There’s a new startup company that claims that it will be able to deliver a half a ton of payload to orbit in less than a year and a half.

Based on their web site, it seems to be Beal Aerospace redux–a big dumb booster, presumably expendable, though it doesn’t state this explicitly (though not as “dumb” as the Beal project–it uses pumps…) funded by a millionaire to go after the existing launch market.

Our first launch vehicle, named Falcon, is a two stage, liquid oxygen and kerosene powered rocket capable of placing half a ton into low Earth orbit. We expect to have the Falcon ready for launch by late 2003, with the actual liftoff date subject to Air Force and NASA safety approval.

This statement in itself would seem to indicate that they don’t know what they’re doing. Assuming that it’s a commercial vehicle, neither the Air Force or NASA provide approval of “safety.” This is done by the FAA.

That’s not to say, of course, that they don’t actually know what they’re doing–just that they don’t appear to, based on that statement at their web site. The personnel list looks competent enough, though it seems a little engineer heavy, and I don’t see any actual launch operations experience there (which will be necessary to jump through all the AST hoops). The only name I recognize, other than Elon Musk (the guy who founded Paypal, and has been funding some ventures for the Mars Society), is Gwynne Gurevich, formerly of Microcosm.

It’s possible that some PR type put the web site together, and thought that it might sound more impressive to say they’ll get Air Force and NASA approval, to the general public who’s unaware of these issues. If so, it’s sad in a different way, because it still means that NASA is associated with space in the public mind, and that nothing is possible without them.

My prognosis, regardless of the technical talent: based on the stated business plan, it will fail. My opinion is subject to change, given more information.

The successor to PETA has been founded (via Alan Boyle).

David Warren describes what’s really going on at the UN.

The first thing to know is that none of the five governments are in any doubt that the U.S. intends to change the regime of Saddam Hussein. And neither Paris, nor Moscow, nor Beijing is in a position to stop it, through the U.N. or otherwise. The question from each is, “At what price will we allow the Americans to escape from the appearance of unilateralism?”

Instapundit (via Jay Fitzgerald) points out an interesting column by Charles Jacobs, which correctly points out that the left doesn’t get its panties knotted over who is perceived as the victim (after all, aren’t we all, ultimately, victims of the oppressive world order?), but rather based on who is perceived to be the oppressor.

Alternatively, imagine the ”wrong” oppressor: Suppose that Arabs, not Jews, shot Palestinians in revolt. In 1970 (”Black September”), Jordan murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians in two days, yet we saw no divestment campaigns, and we wouldn’t today.

But suppose they did? Just what powerhouse stocks would one divest oneself of if one wanted to protest the actions of Jordan, or the Saudi entity, or any other Arab country? Not to imply that they have any interest in protesting such countries’ behavior, but if they did, given the paucity of industry, innovation and rational corporate and lending law of the Arab world, which are vital for enterprise, they’d have to find some other way to protest.

Ignoring morality issues (spurious or otherwise), from a purely financial perspective, Israel is worthy of investment (as was South Africa at the time). Arabia is not. That’s what must change.

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.

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.

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.

Some of you may have noticed that the site was down for most of the day. Apparently my host lost their net connection. I wasn’t getting email either, but all seems to be well again now.

Posting will be light for the next couple of days–I’m preparing for a meeting that I’ll be attending most of the day tomorrow.

In the meantime, enjoy Mark Steyn’s latest, in which he blasts the European elites as impotent poseurs. Nothing new there, but he finds a way to say it in a new and entertaining way.

I wonder if the rest of the anti-Yank set have thought it through. When they bitch about America?s warmongering but think the UN?s the perfect vehicle to restrain it, you know they?re just posing, and that, though they may routinely say that ?Bush frightens me?, they?re not frightened at all. America could project itself anywhere and blow up anything, but it doesn?t. It could tell the UN to go fuck itself, but it?s not that impolite. Imagine any previous power of the last thousand years with America?s unrivalled hegemony and unparalleled military superiority in a unipolar world with nothing to stand in its way but UN resolutions. Pick whoever you like: the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, the Third Reich, the Habsburgs, Tsarist Russia, Napoleon, Spain, the Vikings. That?s really ?frightening?. I?ve now read a gazillion columns beginning, ?He?s a dangerous madman with weapons of mass destruction. No, not Saddam. George W. Bush.? It barely works as a joke never mind a real threat. The fact that, in all the torrent of anti-Americanism, there?s no serious thought given to how to reverse it nor any urgency about doing so tells you precisely how frightening and dangerous these folks really think the Great Satan is.

It’s been four and a half decades since the dawn of the space age.

