Red Moon Rising

by Matthew Brzezinski

  184 Go to Congress, he urged Ike: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 147.

  “We do not, as of yet, know if the satellite is sending out encoded messages” and all other quotes from October 10, 1957, NSC meeting: Memorandum on the 339th meeting of the National Security Council, Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.Eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/sputnik/summaryofdiscussion339thmtgoctl119571ofl4.pdf.

  186 “The country will support it”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 20.

  announcing that the Vanguard program would launch “a small satellite sphere”: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/sputnik/pressconferenceoct91957pg.lpdf.

  “We who could coldly appraise”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 160.

  187 “far, far out on a limb”: Ibid., p. 162.

  “I had neither money nor authority”: Ibid.

  9: Something for the Holidays

  188 “Just another Korolev launch”: Nicholas Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 65; see also Harford, Korolev, p. 122.

  189 The man whose popularity had so intimidated Joseph Stalin: Thumbnail bio of Zhukov is drawn from http://www.worldatwar.net/biography/z/Zhukov. See also Albert Axell, Marshal Zhukov: The Man Who Beat Hitler (London: Longman, 2003).

  190 “Where you find Zhukov, you find Victory”: http://www.worldatwar.net/biography/z/Zhukov.

  191 Khrushchev had unilaterally slashed troop forces by a staggering 2 million men: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 379.

  191 “shark fodder”: Ibid.

  a further round of three-hundred-thousand-troop reductions: Ibid.

  “Some voices of dissatisfaction were heard”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 43.

  “I can’t go to battle with generals who have to travel with field hospitals”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 225.

  192 “He assumed so much power”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 44.

  “Father feared that Zhukov saw General Eisenhower as an example”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

  “I see what Zhukov is up to”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 44.

  “saboteur schools”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

  “a South American-style military takeover”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 44.

  193 “His unreasonable activities leave us no choice”: Ibid., p. 45.

  194 a small and unobtrusive squib would appear on the back page of Pravda: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 250.

  The evening sessions had run well past ten: The account of the meeting in Kiev is drawn from telephone interviews with Sergei Khrushchev in September 2006 and from his memoir.

  195 “I’ll be back”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, pp. 259-60; also author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

  196 the lead story in Pravda on the morning of October 5: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 533.197 orbital decay: I. V. Meshcheriakov, V Mire Kosmonavtiki (Nizhny Novgorod: Russki Kupets, 1996), pp. 35-36.

  crossing the equator every ninety-six minutes at a sixty-five-degree angle: Valentin Glushko, ed., Malenkaya Entsiklopedia Kosmonavtiki (Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia, 1970), p. 520.

  The exact number would turn out to be ninety-two days: Ibid.198 “We were all too focused”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 543.

  “It was late”: Chertok, Rakety I Lyudi, vol. 2, p. 195.

  “We thought the satellite”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 104.

  “This date”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 197.

  “The whole world is abuzz”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 524.

  199 green for foreign press clippings, red for decoded diplomatic traffic: Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev, p. 128.

  “The achievement is immense”: Manchester Guardian, October 6, 1957.

  “Myth has become reality”: Le Figaro, October 7, 1957.

  “A turning point in civilization”: New York Times, October 6, 1957.

  “in contrast with the first steps in the atomic age”: Monographs in Aerospace History no. 10: USIA, October 17, 1957, Report on World Opinion, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/45thann/html/pubs.

  “validation of the superiority of Marxist-Leninist technology”: Ibid,

  “the planetary era rings the death knell of colonialism”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 131.

  200 “With only a ball of metal”: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 171.

  The European Assembly in Strasbourg… and other examples of shaken faith in the United States: Monographs in Aerospace History no. 10: USIA, October 17, 1957, Report on World Opinion, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/45thann/html/pubs.

  200 “Public opinion in friendly countries shows decided concern”: Ibid.201 “People all over the world are pointing to the satellite”: Time, October 21, 1957.

  “World’s First Artificial Satellite of the Earth Created in Soviet Union”: Pravda, October 6, 1957.

  202 “The average American only cares for his car”: Harris, A New Command, p. 182.

  “We could never understand”: David Akens, Army Ballistic Missile Agency Historical Monograph (Huntsville, Ala.: Redstone Arsenal, 1958), appendix A, at http://www.www.army.redstone.mil/history.

  203 he astounded Korolev by asking where the satellites were placed: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 169.

  “People in the Soviet Union did not complain during that era”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

  “I remember walking in Red Square”: Natalia Koroleva, interview in televised documentary film The Secret Designer (Toronto: Ryan Productions, 1994).

  “They are well provided for”: Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos, p. 128.

