As the 1960 presidential poll approached, it looked as if Richard Nixon would at last have his just reward for all those painful and bitter dues he had paid at Ike’s cold and distant shoulder. Personal relations between Eisenhower and his vice president never truly improved in the years after Sputnik, but Nixon, in preparation for the 1960 elections, was accorded a far greater role in Ike’s second term. He traveled more frequently, especially after John Foster Dulles’s death in 1959, and assumed many of the secretary of state’s foreign policy duties. Some of the trips did not go smoothly. His infamous shouting match with Nikita Khrushchev at Moscow’s international technology fair in July 1959 did little for the cause of improving superpower relations. Visiting a mockup of an American kitchen displayed at the fair, the two leaders launched into an impromptu argument over missiles that ended with the red-faced first secretary jabbing a pudgy finger in the vice president’s chest and growling: “You want to threaten? We will answer threats with threats.”
Nixon’s eventual opponent, John F. Kennedy, would make much of the unstatesmanlike buffoonery of the “kitchen debate,” and he would owe a large debt to the continued fallout from Sputnik and the missile gap for his electoral victory the following year. But it would be Nixon who would preside over the White House when Kennedy’s pledge to put a man on the moon was finally realized in 1969. Some would say this was fitting since he had advocated, as vice president, for Ike to shoot for the moon. But ultimately, would Kennedy have made the pledge, and would Neil Armstrong have taken his famously “small step” when he did, had Sergei Korolev not pitched Khrushchev the idea of a satellite? Perhaps not. The Chief Designer may be completely unknown to most Americans, yet his hidden hand has left indelible prints on the nation.
The hidden hand would become a term better associated with Eisenhower’s detached style of leadership. Ike, after leaving office, did not enjoy rave reviews from historians, but by the mid-1980s scholarly esteem for Eisenhower had risen, a reevaluation that coincided, in part, with the declassification and release of many important documents, which revealed a vastly different man from the fuzzy, remote, and sometimes bumbling public persona. Behind closed doors, Eisenhower proved to be a far sharper figure, much more on top of issues than he publicly let on. It was the dichotomy that Richard Bissell had noticed, when he first assumed that John Foster Dulles ran the show, but after careful observation concluded that Ike was very much his own man. In hindsight, Ike’s subdued response to Sputnik probably owed as much to his instinctive fear of the rise of the “military-industrial complex” as to his failing health and his longing for a peaceful retirement. His farewell address to the nation in January 1961 highlighted the danger of allowing the political and economic interests of military contractors and bureaucrats to hijack the national security agenda for their own gain. America did not heed his advice, however, and to this day trillions of tax dollars have been needlessly spent on unnecessary weapons systems that have not necessarily made the country safer.
Donald Quarles, Eisenhower’s contentious point man on curbing runaway military spending, was to have succeeded Neil McElroy as secretary of defense in 1959. But he was felled by a massive heart attack that year, and his legacy as the man who oversaw America’s earliest space and missile efforts would remain mixed at best.
Sputnik would taint Eisenhower’s legacy as well. Contemporary revisionists are too charitable when they hail his passivity during Sputnik as exemplary. Leadership during times of crisis cannot be hidden or managed from a golf course. It must be assertive and overt. During the Sputnik crisis, Ike fell short on both counts, and populists like Lyndon Johnson stepped into the leadership vacuum.
Assertiveness was never a quality lacking in General Bruce Medaris, the closest thing America had to a Korolev. Though von Braun would get the credit for opening the heavens to the United States, it was really Medaris’s iron will and stubborn refusal to yield to bureaucratic setbacks that lofted Juno into space. A lesser general might have accepted the Pentagon line and awaited orders, but had that happened ABMA would not have been prepared to respond as quickly as it did. He is the other unsung hero of this tale.
Since mavericks don’t tend to last in large institutional settings, it came as no surprise that Medaris’s military career ended shortly after ABMA’s 1958 triumph. Despite Explorer’s political victory, the army lost the war for missile supremacy with the air force, and ABMA was gradually dismantled to make room for the new civilian space organization. Medaris vehemently opposed NASA’s founding on the grounds that it would cannibalize his beloved agency, and his criticisms were so vocal that he had little choice but to resign his commission once von Braun’s team was transferred to civilian control. In early 1960, Joseph P. Kennedy offered Medaris a job advising his son’s presidential campaign on space issues, but he declined, wanting no part in politics. Instead, he accepted the presidency of the Lionel Corporation, a toy train maker with a defense contracting arm. A bout with cancer in the mid-1960s and a miraculous recovery left the devout former general convinced that he had been spared to fulfill a higher calling. He became a lay deacon in 1966, and four years later, at the age of sixty-eight, he was ordained an Episcopal priest. Father Bruce, as Medaris would be called in the final years of his life, passed away in 1990. He was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
Wernher von Braun, of course, went on to become NASA’s most famous founding scientist. He took America to the moon, became rich and respected, and fulfilled all his childhood dreams. His past, however, started catching up with him in the early 1970s. After Paris Match, the glossy French magazine, published a glowing article on the handsome space prophet, several readers wrote in to report that they recognized the man in the photographs. He was stouter and grayer than they remembered, but the burning eyes were unmistakably the same. The readers were survivors of Mittelwerk, former V-2 slave laborers, and the accounts they gave of von Braun differed starkly from the magazine’s fawning profile. They claimed he had personally ordered prisoners executed for sabotage and was a war criminal who should face international tribunals.