Forty five years ago this Friday, on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial earth satellite, dubbed Sputnik. It was a shot that was not just heard, but literally went, round the world. It set off a train of political events that lumbers down the track (albeit slowly and expensively) to this very day.

In 1957, not even the most visionary of the science fiction writers would have predicted that man would be walking on the Moon only a dozen years later.

Even more inconceivable would have been the notion that, having done so, he would stop a scant three years after that, and not return for decades, and perhaps forever, or at least the foreseeable future. Or that three decades after the last treading of human feet in lunar dust, we would be seemingly further from such a feat than we were then.

But that was the result of Sputnik.

In the late 1950s, we were deep in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. We were building bomb shelters in our back yards. I have personal memories of going with my father to the bomb-shelter dealer to view their ghoulish wares. I was too young to truly appreciate their implications, but I do remember the drills in school, in which we were to get into the hallway, curled up like the fetuses we were only a few short years prior, and place our arms over our heads, against the inevitable devastation of a potential nuclear blast. A blast that would presumably, in defiance of the laws of physics, just scatter the debris of our school building over our fragile young bodies, rather than penetrating them with deadly radiation…

So when politicians like Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson talked about “not going to bed under a communist Moon,” it meant something.

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, so that a precedent of overflight of surveillance satellites would be established, and they would be unable to complain when we developed our own. But the Administration didn’t anticipate the public reaction.

We had been one-upped. Aced. Beaten to the punch.

Choose your own cliche–the point was that the American system of Free Enterprise had been upstaged by the commies, and there was nothing to do for it except to initiate programs to improve science and math education in the schools, and to institute a Government Program to launch a satellite of our own.

Accordingly, the next year, we established a mirror socialist space agency, built on the foundation of a previous government agency that had served well to advance the aviation industry–the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA). The difference was that NACA focused itself on developing needed technology for industry and the military (based on their inputs), whereas the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was focused on an operational goal–to beat the Russians on the high frontier.

Thus did our downfall begin, at least to those of us interested in opening up space.

Space itself became secondary–it was only a symbol of technological prowess. What was important was beating the Soviets at something in this line. This was particularly the case after our myriad failures in even achieving the minimal goal (an orbiting satellite) demonstrated by the Soviets.

And so, ultimately, was the Apollo program born.

Despite the rhetoric of the time, the goal was not to open up space to humanity, or even to the American people. The goal was to show that Democracy was superior to Communism (though sadly, both political systems used the same government-enterprise model for their achievement). The X-15 program, which was developing knowledge and experience in routine space operations, was cancelled, because it didn’t hold the near-term promise of showing up the Russians.

Because we were nominally a capitalist nation, America had much more wealth and ingenuity to throw at the problem, and we won. We beat the Soviets to the Moon.

But in so doing, we also lost, because we betrayed the fundamental values of our nation, and in so doing, we established a premature, sterile and unsustainable beachhead on another planet, and then abandoned it.

Today we continue to reap the fruits of that decision.

We have a space program whose purpose is at an extreme variance with its advertisements four decades ago.

It provides jobs, rather than hardware on orbit. “International cooperation” takes precedence over schedule or utility. The engineers working on them proclaim that the Shuttle and the International Space Station are the most complex systems in the world, as though that’s a feature in which to take pride (whereas most competent engineers follow the principle of “KISS”–“Keep It Simple, Stupid.”)

Forty-five years after the Wright brothers flew their first flight, thousands of aircraft had been built, and hundreds of thousands of people had flown, on routine commercial flights.

Forty-five years after Sputnik, space remains an elite destination–fewer than a few hundred people have visited it.

It’s not for lack of interest. Public opinion polls indicate that millions of people would like to experience space flight, if they could afford it. And the lack of their ability to afford it is not a consequence of physics–that accounts for at most an order of magnitude difference in the costs of space flight over air travel.

No, people can’t afford it because, unlike almost any other issue in which many people have an interest, their government is indifferent to their wants. It can get away with this because it has told them that it is “hard,” and because they’ve been told that it is for decades, and the belief itself makes it difficult to raise money that might provide any counterexamples, they believe it.

And why shouldn’t they? Thirty years ago, fifteen years after the launch of the first satellite, we stopped walking on the Moon. We’d done it several times before, and it was expensive. What was the point? We’d beaten the Russians. We’d shown the superiority of American state socialism over Soviet state socialism. That there might be room for American free enterprise, or the desires of the American people to sample the vistas of the cosmos themselves, was never considered.

Perhaps, after almost half a century, it’s time to consider it.

Daniel Wiener thinks that the CA governor’s race may be a lot closer than the LA Times says.