Von Braun was elated by the flight that took him one step closer to space, but his joy was marred by the frustration of bureaucratic secrecy. He and his team were forbidden from discussing the RS-27 launch with anyone outside the circle of classified personnel. It wasn’t too hard to see that this Jupiter C was a separate rocket from the joint army-navy Jupiter project that was facing a new set of challenges including a dissolving partnership. The navy was leaning toward switching to solid fuels, a safer and simpler option when storing a rocket on and launching it from a ship. This eventually became a deal breaker between the service branches, and the navy withdrew from the Jupiter program to pursue its own solid-fueled Polaris missile. Now alone on the Jupiter program, the army was left fighting with the air force over who would launch the Jupiter if it were ever actually built; assigning missile launch capacity to one service was a way to delete duplicate capabilities.
Secretary of Defense Charlie Wilson ultimately sided with the air force in a decision that severely crippled the army. The emphasis on missiles had prompted the army to slash other areas of its budget in favor of the Jupiter program. Suddenly, von Braun and the ABMA were left wondering if, after everything they had worked for over the last half decade, their program would be dead before it even left the ground in spite of the successful RS-27 launch. And all the while the Soviet Union was moving ahead with its own missile development program. Far faster than the United States intelligence had anticipated the Soviets had built the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile, the two stage SS-6 Sapwood rocket powerful enough to cover a distance of nearly five thousand miles. Its formidable range came from the four booster rockets strapped around the first stage, making it far more powerful than the most advanced missiles in the United States.
This ongoing interservice conflict over missiles ran in the background of Eisenhower’s reelection campaign, though it was far from the most pressing problem facing the president. In the summer of 1956, tensions between Egypt, Britain, and France rose when Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the nearly century-old British-French Suez Canal Company; Nasser accused the outraged nations of attempting continued domination of a former colony. Britain took an aggressive stance, unopposed to using force against Egypt while also maintaining a military agreement with France and Israel to invade the Egyptian region. Israel acted on these plans, advancing to within ten miles of the Suez Canal in October.
Eisenhower stepped in lest hostilities break out between NATO nations and a Middle Eastern power that seemed poised to gain assistance from the Soviet Union and spark another war. The president’s health was another issue. He suffered a heart attack in September, raising questions about his ability to see out a second term. But Eisenhower’s popularity favored reelection. Throughout his first term his approval rating averaged 69 percent. The presidential election that fall ended up as a rematch between Adlai Stevenson and Eisenhower, and on November 6, Eisenhower again won by a landslide. The same day, the French and British governments agreed to a United Nations cease-fire agreement in the Middle East. It was a good day for the president.
While national and international events reached resolutions, the satellite question remained unclear and a fairly low-priority issue. The Martin Company had finished the Vanguard design in February, but the rocket was plagued by development problems. Von Braun remained hopeful that he would eventually get a chance to launch Orbiter. The air force was also confident that it might get a chance at launching a satellite if the navy failed.
The air force satellite reconnaissance program, Project Feedback, was left wanting for funding and support in the wake of the Stewart Committee’s decision. To consolidate ongoing research, management of the satellite program was transferred from the Air Research and Development Command to the Western Development Division based in Los Angeles and was rolled into the development of an advanced reconnaissance system. This put all the air force’s satellite research under Brigadier General Bernhard Schriever. Schriever supported satellite development on the condition that it not take away from the ongoing work on missiles designed to be used in combat. He ultimately knew that both technologies would be advantageous should the Soviet threat become more pressing, but funding wasn’t forthcoming. Limping along as it was, the air force couldn’t promise a satellite launch before 1959, which left it as an unlikely backup to Vanguard. Regardless, the service remained unwilling to abandon the project altogether. It was developing missiles and instrumentation that could turn a payload into a satellite. Considering what an air force space program might look like seemed a worthwhile study.
Opinions were divided among various study groups considering ways the air force might take its first steps into space. Some focused on possible follow-up programs to the X-15. Though the closest thing to a flight-ready vehicle was the painted mockup at North American Aviation’s facilities in Los Angeles, forward-thinking planners saw the potential of a hypersonic piloted spacecraft picking up where the X-15 was designed to leave off. The first step would be to send a man orbiting the planet in a capsule, something akin to a nuclear warhead that would ballistically reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and be recovered by a parachute. This was a simple first step to see how a pilot would react to a weightless environment. A general purpose ballistic research program would come next, gathering data on how boost-glide vehicles might work as well as how to launch interplanetary and deep space probes.
The ultimate goal was to develop a manned orbital spaceplane based on the antipodal bomber Walter Dornberger had pitched in 1952, the precursor technology to his ultra planes. Launched atop a rocket, this vehicle would carry a pilot around the planet before reentering the atmosphere where he would fly the glider to a runway landing. In November, personnel from the air force’s Air Research and Development Command solicited the NACA to be a part of this follow-up program to the X-15. The NACA was amenable, initiating the preliminary feasibility studies to determine the hypothetical vehicle’s design and time frame.
