On Pain of Extinction

Just when U.S. space achievements were beginning to make up for Sputnik jolts to the U.S.'s pride and prestige, the Russians sent their Lunik soaring far beyond where any man-made object had ever penetrated before. Once again the world marveled at the U.S.S.R.'s technological prowess. Pressing and immediate question: Why is the U.S. still lagging in a race that may decide whether freedom has any future?

"The Russians' secret weapon," says a U.S. space expert, "is their early start." The U.S.S.R. began working on long-range ballistic missiles soon after World War II. The U.S. did not push ballistic-missile development until 1954, after U.S. physicists decided that they could do what they had said was impossible: make a nuclear warhead light enough to be carried in the nose of a missile.

Despite those lost years, the U.S. has just about closed the ballistic-missile gap. As most U.S. missilemen see it, the U.S.'s ballistic missiles are, militarily speaking, superior to the U.S.S.R.'s. The Russian rocket that carried the Lunik into orbit produced a lot more thrust than any U.S. missile, but if the military job of a ballistic missile is to travel accurately from one point on the globe to another with a warhead in its nose, U.S. missiles appear fit to do the job at least as well as their bulkier Russian counterparts.

But in its concentration on closing the military-missile gap, the Eisenhower Administration neglected the less pressing, less obvious challenge of space. While the Russians were working on big rockets capable of carrying hefty objects into outer space, U.S. missilemen were working on lighter, slimmer, more "sophisticated" missiles--marvels of engineering, but designed for earthly military tasks. Only in mid-1955, as part of the U.S.'s International Geophysical Year effort, did the U.S. at long last undertake its first serious satellite project, and even then the Eisenhower Administration, deciding to keep space research "peaceful" and separate from ballistic-missile programs, settled for sluggish, buggish Project Vanguard (TIME, Oct. 21, 1957).

Two Domains. Scurrying to make up for lost time after Sputnik I, the U.S. has put five satellites into orbit (Explorers I, III and IV, Vanguard, Atlas); fired two near-miss lunar probes (Pioneers I and III); started on an array of other satellite or space-probe projects; let development contracts with the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation Inc. for space-rocket engines with thrusts of 1,000,000 lbs. or more; pushed a man-in-space undertaking, Project Mercury, that is scheduled for announcement this month. But despite the flurry of projects, the U.S. has made disappointingly little progress toward deciding on large, long-range space objectives and creating organizations to carry them out.

Many of the Administration's scientific brains, from Presidential Adviser James R. Killian down, have proved to be naysayers and quibblers, among other things stirring up a futile, irrelevant dispute over whether space is a "civilian" or "military" realm. Reflecting this dispute, U.S. space programs are split between two bureaucratic domains: the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency and the civilian-bossed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (see chart). On paper the division is clear and logical: ARPA, headed by sometime General Electric Executive Roy Johnson, oversees military projects (the Discoverer eye-in-the-sky program, a 1,000,000-lb.-thrust multi-chamber rocket engine); NASA, under Engineer T. Keith Glennan, oversees civilian projects (Project Mercury, a 1,000,000-lb.-thrust single-chamber engine). But the division is arbitrary, a response to prejudices and rivalries rather than to the realities of the challenge. More serious than the inevitable duplications between ARPA and NASA is the fact that neither agency has the scope, resources or authority to undertake grand-scale projects or set long-range goals.

In theory, satellite policymaking is done by the high-level National Aeronautics and Space Council, chaired by President Eisenhower. But NASC is a committee, with all a committee's shortcomings; so far it has met a total of only three times. Wrote New York Times Military Columnist Hanson W. Baldwin last week: "There are any number of men [in Washington] who can say no to suggested space projects. There are very few men who can or will say yes."

Two Perils. The Administration's fundamental failure has been its reluctance to face the hard fact that the space program must be essentially a military program, however it may be bossed from the top. President Eisenhower's high-minded resolve to dedicate outer space to "peaceful purposes" does not stand up well before the arguments that 1) peaceful purposes are an integral part of the psychological cold war, in which the U.S. is already suffering from running behind; 2) the possibilities of gigantic military advantage loom for the nation that first makes space its backyard. Reported the House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration last week: "Inexorable changes in society and political power will follow the development of space capabilities; failure to take account of them would virtually be to choose the path of national extinction. Space developments already have changed the course of world history as inevitably as the discovery of America changed the history of Europe."

If the U.S. fails to grasp the cold-war challenge of space, the prediction of Hungarian-born Physicist Edward Teller may come dismally true. Asked what he expected the first U.S. spacemen to find when they get to the moon, Teller gave the grim reply: "Russians."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.