Sputnik Book
The Green Troll
> The argument that Ike welcomed the Soviets being first is based on the shaky foundation of space law at the time. No one knew if a nations airspace extended out beyond the atmosphere (or indeed to infinity- which would have meant that at different times of the day, different governments would theoretically own around 3/5th's of the entire cosmos, there ownership sweeping around the heavens like a searchlight beam due to the Earth's rotation.)
> So by allowing the Soviet Union to overfly the U.S. with a satellite and doing nothing about it, we set a precedent that national sovereignty ended with the atmosphere, and that space, like the oceans, was free to be exploited by all, as long as they posed no direct military threat to any or all nations.
When Sputnik orbited, why didn't at least one government write the
following dispatch to the USSR?
"In recognition of the experimental nature of this project, we are
more than happy to waive our usual fee of one cent per pound per mile
for unmanned scientific craft crossing above our territory. We
understand that we could not be provided advance notice because of the
difficulty of predicting the path of the craft. Please obtain
clearance for any future satellite crossings from our Ministry of
Transport."
-- Ass Tronott <http://www.rev.net/~aloe/transportation>
Greg D. Moore (Strider)
news:4614b5a2-7adc-4903...@p59g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
> "Patrick Flannery" <flan...@daktel.com> wrote:
>
> "In recognition of the experimental nature of this project, we are
> more than happy to waive our usual fee of one cent per pound per mile
> for unmanned scientific craft crossing above our territory. We
> understand that we could not be provided advance notice because of the
> difficulty of predicting the path of the craft. Please obtain
> clearance for any future satellite crossings from our Ministry of
> Transport."
Because it's a useless gesture unless it can be enforced.
--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.
Matt
> "Patrick Flannery" <flan...@daktel.com> wrote:
> > The argument that Ike welcomed the Soviets being first is based on the shaky foundation of space law at the time. No one knew if a nations airspace extended out beyond the atmosphere (or indeed to infinity- which would have meant that at different times of the day, different governments would theoretically own around 3/5th's of the entire cosmos, there ownership sweeping around the heavens like a searchlight beam due to the Earth's rotation.)
The argument that Ike welcomed or allowed a first Soviet launch is not
correct. If it were true, Ike would not have called Donald Quarles on
the carpet and demanded an explanation. Ike's chief of staff wrote
that the President was pretty hot about it. Quarles pointed out how
the Russians had "unintentionally done us a good turn" related to
space law, and Ike saw the logic but was no less incensed that we'd
handed the Russians a propaganda coup. No one in the government, then
or ever, confirmed any sort of slowdown - only a bad decision by the
Stewart Committee, which opted for the more complex Vanguard, with its
promise of better scientific return, over the Army proposal which
became Explorer.
(It is true that only a minority of the Committee members had actual
rocket expertise, and most likely accepted the Navy's claim it could
do a satellite program nearly as quickly as the Army.)
Nor is it true that a top-level decision had been made to direct the
choice to the "more civilian" Vanguard. If it had, Quarles, who was
DOD's point man in all this, would not have listened to a plea from
von Braun and his commander and reconvened the committee for another
round of presentations and a second vote.
Sometimes, believe it or not, the Government's official version turns
out to be exactly what happened.
Matt Bille
author, The FIrst Space Race: Launching the First Earth Satellites
(Texas A&M, 2004)
OM
wrote:
>Nor is it true that a top-level decision had been made to direct the
>choice to the "more civilian" Vanguard.
...However, the desire to keep the first shot out of "German" hands
has been pretty well documented. That had to have *some* effect on the
decision to go with the NRL as opposed to ABMA.
OM
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Pat Flannery
Matt wrote:
>
>
> The argument that Ike welcomed or allowed a first Soviet launch is not
> correct. If it were true, Ike would not have called Donald Quarles on
> the carpet and demanded an explanation. Ike's chief of staff wrote
> that the President was pretty hot about it. Quarles pointed out how
> the Russians had "unintentionally done us a good turn" related to
> space law, and Ike saw the logic but was no less incensed that we'd
> handed the Russians a propaganda coup. No one in the government, then
> or ever, confirmed any sort of slowdown - only a bad decision by the
> Stewart Committee, which opted for the more complex Vanguard, with its
> promise of better scientific return, over the Army proposal which
> became Explorer.
> (It is true that only a minority of the Committee members had actual
> rocket expertise, and most likely accepted the Navy's claim it could
> do a satellite program nearly as quickly as the Army.)
