Hamblin 4

US spying in the Soviet Union was not very successful, so scientific and technological alternatives were a priority

• the Air Force took on detecting radiation from a Soviet atomic test in the atmosphere
• the Navy set up a system to detect it in rain
• geophysicists could measure the location of a test by distinctive sound waves in the atmosphere and the faint pressure waves traveling through the earth
• publicity about the dangers of radiation from Japan because a fishing boat was exposed to very high levels of radiation when it strayed too near a US nuclear test on an island in the Pacific
  

All of this military work required monitoring stations around the world and provided much new scientific knowledge, leading to the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58

• international cooperative scientific research--scientists and military each taking advantage of the other
  
• a project organized by international scientific societies under the principle that science is international
• but also funded by the Department of Defense because much information was of military value
  
• the new possibility of gathering data for the whole earth including the north and south poles
• commitment by different countries to gather the same data (define what to measure)
• international projects: scientific monitoring stations at the poles
  
• single country projects that were promoted as part of the IGY and some data shared
  
• the Soviets participated but there was much politicking over what data would be shared
• one of the subjects studied was the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because carbon dioxide was part of basic ecological and ocean cycles

The development of hydrogen bombs a thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima made nuclear weapons more dominant in thinking about total war but also raised questions about world wide circulation of radioactive material from bomb tests

• scientists were seeing the world change before their eyes
• measuring radioactivity in the ocean before and after a nuclear test was a new idea
• people had to figure out how to think about the dangers of low levels of radioactivity
• how do you pick a safe level? How many extra cases a year of cancer are acceptable?
  
• how did it circulate and accumulate in the atmosphere and ocean?
• was it dangerous to eat fish
• what areas of the world had soil deficient in calcium and were therefore more vulnerable to strontium poisoning?

another story:


Missiles and Satellites

• U.S. cold war strategy was based on bombers carrying nuclear weapons--for one thing, it was cheap, and Truman and Eisenhower both were reluctant to increase the size of the government and distort the economy by large-scale defense spending.  Substituting technological superiority for a large standing army put a new weight on being ahead
• after initial slow development, intercontinental ballistic missiles came to be seen as the next key technology
• First successful test of Atlas was Dec. 1957, first unit activated April 1958 but real operational capability probably not until 1959.  Initially had to be erected and fueled (and LOX) before launch.
• Soviet  R-7/SS-6 Sapwood ICBM tested Jan. 30, 1958, limited operational capability in early 1960.

 Titan ICBM

• Project RAND (an Air Force think tank) produced in May 1946 a report: "Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship" mentioned reconnaissance, weather, and communications
• In 1951 RAND scientists visiting Wright Field heard a briefing by James Lipp of Boston University's Physical Research Laboratory about using television for satellite reconnaissance.  The key RAND reconnaissance people though the idea was ridiculous, and set out to disprove it with pictures taken at 30,000 feet with 8mm movie camera lenses mounted to a 35mm Leica camera loaded with coarse grain film and processed for poor resolution.  The pictures showed streets and bridges, convincing Amrom Katz and others that satellite reconnaissance was feasible.
• the army had von Braun working on medium range ballistic missiles, the Air Force was working on the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile, and the Navy's Naval Research Lab was doing a wide range of scientific research on rockets--but none of these had high priority or crash project funding
• Korean war led to more funding for intercontinental ballistic missiles in 1951--Atlas--but with funding only for a slow development process (at Convair, even in FY 1954 Atlas got only $14 million).  Only in 1954 was the decision make to give it high priority

• What created stronger interest in the Department of Defense was not only fears of intercontinental ballistic missiles but the lure of spy satellites.
• Balloon reconnaissance over the Soviet Union began in 1956--243 balloons were never heard from again and only 44 were successfully recovered (the Soviets put some on display in Moscow and showed pictures of an air base in Turkey they said they had found on the film carried by one of the balloons)
• The U-2 was approved in 1954, designed by Kelly Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works in 80 days, and first used in 1956.  A Clemson alumnus piloted one of the key flights.

 U-2

• One of the key problems for an open state competing with a closed one was information.  You could do it with aircraft--U-2, but only at substantial risk--a U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, creating a major diplomatic incident.  This proved to be how rockets and particularly launching satellites finally got substantial support

• But this raised an interesting dilemma--it wasn't a race for a spy satellite but an idea for something the Soviets didn't need and wouldn't like
• Eisenhower insisted that the project be peaceful rather than military.  For one thing, this reflected his attempt to avoid a military-dominated state.
• this may also have been a strategy to establish the legitimacy of satellite overflight.  Where do air rights end?--how to establish open skies in international law
• one way to do it is to launch a scientific satellite, preferably under international auspices (IGY).  Far better that this be launched by the Navy's rocket built for scientific research than by what would clearly be a ballistic missile (then it would just look like a military test)
• or, you can let the Soviet Union launch first and not complain when their satellite goes over the U.S.; then they can hardly complain when a U.S. satellites goes over them
• The Naval Research Lab's Vanguard program was chosen for the first launch in a close vote by a panel of experts (on the basis of a better satellite) to launch the first satellite instead of von Braun's Redstone/Jupiter (which could have reached orbit in a test flight in Sept. 1956 if it had had a live upper stage).  This was probably not a political decision, but it was on the basis on science, not a race with the Russians
• What is clearly political is that the DoD and Eisenhower went along with that choice, knowing that it almost surely meant that the USSR would launch first
• And they did, launching Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957

 Sputnik 1, National Air and Space Museum

• This lead to a large public furor and the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration