While Eisenhower was concerned about a nuclear surprise attack, the main emphasis of the US missile program (including budgetary spending) was not the launching of a satellite into space but the precise delivery of a hydrogen warhead anywhere on earth. Because of its miniaturization advantage, the United States did not need rockets with heavy throw weights (thrust). In fact, in the years before Sputnik, the Air Force had actually reduced the number of stages in its Atlas program. Because the USSR warhead devices were larger and heavier, they required the concomitant development of rockets with greater thrust than did the US devices. While the United States was ahead in being able to deliver a hydrogen warhead more precisely anywhere on earth, the USSR had rockets with greater thrust and throw weights that were advantageous for launching objects into outer space. The US focus on attaining a technological/miniaturization advantage was disadvantageous to its being first in space.[1]
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Given the underestimation of the “shock effect” of Sputnik, given the perception that we were technologically far ahead of the USSR in space, and given Eisenhower’s interest in establishing the principle of freedom of passage for spy satellites, the failure to push such a crash program isunderstandable. Nonetheless, it was probable that the US could have been first in space had the president established that achievement as a national goal.[2] As an example of his administration’s commitment to ensuringthe principle of free passage in outer space, the Eisenhower administration (Quarles) in 1956 “restrained” government officials from
- ↑ For a more detailed discussion of the Soviet and US capabilities, see Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy: A History (New York: Norton, 1969), 659-60.
- ↑ In his first meeting with DOD officials after Sputnik was in orbit, Eisenhower learned from the Army that its Redstone rocket may have been able to launch a US satellite into orbit two months earlier than Sputnik. Further, Eisenhower learned that the Army never made such an attempt because the president had given the mission to the Navy Vanguard program. On 8 October 1957, Eisenhower asked Deputy Secretary of Defense Quarles if the assertion of the Army officials was true. Quarles responded to the effect that the situation was even worse given that the Army could have accomplished the launch two years earlier, had not DOD officials and Quarles himself had decided that it was “better to have the earth satellite proceed separately from military development” so as to “stress the peaceful character of the satellite program.” See Ambrose, 428.