Nothing came of the allegations, but von Braun spent the final years of his life defending his war record, and he died in 1977 under a growing cloud of suspicion. In 1984, another V-2 veteran, Arthur Rudolf, the designer of the Saturn V rocket that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the moon, was quietly extradited to West Germany on identical charges. Von Braun unquestionably deserves a place in American history, but his true legacy remains murky.
As for the legacy of the first space race, the pioneering technology of the era is omnipresent in today’s information age. Satellites govern virtually every aspect of modern life, from communications to credit card transactions to avoiding traffic jams using GPS receivers. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was the first military campaign in the history of warfare run almost entirely remotely, via satellite. Thanks to microchip implants, satellites monitor the whereabouts of wayward pets and track cargo and stolen vehicles. They transmit television signals to dish owners and cable operators and broadcast the rantings of radio personalities like Howard Stern.
Space is no longer the exclusive domain of superpowers, but increasingly it is a commercial battleground open to all who can afford it. In this new profit-driven arena, OKB-1, Korolev’s old design bureau, is now called Russian Space Corporation Energya, and it supplies the boosters that orbit private U.S. satellites like DirectTV, beaming The Sopranos and National Football League packages to millions of American homes. Ironically, its partner in the rocket-for-hire venture is Boeing, the same company whose long-range bombers scared Nikita Khrushchev into founding OKB-1 to build the ICBM.
It’s a fitting end to the Sputnik saga to see the former ideological rivals now working together in the common pursuit of market share. That, too, is a big part of the new wireless age that the launch of the world’s first satellite made possible fifty years ago.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushc
hev (front row, center) and members of the Presidium in 1955. At the far left of the front row is Lazar Kaganovich, deputy premier, and next to him is Nikolai Bulganin, chairman of the Council of Ministers. To the right of Khrushchev are Soviet premier Georgi Malenkov and defense minister Klimenti Voroshilov. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
Khrushchev often asked his son, Sergei, an engineering student, to accompany him on visits to the Soviet Union’s rocket research facilities. (Photograph courtesy Sergei Khrushchev)
The tenacious Chief Designer of the Soviet missile program, Sergei Korolev, emerged from the Stalinist gulag to lead the Soviet Union into space. His identity was considered a state secret and his name never appeared in any news reports about missiles or satellites. (From the collection of Peter A. Gorin)
Major General John Bruce Medaris (left) was in charge of the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which employed the top engineers from Nazi Germany’s rocket program but which got scant support from the Pentagon. He is shown here with Brigadier General Holger N. “Ludy” Toftoy, who had whisked the scientists out of Germany in the summer of 1945. (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center)
Charles E. Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of defense, was the former president of General Motors and his charge was to bring down costs at the Pentagon. At his confirmation hearings, he said he did not see any conflict of interest in holding on to his GM stock because “what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.” (Department of Defense)
Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri (left) chaired the Air Power hearings in April 1956 to investigate whether the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union. Wealthy, handsome, and quick to score political points, he was considered an early contender for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination. Here he examines early American missile models with Lieutenant General James M. Gavin. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
Korolev’s archrival, the brilliant propulsion specialist Valentin Glushko, designed virtually all missile motors in the USSR. In 1938 he had provided damaging testimony against Korolev that was used as evidence at the trial that sent the Chief Designer to Siberia, but now they had to work side-by-side again. (From the collection of Peter A. Gorin)
A group photograph of many of the key participants in the Soviet missile and satellite programs. Korolev is in the front row, fourth from right. Others in the front row include Mstislav Keldysh (fifth from left), Leonid Voskresensky (seventh from left), R-7 Commission chairman Vasily Ryabikov (center, with legs crossed), deputy defense minister Mitrofan Nedelin (fifth from right, in uniform), deputy armaments minister Konstantin Rudnev (third from right), Valentin Glushko (second from right), and Vladimir Barmin (far right). (From the collection of Peter A. Gorin)
President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon were publicly united during the 1956 campaign. Behind the scenes, however, theirs was a strained relationship. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Walt Disney (far left) visits Wernher von Braun at the Redstone Arsenal before hiring him as a scientific adviser and host for the Tomorrowland segments of his new Disneyland television program. In these broadcasts, many Americans learned about satellite technology for the first time. (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center)
The powerful and staunchly anti-Communist Dulles brothers. Allen Dulles (left), the director of Central Intelligence, and John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, set the tone for the Eisenhower administration’s aggressive containment policies toward Moscow. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
