But his hopes for official approval of a space project proved premature. Stalin’s death signified the end of an era. The political situation was unstable. The would-be power brokers were stalking each other with treacherous intent. That spring and summer, in the scramble for power after Stalin’s death, it looked as though Beria would seize control. With Malenkov’s support, he had taken over all security services. Beria, however, had underestimated Khrushchev, who had so often played the part of the buffoon at the late-night drinking sessions at Stalin’s dacha. Khrushchev had a plan for Beria’s destruction. With the military on his side, he persuaded Malenkov and others to his view.
Unaware of the danger, Beria felt secure and was looking forward to a meeting of the Presidium in June. His wife, Nina, was uneasy and with prophetic vision warned him that he could be in danger. Beria had no time for his wife’s nervous anxiety, but at the meeting Khrushchev denounced him and called for his arrest. In the following months in prison, he was to learn about fear, but was still unprepared for the end. On 23 December 1953, he was stripped, handcuffed and shackled to a hook on the wall, his screams stopping only when a rag was shoved into his mouth. Before he received a bullet in the head, he shared something of what he had inflicted on his numberless victims.
Pentagon officials had chosen Cape Canaveral in Florida as the best site for developing a new missile launch facility. The Cape was a landscape of desolation: flat, arid, sandy soil and scrubland as far as the eye could see. No one would want to live there or build a farmstead among the alligators and particularly voracious mosquitoes. This vast expanse of barren land near the Atlantic Ocean, glittering here and there with water, seemed the ideal place for the US government to launch its rockets into space. In August 1953, von Braun and his team drove down the long, straight roads barely raised above the surrounding salt marshes towards the sea for the first test flight of their Redstone. The new launch towers stood, like intricate modern sculptures, among the hangars, concrete bunkers and sheds.
The Redstone was launched but the flight was a spectacular failure, veering wildly off course. Problems had arisen in the guidance system. The engineers watched its drunken course for five miles, then aborted it, and the rocket crashed ignominiously into the ocean. Although later in the year they did launch the rocket successfully, many of von Braun’s team were becoming disenchanted. After the ceasefire between North and South Korea a month earlier, their budget for missile development had been slashed once again.
The lure of America for many had been the possibility of a space programme. Yet despite Colonel Toftoy’s almost constant pleading, senior military leaders were only interested in the use of rockets as weapons. At the 1952 Annual Symposium on Space Travel, von Braun tried again to point out the ‘tremendous potential’ of space technology as a ‘deterrent of war’. A space station, he argued, could serve as a bombing platform, allowing first-strike capability with minimal response time. And circling miles above the earth, equipped with powerful telescopic cameras, satellites could take detailed pictures of ‘any suspect area on the face of the globe’, giving the US the ultimate spy, silent and undetectable. ‘Thus they can pull up any Iron Curtain no matter where it is lowered.’
Yet he met serious criticism from others in the field. Milton Rosen, head of rocket development for the Naval Research Laboratory and in charge of creating the Viking rocket to study the upper atmosphere, was blunt about the problems. Von Braun’s much-publicized plans for space travel were based on ‘a meagre store of scientific information and a large amount of speculation!’ He told Time magazine he was ‘frankly aghast at the difficulties that von Braun lightly brushes aside … von Braun’s 7000-ton shuttle rockets, to say nothing of his space station – would be a reckless leap into the blind future’, and this could only lead to a ‘gigantic fiasco’. Any sort of space travel was such a leap that it would take ‘some basic novelty equal to Faraday’s discovery of electro-magnetism’. Furthermore, there was a real danger that space projects could only be developed at the expense of the missile programme. Von Braun had always wanted to be the ‘Columbus of Space’ warned Rosen in Time magazine, ‘but the feeling of many practical missile men is that von Braun’s satellite proposal would fail and leave the US without the new weapons it needs’.
