Breaking the Chains of Gravity

by Amy Shira Teitel

  When he arrived in California for his NACA interview, Crossfield’s worst fears were realized. The Muroc Test Flight Unit consisted of a single hangar in the sand on the edge of a runway, and it barely had legs to stand on. Everything, from its running water to pilots, came from the Air Force. But the atmosphere inside that hangar was at odds with its shabby exterior. There was a pioneering spirit among the small group of men working there. They seemed ready to take on new challenges, ready to push aviation into new realms and build the tools they would need along the way. And the spirit was due in large part to Walt Williams, the former Langley engineer who had moved to Edwards with the X-1 to supervise the NACA’s role in the program.

  A man of action, Williams was eager to show Crossfield the other research aircraft at the site that were still in the early phases of development. There was the X-1, now modified to fly faster with the goal of gathering more data sets. Following in its footsteps, the next generation of research aircraft was ready to address unanswered aerodynamic questions: rocket planes that would launch from underneath bombers like the X-1 but featured new design elements like more powerful engines and more aerodynamic, swept-back wings. It quickly became clear to Crossfield that this little hangar at Edwards was where the future of aviation would be shaped, and he wanted to be a part of it. When Williams offered Crossfield a spot at the Murco Test Flight Unit, the pilot promptly accepted. He returned to Seattle long enough to collect his master’s diploma and resign from his naval reserve unit before beginning the long drive south in June 1950.

  Three weeks later, Crossfield’s former naval reserve unit was deployed to Korea. On June 25, seventy-five thousand soldiers from the Soviet-backed North Korean People’s Army crossed into the southern Republic of Korea in a coordinated attack at strategic points along the thirty-eighth parallel on a path toward the South Korean capital of Seoul. To the United Nations Security Council, which had lost its Soviet representative six months earlier over the refusal to delegate a seat to China, the move was an international crisis. American president Harry S. Truman committed American forces to a combined United Nations military effort to back South Korea, a move that technically qualified as police action rather than a declaration of war but still marked a change in America’s foreign policy. The president established his Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan to funnel aid into Europe and contain Soviet expansion while directing the National Security Council to analyze Soviet and American military capabilities. The subsequent recommendation to the president called for an increase in military funding to suppress the Soviets. This manifested as an increase in funding for missile development programs in the United States as well as a consolidated command structure in Europe.

  Where Europe was concerned, Truman had asked Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower to command a multinational military force under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to protect European nations from a possible Communist invasion. The general accepted the appointment. He firmly believed that NATO was America’s best defense against Soviet imperialism and took his post as the supreme Allied commander at the European headquarters in the Parisian suburb of Rocquencourt near Versailles.

  More than a year after the conflict began and in spite of Truman’s efforts, the war in Korea showed no signs of nearing a resolution. By the end of 1951, American soldiers were dying in droves and Truman’s approval rating dropped as the mood in the United States became dismal. The president’s term was coming to an end, and the current climate made it unlikely that he would seek reelection. Looking ahead, both the Republicans and Democrats shared the goal of healing the nation though neither was sure how to secure victory in the upcoming election. What each needed was a candidate with the right combination of international political understanding and appeal to the common voter, and both parties singled out Eisenhower as their man. The victor of the 1941 Louisiana Maneuvers and celebrated general who orchestrated the successful invasion at Normandy to begin the Second World War’s end in Europe was also a proud nationalist with a winning smile. Just coming up on the end of his first year serving as NATO’s supreme commander in Europe, it was clear Eisenhower had the nation’s best interests at heart and a superior understanding of how to manage a nation at war. The only questions that remained were whether Eisenhower would publicly declare himself for any one party and whether he would actually run.

  Eisenhower had always rebuffed the call to politics, citing army regulations that forbade partisan political activity by serving officers. As an active military servant, Eisenhower could not be seen to be advising any one group over another, and publicly declaring his allegiance to one political party would violate this regulation. But the pressure to serve his country in a political rather than military capacity was fast becoming something he couldn’t ignore. He learned that Senator Robert A. Taft was the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, a candidate who didn’t support Eisenhower’s esteemed NATO. A Republican himself, though still unwilling to declare himself publicly as such, Eisenhower offered Taft a deal: he wouldn’t run for the Republican candidacy on the condition that Taft agree to support collective security in Europe. Taft refused, and Eisenhower began to see how the sense of duty he’d felt for his country might have an outlet in politics. President Truman, similarly uncomfortable with the prospect of a Taft presidency, was willing to seek another term in office just to attempt to keep the rival Republican candidate out of office.

