Moon Shot

by Jay Barbree

  “The United States had no ballistic missile program worth mentioning between 1945 and 1951,” von Braun complained years later. “Those six years during which the Russians obviously laid the groundwork for their large rocket program were irretrievably lost.”

  Although the United States recruited the cream of the German rocket scientists, the Soviets captured many of those left behind and began their own missile program.

  In 1950 the fortunes of the Germans at Fort Bliss changed when the Army received confirmation of Soviet rocket activity and immediately decided to establish a rocket research and development center.

  Huntsville, Alabama, became the new home for the German team. The Army brass promised a warm reception from the local community, but there were still too many empty beds, broken hearts, and still-fresh World War II gravesites of Alabama soldiers for the people of Huntsville to welcome the Germans with any hospitality. Many were suspicious and unable to accept that the scientists had transferred their loyalties from Nazi Germany to the United States as quickly and easily as they seemed to.

  Tensions eased when the Alabamans learned these men were not Nazis. And gradually this energetic, dedicated band of Germans—who had learned to speak English at Fort Bliss—won the respect and support of their stubborn hosts. Much of the credit for this turnaround went to von Braun, the charismatic leader who worked tirelessly to create goodwill within the community.

  Just weeks after the arsenal reopened on June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded a startled and unprepared South Korea. Two days later President Harry S. Truman ordered U.S. troops to Korea. The Korean War energized the arsenal. The Army, under orders from Washington, directed the von Braun team to develop the country’s first ballistic missile. It was required to propel a conventional or nuclear warhead two hundred miles and be mobile enough to be ferried around the battlefront by combat troops. The missile was named Redstone, after the arsenal.

  Once more the German engineers and scientists were called on to build a weapon of war, their hopes for space rocket research and development derailed again. Little did they know that this slender sixty-nine-foot rocket would one day be their ticket to space.

  The Germans and the American engineers working with them designed the Redstone from scratch, fired its engine in test stands, shaped its dynamics in wind tunnels, and verified its structure in vibrating machines. By 1956, the Redstone had become more than a battlefield missile. Coming on line were more powerful fifteen-hundred-mile-range missiles—the Air Force Thor and Army Jupiter—and the Air Force’s Atlas and Titan, the true intercontinental range brutes designed to loft nuclear warheads five thousand miles or more. Missiles this large all shared the same problem: when their warheads were hurled into space, they had to reenter the earth’s atmosphere to reach their targets. Their sixteen-thousand-mile-per-hour speed would create such friction when they hit the dense air on reentry that the heat would melt the warhead. Existing materials were adequate for the warhead of the Redstone, which flew lower and slower. New protective materials had to be developed for the larger rockets and the Pentagon asked von Braun to build a rocket that could fly at sixteen thousand miles per hour, allowing it to carry out warhead reentry tests.

  The Huntsville team adapted the one-stage Redstone for the job. It lengthened the rocket, modified the engine, and added two upper stages, consisting of a total of fourteen small rockets, and called the modified booster a Jupiter-C. Atop this stack they added the unarmed warhead, stuffed with recording instruments, its nose cone coated with the new protective material. It worked perfectly on the first test launch, and the dummy warhead survived.

  “Do you realize what we’ve done?” von Braun asked his team. “We went higher than six hundred miles, we sent the warhead more than three thousand miles, and we reached a speed of sixteen thousand miles an hour—higher, farther, and faster than any rocket has flown. If we had just one more small rocket on top, we could have placed a satellite in orbit around the earth!”

  The Huntsville gang, as von Braun’s scientists had become known, was exuberant. Excitement swept their ranks. Von Braun and the Army asked the Pentagon for permission to add that single stage to the backup Jupiter-C, dubbed Missile 29. Despite the resounding success of the Jupiter-C, the response to von Braun’s request was anything but certain.

