The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

The United States had worked out the cost of an earth satellite project, but it was rejected by the cost-conscious Truman administration. The US Air Force continued to dominate US attempts at rocketry, their missiles being of the cruise missile type such as the “Navajo” or the “Matador”. Von Braun’s (Army) team meanwhile had been moved to the Redstone Arsenal complex near Huntsville, Alabama where they had developed the V-2 into the Redstone, which was a tactical, battlefield missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. The successor to the Redstone was to be the Jupiter, with a range of over 2,000 miles. In 1956 von Braun’s team used the Jupiter’s Research & Development budget to fund a version of the Jupiter which would be capable of putting a satellite into orbit. The Jupiter C’s test flight delivered its nose cone 3,000 miles and reached a speed of 3,000 miles per hour, just less than the speed required for orbital injection. Meanwhile the Defense Department had decided that long-range or strategic missiles were the responsibility of the Air Force, so the Army was forbidden to produce anything with a range of over 200 miles.

When the Soviet R-7 (Semyorka) was tested on 3 August 1957, Soviet leader Mr Krushchev told the world that they had an operational ICBM. It was a bluff: it was a prototype. The USSR was not yet even developing ICBMs. On 4 October 1957 they launched Sputnik I.

On 5 October the New York Times reported: “The Device is 8 times heavier than the one planned by US.” The analyst Harry Schwarz wrote: “The competence in rocketry which that satellite shows is equally applicable to the field of weapons, particularly intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

President Eisenhower dismissed Sputnik as “one small ball in the air, something which does not raise my apprehensions, not one iota.”

When the news of Sputnik broke, the US Defense Secretary, Neil McElroy, was visiting Redstone. Von Braun appealed to him: “For God’s sake! Turn us loose and let us do something. We can put up a satellite in sixty days.” “No, Wernher, ninety days,” said a colleague.

The Soviets put up Sputnik II on 4 November 1957 and on 8 November the Army was given the authorization to make two satellite attempts. They succeeded in putting Explorer into orbit on 31 January 1958. Von Braun was summoned to Washington and his team handled the launch without him. The astronaut Buzz Aldrin wrote: