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The Lift Off Explorer Led The Way

Iven C. Kincheloe, Jr. was typical of those young Americans who fought the Communist threat in the skies over Korea. Born on July 2, 1928 in Detroit, Michigan, he entered the Air Force under the cadet program at Purdue University. While a member of the AFROTC, he was sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in July 1948 for summer training. The next year he graduated from Purdue with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and in August 1950, he was awarded USAF pilot wings at Williams AFB, Arizona. For the next year he served in the U.S. and in September 1951, he arrived in Korea where he flew F-80s on 30 missions and F-86s on 101 missions. Before he returned to the U.S. in May 1952, he had downed five MiG-15s, becoming our nation's 10th jet ace. Many types of testing were being done at Edwards but the most exciting was the advanced research work. Test pilots assigned to advanced research work flew the mysterious "X" planes designed not for combat but to investigate the phenomena of high speed flight at high altitudes. Its motto was AD IN EXPLORATA, Toward the Unknown. In 1955, Kincheloe became a test pilot and was assigned to Edwards. On September 7, 1956, he piloted the Bell X-2 rocket-powered research airplane more than 2,000 mph and to 126,200 ft., the highest altitude to which man had ever flown. For this spectacular flight, he was awarded the Mackay Trophy and nicknamed "America's No. 1 Spaceman". Kincheloe was then selected to be the USAF pilot to fly the famous X-15 rocket plane still under construction. However, he was killed while taking off in an F-104 from Edwards on July 26, 1958. The F-104 was a, and is, a mean airplane. Although it was almost fifty-five feet long, its stubby wings spanned only twenty-two feet. Its gliding angle was straight down and pilots respectfully dubbed it the "missile-with-a-man-in-it." Another feature was the pilot's ejection system. Instead of ejecting upward through the canopy, the pilot shot himself downward out of the airplane. Kincheloe climbed to almost two thousand feet when suddenly the engine quit. Immediately the plane began to fall, and Kincheloe was already too low to eject downward, while he still had control of the plane, he began to roll it over on its back, calling over the radio, "Edwards, Mayday Seven Seventy-two, bailing out." The plane was almost inverted when Kincheloe ejected, his parachute still unfurling, followed into the flames. Captain Iven Carl Kincheloe, Jr. was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on August 1, 1958. The X-15 makes history. On June 27, 1962, Joseph A. Walker flew it at 4,105 miles per hour and Major Bob White, Kincheloe's alternate, reached an altitude of 314,750 feet (59.6 miles) on July 17, 1962, fulfilling the dream of America's first spaceman.

The story of how humanity first managed to break free of its cradle, earth, and venture into the vastness of space begins, appropriately enough, with an international conference. Convened in Rome in October of 1954 to plan the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958, the gathering of scientists from forty different countries resulted in a far-ranging plan of experiments and exploration in disciplines as varied as physics, geology, meteorology, and aerospace. Of all the ambitious objectives the participants sought to undertake, the most novel was the plan to launch a small satellite into earth orbit.

A modest goal by modern standards, the plan to send a basketball-sized probe containing few (if any) scientific instruments into orbit around the earth seemed a fantastic notion to the average American when it was formally introduced in July 1955. As a result of the Rome conference and in cooperation with other countries, the U.S. government announced its intent to play the leading role in the satellite launch.

Following a familiar pattern, the government of the Soviet Union also announced a plan to send a satellite into orbit during the International Geophysical Year. The American move was both strategic and tactical, and its aims were political as well as scientific. Far beyond the obvious benefits to space science that would result from the development of the equipment, systems, and procedures necessary to create and launch the satellite, the U.S. effort was also calculated as a means to outpace the USSR's increasingly optimistic pronouncements about the progress of its own space plans. Thus the seeds of the space race, as it would become known in earnest within the next decade, were sown in the mid-1950s.

Spoils of War, Visions of Space

For both the United States and the USSR, the first fruits of the Allied victory in World War II included a generous portion of German rocket technology, as well as many of the scientists and technicians who had developed it. Of particular interest to both sides was the German V-2 rocket; many of the Soviets' earliest steps toward space were based on further development of the basic V-2, and the United States began firing captured V-2s as well as American-made counterparts in White Sands, New Mexico, in 1946.

The Soviets incorporated many German technicians into their rocket development efforts immediately after the war, gaining the benefit of their expertise and then gradually allowing them to return to Germany in the early 1950s. But, fearing Soviet retribution for Hitler's savage Russian campaigns, a large majority of the most sought-after German scientists surrendered to the Western Allies at the end of the war. As a result, the United States received the lion's share of V-2 rocket expertise, including the skills of pioneering space scientists Hermann Oberth and Wernher von Braun.

