For those interested in some of the arcana of military space history, over at sci.space.policy, in reference to yesterday’s Fox News column, Matte Bille posted:

It is a good article, but I must point out part of the premise is incorrect. Rand writes,

“We now know, as a result of documents unclassified only in the past few years, that the Eisenhower administration wanted the Soviets to be the first…”

I have been poking into this for the last three years (my book The First Space Race, sponsored by the NASA History Office, will be out next spring), and there is no evidence for this. Donald Quarles pointed out to Ike after the fact that “the Soviets have unintentionally done us a good turn,” by establishing the freedom of space, but that’s evidence the US was surprised, not that it planned things this way. When the 1955 Stewart Committee picked Vanguard over the more mature Project Orbiter, the Navy (Vangarud) and WvB (Orbiter) were promising almost identical schedules. There is no document, unless I’ve totally missed something big (in which case please tell me) that even hints we planned things to come out the way they did. Most American leaders assumed the US would be first because the Russians were perceived as technological imcompetents, but as the SecDef, Charlie Wilson, said publicly, he didn’t care who was first. Von Braun argued that being first was very important and justified a crash program, but everyone just assumed he was shilling for his own approach (which of course was part of his intention) and ignored him.

UPI columnist Jim Bennett responds:

Here’s what I said about it in my chapter in the Hudson Institute book 2020 Forecast (2001):

Background. A useful understanding of the prospects for space exploration and development over the coming twenty years requires a clear understanding the origins of space activity in the United States and elsewhere. These origins have their roots in the post-World War Two assessment of German rocketry achievements undertaken in the USA, the USSR, Britain, and elsewhere. The achievement of the practical means for entering space by Germany, combined with the development of nuclear weapons by the USA, left the militaries of the major powers with the determination to exploit new technologies and the fear of being left behind by others. American defense authorities commissioned the “Project RAND” effort by Douglas Aircraft, which eventually became the RAND Corporation, thus inventing a third element of Cold War defense activities, the think tank.

This activity led to the 1946 RAND study Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Space Ship, (1) which clearly indicted that rocket-launched artificial satellites were practically feasible in the near future, and suggested some immediate military roles of value for them. Primary among these was military reconnaissance. This was desirable both for operational reasons (the superior vantage point from space) and for legal-political reasons (the fact that a satellite could pass over a foreign country without permission, while a reconnaissance airplane could not). This study led to the commissioning of a
subsequent, highly classified detailed effort labeled Project Feed Back, (2) whose task was to create a practical high-level definition for a launch vehicle and satellite reconnaissance system. This was an audacious effort, considering that the most advanced launch vehicle flown at that time was a two-stage upper-altitude probe using a V-2 as first stage. The Project Feed Back report was delivered in 1954, and its recommendations were apparently approved and put into implementation shortly thereafter. This project eventually delivered the satellite reconnaissance system generally known by the title of its civilian spinoff (and cover), Tiros. This story can be understood through the now-declassified Feed Back documents, unavailable until the end of the Cold War.

This history is important because it facilitates an accurate understanding of the actual drivers of space activity. These have always been, and are now, primarily the requirement to deliver high-quality satellite reconnaissance for national-security purposes. The immediate corollary of this is that the civilian programs of the US and the USSR have always been secondary to the national-security activities. In the beginning the civil space programs were assembled primarily for propaganda or cover purposes. In fact there is substantial evidence that the Eisenhower administration viewed the impending launch of the first Soviet satellite, Sputnik, with satisfaction, as it would permit the precedent of innocent overflight of national territory to be set by the USSR.

What caught the Eisenhower administration by surprise was the intense public reaction to the Sputnik launch. It was the need to demonstrate American technological prowess without revealing the actual state of American technology being prepared for the Feed Back-inspired reconnaissance system that led the White House to create what is now the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as a visible, civilian answer to Soviet accomplishments.

The principal reference for this is ( 2. Lipp, J.E., and Salter, R.M., Eds. Project Feed Back Summary Report, Contract No. AF 33(038)-6413, The Rand Corporation, March 1, 1954). The discussion therein of the political and international law issues in reconnaissance overflight makes it clear that the report viewed a Soviet first overflight as a positive outcome. Since the report was subsequently implemented essentially as written, so far as can be determined from open records, it is a reasonable assumption (but not a proven fact) that their recommendations on first overflight were also adopted as national security policy.

