Word: sputnik
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...division of responsibility has lost months for Von Braun's Saturn program, the U.S.'s best chance to match the big Soviet moon rockets in the mid-1960s. Von Braun proposed Saturn, with rocket engines designed to generate 1.500,000 Ibs. of blast-off thrust, after Sputnik I revealed the U.S.S.R.'s enormous launching capacity. Nobody in authority responded until the Russians blasted 7,000 Ibs. into space with Sputnik III in May 1958. Then the Pentagon ordered Von Braun to get to work on Saturn. The Budget Bureau promptly tried to stop it, and Director...
Pondering the meaning of Sputnik I back in October 1957, the London Express confidently predicted that the result of the Soviet push into space would be a U.S. drive to "catch up and pass the Russians" in space exploration. "Never doubt for a moment that America will be successful." the Express added. The U.S. agreed with that statement: of course it would catch up, and quickly...
Squabbles in the Web. The U.S.'s efforts to narrow the space gap since Sputnik I have slogged along under a heavy handicap of organizational confusion. Central in the confusion is an arbitrary, irrelevant division of space programs into "civilian" (Glennan's NASA) and "military" (Johnson's ARPA). Coordination between the two domains is supposedly achieved by the Civilian-Military Liaison Committee, the real purpose of which seems to be to provide a roost for amiable, ineffectual William M. Holaday, who was head of the abolished guided missiles office. But that basic split-up is only...
...years after Sputnik I, the U.S. still has no broad, coordinated space program with clearly defined, long-range goals. When a congressional committee tried to find out a few months ago what overall goals the various programs were pushing toward, ARPA's Johnson testified that he did not know of any "total long-term space program." Echoed Lieut. General Bernard Schriever, Air Force research and development chief: "I am not aware whether or not there is an effort being made to lay out one single program...
...Communist propoganda at the first meeting was subtle but apparent. The Soviet entry was timed to coincide with the height of the peace chants, and they used the most prominent parade gimmick, a large sweeping frame ending in a golden sputnik. In contrast, the only association with American science was not peace, but the Japanese signboards of "No More Hiroshimas...