• government funding for scientific research--WW2 showed the power of science but also its dangers
  
• trust in scientists has gradually declined since the 1960s
• when scientists reach a consensus on an issue, that is valuable information
  
• people ask more often will the benefits of progress be greater than the harm--this becoming dominant marked the end of the modern era
  
• do we trust that what science tells us is the best thing to do is accurate for us
• do we get fed up with or confused by science giving us changing advice
  
• cold war keep military research going and growing, which meant a lot of funding for science
  
• end of modern era: people began to worry about technological progress much more than they did during the height of the modern era
  

• we are no longer as confident that progress is always good
• technology->better material standard of life, but people are increasingly seeing that is not all that matters
• for example, you can be rich but if the natural environment is a mess you will be less content with what you have
  
• the modern era believed that progress was limitless, but we are hitting limits
• environmental and global justice issues mean that we will need to reduce how many resources we use
• more concern about how we are harming the planet
• the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s
• concern about technology leading to risks to health
  
• health care costs can't keep increasing, we won't be able to have all that might be possible
• the postmodern era has two rather different phases
• the cold war
• post-cold war (after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989)
  

• Basic science=power
• from 1945 to the early 1960s, the prestige of scientists was at a peak
  
• we can develop new technologies quickly to do whatever we want
• technology gives us dangerous power
• some policy issues require technical knowledge in order to understand the issue
  

• wrote a prediction of the future in 1945--quite accurate except he missed completely the digital computer (much of his engineering research had been on analog computers)
• wrote a report later published as a book called: Science: The Endless Frontier
• his belief that the federal government should pay for basic scientific research led to the National Science Foundation
• he was critical of the manned space program on the grounds that it was too dangerous--even as a believer in progress he was becoming a little more cautious
  
• he understood that managing information was becoming a key problem

• Department of Defense was convinced that research was essential; leftover wartime money poured into basic research, eg. at the new Office of Naval Research
• Office of Naval Research in 1948 supported 700 projects in 150 universities and nonprofit labs involving 2000 scientists at a cost of about $20 million a year
• this was basic research, not specific military projects.  The Navy actually worried about whether universities would accept military funding, but these grants were unclassified and had no controls on publication.  Scientists had few qualms
• other military services started similar programs
• military funding stayed high by historic patterns after the war
  

• Some fields of science got a lot more funding than others (eg. chemistry suffered relative to physics
• universities became big businesses
• “big science”: big projects run by teams of scientists instead of individual scientists designing their own work

National Science Foundation

• Scientists wanted the continuation of federal research funding, from a civilian agency.  Vannevar Bush wrote Science: The Endless Frontier for this purpose.
• Senator Harry M. Kilgore (D. West Virginia) proposed a bill in 1944 emphasizing R&D for small business.  Patents were to be owned by the federal government
• Senator Magnuson proposed a bill along the lines the scientists wanted--scientists would decide how to spend the money
• mid 1946 compromise leaning towards Kilgore failed to pass, 1947 compromise leaning towards Magnuson passed but was vetoed by Truman on grounds of lack of accountability
• compromise finally passed in 1950, but only got $225,000 total the first year

Origins:

• The U.S. was already afraid of communism before World War II, but the Soviet Union was our ally against Germany
• Once it was clear that Germany was falling, both countries rushed to occupy as much territory as possible.  One the reasons the U.S. used the Atom Bomb was to end the war faster so the Soviets would not take as much territory in Asia
• The Soviet Union wanted some control in what it saw as buffer states, and tended to move towards making them puppets.
• The U.S. saw this as the Soviets moving to gradually expand towards world dominion and developed a policy of containment.  The Truman Doctrine (1947)--the U.S. would help the people of free countries fighting communist takeover (either from without or within)
• mindset--everyone has to choose sides
• The U.S. supplied Berlin by air (which no one was sure would be possible) when the Soviets blockaded it in 1948 to try to take complete control.

 planes lined up for Berlin airlift

The Nuclear Arms Race

• The Soviets did not start full-scale research on an atomic bomb until after Hiroshima, but once Stalin realized its importance and started pushing they caught up fast.
• first Soviet atomic bomb tested Aug. 1949 (espionage helped them at most by 3 years).  Stalin wasn’t satisfied he was secure still and the U.S. felt a lot more insecure
• how did they catch up so quickly?
• once you know something can be done it is easier to re-invent
• their spies stole secrets (this wasn't the largest story)
• in a dictatorship the government can allocate lots of resources to whatever it wants
  
• The first Soviet atomic bomb had used the same design as some early U.S. bombs. But the first Soviet hydrogen bomb was an original design, different and perhaps even ahead of that of the United States (their bomb was small enough to carry on a bomber, the US hydrogen bomb a year earlier had not been). On August 12, 1953, the Soviet Union exploded its first thermonuclear bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan.

