts of Nikita Khrushchev and gained his faith and trust. Such bravery was as rare as moon rocks in 1957 Soviet Russia, and yet Sergei Korolev was not a man without fear. There was one thing that kept him awake at nights. One thing that invaded his dreams and turned them into nightmares. One thing more fearful than the torture chambers he had endured in the concentration camps. The only thing Sergei Korolev was deathly afraid of was being number two. If there was to be a major announcement at the October 6 meeting, Sergei Korolev wanted to be the one who made it. It would be he who would wear the laurels of glory. It would be his picture on the front of every major newspaper and magazine. It would be his pen that signed the autographs. It would be he universally praised for his technological brilliance. Despite a dearth of evidence that the Americans had any sort of launch attempt in the pipeline, Korolev chose not to take any chances. In the race for space that only he and Wernher von Braun seemed to know even existed, two days was not two days; it was an eternity. And so one cold Tyuratam morning, Sergei Korolev called his colleagues together and declared that he was moving the satellite launch date up two days to October 4.
As representatives around the world began buying their plane tickets to attend the IGY set for October 6, Korolev and his team sent along apologies and phony excuses for their absence, then prepared for launch.
Only later would Korolev discover how accurate the KGB reports had been.
The R-7 rocket was assembled first in an upright position at a specially built hangar, then slowly towed 1.5 kilometers to the launch area using a tractor platform. Their indoor vertical preassembly technique would eventually be adopted by the United States and NASA, but as with so many other large-rocket details, Korolev and the Soviets had found the wisdom in it first.
The chief designer walked in front of the rocket-carrying flatbed, as if leading it to its destination.2 It took the large transporter almost an hour to travel the short distance to its launch area.3
Once it arrived, and all the systems had checked out, authority for the launch passed from the civilians, headed by Korolev, to the military, commanded by Colonel Aleksandr Nosov.4
“One minute to go,” said Nosov. “Key to launch.”
Lieutenant Boris Chekunov inserted a key into the command console. This key controlled a circuit breaker for the firing circuitry.
“Key on,” said Chekunov.5
Nosov ordered the engine feed lines to be purged with gaseous nitrogen in order to flush out any residual fuel or oxidizer that might be remaining from the propellant-loading process.
“Key to drainage,” said Nosov, and Chekunov responded by shutting off the liquid-oxygen relief valves. Two minutes passed, and Nosov gave his final order.
“Pusk!” A single word, meaning “launch.”
Chekunov now pressed a button that triggered a series of automatic events, like a line of falling dominos. Valves opened, allowing gaseous nitrogen to pressurize both propellant tanks; the umbilical connections, mostly electrical lines, were retracted; the rocket was placed on internal battery power; the turbopumps were actuated, forcing the propellants into the engine's combustion chamber; igniters inside the combustion chambers were switched on, torching the now-mixed propellants and causing a brilliant upside down volcano of fire.
“Primary stage!” shouted Nosov as the turbopumps methodically throttled up to full power.
The rocket began a ponderous upward climb.
“Liftoff!”
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL1
The failure of American and international leaders at all levels, both civilian and military, to understand beforehand the significance that a maiden satellite would have on Earth's human population turned out to be one of the most spectacular political blunders of all time. For years, a small handful of engineers, led by Wernher von Braun, had pressed President Eisenhower and his government about the urgency of moving satellite technology off the drawing boards and into space. But the president had always been dismissive of their warnings. The political climate would have been just as bad in the Soviet Union had not Stalin and his military leaders been so hungry to build an arsenal of ICBMs. Only a small number of countries had the engineering know-how to launch a satellite, and each and every one of them was crippled by institutional myopia.
Soon after Sputnik, a Gallup poll determined that 50 percent of the US population considered the Russian achievement a “serious blow to US prestige.”2 In an interview he gave in 1998, President Eisenhower's staff secretary, Colonel Andrew J. Goodpastor, said the Americans seemed appalled by the president's indifference, saying, “It really created great anxiety,
almost panic within the United States.”3 In their book Project Vanguard: The NASA History, Constance Green and Milton Lomask describe the weeks of post-Sputnik as “a period of mental turmoil and vocal soul-searching.”4
The American media was much more brutal. U.S. News & World Report and Aviation Week began a series of articles highly critical of America's new laggard image in science and technology.5
On the evening of Sputnik's launch, there was a party at the officer's club in Huntsville. When Wernher von Braun arrived, he took General Medaris and US Defense Secretary Neil McElroy aside for an urgent discussion.
