The Eagle Has Landed: The Story of Apollo 11 (4 page)

As the United States established a fledgling missile program, the Soviet Union was busy developing and testing its own rockets. Like Wernher von Braun, Russian-born Sergei Korolev was a visionary, who had established the
Group for Investigation of Reactive Motion
during the 1930s. Korolev, commissioned as a Colonel in the Red Army, traveled to Germany shortly after the end of World War II and supervised the conscription of 150 rocket scientists and technicians. Unlike the United States, which allowed its German immigrants to take an active role in rocket research and development, the Soviets merely learned from their conscripts, before eventually sending them back home. Having salvaged but a handful of V-2s, Soviet scientists utilized German ideas and Russian know-how to develop the next generation of missiles. Korolev would eventually become recognized as the
Chief Designer
of the Soviet missile and space programs.

Having few allies outside its natural boundaries, the Soviet Union did not have available air fields from which to launch nuclear-armed bomber attacks against the United States. To counter the superior American nuclear bomber force, the Soviets decided to develop nuclear missiles as a deterrent.

With the outbreak of the Korean War in June of 1950, American defense spending, which had been significantly curtailed in the years following World War II, dramatically rebounded. As the war raged on the Asian peninsula, the Army missile program was infused with additional funding.

In the mid-1950s, von Braun relocated to the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, where he was appointed Director of the newly-established Army Ordnance Rocket Center. Accompanied by 115 of his colleagues, their families, civilian
General Electric
employees, and Army personnel with expertise in math, science, and engineering, von Braun set to work developing
Redstone, Jupiter,
and
Pershing
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS).

The influx of Germans into Huntsville transformed the sleepy North Alabama town into a mecca of scientific research and development. At first, the locals did not quite know what to make of their new neighbors, and jokingly referred to their rapidly expanding community as “Hunnsville.” In March of 1955, the German scientists, technicians, and their families were sworn in as U.S. citizens during a mass ceremony in Huntsville.

The Soviet Union, which had already established its first missile launch site, the State Central Test Range, was hard at work developing rocket-propelled weaponry. Led by Sergei Korolev, in 1953, the Soviets unveiled their
R-7
rocket. With 20 individual kerosene and liquid oxygen-burning engines, the powerful R-7 was capable of producing 1.1 million pounds of thrust.

In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, wary of the escalating
Arms Race,
proposed an
Open Skies
policy to the Soviet Union, whereby the two countries would employ reconnaissance aircraft to monitor each other’s military build-up. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev immediately rejected Eisenhower’s proposal, believing the U.S. was seeking a convenient means of spying on its rival. By now, Khrushchev was convinced that missile technology would enable the Soviet Union to compete against the United States in the nuclear arms race. In 1956, the Soviet Premier, a master bluffer, boasted that his country was on the verge of possessing “a guided missile with a hydrogen warhead that can fall anywhere in the world.” Having established a frightening foothold, the
Cold War
would dominate East/West relations for the next half-century.

Midway through the 1950s, America’s German-born rocket scientists had improved V-2 technology, producing the
Redstone
rocket—America’s first medium-range ballistic missile, and the vehicle that would ultimately launch the first astronauts into space. Missiles with nuclear warheads, however, remained only a means to an end for Wernher von Braun. A master publicist, von Braun correctly sensed the best way to promote his dream of space exploration was to reach out to the general public. In 1947, he had published
The Mars Project,
a novel which told the story of a mission to the Red Planet, stimulating the curiosity of America’s space enthusiasts. From 1952 through 1954,
Collier’s
magazine featured an eight-part series on space exploration. Von Braun authored the first article, entitled
Man Will Conquer Space.
In a later edition of the widely-read periodical, von Braun predicted a manned mission to Mars would occur within the next 25 years: “There are no problems involved to which we don’t have the answers, or the ability to find them—right now.”

By the end of the decade, von Braun’s lifelong dream would finally come true. The United States and the Soviet Union would be head-to-head competitors in the multi-billion dollar contest to explore space.

.