>
> Nor is it true that a top-level decision had been made to direct the
> choice to the "more civilian" Vanguard. If it had, Quarles, who was
> DOD's point man in all this, would not have listened to a plea from
> von Braun and his commander and reconvened the committee for another
> round of presentations and a second vote.
>
> Sometimes, believe it or not, the Government's official version turns
> out to be exactly what happened.
>
That's not the argument put forth in the book "The Heavens And The Earth".
At the time it occurred, nobody (it came as a real surprise to a
delighted Khrushchev especially) knew what the worldwide panic Sputnik
would cause, and that might have colored Eisenhower's reaction to its
aftermath.
It certainly should not have come as any surprise to the US... the
Soviets announced way back in 1954 that they intended to launch a
satellite during the IGY.
If we had felt any need to beat them to the punch, von Braun's project
could have been given the green light for launch ASAP.
After the first successful R-7 ICBM flight was announced on August 26,
1957, everyone in the know knew that the Soviets could orbit a satellite
with it in fairly short order (G. Harry Stine got fired from Martin for
pointing out right after Sputnik was launched that we knew the Soviets
had the ability to do this for some time, as he had written in his book
from April of 1957 "Earth Satellites And The race For Space
Superiority.") We had pretty good info on the R-7 before its first
successful flight via monitoring its early test flight attempts from
Turkey and U-2 overflights of Baikonur that started on August 5, 1957,
with another on August 28 of the same year, just a week after the first
successful flight.
I don't know if this is from the August 28 flight:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Baikonur_CIA_U-2.gif
...but you could tell that some very large rocket was intended to go on
that launchpad and the October Sputnik launch should have been no
surprise whatsoever.
Pat
Matt
interpretation. Mine was that the U.S., in the person of the Stewart
Committee, with no objections from Donald Quarles or anyone else high
up in DoD or the NSC, went for the better scientific return in
choosing Project Vanguard, and everyone just assumed the "backward"
Russians would not beat us to a satellite. Remember, these decisions
were made in 1955. The R-7 was not successfully testflown until
August 1957, about the time the U-2 got the first look at it, so we
did not have a good grasp of how far along they were toward a
functional ICBM (although we certainly knew of successful IRBM
flights.) The Vanguard choice did fit nicely with the classified NSC
5520 decision's reasoning about a scientific satellite establishing
freedom of space, but the Committee members were not even briefed on
5520, and, in any event, a truly civilian satellite was impossible
until we were willing to spend extra time and money transferring
military technology or even re-creating it in a civilian agency like
NACA.
There were signs before Spuntik, though, and the CIA had guessed the
likely launch date well in advance as November 1957. Nobody much
listened except von Braun and company, and even von Braun's boss,
General Medaris, who had pushed hard for an Army satellite, reassured
Wernher just beofre Sputnik that "You know how complicated it is to
launch a satellite. Those people will never do it."
As to "no Germans," Homer Joe Stewart once speculated that this might
have influenced some people on the committee he chaired, but neither
he nor anyone else ever documented that such influence was ever
exercised.
Historians will forever be miffed at Donald Quarles for dying in
office without writing a memoir, which could have cleared up a lot.
Someone should go through all his papers and do a proper biography of
this pivotal figure, but I've not heard of anyone working on it.
Regards,
Matt Bille
OM
wrote:
>Historians will forever be miffed at Donald Quarles for dying in
>office without writing a memoir, which could have cleared up a lot.
...Or not. As I found out after reading Kraft's book, sometimes the
memoirs serve only to foist one's ego.
The Green Troll
<mooregr_deletet...@greenms.com> wrote:
> "The Green Troll" <a...@rev.net> wrote in messagenews:4614b5a2-7adc-4903...@p59g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>
> > "Patrick Flannery" <flan...@daktel.com> wrote:
>
> > "In recognition of the experimental nature of this project, we are
> > more than happy to waive our usual fee of one cent per pound per mile
> > for unmanned scientific craft crossing above our territory. We
> > understand that we could not be provided advance notice because of the
> > difficulty of predicting the path of the craft. Please obtain
> > clearance for any future satellite crossings from our Ministry of
> > Transport."
>
> Because it's a useless gesture unless it can be enforced.
What's to enforce in granting a retroactive license to enter
territory? Why is the ability to enforce necessary? Has Australia
enforced its $400 fine for littering chunks of Skylab?
-- Ass Tronaut <http://www.rev.net/~aloe/transportation>