Cold War:

• wartime footing without actual fighting
• wartime competition by means other than actual fighting
• some of this was technology with military use
• developing these technologies would have military and civilian spinoffs
• national pride
• winning the hearts and minds of the "third world"
• competition was believed to show which system was better
• war could break out at any minute
  

• Domino theory--fear of other countries falling to communism
• The Red Scare of the 1950s (Joseph McCarthy)--anyone who had had communist or disloyal ideas was a threat to the nation and should loose their job
• Korean War (1950-53)
• Cuban Missile Crisis, October 18-29, 1962.  The Soviet Union was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba.  Kennedy responded by blockading Cuba.  The Soviet leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev, authorized the firing of nuclear weapons against the U.S. if the U.S. invaded Cuba.  After several days the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles.
• The Department of Defense got lots of money to develop new technology because it was seen as a wartime necessity

• 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 and was shot down, the only casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis killed by enemy fire.

 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

• goal: to orbit and recover a manned satellite at the earliest practical date  and to investigate the capabilities of man in this environment
• configuration: a ballistic capsule with high aerodynamic drag to be landed with  parachutes
• the Atlas ICBM was the most reliable available booster system (although not  tested successfully until Nov. 1958), but expensive ($2.5 million each) and not yet available, so testing was done with a cluster of solid rockets called little Joe and with Redstone
•  In Dec. 1958 Eisenhower decided to draw astronaut candidates only from the pool of military test pilots (for security reasons, for one thing).  The education requirement was reduced to bachelors degree or equivalent and test pilot school.
• Testing of astronaut candidates started in early 1959 from a pool of 110 qualified pilots.  32 were selected on the basis of written and psychological tests for physical testing.  This testing followed a pattern set up for the Man-high research balloon program--very detailed medical testing to ensure good health and establish a baseline and environmental tests.   18 of the 31 were recommended without medical reservations.  They went into a program of training and participation in system design
• the first unmanned test of the Mercury capsule with the Atlas booster was held  July 29, 1960.  One minute after lift-off telemetry showed a complete loss of pressure in fuel tanks, then telemetry was lost.  The booster was in the clouds at the time, but apparently it either exploded or suffered catastrophic structural failure.
• In Sept. 1960 an Atlas-Able carrying an early moon probe also failed severely,  raising questions about the use of Atlas for Mercury which were particularly severe because of the pressures of an election year.
• There was a lot of press criticism that Mercury was not a crash program, but  rather took things one step at a time with attention to budget and took second priority to the ICBM program.
• the first test of the Mercury-Redstone combination to be used to launch a  person into ballistic flight was conducted on Nov. 21, 1960.  The booster lifted 4 inches off the launch pad and then settled back down.  The escape tower activated and took off, without the capsule, landing near the launch site and the capsule, still sitting on the booster, shot out its parachutes.  Disarming the booster was not easy, but at least it was available for study to determine the cause of failure (a plug which disconnected unevenly, sending an abort signal).

 Mercury-Redstone 1

• on Dec. 19, 1960 a successful test of Mercury-Redstone was finally completed.
• the question of whether a human being could survive in space became unnecessary  on April 12, 1961, when the Soviet Union launched Yuri Gagarin into orbit in a capsule weighing 3 times what Mercury weighed.  No news of the flight was released until after recovery.
• on May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard, Jr., rode a Mercury-Redstone in a ballistic orbit into space on live TV
• safety of the Altas was such a concern that a chimpanzee named Enos was  launched on Mercury Atlas 5 on Nov. 28, 1961.  The machine to test his abilities under stress--pulling levers to receive a reward or avoid punishment--malfunctioned and he received shocks even when correct.  He performed, but arrived on the ship hopping mad.
• after a series of delays John Glenn was finally orbited on Feb. 20, 1962, Scott Carpenter on May 24, 1962, Walter Schirra on Oct. 3, 1962, and Gordon Cooper on May 15, 1963 (observations of the earth).

