Red moon rising, p.37
Red Moon Rising, page 37
“Well, boys”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 84.
“If the Soviets ever capture one of these planes”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 546.
121 Boyle’s law: Wilson, “Flying the U-2.”
“This is what would happen”: March 9, 1955, “Tomorrowland” telecast, Walt Disney Treasures, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Burbank, Calif., 2004, stock no. 31749.122 “I was assured”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 546.
123 “coffin corner”: Wilson, “Flying the U-2.”
Every U-2 flight required presidential approval: Beschloss, Mayday, p. 118.
A U-2 had exploded once: http://www.blackbirds.net/u2/u2-timeline/u2tl50.html.
124 “seemed somewhat startled and horrified to learn that the flight plan”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 112.
125 Only the new P-30 radar: Alexander Orlov, The U-2 Program: A Russian Officer Remembers, speech at 1998 CIA symposium, at http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/winter98_99/art02.html.
“According to fully confirmed data”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 159. Also author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, February 10, 2006.
“What I remembered most”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, February 10, 2006.
126 The forays, or “ferret” missions as they were known: Douglas Stanglin, Susan Headden, and Peter Cary, “Secrets of the Cold War: Special Report,” US News & World Report, March 15, 1993, pp. 30-52.
“Representations and recommendations”: Ibid., p. 34.
“It would have meant war”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 157.
127 “The notion that we could overfly them”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 113.
“For the first time”: July 17, 1956, CIA memorandum, CIA-RDP62B00844R00200020017-3. Declassified August 26, 2000.
128 “A few days ago a super-long-range”: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 161.
129 From its dish network atop a 6,800-foot peak: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 225.
130 “Stop sending intruders into our air space”: Orlov, The U-2 Program.
“Father thirsted for revenge”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.
131 “They blamed us”: Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), p. 182.
a Ford repair shop at Fifth and K streets: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 104.
“I don’t ‘believe’ that the Soviets are ahead”: New York Times, February 6, 1957.
132 “Every day we don’t reverse our policy is a bad day for the Free World”: Ibid., August 18, 1957.
a West Coast military think tank, the RAND Corporation: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 46.
“Gone was the folksy fellow”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 145.
133 SR-71 Blackbird: http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/sr-71/html.
Bissell was alarmed that it was not even at the blueprint stage: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 134.134 to personally inspect every Jupiter C launch: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 243.
“I knew our national effort”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 134.
135 “in view of the competition we might face”: http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/chapter2.html.
“It was unfortunate”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 14.
“Ellender said that we must be out of our minds”: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 96.
“in the nearest future, the USSR will send a satellite into space”: Mstislav Keldysh, ed., Tvorcheskoye Naslediye Akademika Sergeya Pavlovicha Koroleva: Izbranye Trudy I Dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), p. 376.
136 “The creation and launching of the Soviet”: F. J. Krieger, Behind the Sputniks (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1958), p. 329.
“The Astronomical Council of the USSR”: Ibid., p. 288.
“It was hard not to feel that I was being set up”: Nixon, RN, p. 167.
“Dear Dick, I find that while I have thanked”: Ibid., p. 181.
138 “He flashes gold cuff links”: Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 338.
“I’m going to have to bring up the nigger bill”: Ibid., p. 326.
“Southern whites are not bad people”: James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 81.
139 “What he had not done was provide leadership”: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 409.
“I got the impression at the time”: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 686.
140 “We’re trapped”: And all other Little Rock quotes from inside high school quoted in Melba Patillo Beals, Warriors Don’t Cry (New York: Pocket Books, 1994), pp. 87-88.
“The colored children [were] removed to their homes for safety purposes”:
The Mann telegram is available online at the Eisenhower Library under telegrammanntopresident92457 at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/LittleRock/littlerockdocuments.html.
“Troops not to enforce integration”: Ibid., under DEtroopstoArkansas at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/LittleRock/littlerockdocuments.html.
“A weak President”: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 987.
7: A Simple Satellite
142 The meeting had not gone as Korolev had hoped: The narrative of this account is drawn primarily from K. V. Gerchik, Proryv v Kosmos (Moscow: Veles, 1994), though the opinions of its participants are drawn from a wide array of sources listed below.
143 “I suggest we begin preparations to launch”: Gerchik, Proryv v Kosmos, p. 29.
“This proposal was a big surprise”: Ibid.
“All these space projects”: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 87.
144 an unrealistic time frame: V. V. Favorskiy and I. V. Meshcheryakov, eds., Voyenno-Kosmicheskiye Sily: Kosmonavtika I Vooruzhennyye Sily, vol. 1 (Moscow: Sankt-Peterburgskoy Tipografia Nauka, 1997), p. 34.
“The Directorate of Missile Weapons”: Yuri Mozzhorin, Tak Eto Bilo (Moscow: Tsnimash, 2000), p. 71.