“If you go back to Washington tomorrow, Mr. Secretary, and find all hell has broken loose, remember this: We can get a satellite up in sixty days.”6
There was a stunned silence. Most everyone was still under the assumption that Vanguard was destined to become America's first foray into orbit. Von Braun's declaration seemed desperate and presumptuous, given, as it were, in front of one of the President's cabinet members. But von Braun wasn't done speaking.
“Vanguard will never make it. We have the hardware on the shelf. For God's sake, turn us loose and let us do something!”7
Secretary McElroy and General Medaris did indeed go to Washington to plead von Braun's case, but Eisenhower turned them down flat.8 What was lost on all of the space boosters' satellite dreams, however, was what was going on in the minds of common Americans. If the communists, America's Cold War enemy, could launch a satellite overhead, that meant they had the capability to hit New York or Los Angeles with an H-bomb.9 Americans did not like being second in the newly declared Space Race, but they hated living in fear even more. Overnight, two new phrases entered the English lexicon: fallout shelter and bomb shelter. Fearing a nuclear holocaust, people started building them in their backyards.
Most everyone in the United States agreed that America needed to leap into the fray and show the world its technological superiority. Now that the informal Space Race had been unofficially declared, it was assumed by Americans everywhere that their country would demonstrate its true mettle and capability. Soon after the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, the VOG (Vanguard Operating Group) announced that on December 4 it would launch the Vanguard TV-3 rocket from Cape Canaveral. This launch was intended strictly as a test; there was never any claim or pronouncement that TV-3 would be America's official first satellite launch. Misinformation and exaggeration, however, increased public awareness to the point that the VOG decided to “go for it” and placed a token electronic package atop the rocket “just in case” it happened to go into orbit.10 For this reason, hordes of people, reporters, and cameramen descended on Cape Canaveral. Expectations were high, and completely misplaced.
The launch was beset by technical and weather delays that pushed liftoff from December 4 to the 6th.11 On Friday, at 11:44 a.m., the launch sequence for Vanguard TV-3 began. Pyrotechnic igniters in the engine were started, the propellants—liquid oxygen and kerosene—were forced into the combustion chamber, and the engine started with a typical large-liquid-rocket-engine roar. The rocket lifted off the pad, and for about two seconds all looked well. Then someone shouted, “Look out! Oh, God, no!” The rocket suddenly lost thrust and descended downward, back toward the launchpad. As the rocket crumpled on its own weight, the propellant tanks ruptured, the fuel and oxidizer mixed and ignited, and Vanguard TV-3 exploded in a massive fireball. One of the engineers, Kurt Stehling, would later describe the vision of what he saw from the blockhouse window. According to Stehling, it seemed “as if the gates of hell had opened up.”12
With so many journalists on hand for the launch, it was inevitable that the explosion would play out in the newspapers and television for days and weeks on end. As if the Soviet's launch of Sputnik were not embarrassment enough, now America had on its résumé a spectacular rocket cataclysm—all on the six o'clock news for everyone to see.
The dichotomy of that one incredible Soviet success matched against America's monstrous failure changed everything.
James Howard “Dutch” Kindelberger was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, on May 8, 1895. His father was a steelworker, a position James worked at for a short while before enrolling at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1916. The United States entered World War I the following year, and James joined the army, serving in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps. He became a pilot instructor and was soon enamored of anything that had to do with aircraft. In 1919, he married Thelma Knarr, and a year later, became chief draftsman and assistant chief engineer with the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company in Cleveland, Ohio. Five years later, he accepted a position as chief engineer with Douglas Aircraft in California, where he pioneered development of large passenger planes, the DC-1 and the DC-2. In 1934, Kindelberger became president and general manager of General Aviation, later renamed North American Aviation, Inc.13
Though Dutch, as he would come to be known by both friend and foe, was well regarded for his engineering talents, he was legendary for his marketing acuity. During World War II, North American Aviation was turning out more than five hundred planes of various designs per month for several branches of the military. At that time, the United States Army Air Corps issued most aircraft orders. Not until 1947 would the Air Force become an official separate branch of the US military.14 One day, Dutch was summoned to the USAAF headquarters in Dayton, Ohio, for the purpose of discussing a new airplane the generals wanted to buy. Kindelberger knew they were heavy with bombers but light on fighters, so the week before he was to meet with the USAAF brass, he quickly drew up plans for a new advanced fighter plane. Then he packed the blueprints into a suitcase and piloted his own plane to Dayton.15
The morning of the big meeting, it was raining heavily. Fortunately, Kindelberger had brought his raincoat, inside of which the valuable advanced fighter plane blueprints were safely tucked. As he entered the office building, he shook the rain off his coat, and he was soon ushered into a room full of generals and colonels, all sitting around a long, rectangular conference table. For visual effect, Kindelberger laid the blueprints out on the table as he stood before them.
