Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

IMaGINING aN aerOSpaCe aGeNCY IN the atOMIC aGe
U.S. foreign policy since “the inference of such a demonstration of advanced
technology and its unmistakable relationship to inter-continental ballistic missile
technology might have important repercussions on the political determination
of free world countries to resist Communist threats, especially if the U.S.S.r.
were to be the frst to establish a satellite.” 20
the NSC concluded the U.S. scientifc satellite efort should not hinder
military missile developments and, therefore, should be vested in a separate,
civilian-run program headed by the National Science Foundation. It is absolutely
clear that the eisenhower administration intended to use the satellite launch to
reinforce american scientifc prowess in the international arena.
the fact that prestige was an important element after that fateful October
4 and during the formative period of NaSa is uncontroversial. In a pSaC
meeting in March 1958, hans Bethe commented, “it would be a great mistake
for us to oppose popular enthusiasm even though misguided. 21 and in a recently
declassifed Ofce of research and Intelligence report issued just two weeks
after Sputnik on October 17, 1957, it was concluded:
the technologically less advanced—the audience most
impressed and dazzled by the sputnik [sic]—are often the audience
most vulnerable to the attractions of the Soviet system
. . . It will generate myth, legend and enduring superstition of
a kind peculiarly difcult to eradicate or modify, which the
USSr can exploit to its advantage, among backward, ignorant,
and apolitical audiences particularly difcult to reach. 22
the report went even further in claiming the United States itself had fanned
the fames of the fre in three ways: “frst by fanfare of its own announcement of
its satellite plans, second by creating the impression that we considered ourselves
to have an invulnerable lead in this scientifc and technological area, and third
by the nature of the reaction within the U.S.”
the importance of science to national prestige in the eisenhower
administration existed long before Sputnik; it originated in the experience with
atomic energy. eisenhower had long been an advocate of using atomic energy
20. Ibid.
21. pSaC Meeting, March 12, 1958. the transcribed notes of the pSaC are spotty at best, and
the argumentative logic is nearly incomprehensible. they are reproduced in The Papers of
the President’s Science Advisory Committee, 1957-1961, microflm, (University publications of
america, 1986).
22. Ofce of research and Intelligence report, “World Opinion and the Soviet Satellite: a
preliminary evaluation,”declassifed 1993,folder 18106,(NaSa historical reference Collection,
NaSa headquarters,Washington, DC).
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