Said Lyndon Johnson, quoted in Robert A. Caro, "Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III," p. 1026. This was in 1958, when LBJ was stirring up alarm about the Russians and Sputnik. Caro says:
Dramatic though the Sputnik launchings may have been, their military significance— their significance, in other words, for America’s safety— was minimal. The launchings showed that the Russians had indeed developed rockets with more thrust than America’s, but it was not thrust but rather the rockets’ accuracy and the destructive power of the nuclear warheads they carried that would count in war, and in both accuracy and explosive power the United States was still far ahead...
... Dwight Eisenhower attempted, in the weeks after Sputnik, to reassure a jittery America... ... Eisenhower said that the satellite “does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota”; he would “rather have one good Redstone nuclear-armed missile than a rocket that could hit the moon,” he said. “We have no enemies on the moon.”... "He said... the suggested expenditures were at the expense of needed civilian expenditures and were ‘unjustifiable.’… We must remember that we are defending a way of life.” Turning America into a “garrison state” would mean taking the risk that “all we are striving to defend … could disappear.”
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28 comments:
He was right. He who controls the orbitals, controls the planet. if the US does not have an operational spaceplane, then the heads of the Air Force should be fired. We need the capability to defend our satellites, and launch kinetic energy weapons.
Soon a dog was in space, and then the herd shot around the world.
"if the US does not have an operational spaceplane, then the heads of the Air Force should be fired."
We have the X-37 secret spy plane.
I was an engineering student in college at the time and the combination of the Sputnik, which everyone thought had to have an error in the payload size, and the failure of the US attempt soon after was the cause of the hysteria. It was good for us engineers. The Congress passed the National Defense Student Loan program in 1959 and I was able to go back to school for pre-med in 1960 on it.
We soon had too many engineers, just like now.
"Soon a dog was in space..."
Muttnik redirected the Gulf Stream and England froze.
Dramatic though the Sputnik launchings may have been, their military significance— their significance, in other words, for America’s safety— was minimal.
Wrong. The ability to put something in orbit, infinitely increased the range for nuclear delivered warheads. Previously the crude ICBM, had a range of under 4,000 miles. With the ability to orbit comes the ability to "Fractional orbit" thus infinite range. 14 months after Sputnik we could:
On 18 December 1958, the launch of Atlas 10B sent the missile into orbit around the Earth (without use of an upper stage) carrying the "SCORE" (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment) communications payload. Atlas 10B/SCORE, at 8,750 lb (3,970 kg) was the heaviest man-made object then in orbit, the first voice relay satellite, and the first man-made object in space easily visible to the naked eye due to the large, mirror-polished stainless steel tank.
A 4 Ton payload is a big one...
PS: We could and would have beaten the Soviets into orbit if Eisenhower had not dictated that the US would only attempt an orbit using a special purpose "civilian" (e.g. pre-NASA) rocket rather than those evil Army Redstone rockets (e.g. von Braun's V-2 derivatives). Vanguard, the NASA rocket went 3 for 11 on launches.
Eisenhower went so far as to forbid the Army from launching a Redstone version (called Juno and Jupiter to sanitize it) into orbit. After the Soviets launched, Eisenhower took the cuffs off the Army...
The September 1956 test launch of a Jupiter-C for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency could have been the world's first satellite launch. Had the fourth stage been loaded and fueled, the nose cone would have overshot the target and entered orbit. Such a launch did not occur until early 1958 when a Juno 1 successfully launched the first United States satellite, Explorer 1,
The Cold War fueled all this. The U-2 spy plane gave us a huge intelligence bonanza against the Soviets, but we knew it had a limited shelf life, soon to be replaced by satellites.
And of course LBJ got the center of the space apparatus located in Texas. The man always had a plan--except for Vietnam.
LBJ got the biographer he deserved in Caro. Eisenhower has yet to be given the credit or the biography he deserves..
Space s the high ground. You'll want to control that.
" their significance, in other words, for America’s safety— was minimal."
Wildly incorrect. Imagine a world where the Soviets had capable ICBMs and we didn't. DO you think that they would hesitate to use them? Which then dramatically impacts our ability to deter them - in western Europe, in the Middle East, etc. And dramatically impacts our influence on the "non-aligned" nations.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
"Soon a dog was in space..."
Muttnik redirected the Gulf Stream and England froze.
And not long thereafter, New York City as well:
Wintertime in New York town
The wind blowin’ snow around
Walk around with nowhere to go
Somebody could freeze right to the bone
I froze right to the bone
New York Times said it was the coldest winter in seventeen years
I didn’t feel so cold then
As I remember it, LBJ had to fight for space on the podium to "stir up alarm" over the Russians/Sputnik.
As I remember it, the entire Western political/military/media elite went into full-scale meltdown when Sputnik was launched. The fear-mongering did not require leadership from LBJ...on this, he was along for the ride.
"" their significance, in other words, for America’s safety— was minimal."
Wildly incorrect. Imagine a world where the Soviets had capable ICBMs and we didn't."
The big deal about Sputnik was the payload.
had a mass of 83.6 kilograms (184 lb)
Vanguard Payload: 9.00 kg (19.80 lb)
The first reports were thought to be in error because "nobody" could put 183 pounds in orbit. Well, they did. That mean that Soviet ICBMs could lift their heavier H bombs.
