Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [0]
THE SPY PLANES WERE DRIVING NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV MAD. Whenever America wanted to peer inside the Soviet Union, it launched a U-2, which flew too high to be shot down. But Sergei Korolev, Russia’s chief rocket designer, had a solution: an artificial satellite that would orbit the earth and cross American skies at will. On October 4,1957, the launch of Korolev’s satellite, Sputnik, stunned the world.
In Red Moon Rising, Matthew Brzezinski takes us inside the Kremlin, the White House, secret military facilities, deep-cover safe houses, and the halls of Congress to bring to life the Russians and Americans who feared and distrusted their compatriots at least as much as their superpower rivals. Drawing on original interviews and new documentary sources from both sides of the Cold War divide, he shows how Khrushchev and U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower were buffeted by crises of their own creation, leaving the door open to ambitious politicians and scientists to squabble over the heavens and the earth. It is a story rich in the paranoia of the time, and the combatants include two future presidents, survivors of the gulag, corporate chieftains, rehabilitated Nazis, and a general who won the day by refusing to follow orders.
Sputnik set in motion events that led not only to the moon landing but also to cell phones, federally guaranteed student loans, and the wireless Internet. The true story of the birth of the space age has never been told in such dramatic detail, and Red Moon Rising brings it vividly and memorably to life.
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RED MOON RISING
Red Moon Rising
Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age
Matthew Brzezinski
Times Books
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
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Copyright © 2007 by Matthew Brzezinski
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brzezinski, Matthew, 1965-
Red moon rising : Sputnik and the hidden rivalries that ignited
the Space Age / Matthew Brzezinski. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8147-3
ISBN-10:0-8050-8147-X
1. Space race—United States—History—20th century. 2. Space race—Soviet Union—History—20th century. 3. Cold War. 4. Sputnik satellites. 5. United States—Politics and government—1953-1961. 6. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1953-1985. I. Title. TL789.8.U5B784 2007
629.4’109045—dc22 2007008227
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First Edition 2007
Designed by Victoria Hartman
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Lena,
who wants to be a scientist
and do “science stuff”
Contents
Prologue
1. The Request
2. Jet Power
3. Trials and Errors
4. Tomorrowland
5. Desert Fires
6. Pictures in Black and White
7. A Simple Satellite
8. By the Light of a Red Moon
9. Something for the Holidays
10. Operation Confidence
11. Goldstone Has the Bird
Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
RED MOON RISING
PROLOGUE
September 8, 1944
The rocket rose slowly, tentatively at first, as if reluctant to break from its earthly moorings. Three full seconds elapsed before its tail fins finally cleared the mobile gantry crane that had held it upright.
But now that it was free of its tethers, it seemed to lose self-doubt. Already it felt lighter, stronger. It had consumed nearly 1,000 pounds of propellant to travel those difficult first fifty feet, and the laws of physics were kicking in. Every second from now on meant 275 fewer pounds of spent fuel