CHAPTER 4

Beep-beep

O
n October 4, 1957, the world was suddenly and unexpectedly introduced to the
Space Race.
On that brisk fall day, Americans were preoccupied with other activities. The New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers were deadlocked, one game apiece, in the World Series, while
CBS
television viewers were looking forward to the season premiere of
Leave it to Beaver.
By the time anyone in the United States was aware that the Soviet Union had launched a satellite, the spacecraft had twice orbited over North America.

Sputnik Zemlyi,
“traveling companion of the world,” was launched with little fanfare, but the world’s first satellite would dramatically change the dynamics between the two superpowers. Orbiting at 25 times the speed of sound, the tiny satellite appeared as a blinking light in the nighttime skies—a visible image of the Soviet Union’s head start in space exploration.

Sputnik
(its second name was soon dropped) was equipped with a radio transmitter, and its distinctive
beep-beep
sound was audible to short wave radio listeners throughout America. Following an elliptical 141.7 x 588 mile orbit, the Soviet satellite circled Earth once every 96 minutes and 12 seconds.
Sputnik
would remain in orbit, taunting the free world, until January of 1958, when it finally burned up re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower attempted to diminish the significance of the
Sputnik
launch, describing the satellite as “one small ball in the air, something which does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota.” Eisenhower’s assessment, however, was in the minority, as reflected in the words of the powerful Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon B. Johnson: “The real meaning of the satellite is that we can no longer consider the Soviet Union to be a nation years behind us in scientific research and industrial capability.” The flamboyant Texan, known to Washington insiders as the
Master of the Senate,
issued a shrill warning to his countrymen that the Soviets would soon “be dropping bombs on us from space, like kids dropping rocks from freeway overpasses.” Many other influential leaders echoed Johnson’s warning. The
Washington Post likened
the
Sputnik
launch to the Japanese bombardment of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; a point in time when the United States had been caught totally unprepared.

Alarmists, clearly in the majority, declared the Russians had mounted an insurmountable lead in the Space Race. Many political and military leaders, all but hysterical, worried the Soviet Union would soon be launching nuclear weapons from space. England’s
Manchester Guardian
offered a grave, yet misguided warning: “Russians can now build ballistic missiles capable of hitting any chosen target, anywhere in the world.” A proud and bellicose Nikita Khrushchev stoked anxious fires burning outside the Iron Curtain, boasting that the Soviet Union could launch nuclear missiles
anytime
and
anywhere
it wanted.

The profound practical and psychological implications of
Sputnik
jump-started America’s entry into the Space Race. Many politicians, fearful of being regarded as
soft
on Communism during the red-baiting, Cold War era, exploited the fears of their fellow citizens. On November 25, 1957, Lyndon Johnson initiated congressional hearings to determine how best to stimulate the country’s fledgling space program. In short order, Johnson, who had his eye set on the presidency in 1960, was appointed Chairman of the Special Committee on Space and Astronauts. Other presidential aspirants, including the Democratic junior Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, amplified Johnson’s clarion call.

Led by scientist and engineer, Sergei Korolev, the Soviet Union was well on its way toward establishing a formidable space program. In 1955, construction had begun on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Soviet-controlled Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan. Protected by heavy military guard, Baikonur was a top secret “closed city,” where in totalitarian fashion, research, development, and implementation of the Soviet space program were hidden from the world. Only the cameras of American U-2 spy planes were privy to the activities at Baikonur. With its powerful
R-7
rocket having already proven that it could launch a satellite into orbit, the Soviet Union was preparing to leave its Cold War rival in the starting blocks.

President Eisenhower, ever calm during real or perceived crises, was clearly aware that Soviet rocket technology was vastly overrated, and knew the so-called
missile gap
was politically-inspired fiction. Detailed photographs taken during U-2 flights over the Soviet Union had provided the President with evidence that Khrushchev’s dire warnings about the numerical superiority of his country’s nuclear missiles were largely boastful rhetoric. Unwilling to publicly reveal the clandestine nature of the U-2 program, Eisenhower played his top secret cards close to the vest, and chose not to refute the errant cries of missile gap proponents.