  Two years earlier, in 1954, von Braun and other space enthusiasts from industry and academia had met in Washington to discuss the U.S. contribution to International Geophysical Year, a cooperative scientific effort through which scientists around the world would study the earth and which would be observed between July 1957 and December 1958. Von Braun said he could orbit a five-pound satellite to study the upper atmosphere by adding upper stages to the Redstone rocket. The Office of Naval Research put up eighty-eight thousand dollars, and Project Orbiter was born.

  The project had a short life. A panel of scientists appointed by the White House decided that the satellite should be launched with a rocket that did not have a military origin and recommended development of a new booster called Vanguard, arguing that a rocket with non-military applications would lend more dignity to a scientific project like IGY. President Eisenhower agreed. Snorted von Braun: “I’m all for dignity, but this is a cold war tool. How dignified would our position really be if a man-made star of unknown origin suddenly appeared in our skies?”

  There were reports at the time that Eisenhower and his aides wanted the world’s first satellite to be orbited by an American scientific team and not by a group headed by von Braun’s German war veterans. It was irrelevant to the administration that other American research centers did not yet possess the technical skills of the Germans, nor did they have the advanced hardware that had emerged from Redstone Arsenal. There was time enough for the Americans to learn, or so Washington thought.

  Ready for an American launch in 1956, more than a year ahead of the Russians, Earth’s first satellite was grounded yet again.

  The Eisenhower administration ignored hints from Moscow that the Soviets were quickly developing the technology that could put them in space first. Not only were they launching intercontinental range missiles to Pacific targets, but they had also announced their intention to launch their own satellite during International Geophysical Year. Washington, particularly the Pentagon, brushed off the Soviet announcement as a bluff, not believing the Soviets had developed the technology for such a feat.

  But Wernher von Braun was listening. He heard the Russian broadcasts and read the detailed papers being circulated at scientific meetings around the globe. He also paid close attention to the radar reports from American sites in Iran, which confirmed beyond any doubt that Russians missiles were flying higher, faster, and farther.

  Von Braun understood better than the Pentagon or the White House that if his Jupiter-C rocket could toss a satellite into orbit, then the Soviets with their five-thousand-mile-range missiles carrying heavy warheads could very well launch their own satellite.

  When again von Braun asked for permission to launch his Earth satellite, Eisenhower denied the request. Disappointed, the Huntsville team stored Redstone 29. Washington had opened the door for the Russians to lead the world into tomorrow.

  If you flew nine thousand miles east from the rolling hills and piney woods surrounding Wernher von Braun’s Huntsville team, you would arrive at the land of the sky: the vast steppes of Kazakhstan, a flat plain where the yellowed grasslands turn green only in spring, where at days end one can see nothing, not even a leaf or twig between self and setting sun.

  It was this bare, unpopulated land that was chosen in the 1950s by a small army of Russian space pioneers, scientists, rocket engineers and technicians, laborers and cooks and carpenters and masons to build the great Soviet Baikonur Cosmodrome—a sprawling space center located perfectly to launch rockets and land spacecraft where mishaps would do little damage to the sparse flora and fauna. Even more importantly, the desolation would keep secrets hidden.

  They developed and tested
rockets, and on the evening of October 4, 1957, they gathered around a large white rocket bathed in brilliant floodlights. The rocket was the temple, the tiny figures scurrying around its flanks the faithful. For most of the day the rocket had experienced exasperating technical problems that resulted in numerous countdown delays. The launch originally set for early morning was finally at hand.

  The rocket was called R-7, a simple name for a momentous giant.

  Inside a steel-walled room on the nearby launch pad, Sergei Korolev sat at an old wooden desk, microphone in hand, orchestrating the stop-and-go countdown. Korolev was the chief rocket engineer of the USSR, who, unlike Wernher von Braun, had the full blessing and support of his country’s leader, Premier Nikita Khrushchev. His R-7, four times more powerful than the Redstone, was to send a satellite into orbit and Russia into a new page in history.

