Sputnik Rumors Revisited - Confirmed and Unconfirmed

Last night PBS aired NOVA: Sputnik Declassified shedding even more light on a topic that I’d blogged about earlier. For those of you who didn’t catch the show:

In 1955, President Eisenhower wanted information about Soviet ballistic missiles and formed a secret commission headed by Dr. James Killian (then head of M.I.T) to analyze the situation and provide recommendations. Recommendation number 10 of the commission’s report was to develop spy satellites (NOVA only shows that particular recommendation, I wonder what the other 9 were? Or, if there were more than 10?). But that recommendation triggered a question that no one on the commission or in the administration could answer: How would the Soviet Union react to a fly over by a U.S. satellite? What was the legal status of space?

To establish a legal precedent for the neutrality of space and the legality of spy satellites, Ike and his advisors decide to take advantage of the International Geophysical Year (1957 – 1958) and launch a civilian scientific satellite. The request for proposals go to two groups: a team at the U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL) with a rocket called Vanguard and a team comprised of engineers under Wernher von Braun at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). Their rocket is called Jupiter-C.

In a controversial decision, the Eisenhower administration picks the NRL team over the von Braun-JPL team. NOVA points out that the Navy’s team (1) had the better satellite, (2) would use a brand new rocket not associated with a military weapon (more in keeping with the goal of establishing the neutrality of space), and (3) that there was resentment within the Pentagon against von Braun and his history with the Nazis. Considering that Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied commander in WWII and had led the effort to defeat the Nazis, I personally think that this had a lot to do with it.

But von Braun and his team are undeterred and decide to keep working in secret. Apparently rumors do start to circulate that von Braun is disregarding his direct order not to launch a satellite and a year later, 1956, the Army orders an audit during a key test of the Jupiter-C rocket. At this point one of the engineers being interviewed admits that during the audit he hid the satellite in the trunk of his car. NOVA doesn’t say so explicitly but it seems plausible that the auditors were on hand to make sure that von Braun and his team did not “accidentally” launch a satellite into orbit during the test. In the end, the Jupiter-C goes up with a dummy satellite that does not have the second and third stage engines necessary for orbit. The flight is flawless.

After the test, von Braun and his team keep another rocket stored in a warehouse, ready to go. On inventory records they list it as part of an experiment to see if rockets could be stored for long periods and still work.

I was waiting at this point for a mention of the court martial of Col. Nickerson (detailed in my previous post) as an outcome of the audit. But NOVA provided no information.

Now, time to fast forward. The Soviet Union launches Sputnik in October 1957. Two months later, on nationwide live TV, the Navy’s Vanguard rocket rises majestically a few feet off its pad, sinks slowly backward, and then explodes in spectacular fashion (See it here).























Von Braun and his team get the call and he says he’ll have it all done by the end of January 1958. He does.

So, for those of you keeping score:

CONFIRMED
1) The U.S. could have orbited a satellite before the Soviet Union.
2) Von Braun was working in secret to launch a satellite.
3) Word leaked out about von Braun’s work and this triggered additional oversight from the U.S. Army.

PLAUSIBLE BUT STILL UNCONFIRMED
1) Col. Nickerson was court martialed because of von Braun’s secret satellite plan.