435 



Technocracy and Statecraft in the Space Age 1017 



special pleaders portrayed Sputnik as a symbol of a general American malaise: 

 flabby education, denigration of "egghead" scientists, complacency, and con- 

 sumerism demanded a national soul-searching. Life magazine "argued the case 

 for being panicky," and Bernard Baruch prophesied, "If America ever crashes, 

 it will be in a two-tone convertible." But historians must avoid reading back into 

 the 1940s and 1950s the assumptions of the Space Age itself. The Truman 

 administration had cancelled the first satellite and ICBM programs begun in 

 1945 by the Naval Research Laboratory and the Air Force, because no cost- 

 effective mission for large rockets existed until the building of compact, light 

 hydrogen bombs after 1954. Even then. Nelson Rockefeller was almost alone in 

 warning that the prestige value of the first satellite "makes this a race that we 

 cannot afford to lose."'^ In those years Europe and East Asia were on the front 

 lines of the Cold War, the Red Army and Communist subversion the main 

 threats, the Strategic Air Command and the Central Intelligence Agency the 

 requisite deterrents. A prestige race for "hearts and minds" in a barely emergent 

 Third World in which preeminence in space was to play a major role was 

 inconceivable to Eisenhower before Sputnik I and financially reckless thereafter. 

 Meanwhile, the impending Soviet missile capability, watched closely by the 

 White House throughout the 1950s, suggested not panic but disarmament 

 talks. '^ The Soviet "coming of age," with its implied threat to the United States, 

 was an apt moment for international control of weapons threatening the entire 

 planet. But far from altering forever the ebb and flow of rivalry and balance of 

 power, the new technologies only reinforced political factors to stymie such 

 control. The tempting utility of thermonuclear missile forces in surprise attack, 

 the long lead times of complex missile and defense systems, the possibility of 

 "technological surprise" for purposes of political blackmail, and the insurmount- 

 able problems of verification of disarmament — all weighed against a diplomatic 

 formula for arms control.'^ The absence of diplomatic solutions was a boon to 

 space technology, which would have encountered an ironic hurdle if "outer 

 space missiles," as they were called, had been banned or severely controlled at 

 the outset. Other strategic imperatives favored rapid development of space 

 technology regardless of presidential will or world view. First, the simple fact 

 that the Cold War pitted an open society against a closed one placed a premium 

 on surreptitious surveillance techniques for the United States, whether an arms 



" On early American satellite proposals, see R. Cargill Hall, "Earth Satellites: A First Look by the U.S. Navy," 

 paper presented at the Fourth History Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics, held in 

 October 1970; and RAND SM-11827, "Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship," 

 May 2. 1946. Rockefeller's comments were attached to NSC 5520, "Satellite Program," May 20, 1955, Dwight 

 David Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kans. 



' The American intelligence community estimated in January 1955 that the Soviet Union would have 

 o/xraftoTuj/ intercontinental ballistic missiles by 1963 — 1960 at the earliest; the estimates, though not far wrong, 

 ignored the political impact of the earlier test rockets, such as the ones that launched the Sputniks. "Basic 

 National Security Policy. " January 7, 1955, Eisenhower Library, NSC 5501. 



" Eisenhower had called for United Nations control of "outer space missiles" in January 1957 as well as 

 "Open Skies" for monitormg disarmament in 1955, and he began negotiations for a nuclear test ban in 1958. 

 See James Killian, Sputnik. Snenluts. and Eisenhower: A Memoir nf the first Special Assistant to the President for Science 

 and rcf/ino/og^ (Cambridge, Mass., 1977); and Rolxrt A. Dnwe.BlouingonlhfWind: The ,\iuleiir Test Ban Debate. 

 1954-1960 (London. 1978). 



