Tonight I watched the excellent second episode of a BBC series on the US/USSR space race of the 1950’s and 1960’s. I found it highly entertaining and well worth the watching.
As some of you are aware, I have some slight knowledge in this area. It was for the most part well researched and an accurate portrayal both of historical facts and the atmosphere of the time. I found the use of bits of old black and white TV from the period fascinating. I must also admit to recognizing the Life Magazine covers as those and Werner’s Disney appearances had at least something to do with my own passion for space.
This would not be a proper review if I did not also point out what was wrong. The history they presented was what anyone would find by researching the times and accepting the received wisdom about ‘what happened’. There was more to the events of the era than most are aware of even though a great deal of it is no longer classified.
There was more at stake than whether ex-German Werner Von Braun launched the first satellite or not. There was an intelligence sting in progress; perhaps one of the most successful in US intelligence history.
The story began some years earlier with a top secret report on the use of space for military purposes, and in particular for spy satellites. The problem was whether flying an object repeatedly and undeniably over an enemy nation would be taken as an aggressive act. Would satellites be treated the same as Francis Gary Powers and his U2 were treated many years later? That was the sticky point, and the way around it was to make sure the Russians were suckered into doing it first. Once they had established the ‘open skies’ precedent, the US was free to roll out the spy satellites. It was no accident that the technology was ready to go and that many of the early Explorer’s were less than scientific in purpose.
The public response, or ‘blowback’ caught Eisenhower by surprise. He’d accomplished precisely what he had wanted to accomplish but was now publicly on the hook for a missile gap which did not actually exist. Even at the time of the Nixon-Kennedy debates, the Russians did not have a significant number of ICBM’s reliable enough to generate a serious strategic threat to America. LBJ, as a member of a key Senate committee was well aware of the real facts and almost certainly used the fact of their secrecy to his and Kennedy’s political advantage.
Meanwhile, Nixon had to hold his tongue on the issue. Some pundits have suggested this may have caused him to strike back in inappropriate ways a decade later, leading to the Watergate fiasco. Personally I cannot forget that he was a key player in the McCarthy hearings of the early fifties, hearings which ruined many lives and did not uncover any of the real Stalinist moles in the heart of the US government.
I will not hold this against the BBC however. Few are aware of this bit of history and there are many who consider it controversial.
I give the BBC an 8.5 for history and a solid 10 for presentation and entertainment.
Dale, you are too kind in reporting about the “Soviet moles” in the US government during the 1930s-1960s.
Senator Joseph McCarthy has indeed taken flak for decades about his naming of moles. While he named names wrong, no-one has been able to deny in the ensuing decades that Soviet agents were indeed [hidden] in high policy-making positions within the United States government.
Supposedly, there are new books on the McCarthy era coming out. You will know they have been published when our domestic political Left (e.g., CNN, CBS, etc.) start caterwauling.
Very interesting. Can you recommend any good books dealing with the historical issues you raise, Dale? (Specifically, the bit about Ike letting the Russians go first.)
Dale
I wish that what you said was the incontrevertable truth. For years I have been trying to nail down the facts. I interviewed General Andrew Goodpaster (who died a couple of months back) about this. He was Ike’s personal military staff officer in the White House and if anyone was in a position to know it would have been him.
He just added to the confusion. there had been some talk about the overflight question, but the main thing in Ikes mind was to keep the first flight civilian, or as civilian as possible. Thus he made them choose the Navy Vanguard missile which had no military function whatsoever, it was a pure research vehicle.
He also got contradictory intelligence (surprise surprise) some telling him that the Russians could’nt do anything and others who said that they were ready to go. In fact they had annouced their readiness at a couple of scientific conferences.
The WS-117 spy satellite program was well underway supervised by Bernard Schriever (who also died recently.)
Here’s part of one account on the matter from…NASA:
The Eisenhower administration viewed the Soviet satellite less as a military threat than as a boost to its behind-the-scenes efforts to establish the principle of “freedom of space” ahead of eventual military reconnaissance satellite launches. Sputnik overflew international boundaries, yet it aroused no diplomatic protests. Four days after Sputnik’s launch, on October 8, Donald Quarles summed up a discussion he had with Eisenhower: “the Russians have . . . done us a good turn, unintentionally, in establishing the concept of freedom of international space. . . . The President then looked ahead . . . and asked about a reconnaissance [satellite] vehicle.”22
NASA
The “missile gap” thing was all political. And it worked.
Here are links to a bunch of relevant documents including some from Goodpaster. Enjoy.
When you are discussing the emotional reaction to Sputnik, you need a broader historical context than just space technology. At that point in time, Communism was ascendent to the point of having 1/4 of the world’s population under it. China had just fought the US to a bloody stalemate. The USSR had the Bomb much sooner than expected. The tone of the communications between the US and the USSR was bellicose in the extreme. In the US, it was widely believed that the west was losing the cold war. This was the state of affairs when Sputnik came onto the scene, so it’s not surprising that the public reaction was one of fear and dismay.
I was present when Jim Bennett gave a paper on this historical topic at the Cato Institute and afterwards chatted with Tom Rogers whom I believe was in the Eisenhower admin and he agreed with the whole thing.
But Tricky Dick did get Alger Hiss and the daggers were out from then on….
Acutally Tom Rogers was the Deputy Director of Reseach and Engineering in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. When Ike was President he was still at MIT Lincoln labs.
He ran the first military satellite communications program. Later he became the first chief scientist at the department of Housing and Urban development. Where he discovered just how much goverment regulations add to the cost of building a house.
As for the public reaction to sputnik, if Eisenhower had been a fan of SF instead of westerns he might have been better prepared for what happened.
Actually, Nixon had nothing to do with the McCarthy hearings. He was a member of the House of Representatives, and McCarthy was a senator. He got Alger Hiss, who we know was a spy, and helped to blunt the edge of Soviet espionage in the late 50’s, early 60’s. McCarthy is a totally seperate issue, one I don’t have the time to discuss, but don’t simply roll all anti-Communist Republican politicians of the time into one entity. Tricky Dick was a corrupt and paranoid politician during the mid 60’s, but he deserves nothing but praise for his dogged work undercovering a large and insidious Soviet spy network in the mid 50’s.
Part of the blowback was the development of the PSSC Physics course by MIT (and others) rolled out to the better high schools in America.
It was probably one of the most successful methods of teaching physics ever developed.
In the seach for new education fads it was dropped after about 10 years of success. America is still living off that capital. However, like all human capital it is a wasting resource