A Delayed Space Race

I'm curious, what would you think about a straight retcon - going back and altering the early Soviet space program so that it's not just a matter of Sputnik? Would you still object to a slower or deeply delayed space race if the Russians actually hadn't had the technical lead?

To do that, you have to make the R-7 a bust. One of the things I got out of my research (I'll stop being coy.. the website I sent you to is mine. I'm a professional space race historian with a focus on the first couple of years of unmanned space travel), is how much the space program was really almost an afterthought, a side-effect of the ICBM race. The Soviets could launch Sputnik and Vostok because they had the R-7 ICBM. We could launch Explorer 1 because we had the Jupiter IRBM. We could launch Pioneer 0 *less than a year after Sputnik* because we already had the Thor IRBM.

But if you delay the R-7, you delay the reaction to it. The development of the Atlas/Titan/Minuteman/Thor by my friends at STL (at whose Space Park I have spent many hours rummaging through their archive) started in 1954, the year after work began on the R-7. Butterfly away the Soviet ICBM or severely hinder it, and America works less hard on its missiles. And Kennedy has more trouble touting a credible "missile gap."
 
On the psychology and strategy of the "space race"

I don't think it's quite accurate to say that Eisenhower wanted the Russians to be the first to launch a satellite.

What was important, and carefully considered, by Ike was that the first satellite to be launched by anyone--and I imagine he preferred, and assumed, that that someone would be the United States--be known to the world as a peaceful, civil, scientific project.

His reason was the opposite of altruism though. The first satellite he wanted was the Corona series of spy satellites, under top secret development by the CIA. He was focused on developing satellites as a safer and more capable advance on the aerial surveillance capabilities of such planes as the U-2. It was all well and good that American planes could often penetrate Soviet airspace and get a good look at what the Russians were up to, but it was always risky to do that. If American satellites could overfly the Soviet Union at will, immune to being shot down and able to observe any part of that vast nation, without putting a pilot at risk or risking a diplomatic incident that might trigger a world war, that was a capability he wanted very much, and so he authorized the CIA satellite program for this pragmatic reason.

However, while he wanted the Corona series to start orbiting as soon as possible, he also realized that if this practical and cost-effective application of space technology were the first to orbit, he might muddy the waters by motivating the Russians to argue for a very strong and far-reaching claim of sovereign airspace to include vast reaches of space, and thus claim the right to shoot down orbiting vehicles passing over Russia. Therefore, he wanted the first satellite--the first American satellite, in his assumption, to be known in advance to the world as a peaceful and scientific project in no way threatening to Soviet interests. That, he decided, would be Project Vanguard. Once Vanguard had safely launched a satellite, no matter how small--indeed, the more modest the less threatening and therefore better--presumably the Americans would have a good chance at persuading the world to accept a limit on sovereign airspace claims to exclude orbital space, which would become analogous to the international freedom of the high seas. Then Corona could launch and the Soviets would not be in a position to demand they cease and desist or be shot down.

Therefore, Von Braun's initiative over at the army's Redstone base was unwelcome. For a former Third Reich officer working for the division of the Army that was in the business primarily of developing ballistic weapons to use presumably against the Soviets to be the first to put a satellite into orbit would tend to mess up this plan of legal strategy. That's why Explorer was put on ice.

I think it came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to Eisenhower for the Russians to be first to put up a satellite. Despite the blow to American prestige however, Sputnik clearly brought with it a large and valuable booby prize to the President--with the Russians themselves being the first to implicitly demand the internationalization of orbital space and avail themselves of the freedom of orbit, the legal precedent Eisenhower wanted was more firmly and irrevocably established than anything an American initiative could have done. The one party he most feared might demand the right to shoot down American satellites had gone and sent Sputnik orbiting over the whole world without asking anyone's permission and the Soviets could hardly be the ones to change the tune later.

So, Corona could go ahead at full speed, and von Braun was given the green light to get something up as fast as he cared to now.
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Now on the Russian side, I think that on both sides we had a situation where the men leading the respective rocketry programs, von Braun and Sergei Korolov respectively, were serious space nuts. They were strongly motivated by the positive vision of humanity in space. In both countries, this dream was not totally unknown and even somewhat respectable in all circles. But at the top levels of power where funds and permission were controlled, it was considerably diluted and even offset.