“development of an artificial satellite for photographing the earth’s surface”: Vetrov, ed., S. P. Korolev I Ego Delo, p. 232.
145 who had been the youngest member ever elected to the prestigious Academy of Sciences: Akademiya Nauk SSSR: Membership Directory, vol. 2 (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), p. 61.
Korolev’s greatest proponent was openly skeptical: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 154.
146 which, at Tyura-Tam, was just over 1,000 feet per second: Ivan V. Meshcheryakov, V Mire Kosmonovtiki (Novgorod: Russian Merchant Publishers, 1996), pp. 45-46.
147 “Why, Sergei Pavlovich?” and “Because it’s not round”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 535.
The silver-zinc chargers alone weighed 122 pounds, providing power: Valentin Glushko, ed., Kosmonavtika Entsiklopediya (Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia, 1985), pp. 290-91.
“Mindless malice”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 159.
148 “Do you know when Russia will build the bomb?”: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 25.
“German scientists in Russia did it”: David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 748.
149 The mutineers had been dealt with: Taubman, Khrushchev, pp. 368-69.
“Nobody wanted to be accused of dragging their feet”: Gerchik, Proryv v Kosmos, p. 30.
150 the commission formally informed the Kremlin that PS-1 was scheduled for liftoff on October 6, 1957: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 165.
It was model number 8k71PS, sixteen feet shorter: Timofei Varfolomeev, “Soviet Rocketry Conquered Space,” part 1, Spaceflight Magazine (UK), August 1995, pp. 260-63.
151 “Silence fell whenever the Chief Designer appeared”: Harford, Korolev, p. 129.
which sat on a felt-covered cradle in a sealed-off “clean room”: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 90.
“Coats, gloves, it’s a must”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 161.
Tikhonravov had pressurized the sphere with nitrogen: Glushko, ed., Kosmonavtika Entsiklopediya, pp. 290-91.
“I saw a crowd gathered around the satellite”: Mozzhorin, ed., Nachalo Kosmichiskoy Eri, p. 23.
152 “What does it mean?”: Galovanov, Korolev, pp. 537-38.
An overhead crane lifted the twenty-seven-ton empty shell: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 74.
153 “Well, shall we see off our first-born?”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 538.
A grainy and undated Soviet video: Fifty Years of RKK Energya (Moscow: RKK Energya [videotape], 1996).
over the next hour and ten minutes, the rocket was raised: Hubert Curien, Baikonour (Paris: Arnaud Colin Editeur, 1994), p. 147.
over the 120-foot-deep, five-football-fields-wide: Igor Barmin, Na Zemle I V Kosmosy (Moscow: VP Barmin Design Bureau of General Machine Building, 2001), p. 80.
Marshal Nedelin, in particular, was unhappy with the Soviet arrangement: Ibid., p. 93.
154 “Technical banditry”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 538.
“Let’s not make a fuss”: Ibid.
“OK, dear”: A. Polyektov, Kosmodrome Bajkonur; Nachale (Moscow: Veles, 1992), p. 86.
155 “Nobody will rush us”: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 165.
“T minus ten” and countdown instructions re-created from the following sources: Chekunov recollection in Gerchik, Proryv v Kosmos, pp. 68-73. Official timeline launch card reprinted in Natalia Koroleva, Otets, vol. 2, p. 309.
Also from Chertok, Raketi I Lyudi, vol. 2, pp. 197-98. And from Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S. P. Korolev, pp. 448-64.
158 At 116 seconds a fiery cross appeared: Novosti Kosmonavtiki, no. 7, August 1997, p. 9.
The engines had run out of fuel at 295.4 seconds: Ibid,
at 142 miles in altitude instead of 147 miles: Ibid.
“Separation Achieved”: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 89.159 “Quiet”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 540.
“This is music no one has ever heard before”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 164.
“Hold off on the celebrations”: Mozzhorin, ed., Nachalo Kosmichiskoy Eri, p. 64.
160 BEEP, BEEP, BEEP: Ibid.
8: By the Light of a Red Moon
161 a man so hated in Huntsville that some rocket scientists had once burned his effigy in Courthouse Square: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 98.
“We could not shed a single tear”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 152.
162 “Sour Kraut Hill”: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 78.
The jobs of five thousand skilled workers: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 218. bureaucratic guerrilla campaigns that were beginning to take their toll: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 127.
163 “timing his comings and goings so that Grandmother”: Harris, A New Command, p. 7.
over one hundred thousand dollars in his trading account: Ibid., p. 43.
“We must make it perfectly clear”: Bille and Lishoke, The First Space Race, p. 117.
soaring 662 miles high over a 3,335-mile arc: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 130.
“In various languages”: Von Braun et al., Space Travel, p. 156.
164 At fifty-three, he was almost exactly: Neil McElroy’s biographical information can be found at http://www.nndb.com/people/102/000057928.
“Our whole organization was thoroughly fired up”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 154.
“two-star generals were serving drinks to three-star generals”: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 111.