Other air force study groups focused on less lofty, more immediate goals for a space program that highlighted the military aspect. The air force’s Science Advisory Board put together a space sciences study group that recommended a broader inquiry into questions of military defense in the space between the Earth and the Moon. Still other groups considered the potential of a purely scientific space program, one that would focus on gathering experience to ultimately lay a strong foundation for long-term planning in space. One early 1957 study run out of the Wright Air Development Center considered state-of-the-art technology ranging from structural and propulsive systems to electronics to human factors, with an eye on developing trends and possible future developments. What emerged from the exhaustive examination was a report, “An Estimate of Future Space Vehicle Evolution Based upon a Projected Technical Capability,” detailing a sequential evolution of space vehicles.
The first step in this metered approach to spaceflight was the Expendable Earth Orbiter, Minimum phase. Small satellites weighing just one hundred pounds would be lofted into orbit using available rockets modified into multistage launch vehicles. Only the uppermost stage would demand significant technical advances, so this phase could launch relatively quickly. Simple orbital missions would serve as a test bed for the most basic technical developments like satellite operation, tracking, and precise methods of delivering a satellite into an exact orbit. These lessons would parlay directly into the second program phase, Expendable Earth Orbiter, Advanced. This phase would see not only significantly larger payloads weighing up to twenty-nine hundred pounds launched into space, but significantly more sophisticated satellites as well. These vehicles would be able to self-stabilize in orbit, collect data, and provide limited power for onboard instruments by a small nuclear reactor. Over the course of these two phases, instruments and satellite components were expected to develop to the point where miniaturization would allow scientists to pack more into these modest satellites, a necessary developm
ent for the program moving forward.
The Unmanned Recoverable Earth Orbiter phase would launch satellites into orbit using the same rockets as their predecessors, but this generation would use a drag balloon to decelerate and begin their fall back through the Earth’s atmosphere, a parachute slowing its final descent. So singular was the focus on recovering a satellite from space during this phase that these satellites wouldn’t send any telemetry back to Earth during the flight. Everything would be stored on board and read only after the satellite was recovered.
Having proved recovery from orbit was feasible, the next phase was Manned Recoverable Earth Orbiter, which would repeat the previous flights but with a man inside the spacecraft. The study expected that the pilot and all the necessary life support systems would increase the spacecraft’s mass and size enough to necessitate development of a four-stage booster rocket, and this was still a fairly simple spacecraft. As with the first recoverable system, there were no parameters to include telemetry in these first manned missions. Instead, the pilot would give controllers on the ground updates via a voice communications system, while storing information on board the spacecraft that would be read after he landed. The byproduct of this phase would be the development of sophisticated life support systems, including a recycling atmospheric breathing system that could manage the spacecraft’s pressure, temperature, and humidity. Other human comforts would be inspired by their military counterparts. Onboard meals, for example, would be similar to combat-type rations, a small variety of precooked concentrated offerings.
Gradually, these flights would teach the air force how to manage its manned spaceflight program, and with experience would come longer flights and more demanding missions. Eventually, these first space travelers and their managers on the ground would apply newfound skills to building an orbital space station resting some 1,237 miles above the planet with a total mass of about 669,000 pounds, more than half of which would be propellant to maintain its orbit. The idea was to build a station that would be constantly occupied by a rotating cast of crews. One crew would launch and take up residence in the station, performing various astronomical observations and experiments during their time on board while also learning how to make life in space more comfortable. When the mission reached its end, a new crew would launch armed with supplies and take the place of the departing crew who would return home in the now familiar manned recovery vehicle. Building the space station would necessitate major technological advances, particularly in booster technology, but would come naturally at this point in the program.
But the air force had no intention of limiting itself to Earth orbit for long. The Wright Center’s proposal included seven vehicles designed to reach escape velocity, flying fast enough to leave Earth orbit, beginning with the Expendable Lunar Vehicle, Pass-By. Similar in mass to the advanced expendable Earth orbiting satellite, this spacecraft would use a far more powerful booster to achieve a faster launch speed, traveling directly from the Earth to the Moon. Pending advances in camera sensitivity, data handling, and accuracy of remote camera aiming, this satellite would carry a visual system to record the first ever close-up images of the Moon.
Following these initial flights, an advanced version of the satellite would be the first payload to attempt a landing on the Moon. This phase, again, would require significant improvements to the state of the art in terms of propulsion and particularly the propulsion needed to slow the payload for landing. In the summer of 1957, it was too early for the air force study group to detail what kind of science experiments and instruments should be on board this spacecraft, but doubtless it would include means of gathering measurements and analysis of the Moon’s geophysical properties as well as its surface and atmosphere, if it turned out there was one. The next stage of the proposed spaceflight program, though only expressed as subtext at this point, was the goal of landing a man on the Moon in the same basic spacecraft.