  “Our most brilliant missile designer could not hold a candle to Sergei Pavlovich Korolev”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 77.

  204 “When we announced the successful testing of an intercontinental rocket”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 237.

  205 “Initially, Father believed”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

  Yangel, a few months earlier, had successfully tested the R-12: Oruzhe Rossii, vol. 4 (Moscow: Military Parade, 1997), p. 77.

  lobbying Nedelin to push for the R-16: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 182.

  206 “In his able proposals”: Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos, p. 72.

  “You know”: Khrushchev’s exchange with Korolev and Mikoyan is in Golovanov, Korolev, p. 544.

  207 Khrushchev had commissioned poems: Harford, Korolev, p. 122. commemorative stamps: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 542.

  “Now we are ahead of America”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 71.

  208 “Nowhere else would you find”: Ibid.

  Beijing had blasted Khrushchev’s assault on Stalin as “revisionist”: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, p. 72.

  promised Mao missile technology, starting with the R-2: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 66.

  209 He had the parts to assemble one more rocket: Chertok, Rakety I Lyudi, vol. 2, p. 199.

  211 The hardware would have to come entirely off the shelf: Harford, Korolev, p. 132.

  212 “My wife and I”: in Mozhorin, ed., Nachalo Kosmicheskoy Eri, p. 64.

  “We’re returning to Tyura-Tam”: Ibid.

  10: Operation Confidence

  213 “What next?”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 94.

  “Shoot the Moon, Ike”: Time, November 11, 1957.

  213 “Plunge heavily into this one”: http://www.spacereview.com/article/396/1.

  214 “Let’s not look for scapegoats”: Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics and Space Act: Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop Conducted April 3, 1992, Monographs in Space History no. 8, http://www.history.nasa.gov/40than/l
egislat.pdf.

  215 “Sputnik II absolutely made the decision for them”: Ibid.

  “The greatly increased size of the second Sputnik”: Time, November 11, 1957.

  “whether the Soviet Union might be using some new form”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 143.

  “As Chairman of the Committee”: www.spacereview.com/article/396/1.

  “It’s a real circus act”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 44.

  216 “demonstrates that the USSR has outstripped”: Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos, p. 128.

  “the freed and conscientious labor of the people”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 103.

  “to be less concerned with the depth of the pile”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 140.

  “While we devote our industrial and technological might”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 19.

  “It’s time to stop worrying about tail-fins”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 77.

  “We’ve become a little too self-satisfied”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 139.

  “an intercontinental outer-space raspberry”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 17.

  217 “From the echoes of the satellite”: Warshaw, ed., Reexamining the Eisenhower Presidency, p. 111.

  “The fact that we were able to launch the first Sputnik”: Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos, p. 127.

  “The United States can practically annihilate”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 223.

  218 GENTLE IN MANNER, STRONG IN DEED: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 219.

  “It misses the whole point”: Warshaw, ed., Reexamining the Eisenhower Presidency, p. 112.

  General Bruce Medaris watched the address with an equal mix of bewilderment and frustration: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 165.

  219 “somewhat cherubic” and “as disarmingly pleasant”: Taubman, Secret Empire, p. 88.

  Squirrel Hill: Harris, A New Command, p. 147.

  “Hang on tight, and I will support you”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 165.

  seriously considering quitting the army: Ibid., p. 168.

  220 “So far as the public could judge”: Ibid., p. 166.

  “The time for talking”: Ibid., p. 169.

  “The real tragedy of Sputnik’s victory”: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 132.

  “could be very damaging to what the President was trying to do”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 169.

  a devastating report: Prados, The Soviet Estimate, p. 72.

  221 “deeply shocking”: Sherman Adams, First Hand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961), p. 413.

  221 “Its disclosure would be inimical”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 221.

  “It will be interesting to find out how long”: Ibid.

  “The still top-secret Gaither Report”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 98.

  222 “Arguing the Case for Being Panicky”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 150.

  “Another tranquility pill”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 47.

  “It was by no means a blood, sweat and toil speech”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 34.

  “Two Sputniks cannot sway Eisenhower”: Ibid, pp. 45-46.

  sinking by 22 percentage points: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 151.

  “In a matter of a few months”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 156.

  “The bill’s best bet”: Ibid., p. 161.

  “Eisenhower was skeptical about the loans”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 195.

  223 A new $ 100-million-a-year Astronautical Research and Development Agency: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 112.

  “I’d like to know what’s on the other side of the moon”: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 453.

  “a depression that will curl your hair”: Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. 121.

  Unemployment was expected to jump by as much as 1.5 million: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 213.

  224 “In effect there was no clear cut authority”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 167.