But less so in the USSR, I think. In Soviet society, the notion that the Leninist revolution would catch up to the West and pull ahead, and that a successful socialist society would be known in part by its superior ability to lead the way scientifically and technologically, were fundamental ideological principles of the regime. Moreover, as Russian patriots, the Russians had a long tradition of achieving distinction in science and even innovative technology despite the general poverty and backwardness of their nation, and in the field of rocketry and prophetic dreams of space travel as expressed by such Russian and Soviet citizens as Tsiolovski in the ranks of Soviet cultural heroes. So the socialist-internationalist vision and Russian patriotism combined to make a forward-looking vision of Soviet space exploration a respectable and indeed standard-issue part of good Communist thinking. Any frowning on such enthusiasm would come from pure pragmatic necessity.

In the West, in the USA particularly, the ruling circles were far more likely to simply laugh off such visionary thinking, and demand purely practical applications of rocketry before they'd fund it. But in the East there were a lot less funds and more stark challenges to face, so it came out pretty much a wash in practical terms.

In particular, Nikita Khrushchev presented a rather schizophrenic mix of hopes and fears. His fears were well-founded; he knew that despite impressive progress the Soviet Union and the bloc it ruled were still far behind the West in many respects, and like all Russians he put little trust in the good intentions of his rivals overseas--he feared that any sign of weakness on Russia's part might well be blood in the water for the capitalist sharks to move in again as they had in 1940. As a true believer in the progressiveness of the Leninist program he hoped the USSR would indeed pull ahead, and that the Soviets could win friends abroad and that war could be avoided. Furthermore to realize those hopes he knew he'd have to do all he could to cut down the demands the vast military machine placed on the weak system until it could find its strength. But he was terrified that the more the Westerners knew of the actual current weakness of his country the more likely their rapacious leadership would be to order an attack.

Therefore he not so much alternately as simultaneously tried to appear as both benign and threatening. Strategic ICBMs were a key part of his hopes and answer to his fears. On his side, the pragmatic need to develop effective and deployable missiles took top priority and he did not want to hear much about Soviets in space--but when Korolov let him know that a satellite would be possible with a rocket he could have in hand shortly, Khrushchev saw the opportunity to impress the world with Soviet capability--and implicitly, without saying any such thing, threaten it with that capability starkly yet peacefully demonstrated.

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On the POD and thread in general, I don't know that the tone or timing of the Space Race could have been shifted all that much. Both sides were what they were in structural and cultural terms, with a lot of similarities and some crucial differences that didn't stem from this or that personality. Had the USA gotten a satellite up first--had Vanguard been more successful sooner in other words, given Eisenhower's deep and carefully laid plans--I still think the Russians would have at least responded, to demonstrate clearly that they too could do it. Meanwhile behind the rhetoric and sentiment of space travel, there were fundamental pragmatic drives toward capabilities--intercontinental missiles, surveillance, communications--that only space could offer, and in particular on the Russian side, the logic of taking advantage of orbit for surveillance and the like would have suggested sending up humans, since they couldn't rely on electronics as much as the Americans could to guarantee the success of an unmanned satellite. Thus, Man In Space was on the agenda, and if the Soviets lost the first round of the race by being pre-empted in orbit, they would be more motivated to be the first to get a cosmonaut up. Once that happened, the American pragmatists would be alarmed because they too realized that space was high ground they couldn't concede lightly.
 
On the POD and thread in general, I don't know that the tone or timing of the Space Race could have been shifted all that much. Both sides were what they were in structural and cultural terms, with a lot of similarities and some crucial differences that didn't stem from this or that personality. Had the USA gotten a satellite up first--had Vanguard been more successful sooner in other words, given Eisenhower's deep and carefully laid plans--I still think the Russians would have at least responded, to demonstrate clearly that they too could do it. Meanwhile behind the rhetoric and sentiment of space travel, there were fundamental pragmatic drives toward capabilities--intercontinental missiles, surveillance, communications--that only space could offer, and in particular on the Russian side, the logic of taking advantage of orbit for surveillance and the like would have suggested sending up humans, since they couldn't rely on electronics as much as the Americans could to guarantee the success of an unmanned satellite. Thus, Man In Space was on the agenda, and if the Soviets lost the first round of the race by being pre-empted in orbit, they would be more motivated to be the first to get a cosmonaut up. Once that happened, the American pragmatists would be alarmed because they too realized that space was high ground they couldn't concede lightly.

Well said, and we have to remember that the Americans were trounced in Round 1 and Round 2.. and we ultimately won. A feeble American victory in Round 1 (with no real capacity to follow up in the near term) could be impetus for the Soviets to make their own grandiose lunar announcement, from which it would be difficult to turn back.
 
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