  His aversion beginning to weaken, Eisenhower authorized his close friend Clifford Roberts to organize an advisory group of trusted men to quietly keep him informed of the ongoing political situation. Pressure to declare himself a candidate was unrelenting, and after months of discussion Eisenhower conceded to allow a draft movement. He would not seek the presidential nomination, he concluded, but would entertain what the public had to say on the matter. Henry Cabot Lodge, a Republican senator from Massachusetts, registered Eisenhower as a Republican candidate in the New Hampshire primary election on January 6, 1952, completely without Eisenhower’s knowledge. Demands from the press saw the general give a noncommittal statement. If he was offered the Republican nomination for the presidency, he said, he would accept, but he privately remained unconvinced that he should run. Eisenhower held fast to a stance of nonparticipation and refrained from speaking out on national issues or even acknowledging his candidacy. His own humility bred doubt that interest in his presidency was genuine. He was flattered by his friends’ conviction, but ultimately unconvinced that the public would support him.

  While his supporters were taking steps to secure his candidacy in the United States, Eisenhower returned to France along with his wife, Mamie, to fulfill his commitment to NATO. On February 11, famed aviatrix and businesswoman Jacqueline Cochran arrived at the Eisenhowers’ residence in Paris with a film reel in hand. The movie, Serenade to Ike, had been shot three days earlier when leaders of the Draft Eisenhower movement had staged a rally in Madison Square Garden. The venue was packed well beyond capacity with twenty-five thousand crammed into a space designed to hold sixteen thousand, and neither police nor the fire marshal could get a single person to leave. Throughout the crowd were signs proclaiming I LIKE IKE. Watching the film, Eisenhower realized he hadn’t been so emotional in years, and when Cochran raised a glass to toast the general as the future president of the United States, he burst into tears. He decided his country needed him. Eisenhower announced his candidacy the next day. One month later he won the New Hampshire primary with 50 percent of the votes compared to Taft’s 38.5 percent. It seemed the general’s distinguished career appealed to both Democrats and Republicans alike. On June 2, Eisenhower retired from the military, ending a nearly five-decade-long career. Two days later he began his campaign for president in earnest.

  The Republican National Convention held in Chicago the following month saw Eisenhower secure the Republican nomination for president. His Democratic counterpart was Adlai Stevenson, a former lawyer and governor of Illinois who had helped organize the United
Nations before serving as an adviser to its first American delegation. His candidacy secured, Eisenhower’s team chose Senator Richard Nixon from California as his running mate. Nixon was a young man so a counterbalance to the presidential candidate’s sixty-one years and was a recognizable name whose relatively short career was backed by strong credentials. Both men were vehemently anti-Communist, which was vital to their campaign. Paranoia that foreign Communist agents were trying to infiltrate the American government was widespread throughout the nation, and the ongoing Korean War weighed heavily on voters’ minds as a potential precursor to a feared Soviet invasion of the United States. The U.S. Army at that point relied heavily on the draft to fill out its ranks, which brought home the reality of war. The nation as a whole wanted the conflict in Korea settled, and this was foremost among Eisenhower’s promises. He pledged to personally travel to Korea to meet with leaders there and seek a resolution. His only means to serve his country was to bring peace, he said, and the promise exhilarated the nation.

  On November 4, 1952, Americans went to the polls. Eisenhower spent the day painting at his residence at 60 Morningside Drive in New York City. Consensus as Election Day began was that the presidential race would be a close one, but it wasn’t. Eisenhower won by a landslide, capturing thirty-nine of the forty-eight states including the typically Democratic Florida, Texas, and Virginia. He secured 442 electoral votes to Stevenson’s 89. It was a personal triumph for Eisenhower that also pleased the nation. When he was sworn in as president on January 20, 1953, his approval rating was close to 68 percent.

  When Eisenhower was elected as president, the state of missile technology was taking strides forward, though the pace had been conservative since the outbreak of the Korean War. Upon his arrival in Huntsville, Wernher von Braun had been tasked by the U.S. Army to develop a missile, or at least a functioning prototype, within thirty-six months. The Hermes C1 missile that had been transferred to Alabama with the German scientists became the basis of the army’s long-range ballistic missile. Originally envisioned as a three-stage rocket capable of delivering a thousand-pound warhead to its target, it came to life slowly at the Redstone Arsenal with the idea that it would be built entirely in house with twelve missiles ready for testing by May 1953. Under von Braun’s leadership, this program was granted access to the best facilities in the country including government wind tunnels for aerodynamic research and proving ground facilities, as well as adequate financial support and personnel numbers. Technological developments included a new, more powerful engine that, like the missile itself, was based on the V-2.

