any public discussion of spaceflight.[1] Eisenhower administration officials feared that any discussion of military space operations would engender a “worldwide debate” on outer space law issues. They further feared that the debate might result in efforts to preclude the passage in outer space of military related devices.[2]
Despite Eisenhower’s “civilian” emphasis in the booster program, the military had not ceased development of its boosters. In fact, prior to Sputnik I, the military continued to attempt to launch military boosters that would have been necessary to launch such a satellite into orbit. These efforts failed.[3] The Air Force, like the other services, had continued in its efforts to develop multistage rockets. Not until November 1956, when Secretary of the Air Force Quarles issued his order and indicated that no US military satellite would precede a civilian scientific satellite into orbit, did the Air Force cease all vehicle construction and intentionally put its space efforts on hold.[4]
Determining whether Quarles and the Eisenhower administration purposely delayed orbiting a satellite is problematic. Some complained that Eisenhower delayed because he wanted to wait for the development of nonmilitary boosters instead of using existing military boosters. Had the Eisenhower administration clearly indicated to the military services that it desired to be first in space with a satellite, the military might have designed a booster strictly for that purpose. But for the space-for-peace policy, the Eisenhower administration might well have implemented a “crash” program to develop a nonmilitary booster. To conclude that President Eisenhower’s space-for-peace proposal, by itself, allowed the USSR to be “first” is speculative at best. Nevertheless, it appears that Quarles was perhaps willing to accept the USSR being first in space so long as the freedom of passage in space principle was established as a result.[5]
The Eisenhower administration’s initial response to the two Sputniks was to advance with same due deliberation as it had been proceeding and to treat the Soviet achievement as being “no big deal,” in the current vernacular. Eisenhower did perceive a need to demonstrate some success in the missile programs and appointed a panel to study the US missile program. The “fevered tone” and substance of the resulting report of the Security Resources Panel[6] (known as the Gaither Report) helped generate public pressure that caused President Eisenhower to agree to increased spending on missile programs. While a long-term salient impact of the report was increased emphasis on better scientific education and
- ↑ Hall, “Origins,” 22.
- ↑ Spires, 47.
- ↑ Given that the Explorer satellite program successfully launched after Sputnik and given that on 20 September 1956 a Jupiter-C with a Redstone rocket as a first stage plus upper stages like those proposed for the Orbiter had successfully carried an 84-pound payload that could have been replaced by a satellite, Quarles and the Army officials may have been correct when they informed Eisenhower that the United States could have placed an object into orbit before Sputnik. See also Whipple.
- ↑ Hall, “Origins,” 22; Whipple.
- ↑ Hall, “Origins,” 21-22. A valid question, not answered herein, is whether the Eisenhower administration purposefully allowed the USSR to be “first-in-space” to lure the USSR into creating by its own actions the principle of freedom of passage in outer space. Such could explain why Eisenhower assigned to nonexistant nonmilitary boosters, the task of sending a satellite into orbit. Perhaps, Eisenhower knowingly and intentionally proposed an “impossibility.” If anyone appears to have had such a design in mind, it appears to have been Air Force secretary (later Deputy Secretary of Defense) Quarles. (See note 36, chapter 2.)
- ↑ The panel was chaired by H. Rowan Gaither, chairman of the board of directors of the Ford Foundation. For a more complete description of the panel and its membership and its interworkings, see Watson, 136-41.