However far into the future this proposal reached, in the summer of 1957 this incremental approach to spaceflight was neither too conservative nor too audacious. The first stages were well within the limits of existing technology under the assumption that advances would be made over the course of spacecraft and rocket development. But feasible as it was, the Department of Defense was wary of pursuing a military space program; missile development in the name of national security remained the most important goal. Air force activities in space remained underfunded and unsupported, the reconnaissance satellite program continuing to limp along in favor of missile development.
The air force’s extensive studies into potential spaceflight programs underscored the assumption that space would be the dominion of this service. Being in the business of fast aircraft and powerful missiles, it seemed logical that eventually the air force would move from air into space. Industry partners seemed to agree, presenting other spaceflight proposals to the air force.
AVCO, one of the air force’s largest contractors developing reentry vehicles for intercontinental ballistic missiles, submitted its first spaceflight study to the service toward the end of 1956. It focused on a pure drag reentry method. The spacecraft, a sphere slightly larger than three feet in diameter, would rely on a stainless-steel-cloth parachute whose diameter was controlled by compressed air bellows. This parachute alone would adjust the vehicle in orbit, begin its fall back toward the Earth, and slow its reentry.
Convair, the contractor behind the Atlas missile, presented its own spaceflight proposal to the air force in the summer of 1957 calling for miniature orbital test vehicles and reconnaissance satellites. The company envisioned a constant drag, blunted, conical vehicle that would begin its return to Earth from orbit by a small solid retrorocket system. A fiberglass-resin heat shield would protect the vehicle from the heat of reentry, and from an altitude of forty thousand feet the descent would be managed by a conventional cargo parachute. Convair also stressed the importance of learning about the human side of spaceflight, namely the challenges involved in safely recovering a man from orbit.
The Martin Company also presented its early research on satellites to the air force in the summer of 1957. Martin highlighted the military aspect of space exploration, culminating in a formal proposal outlining basic military requirements for a military outpost on the Moon.
In spite of detailed proposals for research and development programs coming from both military and industry studies, space remained something that appealed to only a small cohort within the service. On the whole, the air force remained committed to vehicles flying through the air, not those rocketing through space. The same was true for the army, whose space activities were relegated to continued development tests with missiles that could be used to launch satellites into orbit. But regardless of the expressed interest of both these service branches and preliminary programs, following President Eisenhower’s decree the nation’s first satellite program remained a firmly nonmilitary one resting on the shoulders of the U.S. Navy.
On July 1, 1957, White House Secretary James Hagerty announced the beginning of the eighteen-month International Geophysical Year. The most important result of the International Geophysical Year, he said in his address, was for participating nations to demonstrate their ability to work together harmoniously on projects that would benefit not one nation but humanity as a whole. He expressed his hope that this type of scientific cooperation would become common practice in other fields of human endeavor. With the IGY officially begun, it was open season for satellite launches. The military branches fighting for the first launch on the home front now faced the prospect of an international competitor beating them to it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
One Little Ball’s Big Impact
Taking advantage of a moment of calm before Friday evening’s activities began, Wernher von Braun ducked briefly back to his office at the Redstone Arsenal. He had spent the afternoon with General Bruce Medaris, head of the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency, giving incoming secretary of defense Neil McElroy a tour of the
Redstone facilities and the group’s latest missile technology. The ABMA was, on the whole, thrilled to have McElroy replace Charles Wilson, a man whose popularity with the army had dwindled over the years. The Redstone group blamed Wilson’s lack of foresight for their slow progress and fruitless pursuit of short-range missiles and were still seething over his decision to grant control of the nation’s long range missile to the air force. But the ABMA was hopeful that McElroy might be more sympathetic to their cause and condone pulling the retained Orbiter capability out of storage, green-lighting their desire to serve as a backup for the navy’s Vanguard program. In showing McElroy around Redstone all afternoon, von Braun had worked hard to sell the army, and specifically the ABMA, as the nation’s best bet for launching an American satellite into orbit.
As Von Braun was preparing to leave his office that evening, October 4, 1957, for an on-base predinner cocktail party in honor of McElroy’s visit, his phone rang. He picked up the receiver and heard a British voice on the other end ask what he thought about it. About what, von Braun shot back, clearly missing some vital piece of information. About the Russian satellite that the Soviet Union had just launched into orbit, the reporter on the other line answered. The news didn’t entirely shock von Braun. As early as June, articles had appeared in the West saying that Soviet scientists had developed a rocket and all the necessary instrumentation to put a small Earth satellite into orbit. Intellectually, von Braun knew their missiles were large enough to double as satellite launch vehicles, but the reality was still somehow different. More than anything, he was disappointed that the decision makers in Washington hadn’t seen the potential in these Soviet missiles that he had, that intelligence information and his own warnings of what a psychological coup it would be for the first nation to reach orbit has been ignored.
Breaking the Chains of Gravity Page 23
