Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [79]
Little Rock’s experiment with school integration had lasted less than three hours. “The colored children [were] removed to their homes for safety purposes,” Mayor Woodrow W. Mann informed Eisenhower in an urgent telegram. “The mob that gathered was no spontaneous assembly. It was agitated, aroused, and assembled by a concerted plan . . . [which] leads to the inevitable conclusion that Governor Faubus was cognizant of what was going to take place.”
Eisenhower was furious at Faubus’s duplicitous double-cross. As the journalist David Halberstam later observed, “A man who had been a five-star general did not look kindly on frontal challenges by junior officers. After vacillating for so long, he came down hard, seeing the issue not as a question of integration as much as one of insurrection.”
That same afternoon, the president ordered one thousand paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. It was the first time since Reconstruction that federal troops were deployed in the South. “Troops not to enforce integration but to prevent opposition to an order of a court,” Eisenhower noted to himself on his personal stationery, along with doodles of an airplane, sundry checkmarks, scribbles, and several illegible musings.
By early October, the situation had been brought under control. But the resolution came at a high price for Eisenhower. “A weak President who fiddled along ineffectually until a personal affront drives him to unexpectedly drastic action” was how the former secretary of state Dean Acheson described Eisenhower in a letter to Harry Truman. “A Little Rock with Moscow,” Acheson added, “and SAC in the place of the paratroopers could blow us all apart.”
The Democrats, like Acheson, saw that Little Rock had badly dented Eisenhower’s seemingly invulnerable image as a strong and decisive leader. What they didn’t realize was that an even greater crisis of confidence loomed just days away. And as Acheson had feared, this time it would be the Russians who would test Eisenhower’s mettle.
7
A SIMPLE SATELLITE
There was only one problem with Sergei Korolev’s satellite plan. The R-7 State Commission, the government body that oversaw missile testing, wasn’t buying it.
One after another, Korolev fixed the commission members with long, livid looks. Fools, his eyes blazed, you stupid, shortsighted fools. Thirteen hard and hostile faces returned his angry gaze. From behind the thick stacks of telemetry readings and mission reports in front of each representative, a few smug and barely concealed smirks swirled amid the cigarette smoke and steaming glasses of sweet tea. For once, their satisfied expressions seemed to say, the arrogant Chief Designer wouldn’t get his way. This time, he wasn’t going to steamroll over anyone.
The meeting had not gone as Korolev had hoped. It had started cordially enough, with a postmortem of the successful August 21 launch. Glushko, Pilyugin, Kuznetsov, and the other bureau heads had delivered reports on how their engines, valves, and guidance and gyroscopic systems had performed during the maiden flight, and all had been found satisfactory. The critical failure of the warhead shield on reentry had been discussed without any of the rancor that had plagued the disastrous summer trials, and recommendations had been made for further investigations ahead of the next scheduled attempt on September 7. All the heartache, health problems, and bad blood seemed to have been forgotten, now that the rocket had worked, and everyone basked in its collective glory. Glushko and Korolev had even exchanged supportive glances as the list of systems successes had been read off. It was only when the Chief Designer rose to speak that the convivial atmosphere abruptly changed. “I suggest we begin preparations to launch the artificial satellite,” he said to stunned silence. “I mean to use the primitive satellite PS-1,” he added, referring to the Russian acronym for Simple