I would be interested in hearing whether the Eisenhower quote was in public or in private, and if in private, whether it was made in the company of people all of whom had access to the reality of the reconnaissance program. Eisenhower was rather famous for deliberate misdirection through comments, and had a long history of using deception strategically (most famously in the Normandy-Pas de Calais deception for D-Day) and in would be entirely in character, and strategically sensible, if he had deliberately created a smokescreen through his
“inadvertently” comment.

Matt Bille is not going to get to the bottom of this matter with the aid of the NASA History Office. I doubt that NACA or NASA had access to the national security information and documents that dealt with the issue of first overflight before the fact. Why would they? They had absolutely no need to know, and this was one of the nation’s central national security secrets. Their job was to be the civilian smoke screen. Ike knew that they would be more effective at the role if they didn’t have the whole background.

I don’t have the smoking gun on this issue. That’s why my chapter says “suggests that”. But the Feed Back report makes it clear that the people who created the program had a positive desire for a Soviet first flight. This program was central to US national security in the eyes of the Administration, from Ike on down. My judgement on the matter is that the Administration, acting through the deepest level of national-security apparatus, had at least biased American activities to make it so. I don’t think this can be disproven (or proven) until the national security archives are fully opened.

I don’t personally have a lot of first-hand knowledge of the issue, but there’s a comments section below for anyone interested in discoursing on it further. I’m off to an all-day meeting.

And by the way, today is the forty-fifth anniversary of Sputnik.

[Update on Saturday afternoon]

Len Cormier comments at sci.space.policy

All of this occurred pre-NASA. In 1956 and 1957, there were only two staff members in the National Academy of Sciences IGY Earth Satellite Office–Gil Reid and myself (plus secretaries). To the best of my knowlege, the decision to continue solely with Vanguard rather than Jupiter was entirely influenced by the strong desire to have the U.S. IGY satellite launch vehicle to be derived from a research rocket (Viking) rather than from a military ballistic missile (like the Redstone).

However, three key persons on the National Academy’s IGY Satellite Panel–Dick Porter, the Chairman, Jim Van Allen, head of the Working Group on Satellite Instrumentation, and Bill Pickering, head of the Working Group on Tracking and Computation (and Director of JPL)–felt strongly that the U.S. should also back von Braun’s Jupiter-C concept. The “race” aspects of the satellite launch business were freely acknowledged at the time; nonetheless, the timing of Sputnik was still a surprise. On October 2, Gen. Blagonravoff had replied to my question of “when” with the answer “na kanune” — a rather ambiguous term meaning “on the eve.” This could mean in a day or two (which did occur), but also a month or months in the future.

Porter was on the Homer Jo Stewart committe and voted for a switch in priorities to Jupiter-C–even though Dick worked for GE, the contractor for the Vanguard first stage engine. Van Allen and Pickering–with Porter’s encouragement–worked quietly with von Braun to prepare Explorer I and the second, third and integral fourth stages derivived from the WAC Corporal. As is well known, Jupiter-C wasn’t given the go-ahead until after Sputnik and the Vanguard failure.

The Vanguard was actually quite a remarkable and sophisticated vehicle for its time. It’s gross mass was only a ten tonnes.

As for the benefits of unrestricted satellite overflights, this seems to be have been well recognized before Sputnik. No one talked about it much, and no one wanted to make an issue of it before it became a fait accompli. From the point of view of our “civilian” satellite office at the National Academy, the question of who launched first was not expected to be particularly important for unrestricted overflight–since this principal seemed to be already established by the international and cooperative nature of IGY–including the hoped-for launch of satellites during IGY. The actual launch by either the USSR or the USA would only confirm this principal.

Based on this, and the consensus apparently reached in the comments section, it is indeed too strong to say that it was actually Administration policy to let the Russians go first, though it also seems that they weren’t particularly upset about it, either, at least until the public impact became clear. I’ll put an erratum in my Fox column next week.

This discussion (particularly Len’s comment) also shows the clear historical value of capturing the memories of people who were there, while we still can.