DEFENSE: The Race to Come

The dim streak across outer space exploded on man’s consciousness in a pro fusion of meanings. To the three young University of Alaska scientists who be came the first Americans to see it, the Soviet satellite appeared “like a star and brighter than Jupiter.” To Washington’s Democratic Senator Henry Jackson, it was a partisan reason for proclaiming “a week of shame and danger.” To Missouri’s Democratic Senator Stuart Symington, it meant a frenzied call for a special session of Congress. To retired Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, it was merely “a nice technical trick.” To hundreds of U.S. scientists, it was a marvelous scientific-technical achievement, a triumph of mind over universal matter—and at the same time a last-chance signal to beware of onrushing Russian technology. To the man whose job it was to speak and act for the U.S. and the free world, it was a challenge to be met.

Upon Dwight Eisenhower converged all the frets, frustrations and fears of a suddenly fretful and frustrated people. His first duty was to stop the cries of hysteria. His second, and most important, responsibility was to re-examine the U.S. position in a world where space flight—whatever its immediate practical value— has temporarily become the enemy’s exclusive capability.

“Not One lota.” At week’s start, the President called a three-hour White House meeting of scientific and military advisers. They brought him up to date on Sputnik, with particular attention to the spectacular and ominous rocket-thrust required to push so heavy a satellite into outer space.

At his Thursday morning press conference, the President reflected the results of his scientific-military session. As far as the U.S. is concerned, he said, the quest for man’s moon has never been “considered as a race.” It was “merely an engagement on our part to put up a vehicle of this kind.” The achievement would be in terms of knowledge about “temperatures, radiation, ionization, pressures.” To be sure, the Russian satellite meant possession “of a very powerful thrust in their rocketry, and that is important.” But this, in current terms, was militarily meaningless: “I don’t know anything about their accuracy, and until you know something about their accuracy, you know nothing at all about their usefulness in warfare.” Even so, the President had deep regrets: “I wish we were further ahead and knew more as to accuracy and to the erosion and to the heat-resistant qualities of metals, and all the other things we have to know about. I wish we knew more about it at this moment.”

The keynote to the President’s press conference was his insistence that the satellite is a scientific, not a defense, instrument (see box, opposite). On that basis, the U.S. was already committed to putting some $110 million into a U.S. moon. But basic missile research and development would continue to get priority over satellite work in U.S. defense spending. It was in this sense that President Eisenhower said flatly: “So far as the satellite itself is concerned, that does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota.”

“No Dollars Be Damned.” With these explanatory words spoken, the Administration moved swiftly in other directions. The National Security Council met with a portentous array of high administrative brass and came to a quick conclusion. As a result, Dwight Eisenhower ordered an urgent and immediate review of the nation’s missile program by Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, just sworn into office the day before.

Pending that review, the U.S. does not plan 1) any “dollars-be-damned” crash program in missile development, 2) any change from the present Army, Navy, Air Force development program in favor of a Manhattan Project sort of effort, or 3) any quick decision between the Air Force Thor and the Army Jupiter as the U.S. intermediate-range missile. At first, the McElroy review will aim at unclogging existing bottlenecks; e.g., almost certain to go is the curb on overtime pay at missile centers. At a subsequent Cabinet meeting the decision was made to unloose purse strings on rocket work whenever McElroy could prove that he needed the money.

Against the Storm. The President and his Administration moved and planned, but not enough to still the storm of criticism across the land. “The basic reason we’re behind the Russians,” cried a major defense contractor, “is that we haven’t gone all out.” Electronics and airframe experts angrily recalled the casual attitude of Defense Secretary Wilson toward research and development.

Former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Research and Development Trevor Gardner, who was in charge of the Air Force ballistic-missile program, was bitter in his memory of the tri-service rocket development that led the Army, Navy and Air Force to compete more for headlines against one another than for technological superiority over the Russians. Said Gardner: “We have presently at least nine ballistic-missile programs, all competing for roughly the same kind of facilities, the same kind of brains, the same kind of engines and the same public attention.” Among the loudest of the critics were members of the 85th Congress, condemning the Administration for skimping on defense spending—yet it was that same Democratic 85th Congress that overrode the President’s urgent public pleas and cut the U.S. defense budget by some $2 billion.

The storm showed promise of being the most serious that Dwight Eisenhower had ever faced. The President had backed both the defense budget and the missile program, but the loudest noise in the defense area in recent weeks had been made by Charlie Wilson genially hacking away at military expenditures that he had let get out of hand. Militarily, Sputnik, plus Khrushchev’s bold rocket-rattling, gave a bald warning about the grim missile race to come. Beyond all this, the President was bound to bear the brunt of a special American reaction: the U.S. takes deep pride in its technical skills and technological prowess, in its ability to get things done—first. Now, despite all the rational explanations, there was a sudden, sharp national disappointment that Americans had been outshone by the Red moon. The disappointment would linger until the U.S. no longer stood second best in the conquest of space.