  But the in-house nature of the program at Redstone didn’t last. Army Ordnance determined that the research and development site would remain a research and development site and not spend its time building rockets. The legwork of producing components could be farmed out to external contractors and industry partners while assembly and testing of the Redstone missile—the Hermes C1 was renamed after the arsenal on April 8, 1952—would be done in Huntsville. Where the contractors were concerned, the army opted to forego aircraft contractors that would inevitably favor air force programs and look instead toward the automobile and locomotive industries. The Chrysler Corporation was among the candidates, and when its project to develop a jet engine for the U.S. Navy was canceled the company suddenly had the available personnel and facilities to bring the Redstone to life. Chrysler won the prime contract for the new rocket on September 15. Among the subcontractors were North American Aviation, who would build the engine; the Ford Instrument Company, who would design the guidance system; and Reynolds Metals, who would build the rocket’s fuselage. The idea behind contracting out the pieces of the rocket had the Germans put to better use than they had been at White Sands, developing new systems rather than assembling and launching existing rockets.

  The development of weapons was keeping pace with the missiles that would eventually launch them. On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated its first hydrogen bomb on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. But on the whole both programs were progressing slowly. In early 1953, Eisenhower was in the White House, and the new president’s administration turned to the nation’s missile experts to determine how quickly a working system could be brought to fruition. The successful hydrogen bomb detonation had given the United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race over the Soviet Union who, on August 12, 1953, successfully tested its own hydrogen bomb. Though smaller than the American one, the Soviet’s was lighter, meaning it was better suited to being launched as a warhead on a missile. The advent of the hydrogen bomb pushed the American missile program forward, though the threat these weapons were addressing was unknown. Because the Soviet state was a closed one, there was little solid knowledge about that nation’s missiles, military capability, or intentions. Without clear knowledge of Soviet targets, American military strategists could only plan in the abstract and attempt to protect the country from a surprise attack. At every turn, any misstep could spark a new international conflict.

  What the United States wasn’t lacking was missiles to choose from. With multiple programs running simultaneously, a committee headed by the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, James Killian, surveyed the options. The army’s Redstone missile program was one, though the service had others to offer. Jupiter was a longer-range offshoot of the Redstone. In the early 1950s, fifty-seven Redstones were designated as test missiles, seven of which were never flown. Thirty-seven missiles were launched as part of the research and development program, testing new technological developments from new engines, airframes, and guidance systems. Of the thirty-seven missiles, only twelve were part of the Redstone rocket’s development. The rest were used to test components that would eventually make their way into the Jupiter missile. These first generation missiles designated Jupiter A were designed to gather design data, test the guidance system, and evolve separation procedures for multistage missiles among other technical goals. Three modified Redstones were designated Jupiter C for composite reentry vehicles that would test a scale module Jupiter nose cone along a specified trajectory to duplicate the reentry conditions the full-scale model would face. The air force presented other options, one of which sprung from the MX-774 program. This early missile effort had been canceled in an attempt to cut military spending in 1947, but the long range missile idea was rehashed in 1951 as Project MX-1593, nicknamed Project Atlas.

  Killian’s committee recommended that the United States develop more than one rocket with highest priority granted to the air force’s Atlas and Titan missile program. There were two corresponding intermediate range missile programs that were also funded, the air force’s Thor missile and the army’s Jupiter missile.

  In 1954, a new group joined the air force missile effort. The Western Development Division was set up in Los Angeles, California, with the task of building a missile that could travel five thousand miles, roughly the distance to the Soviet Union from the east coast of the United States. For some, this rocket brought with it a secondary application as a space-launch vehicle, but this vision was quashed by Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson and his secretary, Don Quarles. These civilian overseers of the military project didn’t share the lofty visions of spaceflight and appropriated too little funding to see these projects come to life in the immediate future.

  The influx of funding and attention paid to missiles inevitably gave way to satellite proposals, though they were firmly secondary interests. Project Feedback surfaced at the end of 1953 as a complement to the air force’s Atlas missile program, a small, Earth-orbiting reconnaissance satellite that would double as a scientific platform. A booster eighty feet long, nine feet in diameter, and weighing 180,000 pounds could deliver a satellite about thirty feet long weighing forty-five hundred pounds into orbit. It could circle the planet fifteen times each day, scanning the land beneath it. A second reconnaissance satellite program was proposed to go beyond this first step. Project 1115, the Advanced Reconnaiss
ance System, was approved by the air force in July 1954 with the goal of establishing critical reconnaissance satellite components and determining how to integrate this new technology into the missile-turned-launch vehicle system.

  The proposed satellite systems brought a host of technical unknowns to the fore. How a satellite would be powered once in orbit around the planet, for example, was a problem the Atomic Energy Commission was keen to solve, carving out its niche in the new weapons landscape. How to stabilize the satellite for scanning and imaging the Earth was another question. Equally important was the perfection of an advanced information processing system to support acquisition and distribution of data gathered by these proposed satellites. The state of the art was clearly supporting the loftier goals of these new technologies. Into the mix of unresolved questions were the rocket-powered manned research flights flying over Edwards Air Force Base. As they increased in sophistication, it seemed that there might be a place for a man in space as part of some future reconnaissance or military program. Which raised the equally troublesome question of what might happen to a man flying a strange new vehicle outside the safety of the Earth’s atmosphere.