With the lack of interest in space projects, the German rocket team from Peenemünde, which had been held together for so many years by assurances from von Braun that America would one day fund space exploration, began to break up. Von Braun’s ability to charm people and keep them in his orbit had held the group together for nine years, but patience was now wearing thin. His budget for missile development had all but dried up. Commercial industry had more to offer with larger salaries and greater chances of promotion. One by one members of the team drifted away. ‘We must remain strong,’ von Braun would say, urging them to stay. ‘Some day Congress has to ease up and grant funds for research.’ But even his own brother Magnus had had enough; he left to join the Chrysler Corporation. Von Braun himself secretly tried to resign, but his requests were simply dismissed. ‘He wrote me notes threatening to leave,’ admitted Major Hamill, who had been in command of the German group. ‘I always ignored what he said and what he wrote I threw into the waste paper basket.’
Having all but given up hope of a serious space project, von Braun was astonished in June 1954 to receive a telephone call asking if he wanted to put a satellite into space. Two days later, he found himself ensconced in Washington discussing satellites with Commander George Hoover of the Office of Naval Research and other scientific research teams. Despite the obstacles that Milton Rosen had outlined, Hoover himself was enthusiastic. ‘Gentlemen, the time has come to stop talking and start doing,’ he began. ‘We will now go ahead and build a satellite.’ Hoover wanted to coordinate efforts to create an unmanned satellite carrying scientific instruments. It looked as though the empty years of waiting might be over.
America would be taking part in the coming International Geophysical Year, planned for 1957, he explained. This was timed to coincide with a period when the eleven-year sun spot cycle would be most active, with high radiation. Western scientists were planning a range of experiments to study the upper atmosphere. A satellite equipped with scientific instruments would be the centrepiece of a whole array of dazzling events. Was von Braun interested and what would he suggest? With the ease of a man telling a familiar story, von Braun explained how the Redstone rocket could be easily adapted to carry a satellite of about 5–10 pounds. Stages could be added to boost power with a cluster of solid propellant rockets.
The scientific enthusiasts meeting that day were keen to work collaboratively, with the army and navy working together to launch a satellite. Professor James Van Allen from the University of Iowa was nominated to head the scientific research for the satellite, and was to begin on designs at Huntsville. Von Braun asked for $100,000 for development, arguing in his report for the Department of Defense that ‘a satellite vehicle circling the Earth would be of enormous value to science, especially to upper atmosphere meteorological and radiological research … Since it is a project that we could realize … it is only logical to assume that other countries could do the same. It would be a great blow to US prestige if we did not do it first.’
But President Eisenhower soon introduced an element of competition. The CIA had received reports that the Soviets were also working on a satellite, and suddenly this project assumed a new importance. The President set up a top-level Technologies Capabilities Panel to advise on how to meet a potential Soviet missile threat. Among their recommendations in February 1955, the panel proposed a programme to develop a reconnaissance satellite to spy on the Soviet Union, but they cautioned that America should launch a civilian satellite first, to establish the ‘freedom of space’ precedent – the right of a satellite to fly over a foreign country. The International Geophysical Year provided perfect cover for this civilian satellite project.
Eisenhower adopted this recommendati
on and the Department of Defense was requested to set up a committee to investigate how to launch this first satellite, led by Dr Homer Stewart, a physicist at the Institute of California. Homer’s Committee on Special Capabilities decided that, instead of the army and navy working in collaboration, all three services – army, navy and air force – should pitch individual satellite proposals. Only one would be chosen.
The Huntsville team was confident that theirs was the best project and their army proposal would be selected over the navy’s, which would be led by Milton Rosen, and the air force. However, there had been some criticism that the Germans were too closely involved with the space programme that would represent America. In view of this, the Germans decided that now was the time to appeal for citizenship. Since arriving in the small town of Huntsville in 1951, they had made a big impact on their surroundings. With limited resources, they had bought a field and proceeded to build themselves houses. They formed clubs and musical societies and set up a town orchestra which proved immensely popular. The locals, unsure at first about having so many people in their midst from a country with which they had so recently been at war, had been completely won over.