Richard Bissell was the man behind the CIA’s top-secret U-2 and satellite reconnaissance programs. (Central Intelligence Agency)
The U-2 was used in reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union, taking aerial photographs from as high as 70,000 feet. In the mid-1950s, it flew beyond the range of Soviet fighters or missiles, infuriating Khrushchev and helping to spur the development of missiles and satellites. (U.S. Air Force Photo)
Known as the “quiet man,” Mikhail Tikhonravov was the introverted visionary behind the Soviet Union’s satellite breakthroughs. (From the collection of Peter A. Gorin)
The world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7, seen here in its Tulip launch stand, was Khrushchev’s bold gamble to redefine the arms race on his own terms. (From the collection of Peter A. Gorin)
The Soviet engineers called their first satellite PS-1, for prostreishy sputnik or “simple satellite.” After its successful launch into orbit on October 4, 1957, it would be known simply as Sputnik. (From the collection of Peter A. Gorin)
President Eisenhower, encountering a hostile press corps, tried to downplay the military significance of Sputnik at an October 9, 1957, press conference. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
Senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas (second from right), the Democratic majority leader, seized on the Sputnik scare to further his own ambitions, outmaneuvering Symington to hold hearings on “preparedness.” Here he poses with a giant globe as Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy (in bow tie) and Deputy Secretary Donald Quarles point out the location of Sputnik’s launch. Also looking on at far left is Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Eisenhower, in a morale-boosting address, tries to reassure Americans that the United States has not fallen far behind the Soviets. Here he displays a recovered nose cone from an American rocket shot into space. (White House National Park Service Collection, courtesy Dwight D. Eisenhower Library)
The navy’s Vanguard missile was given priority for America’s first post-Sputnik launch on December 6, 1957. However, the vehicle blew up on the launch pad, on live television, humiliating the United States in the eyes of the world. Newspapers called it “Flopnik” and “Kaputnik.” (NASA Headquarters—Greatest Images of NASA)
America’s second launch attempt would be a closely guarded affair. In the control room at Cape Canaveral in January 1958, Wernher von Braun (second from right, below) conferred with his colleagues as they waited for the weather to clear. (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center)
Finally, on January 31, 1958, America’s first satellite, Explorer, is catapulted into space atop von Braun’s Jupiter-C rocket. (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center)
NOTES
Prologue
PAGE
1 Every second from now on meant 275 fewer pounds: See propellant use specifications at http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/motor.html.
sixteen-ton Strabo crane: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/mobileoperations/html.
2 the nearby horse-track oval outside suburban Wassenaar: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/denhaag.html.
trajectory traced by a billowy white vapor trail: Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 75.
producing a vein of jet exhaust gases at 4,802 degrees Fahrenheit: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/motor.html.
the second battery of the 485th Artillery Battalion: Frederick Ordway and Mitchell Sharpe, The Rocket Team (Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books, 2003), p. 139.
body in a forty-five-degree inclination: Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 97.
3 The gimbaled spinning wheels, rotating at 2,000 revolutions per minute: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/design.html.
Sixty-three seconds into its flight, the rocket ceased being a rocket: Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral, p. 75.
At an altitude of seventeen miles: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 98.
shell painted in a jagged camouflage scheme of signal white, earth gray, and olive green: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/markings.html.
moving at 3,500 miles per hour: Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral, p. 75.
4 Another ten seconds passed, and the rocket reached its apogee of fifty-two miles: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/timeline.html.
4 forward at nearly five times the speed of sound: http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/EvolutionofTech
nology/V-2/Tech26.htm.
The time was 6:41 PM: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/timeline.html.
six-year-old John Clarke was freshening up for dinner: John Clarke interview with BBC, September 7, 2004, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/sci/tech/3634212.stm.
the quarter-inch-thick sheet metal that encased it rose to 1,100 degrees: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/design.html.
5 the V-2 slammed into Staveley Road at Mach 3: BBC, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/sci/tech/3634212.stm.
“The best way to describe it is television with the sound off “: Ibid.
“German science has once again demonstrated a malignant ingenuity”: William E. Burrows, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Race (New York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 102.
Boris Chertok had no trouble finding the big brown brick building: To recreate Chertok’s experiences in Berlin, I have drawn on the English translation of the first volume of his four-volume memoirs, Rakety i Lyudi: Boris Evseevich Chertok, Rockets and People (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration History Series, 2005).
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