The U 2 was flying when I was an engineer in 1959 and we knew how high it could go (90,000 feet) and it is still flying.
Oh ye of little imagination. Oh ye of little appreciation of physics and orbital mechanics. Oh ye who've never bothered to think about man-made SMODs. If you genuinely control space, you can rain down havoc, via kinetic bombardment, of the sort that ended the dinosaurs — without ever having to use a nuke.
@ David: The choice of Houston as the location for what's now the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center actually came during the Kennedy Administration, at a time when LBJ had ceded virtually all of his power (as "Master of the Senate") to become Veep. There were indeed some good reasons to locate it in Houston, but it's also tempting to say that the decision was in part a sop to LBJ. But of course, the reason LBJ was Veep was because Kennedy desperately needed Texas' electoral votes in 1960, and anticipated needing them again in 1964, so it's probably more accurate to say that the choice was one of Kennedy's self-interest. (Contrast the Obama Administration's spiteful decision to deny Houston and the JSC museum and display rights to even one of the retired Space Shuttles; thus does Obama shoot the finger, metaphorically, at a state which doesn't much like him either.)
@ William: Agreed, re both Caro and Eisenhower. "Master of the Senate" is the single best book about American politics I've ever read, and the rest of the series is almost as good. I've read two interesting biographies about Ike recently -- David Nichol's Eisenhower 1956: The President's Year of Crisis--Suez and the Brink of War (2011), and Evan Thomas' Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World. Of the two, I preferred Nichol's book. But neither comes remotely close to Caro's series on LBJ in terms of scope, insight, or brilliance.
I've read all the Caro books on LBJ and I see no reason to single out Master of the Senate other than that it's very long. I think they are uniformly good.
@David @Beldar In retrospect, the decision to move manned space HQ out of Langley was seen as a good idea. Langley was the center of aeronautics work and was slow, methodical, and veyr bureaucratic in it's work practices. Every paper published internally or externally had to go across the desk of the center director for review and comments. Fine for analysis of airfoil shapes, not so good for getting to the moon before 12/31/69. (Albert Thomas in the House was probably as influential in getting the MSC (now JSC) to Houston.)
Michael K said...
The first reports were thought to be in error because "nobody" could put 183 pounds in orbit. Well, they did. That mean that Soviet ICBMs could lift their heavier H bombs.
The first Vanguard (4th Satellite) was a 3 pound payload. That shows how anemic the NASA plan was.
The first Explorer (3rd Satellite) was a 30 lb payload, and designed in 84 days by a joint Army/Navy/JPL team on a Jupiter (aka V2++) rocket
The SCORE Radio Relay satellite was a 8700 lb payload (includes the last stage when orbited) and went up in 1958
It's hard to write a dull book about the early life of Andrew Jackson, Abe Lincoln, or Teddy Roosevelt. Other presidents are more of a challenge. David McCullough is to be congratulated for his biography of Truman. McCullough found the grandeur in Truman's decency and small virtues.......Washington was probably the greatest American President. Very few world leaders were so consistently right about so many things as Washington, but he resists biography. There are no gaps in his smooth facade on which to purchase a grip......Eisenhower perhaps suffers from the same disadvantage. His surface is too even and equable. He is especially bland when you consider the Shakespearean flaws and plot lines of his immediate successors--JFK, LBJ, and Richard Nixon.
Naming Cape Canaveral for Kennedy was probably more political.
@ Prof. Althouse: All of the Caro books on LBJ are long, but worth it. As biographies I'd agree that they're all equally good.
The early books, though, brilliantly illuminate Texas and its politics; the later ones increasingly explain national politics. And "Master of the Senate" puts the focus squarely on congressional politics, about which much, much less tends to be written than presidential politics. That's why I found it to be the single best book about American politics I've ever read. But of course, your mileage may vary.
"@ Prof. Althouse: All of the Caro books on LBJ are long, but worth it."
They are all long, but Master is by far the longest.
I'm just saying that they are on a consistent level. I don't like seeing the advice that one really stands out as the best. I see the books as a multi volume story.
truly, Beldar, the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, illustrates one version, with a mass accelerator based on the moon,
Why is it that historians who demonstrate no understanding of the strategic realities of the period are considered qualified to write about what they do not know about.
Said Lyndon (I'll have those ni@@ers voting democrat for the next 200 years) Johnson.
His fully qualified name.
"@ Prof. Althouse: All of the Caro books on LBJ are long, but worth it."
They are all long, but Master is by far the longest.
Yawn. We already know LBJ was one of the worst men to ever walk the planet. Why go on and on about it? Just give us the nut: did he really have JFK murdered, or not?
"A 4 Ton payload is a big one..."
Actually, SCORE was a 4 ton satellite with a 68 kg (150 pound)payload. Although its gross weight was excellent Cold War propaganda.
In any case, the early Space Race was indeed powered by military rockets, and so the ability to orbit heavy satellites clearly advertised the ability to send thermonuclear warheads over intercontinental distances.
Although by 1970 military and space rockets had diverged: the Minuteman missile was too small to be very useful for spaceflight, and the Saturn V was far too large (and costly) to be of interest to the military.
In any case, although orbital assets are vital to the U.S. military today, physics will always make it easier to shoot down a satellite than to launch one as a satellite killer need not reach orbital velocity, it just has to be capable of reaching orbital altitude.
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