Once again, there were the inevitable FBI investigations. This time von Braun had to take a lie-detector test. A steady number of his former colleagues had returned to the West. Rumours abounded about Helmut Gröttrup: that he had committed suicide, or divorced Irmgardt – who had married a Soviet official – or was in a concentration camp. In fact, he and Irmgardt and their two children had finally been released from Gorodomlya Island in November 1953 and were now living quietly in the West. The CIA had interrogated him and gained some insights into the early Soviet missile programme, but the FBI wanted to find out what else von Braun might know. In December 1954, he was given a polygraph test and was once more interrogated about any possible communist links or affiliations, contact with foreign governments, or any other violations of security regulations. There was much concern about his failure to have sent a single classified letter through the official Classified Mail Section at Redstone. The screening also included vetting his neighbours and friends to check on his potential communist or Nazi affiliations. He has ‘no bad habits … is a Church going man, and fears God,’ said one.
Von Braun’s team swore the oath of allegiance en masse in a ceremony in Huntsville High School on 14 April 1955. Huntsville, showing its appreciation, saluted the German scientists and their families with a special dinner. Later in a speech, von Braun thanked the Huntsville community, acknowledging his debt ‘for the understanding and encouragement which has greeted us everywhere in the US … We feel genuine regret that our missile born of idealism had joined in the business of killing. We had designed it to blaze a trail to other planets, not to destroy our own.’ Becoming an American citizen, he said, was the happiest day of his life.
That spring von Braun began hosting a series on the Disney Channel. He set out to inform America about the wonders of space and how to get there. With Disney’s drawing expertise, the programmes soon captured the imagination of Americans. ‘I believe a practical passenger rocket can be built and tested within ten years,’ announced von Braun as he proceeded to show them a four-stage orbital rocket ship travelling to a space station, the shape of a wheel 250 feet across, powered by an atomic reactor. The pilots in their special suits, facing the probabilities of weightlessness and travelling to the moon or even Mars, captivated audiences of fifty million. Almost overnight, von Braun became the face of space travel for Americans and space became the next frontier to be explored.
With this success, combined with the complete certainty that his proposal was better than his rivals’, von Braun was hopeful that his team would finally win its opportunity to launch a satellite. In early July, each of the armed services had its chance to pitch its vision.
The air force plans were running into trouble. They wanted to launch a large satellite containing an ambitious programme of scientific research using their Atlas intercontinental missile, which had been under development for several years. The Atlas was the most powerful American rocket yet built, with a range of five thousand miles. Although not as bold a design as Korolev’s R-7, the Atlas had an elegant engineering solution to the problem of reducing the weight of a missile. The outer skin of the central core was so thin that, with its payload in place, it could only stand up and maintain its rigidity if it was pressurized: it was like a great metal balloon. Although the pressurized shell was a quantum leap in missile technology, in the short term the engineers had so many teething problems that it looked like a non-runner. Von Braun thought it was clever, perhaps too clever.
The navy proposal, led by Milton Rosen, was also facing difficulties. Rosen aimed to put a satellite into orbit using the Vanguard rocket – as yet unbuilt. The first stage would be adapted from the navy’s Viking rocket, which had been used in high-atmosphere research to reach an altitude of over 150 miles and had successfully taken the first photographs of the earth from space. Two more stages would be required to provide enough power, and although the third stage had not yet been designed, Rosen claimed it would be ready by 1956. Von Braun thought this was stretching credibility.
With the ‘old reliable’, as the Redstone was nicknamed, von Braun was convinced he had the most plausible bid. With his customary assurance, he spoke for twice as long as the others, providing convincing details that the Redstone could have a 15-pound satellite carrying scientific instruments ready to launch within the year simply by adapting the existing rocket. The booster and the guidance systems had all been successfully tested. There was nothing to stop them. Furthermore, the matter was urgent: ‘We’ve got mighty little time to lose, for we know that the Soviets are thinking along the same lines. If we do not wish to see the control of space wrested from us, it’s time, and high time, we acted,’ he argued passionately. Everyone had complete confidence that the army design must be the winner.