  Korolev was a brilliant, simple man. He disliked fancy surroundings and, shortly after arriving at the Cosmodrome, he had built for himself a small wood frame house no better than that of any Russian peasant family. The essential difference with Korolev’s house was its location: it stood halfway between the rocket assembly building and the R-7 launch pad.

  Korolev had left nothing to chance. He stood side by side with mechanics and metal workers in a machine shop at the launch area, personally helping to fashion and assemble what would be the first artificial satellite of the human race. Korolev followed the rule of simplicity and created a sphere of aluminum alloys with four spring-loaded whip antennas and two battery-powered radio transmitters that would sing their unmelodious song to the world. He fitted the satellite within a pointed metal nose cone, and watched technicians installing it atop the large booster.

  Once the technological glitches had been resolved, events moved rapidly and men left the launching pad for safety behind thick concrete walls. The countdown went quickly and was heard only by the launch crew and a handful of top experts and communist officials.

  An unsuspecting world was about to be shocked.

  “Gotovnosty dyesyat minut.”

  Ten minutes and counting.

  The great launch tower with work stands and umbilicals rolled back, others folded. The last power umbilicals between the launch stand and the rocket separated, falling and writhing like thick, black snakes. R-7 stood alone with its super-cold fuels venting plumes of icy fog into the night.

  R-7’s internal systems were alive.

  The minutes were gone.

  Final seconds fell like withered leaves.

  “Tri . . .

  “Dva . . .

  “Odin . . . ”

  Korolev’s voice rang out:

  “Zashiganiye!”

  Ignition!

  Green-red flame created a pillow of fire that ripped into curving steel and concrete channels, blew away the darkness of the night, and sent bright-orange day flashing across the desolate landscape. The manmade light was followed quickly by a sustained roar as thunder shook all that stood for miles.

  R-7 rose on a Niagara of thrust and, as it climbed into the night—a brilliant star racing against a black sky—darkness returned to the launch pad. In minutes the Russian rocket had disappeared over the Aral Sea. Korolev was far more interested in his readouts than in the pyrotechnic wonder of his booster. The numbers were perfect. Engines had cut off on schedule, rocket stages separated as planned and, when the last engine died, protective metal flew away from the satellite. Springs pushed it free to fly in space.

  The moment its power had been cut and it had been freed from the rocket, the satellite became known as Sputnik (fellow traveler). Obeying the laws of celestial mechanics, it immediately began to fall, beckoned invisibly toward the center of the earth. As fast as it fell in a wide, swooping arc, the surface of the planet below curved away beneath it, falling away at a speed of three hundred miles per minute.

  Sputnik was in orbit.

  Ninety minutes later, it raced over its still-steaming launch pad, its transmitter emitting a lusty beep-beep-beep, which blared from Baikonur’s loudspeakers. Cheers and shouts of joy exploded from observers on the launch pad. Korolev turned to his associates.

  “Today,” he said with deep feeling, “the dreams of the best sons of mankind have come true. The assault on space has begun.”

  News of Sputnik swept like breaking surf across the world. Five bells clanged from Associated Press printers in newsrooms across the country, signaling a major story. Editors and reporters, jolted to attention, moved quickly to the keys pounding paper. They could hardly believe what they were reading. It was no exception in the NBC newsroom in the city of New York.

  Editor Bill Fitzgerald had just put the wrap on his next scheduled newscast. He froze at his desk when the wire service machines began to clang. The bells echoed in the large newsroom as he dashed from his desk into the wire room and stood before the main AP machine. He stared with eyes wide at the incoming copy.

  BULLETIN

  LONDON, OCT. 4 (AP)—MOSCOW RADIO SAID TONIGHT THAT THE SOVIET UNION HAS LAUNCHED AN EARTH SATELLITE.