• The Dec. 1960 PSAC Report had projected a manned circumlunar flight about 1970, and a manned landing on the moon about 1975 at a total cost of $26 to 38 billion.
  NASA included only circumlunar flight in its ten year plan, yet as early as mid-1959 NASA had identified a manned trip to the moon as a logical next step after putting people in space and had started the necessary planning.
• Eisenhower refused to include money for Apollo development in his 1962 budget, while at the same time he approved development of an anti-satellite satellite
  Meanwhile, Kennedy was elected in November 1960, having made a big fuss in his campaign about the missile gap (which did not in fact exist)
• the first signs from the Kennedy administration were negative on space in general--NASA worried he would support the Air Force which wanted NASA to be replace by a military space program
• Kennedy's vice president, Johnson, had long been a major supporter of the space program
• Not until Jan 30 did Kennedy appoint a new NASA administrator, James Webb, who took office Feb. 14.  But Webb was clearly an ambitious man

• April 12, 1961, Soviet Union launched Yuri Gagarin, and the U.S. was again embarrassingly behind
• at an April 14 meeting it became clear that Kennedy wanted to accept the Soviet challenge, but was worried by the cost
  on April 17 a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, trained and financed by the U.S. invaded Cuba in what came to be called the Bay of Pigs fiasco because it was a total failure.
• on April 19 Kennedy asked Johnson to find a "space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win.  Johnson and the Space Council organized hearings to answer this question.  concluded that there was no chance of beating the Russians in putting a multi-manned laboratory in space
• NASA said we could beat the Russians to the moon, and set 1967 as a target date.  Accelerating the program would raise the cost from $22.3 billion to $33.7 billion
• Meanwhile, on May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard, Jr., rode a Mercury-Redstone in a ballistic trajectory into space, with live TV coverage.  This was a reminder of what good press came from putting people in space
• Webb and Secretary of Defense MacNamara, with Johnson's blessing, wrote a memo entitled "Recommendations for our National Space Program: Changes, Policies, Goals."  Called for a manned lunar landing before 1970, emphasizing national prestige and international competition
• Kennedy approved this as it stood--proposed a 61% increase in 1962 NASA budget
• On May 25, in a speech  (listen to it all) entitled "Urgent National Needs" Kennedy said: "I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth."
• the key point is that Apollo was a crash program--faster than even NASA had planned.  The essential definition of a crash program is that different approaches are worked on in parallel

• bankruptcy of the Soviet Union
  • due to arms race, corruption, problems with their system
  • some people argue that Reagan's commitment to Strategic Defense Initiative (defense against ICBMs) was the specific increase in the arms race that the Soviets couldn't afford
  • thaw in relationship between U.S. and Soviets in later 1980s, new willingness to negotiate on both sides, the U.S. didn't take advantage of Soviet weakness

Transformation of Soviet Union

• Gorbachev's Coming to Power (1985)--a new generation
• Economic Reform Plan: Perestroika (Restructuring)
  • make the system work better by giving more incentives
  • not traditional incentives but market-based incentives--small step towards a free market
• Political Reform Plan: Glasnost (Openness) eg. less censorship of newspapers, arts
• Foreign  Policy: From Detente (willingness to make treaties with your enemy to make things stable) to Disengagement (step out of the race)

The Cold War ends:

• Poland: Elections of 1989--Poles had an election and chose leaders who weren't Soviet puppets, the Soviets did not intervene
• Fall of Berlin Wall (Nov. 9, 1989)--see also a personal account
  • came from ordinary people who refused to live by the old rules
• Reunification of Germany (1990)
• Disintegration of Soviet Union (1991)
  • Secession of Baltic States [Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia]
  • Aborted Communist Coup
  • Collapse of U.S.S.R. & Boris Yelsin's Rise to Power--moving substantially away from communism

• end of the arms race--no one to compete with any more
• new mission--small wars, policing

• society and politics have become more divisive
• the US government still sponsors significant research, science for its own sake and for the common good
• large corporations do more of the research and development
• innovation is more focused on consumers
• 
  

• renewed enthusiasm for progress, but with some wise caution
  
• accepting that the world is full of mystery instead of expecting to be able to control it all
• we will live in an "expanded" era