A few weeks later, President Eisenhower formally announced that America would launch an earth-circling satellite: a ‘second moon’. ‘For the first time in history,’ declared his press secretary, James Hagerty, ‘this will enable scientists throughout the world to make sustained observations … beyond the earth’s atmosphere.’ At last, it seemed, von Braun’s chance had come.
While Wernher von Braun and his team enjoyed the comfortable living conditions of 1950s America, a very different lifestyle in a hostile environment awaited Sergei Korolev. During the spring of 1955, he began to spend several months of the year at a new launch site being built in a remote desert region on the equator in Kazakhstan, around a hundred miles from the Aral Sea. Kapustin Yar did not have the facilities to cope with the giant R-7 and was too close to Western radar stations in Turkey and Iran. A site far from possible Western listening posts was chosen: this was ‘Research Range 5’ of the Ministry of Defence. The nearest settlement was Tyura-Tam, a bleak place, little more than a small railway station, a pump house and a few houses and cabins for railway workers. The town of Baikonur lay 220 miles to the north-east – although this name was used for the launch site in an attempt to confuse Western intelligence of its precise location. Desolation and emptiness stretched for thousands of miles east and north across Siberia, marked only by the railway line crossing from one empty horizon to another. Few had ever chosen to live in this barren waste. It was like a dry, dead planet; a place of parching heat or freezing cold, salt marshes, thorn bushes and an uneasy wind that whipped the sand and dust into gritty, blistering weapons of attack.
In 1955, the desert wasteland around Tyura-Tam was transformed when more than five hundred soldiers and a small army of construction workers poured into the area. The first workers were housed in railway carriages or tents, sleeping in their clothes as a protection against the cold at night. Later would come the luxury of barracks shared by two families. During the day they could labour in temperatures as low as 40 degrees C below zero in the winter and as high as 50 degrees C in the summer. ‘Our condi
tions were very poor,’ recorded one worker. ‘Fear was all-pervasive of getting things wrong … Water was brought in cisterns. It smelt of kerosene because the same hose was used to distribute water as for kerosene.’ In the early days the work was often manual. Using shovels and hoes the men and their wives built flood protection on the banks of the Syr Darya River. Sickness was prevalent, alcohol their only comfort. A much-appreciated refinement was the arrival of the sauna and laundry train, strangely, it seemed, always in need of repair when it was the women’s turn to use it.
The site took shape steadily, the monolithic buildings rising like some incomprehensible new Aztec city. At ‘site 1’, preparations were underway to build the largest launch complex yet created. More than 30 million cubic feet of soil had to be removed for the exhaust gases that would be generated at liftoff and endless tons of concrete poured. The massive launch platform itself would require a million cubic feet of concrete. At ‘site 2’ workers were constructing a vast hangar, more than 330 feet long and 160 wide, where the R-7 would be assembled. Engineers tested each structure at a full-scale mock-up of the launch facility that was created at the Leningrad Metallurgical Plant to ensure that all equipment would function correctly. The aim was to build a site that would dominate the future, with a well-equipped laboratory and test site for the larger military rockets. Slowly, huge steel towers rose up with solid concrete bunkers hunched behind them, their basements going down five storeys into the desert floor. A new road and a rail network crisscrossed the site from the railway station, which was always busy.
At first, when Korolev visited the site, he lived in a railway carriage until accommodation could be arranged for him. When he wrote to Nina, he would sometimes sit by the window viewing the characterless landscape, smoking here and there with swirling dust storms, but seeing only the future: the large rockets, the cosmodrome and the journey into space: ‘Here in these sands and winds, I think about everything and about you,’ he wrote. ‘No matter how hard our separations, it has to be in the name of a great work for our Motherland … Once I had a dream that there will be a moment when a white machine – our dream – will launch from the Earth.’
Space Race Page 17