  THE SATELLITE, SILVER IN COLOR, WEIGHS 184 POUNDS AND IS REPORTED TO BE THE SIZE OF A BASKETBALL. MOSCOW RADIO SAID IT IS CIRCLING THE GLOBE EVERY 96 MINUTES, REACHING AS FAR OUT AS 569 MILES AS IT ZIPS ALONG AT MORE THAN 17,000 MILES PER HOUR.

  “Damn!” Fitzgerald spat in disgust. Not at the news but with the realization that his fully written newscast had just gone down the toilet.

  He hurried from the wire room across the wide news center and burst into Morgan Beatty’s office. “Mo, we’ve gotta update,” he yelled. “One of the damn Russian missiles got away from them, and they lost a basketball or something in space.”

  The veteran newscaster stared in disbelief at the agitated editor. “Give me that,” he demanded, snatching the wire copy from Fitzgerald’s hand.

  His eyes widened as he read. “Jesus Christ, Bill, you know what this is? The Russians have just put up an Earth satellite! They’ve been talking about it and, dammit, they’ve really done it!”

  Realization was sinking into Fitzgerald. He took a deep breath. “Okay, what do we do, Mo?”

  “We’d better put out a hotline,” Beatty said quickly. “We’ve got to get on the air right away.” He kicked back the chair and headed for the wire room, calling over his shoulder as he left. “Get the RCA shortwave station on it! Get them on the satellite’s frequency. We need the sound of that thing passing overhead!”

  Sputnik hurtled through space, arcing around the world, and began a pass over the eastern United States. Its orbit took it almost directly over Huntsville, Alabama, where it was about to wreck a carefully planned evening.

  More than five hundred miles below Sputnik, the Army’s rocket team was enjoying cocktails. Top brass from Washington had joined them for an evening of business and pleasure. One of the guests, Neil H. McElroy, had just been nominated by President Eisenhower to be the secretary of defense. Wernher von Braun was delighted with the news; he judged McElroy as a man of action and quick decisions. McElroy was to replace the current defense secretary, Charles E. Wilson, who thought space flight was nonsense, and who had blocked every attempt by von Braun’s team to punch a satellite into orbit.

  Von Braun was eager to meet the secretary-designate. He had come loaded with charts, blueprints, slides, and reams of data, and with a magnificent meal prepared at his personal direction. Von Braun was as much a social charmer as he was a genius in rocketry. Tall, blond, square-jawed, and with an unquenchable enthusiasm for space flight, he also was experienced in dealing with bureaucratic machinery.

  Wernher knew his team was the only group in America with the experience and the ability to launch a satellite. He also knew that no matter what else went on in Washington, the man who was president had also fought the legions of the Wehrmacht and seen what von Braun’s V-2 rockets could do to helpless cities. Von Braun knew Eisenhower would neither forgive nor forget.

  Von Braun joined with his American friend and sympathizer, Major Gene
ral John B. Medaris, commander of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone, to plead their case to launch a satellite with a souped-up Redstone rocket. They argued that Project Vanguard would fail and that the Soviet Union would embarrass the United States by orbiting the first satellite.

  That evening von Braun launched into spellbinding oratory as he briefed McElroy on the potential of the Army’s rockets to bring American space flight into reality. McElroy listened with interest and understanding. Wernher and Medaris were jubilant; they felt they were getting through.

  “Dr. von Braun!”

  Wernher stopped in mid-sentence. They all turned to see a man running into the room.

  “They’ve done it!” shouted Gordon Harris, the public affairs director for the rocket team.

  “They’ve done what?” demanded von Braun.

  “The Russians . . . ” Harris ran up to join von Braun, Medaris, and McElroy. “They just announced over the radio that the Russians have successfully put up a satellite!”

  The room froze in stunned silence. “What radio?” von Braun snapped at Harris.

  “NBC.” Harris sucked in air. “NBC in New York. They reported a bulletin from Moscow Radio. They’ve got the sounds from the satellite. The BBC has also picked up—”

  “What sounds?” von Braun interrupted, his voice a steady monotone.