Given the political and social climate of the day, with the former allies sliding precariously into the first decade of the nuclear age and the initial years of the cold war, it seems inevitable - and in many ways beneficial - that the United States and USSR would embark on a decade-long competition to send first satellites, then human beings, into orbit and eventually to the moon. The two nations' race to develop their space programs coincided with the initial stage of their harrowing development of vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Locked into an arms race that by its nature provided no hope of victory but at the same time gave neither side any practical way to withdraw, America and the Soviet Union feverishly pursued the benefits of propaganda and prestige that early hegemony in space could provide.

From the beginning, the contest of technologies and engineering skills reflected the central tenets of each nation's belief system. Superiority in the space race was increasingly seen as a validation of national pride and the preeminence of one way of life over the other. And even as the cold war ground on, with its intransigent nuclear adversaries a world apart in ideology as well as geography, humanity's shared preoccupation with space offered a proving ground for the first great superpowers that reduced their potential for fatal miscalculation more than any comparable earthbound alternative.

First Sounds from Space: Sputnik 1

On October 4, 1957, 10:28 p.m. Moscow time, the USSR launched the Sputnik 1 satellite from a site in Tyuratam, in Soviet Central Asia. A simple device, an aluminum sphere with four antennas and a radio transmitter, Sputnik 1 was the first human-made object to orbit the earth. The space age had begun.

U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower, meanwhile, sought to downplay the military significance of Sputnik 1. In several major speeches, he reassured the American people that the Soviet space probe presented no practical military threat, and he repeatedly stated that he was confident that an American satellite would soon be joining Sputnik 1 in the heavens. Eisenhower is often represented as having underestimated the importance of the Soviets' fast start in space, but the gradual declassification of documents from the early cold-war era indicate otherwise. Details of the Naval Research Laboratory's Galactic Radiation and Background (GRAB) satellite, for example, demonstrate the president's clear understanding of the intelligence benefits of the early space program.

Design work on the GRAB satellite began within a year of the first Sputnik flight, and the odd-shaped ball - looking much like an old-fashioned deep-sea diver's helmet with too many view holes - was launched on June 22, 1960. The launch took place just five days after U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down by the Soviets in his U-2 spy plane. Powers's capture led to an embarrassing public disclosure of American spying techniques, and added a bit of tarnish to Eisenhower's considerable reputation as an exceptional commander in chief. Only a small handful of government officials were aware at the time that the country's spying efforts were already advancing into space, a fact that, had it been disclosed, might well have laid to rest a good deal of public anxiety about the so-called missile gap between the United States and USSR.'

The president's insistence that the United States was not far behind the Soviets generally fell on deaf ears in Congress and the media, and the issue grew in stature during the 1960 presidential campaign between Eisenhower's vice president, Richard M. Nixon, and Democratic challenger John F. Kennedy.

Well Ahead of Sputnik: Early U.S. Satellite Surveillance

In retrospect, it is obvious that Eisenhower understood the need for American space successes that could be made public. At the same time, he was also aware that such a program would be a long, arduous undertaking that would require years of hard work before the United States could surpass the Soviets. The secret spy satellite, on the other hand, was immediately useful in the short term for detecting Russian air defenses, and arguably put the United States well ahead of the Soviets in the burgeoning space race. In fact, the only major drawback of the tiny GRAB device was that the government couldn't tell anyone about it. (The satellite's existence was made public by the Naval Research Lab and the National Reconnaissance Office in June 1998, in honor of the navy lab's seventy-fifth anniversary).

The American path into space featured several roads being traveled all at once, with separate systems being developed by the Naval Research Laboratory, the army, and the air force. The navy's Vanguard program got the initial go-ahead, but lost its chance to put the first U.S. satellite into orbit with an early-December failure of its three-stage test vehicle.

The Air Force became seriously interested in space. Following the Soviet Union's successful Sputnik satellite launch in 1957, the air staff envisioned the need to command the heavens as well as the skies. NORAD's mission expanded to include space concerns in 1959, leading to origin of the term "aerospace" as a unified concept of aviation and space exploration. Admiral Arleigh Burke, chief of naval operations, suggested a unified space command for greater efficiency, and was supported by the U.S. Army. However, the Air Force balked at losing some of its hard-won autonomy and continued with its own program.