Just under a month after its inaugural triumph, the Soviet Union launched
Sputnik 2,
a 1,120-pound satellite (the size of a small car), transporting a canine passenger into orbit.
Laika
(Russian for “barkerÝ), the world’s first
space dog,
could indeed be heard barking over the satellite radio transmitter—proof positive that living creatures could survive, at least for a short time, in zero gravity. In spite of growing anxiety over the twin Soviet successes, the American press lampooned the satellite as
Muttnik
and
Poochnik. Laika
died after four days in orbit, either from oxygen deprivation, overheating, or poison injection, the latter of which the Soviets considered more humane, since the satellite could not be recovered.
Laika’s
death enraged American dog owners, who found yet another reason to despise the Godless Communists.

During the next three years, the Soviet Union would launch more
Sputnik
satellites. None, however, would have the same startling impact as the very first one.

America’s first attempt to join the Space Race ended in failure. Temporarily shunning the expertise of the German-born rocket scientists at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal, the Eisenhower Administration opted to utilize the Navy’s
Vanguard
rockets to launch the country’s first orbiting satellite. A measure of anti-German prejudice still permeated the government’s leadership, so the “made in America” Navy rockets were given the first chance to make history. Werner von Braun shared his disappointment: “This is not a design contest. It is a contest to get a satellite into orbit, and we are way ahead on this.”

On December 6, 1957, a large contingent of reporters and cameramen gathered at Cape Canaveral to witness the
Vanguard
rocket attempt to launch a 3.2-pound satellite into orbit. The rocket managed to lift four feet off the ground, before collapsing into a ball of fire. The grapefruit-sized satellite somehow managed to roll away from the launch pad inferno unscathed, prompting
New York Journal American
columnist, Dorothy Kilgallen, to quip: “Why doesn’t somebody go out there and kill it?”

The media lampooned the failed launch as
Flopnik, Kaputnik, and Stayputnik.
Von Braun found it increasingly difficult to contain his frustration: “…We could have done this with our Redstone (missile) two years ago…
Vanguard will
never make it…We have the hardware on the shelf…For God’s sake, turn us loose and let us do something.”

In November of 1957, less than a month before the
Vanguard
fiasco, the government had finally given a green light to the German rocket scientists at Redstone Arsenal, allowing them to participate in the satellite launch program. Eighty-nine days later, on January 31, 1958,
Explorer 1
was launched into space by a
Juno
rocket (a modified
Redstone
missile). The satellite entered an elliptical, 220 x 156 mile orbit, and traveling at 18,000 mph, circled the Earth once every 114.8 minutes. The cylindrical-shaped American satellite, 80 inches long and weighing only 12 pounds, and was mocked by Soviet Premier Khrushchev as an “orbiting grapefruit.” The American news media, on the other hand, excitedly exaggerated the significance of the orbital milestone: “The 119 days between
Sputnik 1
and
Explorer were
as important to the U.S.…as any similar span in history.”

The
Explorer 1
satellite proved to be an unqualified success, orbiting the Earth 58,000 times before burning on re-entry in March of 1970. Among the satellite’s accomplishments was the discovery of the
Van Allen Belt.
Utilizing sophisticated sensory equipment,
Explorer 1
verified that a zone of trapped radiation encircled the Earth at altitudes greater than 600 miles—a protective cover against potentially deadly celestial radiation.

The struggling
Vanguard
satellite program suffered another setback on January 25, 1958, when the launch rocket’s first stage engine malfunctioned, 14 seconds before ignition. Finally, on March 17
^th
of that same year, a
Vanguard
satellite was successfully sent aloft; the spacecraft, which has measured the Earth and Sun’s gravitational fields, solar winds, and atmospheric conditions, remains in orbit, yet today. The last successful
Vanguard
launch occurred in March of 1959, but the beleaguered Navy program’s success rate was far from spectacular; only three of its eleven satellites made it into orbit.