1862 



However, some elements of the IGY required government support 

 for logistics and technical equipment. One such program was the 

 elaborate series of studies in Antarctica. These led to the felicitous 

 Antarctic Treaty, which might reasonably be considered as a model 

 for extension to other geographic areas. Another was the effort by two 

 technologically advanced countries to place in orbit an instrumented 

 satelUte. 



The Soviet Union announced the intention to orbit a satellite 

 April 16, 1955. The United States gave slight attention to the Soviet 

 announcement but announced, July 29, 1955, its own plan to orbit a 

 satellite. The Soviet effort succeeded October 4, 1957. After a number 

 of well-publicized failures, the United States succeeded some months 

 later, but the success was largely eclipsed by subsequent Soviet 

 achievements with successively larger payloads. 



It is interesting to note that the "science office" of the Department 

 of State was inactive during the years 1955-57, and was restored only 

 after the first Soviet sputnik achievement. 



Despite the extraordinary impact of the Soviet sputnik on U.S. 

 space activities, education, military research and development, and 

 science advisory organizations in the Executive Office of the President, 

 the Department of State was only modestly affected. While it is 

 understandable that diplomats in the Department of State could 

 regard the basic scientific aspects of the IGY as outside their scope of 

 concern (as well as their competence), they might still have been 

 watchful for the diplomatic implications of the program as a whole — 

 and those of its major geographic features. For example: Might the 

 cooperative principles developed in Antarctica be extended northward 

 and even into the Indian Ocean? What were the implications of 

 offshore research for a future seabed treaty and for resolving the 

 thorny questions of seaward territorial limits? What positive implica- 

 tions might be found in the move toward nuclear-free zones? What 

 would be the implications for national sovereignty of all the elements 

 of the IGY, taken together, including the prospective overflights of 

 numerous instrumented satellites? What durable and useful multi- 

 lateral institutions and understandings outside the traditional diplo- 

 matic sphere might be initiated and nourished by the IGY for future 

 projects to build on? How might the developing countries benefit most 

 from the IGY? What new opportunities were there to cement a more 

 constructive and cooperative world community of nations? 



Because of the absence of an orderly mechanism for long-range 

 diplomatic planning, closely linked to the centers of political power in 

 the United States, these larger questions appear to have gone un- 

 explored. And U.S. decisionmaking machinery was soon to be over- 

 loaded with the problem of reacting expensively on a short time scale 

 to an alleged "missile gap," an apparent lag in the technology of 

 nuclear delivery systems, the space race, the decline in U.S. tech- 

 nological prestige abroad, the Cuban threat, and unrest in Southeast 

 Asia. In all these fields of action the United States lost control of the 

 situation and sought instead to react to outside forces and develop- 

 ments, piecemeal and incrementally. 



