Word: boosterism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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These bitter men were only partly right. U.S. defeats in space go back a long way to a few top-level decisions. Perhaps the most serious U.S. handicap is lack of a big and reliable Stage 1 rocket booster. The Russians have boosters with more than 800,000 Ibs. of thrust. They developed them because they thought that they would need them to loft heavy nuclear warheads across the world's oceans...
From the lack of a big booster have flowed many familiar U.S. troubles. Everything that the U.S. fires into space, including the man-carrying Mercury capsule, must be built as light as possible. Structure and equipment are inevitably delicate, pushed to the peak of performance. The Russians have plenty of payload to play with. They can use rugged, dependable and comparatively heavy parts. Their spacecraft can afford the luxury of parallel electronic circuits, one ready to take over if the other fails. Many of the Russian achievements in space, including their accurate control systems, can be explained by the weight...
Pravda also shed some light on how Venusnik was separated from the booster that lifted it piggyback into space. At a predetermined point on orbit around the earth, when the satellite reached a great speed, the booster was separated-whether automatically or by radio signal from earth, the Soviets did not say. The booster stayed on orbit, while Venusnik hurtled on alone. As it broke away from the earth's gravitation, it moved into a solar orbit at 61,000 m.p.h...
...spectacular, and more fruitful, space research with small rockets. Finally, under pressure from those who saw the vast advantage the Communists would have in space exploration through their ability to lift heavy loads aloft, the Eisenhower Administration got moving in 1958 on the 1,500,000-lb.-thrust Saturn booster, a relatively primitive design of eight engines in a single cluster. The Saturn has been static-tested, but will not be operational until 1965 or 1966. Only recently has the program been allotted anything more than a shoestring budget for research and development...
...first there was good reason for the Russian lead. In 1954, when the Soviets began work on their intercontinental ballistic missiles, they needed an engine powerful enough to lift their outsize nuclear warheads. They gave top priority to that goal and developed the 800,000-lb.-thrust, liquid-fueled booster engine that has since provided the power for their spectacular out-space shots as well as their ICBMs. The U.S., with a smaller warhead, did not require such massive power, settled on the 360,000-lb.-thrust Atlas engine, still the biggest in the U.S. space arsenal...