165 the young officer rudely interrupted McElroy: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 155.
“General Gavin was visibly shaken”: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 261.
“Damn bastards”: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 131.
“Now look”: Ibid.166 “Von Braun started to talk as if”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 155.
“We knew they would do it”: Ibid.
“There was no chance”: Bille and Lishoke, The First Space Race, p. 118.
“For God’s sake, cut us loose”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 155.
167 “It was imprudent to admit we had retained those rockets”: Harris, A New Command, p. 155.
“It beeped derisively over our heads”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 156.
168 “Missile number 27 proved our capabilities”: Ibid.
“When you get back to Washington”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 131.
64 percent, according to a Gallup survey: Time, October 14, 1957.
169 “Dear Dick, I had been hoping to play golf this afternoon”: The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 18 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pt. 3, chap. 6, document 365.
“Sherman Adams was cold, blunt, abrasive”: Nixon, RN, p. 198.
“Golf in Newport was enjoyable”: The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 18, pt. 3, chap. 6, document 366.
170 “an economy of abundance”: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 587.
And tax revenues were coming in at a disappointing $72 billion: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 213.
in an effort to trim half a billion dollars from the $3.5 billion monthly defense bill: Robert A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Threat (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 119.
170 “The developments of this year”: Ferrell, ed., Eisenhower Diaries, p. 347.
the putting green he had installed just outside his patio doors: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 398.
171 played golf for the fifth time that week: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 22.
“an event of considerable technical and scientific importance”: John Foster Dulles Papers, Dwight Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/15.html.
“without military significance,” “A neat technical trick,” “A silly bauble,” “in an outer space basketball game”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 10.
“hunk of iron”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 187.
“a propaganda stunt”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. xv.
like a “canary that jumps on the eagle’s back”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 186.
“Listen now”: Time, October 12, 1956.
“Soviet Fires Earth Satellite”: New York Times, October 5, 1957.
172 “Here in the capital”: Richard Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks (New York: Doubleday Headline Publications, 1958), p. 9.
173 “a great national emergency,” comparisons to the shots fired at Lexington and Concord, “a technological Pearl Harbor”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. xvi.
“chilling beeps”: Time, October 14, 1957.
“The reaction here indicates massive indifference”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 3.
only 13 percent of Americans saw Sputnik as a sign: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 23.
174 “When I asked what this country should do”: Shirley Ann Warshaw, ed., Reexamining the Eisenhower Presidency (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1993), p. 108.
“I have been warning about this growing danger”: New York Times, October 5, 1957.
“a National Week of Shame and Danger”: Time, October 21, 1957.
“We now know beyond a doubt”: New York Times, October 5, 1957.
175 “liked nothing better than to careen over the hills”: Woods, LBJ, p. 313.
an air-conditioned, glass-enclosed, forty-foot-high hunting blind: Ibid.
“Soon they will be dropping bombs on us”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 117.
“a full and exhaustive inquiry”: Henry Dethloff, Suddenly, Tomorrow Came (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1994), p. 3.
176 “I made sure that there was always one companion”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), p. 105.
“I knew there was only one way to see Russell everyday”: Ibid., p. 103.
some 4 percent of the U.S. population would report seeing Sputnik: International Affairs Seminars of Washington, “American Reactions to Crisis: Examples of Pre-Sputnik and Post-Sputnik Attitudes and of the Reaction to Other Events Perceived as Threats,” U.S. President’s Committee on Information Activities Abroad Records, 1959-1961, box 5, A83-10, Dwight D Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/oct58.html.
177 “We can’t always go changing our program”: Warshaw, ed., Reexamining the Eisenhower Presidency, p. 109.
“Ike Plays Golf, Hears the News”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 22.
“This was a place where Eisenhower went wrong”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 107.
177 “I can’t understand why the American people”: Ibid.
178 “There was no doubt that the Redstone” and other quotes from October 8, 1957, White House damage-control meeting: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/sputnik-memo/images/memo-page2-1.gif.
179 “The rocketry employed by our Naval Research Laboratory for launching our Vanguard” and all other quotes from October 9, 1957, press conference: Official White House transcript of President Eisenhower’s Press and Radio Conference no. 123. October, 9, 1957, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/sputnik/pressconferenceoct91957pg.1pdf.
182 “A fumbling apologia”: http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/chap11.html.
“A Crisis in Leadership”: Time, November 4, 1957.
“be in some kind of partial retirement”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 120.
“He is not leading the country”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 8. mind-numbing sedatives: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 120.
“courageous statesmanship”: Ibid.
“penny-pinching,” “complacency,” “lack of vision,” “incredible stupidity”: http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/chap11.html.
“No greater opportunity will ever be present”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 149.
“The issue of [Sputnik], if properly handled”: Ibid.
183 “Its velocity was breathtaking”: Woods, LBJ, p. 262.
“making cowboy love”: Ibid., p. 263.