  “They are trying to delude Congress”: Harris, A New Command, p. 183.

  “Either give me a clear-cut order”: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 134.

  “I’m afraid my language”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 168.

  “a fierce religious zeal” and a “pious belligerence”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 127.

  225 “Vanguard will never make it”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 155.

  “all test firings of Vanguard have met with success”: Ibid., p. 166.

  stop sending him “garbage”: Kurt Stehling, Project Vanguard (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p. 119.

  “almost developed”: Ibid., p. 60.

  “For all practical purposes the Vanguard vehicle was new”: Constance McLaughlin Green and Milton Lomask, Vanguard: A History (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1970), p. 177.

  226 “It was either forgotten, or not understood”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 60.

  simultaneously drew paychecks from the aerospace companies: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 240.

  assertions from the Glenn L. Martin Company: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, pp. 54, 62.

  Vanguard’s budget: Ibid., pp. 62, 105, 131.

  “I question very much whether it would have been authorized”: Percival Brundage, April 30, 1957, Project Vanguard memorandum to the president, Bureau of Budget files, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/iik4.html.

  227 “piece by rotten piece”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 119.

  227 There were moisture problems, poorly located pressure indicator lines, unsoldered wire connections, corroded and leaky fittings: Ibid., pp. 109-11.

  “What! You want to put a ball in that rocket?”: Ibid., pp. 87-88.

  “We’re never going to make it”: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, p. 131.

  228 “an unaccepted, incompletely developed vehicle”: Ibid., p. 177.

  “An astonishing piece of stupidity”: Time, October 21, 1957.

  the Stewart Committee had been “prejudiced”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 60.

  229 “the funds estimated by Secretary Quarles were totally inadequate”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 21.

  Wilson interviewed by Mike Wallace: Ibid., p. 47.

  “Implicit in all the criticism”: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 457.

  a crack team of Wall Street lawyers: Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), p. 1022.

  230 “He never asked the head of my organization”: Eilene Galloway, NASA Oral History transcript, at http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Herstory/GallowayE/EG_8-7-00.pdf.

  “He was really like a dynamo”: Ibid.

  “The timing was perfect”: Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics and Space Act: Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop Conducted April 3, 1992, Monographs in Space History no. 8, http://www.history.nasa.gov/40than/legislat.pdf.

  “Crisis had become normalcy”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 226.

  “His aides who sometimes caught him with a faraway look”: Mosley, Dulles, p. 439.

  Gallup polls had shown that most American voters did not mind Ike’s frequent weekday golf outings: Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. 40.

  231 “Oh little Sputnik, flying high”: Roger D. Launius, Sputnik and the Origins of the Space Age, monograph at http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/sputorig.html. “As I picked up a pen”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 227.

  “You may be President in twenty-four hours”: Nixon, RN, p. 184.

  232 “The Vanguard tower was clear against a starry sky”: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, p. 206.

  “Bird Watch Hill”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 122.

  233 filled the airwaves with
all manner of facts: Ibid.

  Though missiles had been tested at the complex since the summer of 1950: http://www.patrick.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet_print.asp?fsID=4514&page=1.

  “The rocket looked unkempt”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 21.

  234 the most ambitious and expensive installment of his “Man in Space” series: Introduction by Leonard Maltin to Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond, commemorative DVD package, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Burbank, Calif., 2004, originally aired December 4, 1957.

  235 Wolfsschanze: This account of the July 1943 meeting is drawn from Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 192.

  and film that had been shot using several cameras simultaneously: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 33.

  236 “seemed a pretty dowdy type”: Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, p. 27.

  somewhat more reluctant decision in 1940: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 41.

  237 “But what I want is annihilation”: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 192.

  “The Führer was amazed at von Braun’s youth”: Ibid., p. 278.

  238 Porter was instrumental in scuttling: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 240.

  239 “Ten, nine, eight…”: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, pp. 208-9.

  “Oh God! No! Look out! Duck!”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 24.

  11: Goldstone Has the Bird

  240 “What happened yesterday has made us…” and all other quotes from NSC meeting no. 347: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/Sputnik/nasasearchreport.pdf, see NSC series, box 9, Ann Whitman File.

  where polls conducted in Britain and France prior to Sputnik’s launch had shown that only 6 percent: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 240.

  241 “Why doesn’t somebody go out there, find it, and kill it”: Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, p. 117.

  “Oh, what a Flopnik”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 158.

  Kaputnik, Splatnik, Stallnik: Time, December 16, 1957.

  “This incident has no bearing on our programs”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 72.

  242 Sputnik Cocktails: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 4.

  “our worst humiliation since Custer’s last stand”: Time, December 16, 1957.