The launch of Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958, led the way into space for the United States. The tiny satellite lifted off atop a modified Jupiter rocket developed in large part from the blueprint of the German V-2 and the expertise of Wernher von Braun. While primarily remembered for redeeming America's viuue in light of the achievements of the first two Sputniks, Explorer 1 also demonstrated the practical scientific value of space exploration, as it discovered the earth's radiation belts, later named for Dr. James Van Allen, who had the foresight to equip the tiny satellite with a Geiger counter. Khrushchev ridiculed Explorer 1 for its small size, but made no mention of a subsequent Soviet failure the following month.

The Vanguard program redeemed itself handsomely in March of that same year, lifting Vanguard 1 into an orbit that it maintains to this day. In fact, Vanguard 1 is expected to remain in orbit for the next 250 years or so, until sometime around 2250.

U.S. attempts to equal the Soviet moon accomplishments were hindered by a series of failed launches in 1958 and 1959. In March of 1959 the American Pioneer satellite shot past the moon and into orbit around the sun, as Luna 1 had a few months earlier. Three more American lunar probes failed even to reach earth orbit between November 1959 and the end of 1960, and American attempts to reach the moon then ended until the advent of the Lunar Orbiter, Ranger, and Surveyor projects of the mid-1960s.

The main accomplishments of the U.S. program in the late 1950s were more organizational than operational. Acutely aware of the need to appropriately separate civilian and military authority based on his own experiences as supreme commander of Allied forces in World War II, President Eisenhower suggested to Congress in April 1958 that the U.S. space program be placed under civilian control. Given the climate of the time, with Americans' fear running rampant in response to the tensions generated by the arms race, the cold war, and the USSR's Sputnik successes, it was a courageous decision.

Congress agreed that the exploration and potential development of space should be governed by civilian rather than military authority, and as a result, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was formed on October 1, 1958, with T. Keith Glennan as its first administrator. NASA absorbed the former National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which had been established in 1915, and assumed complete responsibility for America's space program, except for those activities necessary for national defense, which would remain the responsibility of the military.

Eisenhower's foresight effectively ended the interservice squabbling that characterized the attempts to launch the first U.S. satellite, and opened the space agency to a wider array of engineering and scientific talent. Perhaps most important of all, it established an aura of civilian participation that would seem in later years to give average Americans a stake in the program's success or failure. The connection between the support of the general public and the agency's ability to receive and maintain the funding necessary for its eventual trip to the moon was fundamental from the very beginning.

The wide involvement of ordinary citizens also spoke to the basic American ideal of honest and open government. Inherent in NASA's role as America's civilian space authority is the promise that at each step along the way, in success or failure, the agency will be accountable to the American people.

As the decade came to an end, so did the first phase of space exploration. The Soviets had achieved about all that their technology would allow at that time, and had exhausted the propaganda benefits of their considerable space achievements. The USSR's early lead in the space race had paid handsome earthbound benefits, especially in the growing perception that superior Soviet rocket technology had allowed them to produce more intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The resulting "missile gap" was nervously discussed throughout Eisenhower's final two years in office, and furiously debated during the 1960 presidential campaign.

During the same period, the U.S. effort to keep pace with the Soviet program was hampered by the Americans' inability to develop a powerful, reliable rocket system that could consistently send even small spacecraft into orbit. The American public bristled at the maddening spectacle of successive launch failures, and grew increasingly worried about the broader implications of the seemingly unbroken string of Soviet achievements.

Once the Korean War had been negotiated to a standoff early in Eisenhower's first term, the United States enjoyed a brief period of respite from active combat and a general boost in prosperity for a majority of its citizens. The American economy saw a rapid and sustained expansion throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, and by mid-decade the country's workforce shifted officially into the postindustrial age, as whitecollar workers outnumbered their blue-collar counterparts for the first time in American history.

The president himself became the overriding symbol of peace and progress; as an impeccably "nonpolitical" politician, he skillfully translated his World War II leadership skills into the civilian authority of the presidency, and his confidence was reflected in the self-assurance of his constituents.

But as the decade came to a close, it was clear to most Americans that the United States was behind in the nascent field of space technology, and anxiety about the arms race, the cold war, and the Sputniks reached a peak as the nation pondered its future course at the end of Eisenhower's second and final term as president.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new, terrifying theater of war.

John F. Kennedy
September 12, 1962

Patrick J. Walsh. NASA Lifts Off: The 1950s. Echoes Among the Stars: A Short History of the U.S. Space Program. M. E. Sharpe. 2000.

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