“So,” he began. “What can we make for you gentlemen?”
The response made Kindelberger stop breathing.
“We want a new bomber. All the bombers we have are too small. We need a bomber that can fly farther and transport a much greater payload.”
As soon as he heard the word bomber, Kindelberger had casually rested his raincoat atop the blueprints, hiding enough of the design so that no one would be able to tell what kind of plane it was.
“Yes,” said another general. “We need a much bigger bomber. We hear your competitors are already working on designing such a bomber, so we're not sure if we should even be talking to you.”
“This is your lucky day,” said Kindelberger. “We've spent the last six months secretly developing a large bomber just as you have described.” Pointing at the obscured blueprints he said, “And unlike my competitors, our design is ready to go.”
Dutch Kindelberger left the room with the largest order of bomber aircraft he had ever received. On the flight home, he began designing the new plane in his head.
Tom Meyers's office was raised ten feet off the engineering floor and positioned so that from his windows he could see every last slide-rule puller in the department. When his phone rang with the warning, he had not been at those windows, sitting instead at his desk pouring over the latest engine-performance data.16
“He's in the building. He's not happy. Make sure your desk is clean.”
He recognized the voice of Audra, one of the lobby receptionists. She had barked off those three quick sentences, then hung up the phone.
He's in the building? Who is in the building?
Obviously they were receiving a visit from some VIP—not an unusual occurrence. An army general, or perhaps even a congressman. As Tom stood up, Irving Kanarek ran into his office.
“He's in the building!”
“Who?
”
“Mr. Big. Mr. Mucky-Muck himself.”
Tom was confused. “Sam Hoffman?”
“No—no! The real Mr. Big! The legend: Dutch Kindelberger.” Then Kanarek left.
Tom stepped quickly over to the windows. Kindelberger was easy to spot. As he marched toward Tom's office, the founder and commander of North American Aviation left a visual wake of turning heads, moving bodies, and fear. And they had good reason to have that fear. Kindelberger was famous on Wall Street as the inventor of the “Five Percent Rule”—a policy that required 5 percent of all company employees to be fired every year, whether they deserved it or not. Kindelberger's theory was that such a rule made the other 95 percent work harder. Sadly, it often succeeded.17
Tom struggled to consider why Kindelberger would be paying him a visit.
In ten years, Dutch has never once visited this plant. Now he's here, and heading my way.
Tom rushed to clean his desk, a job he managed to get half completed before his door opened and the Dutchman entered. Kindelberger was wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a blue polka-dotted bow tie. His hair was receding, but most of it was still there, stark in its whiteness.
“Hello, Tom.”
“Mr. Kindelberger.” Still holding an armload of files that he had intended to hide somewhere, Tom stood up.
“Mind if I come in?” said his visitor.
“It's your company, sir. You can go wherever you want.” Tom set down the files.
“I know. But courtesy, Tom. Never forget it. Courtesy goes a long way.”
Kindelberger took a commanding stance in the middle of the room.
“Let me ask you something, Tom. Do you have any idea what it's like getting a phone call from the president of the United States?”
“Can't say I've had the pleasure.”
“It's not something you'll ever forget. Trust me.”
The white-haired gentleman began walking the room, examining a display of photographs on the office wall. Some of the photos were of successful rocket test-firings, some depicted famous NAA aircraft from the war. Then he arrived at a photo of Tom and his family.
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