Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [127]
Massive university scholarship programs were proposed to bridge the alleged education gap with communism, and there were even suggestions that the federal government begin granting college loans to aspiring students. “Eisenhower was skeptical about the loans,” Killian recalled. “He doubted whether young people and their parents would be willing to go into debt for their education.”
The White House was also being bombarded with frantic calls for a complete overhaul of the Defense Department and military space organizations, leading to a dizzying array of acronyms competing for presidential attention. A new $100-million-a-year Astronautical Research and Development Agency, or ARDA, was proposed by the American Rocket Society, to coordinate scientific space projects. A rival plan by the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel was even more ambitious, calling for one billion dollars a year to be appropriated for a civilian body called the National Space Establishment (NSE), along the lines of NACA, the existing National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. Not to be outdone, NACA created its own Special Committee on Space Technology, or SCST, to study the possibility of starting an even costlier space-oriented department, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. Meanwhile, the Pentagon unveiled plans for a new Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA, to conduct military space research and development programs.
All this was exactly what Eisenhower had feared, the panicked spending that would throw fiscal discipline completely out of whack. To the beleaguered president, it must have seemed as if everyone suddenly had a panacea to counter the Soviet space lead, and unfortunately every one of the miracle cures landing on his desk held the unappealing promise of being ruinously expensive. “Look,” Ike finally snapped, “I’d like to know what’s on the other side of the moon, too, but I won’t pay to find out this year.”
By this year, he meant the upcoming fiscal year. Treasury Secretary George Humphrey had prepared an austerity budget to weather an economic downturn that was worsening by the month, and he had warned the president that any increases in the already mounting deficit could spark “a depression that will curl your hair.” Though Humphrey had recently been replaced by Robert Anderson, the recessionary warnings coming out of the Treasury and Commerce departments had only grown more ominous. Unemployment was expected to jump by as much as 1.5 million in 1958, bringing the total number of out-of-work Americans to 5 million, the highest jobless count since 1940, and economic growth in the third quarter of 1957—after more than a decade of robust increases—had completely flatlined. This was hardly the time to be writing big checks, and Ike was not about to risk a lengthy recession simply to satisfy short-term space jitters.
He did, however, relent on pressures to speed the satellite programs, authorizing the minimal disbursement of $3.5 million (much of which Medaris had already spent) for ABMA to ready its Jupiter C for a space shot. Far from being overjoyed, Medaris hit the roof when he saw the official Pentagon directive. It did not instruct ABMA to proceed with a launch, only to “prepare” for one. “In effect there was no clear-cut authority to go ahead and put up a satellite,” he recalled. Vanguard still had the primary mission, and only if it failed in its scheduled December attempt would the White House then consider allowing ABMA to proceed. This was unacceptable, Medaris complained. “They are trying to delude Congress and the public into believing that we are cranking up for a launch.”
“Either give me a clear-cut order to launch or I quit,” the rebellious general cabled Gavin, declaring rather crudely that ABMA would not carry out its orders. “I’m afraid my language was pretty rough,” he recalled years later. But, like Gavin,