Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [83]
For Khrushchev, the R-7’s second consecutive success had also been a vindication of his vision for a new defense shield against the forces of imperialism. If the Soviet leader harbored any regrets with regard to the R-7, it was the disappointing reaction in the West to his announcement of the new weapons system. Washington had not quaked in panic at news of the Communist ICBM, as Khrushchev had hoped. In fact, the American general public barely noticed, and the Eisenhower administration appeared dismissively skeptical as to whether the R-7 was truly operational. There was a pervasive sentiment in Washington that a totalitarian state with communal toilets could not pull off something so technologically complex, as Senator Ellender had stated. A similarly derisive disbelief had greeted the initial news in 1949 that Moscow had detonated an atomic bomb. “Do you know when Russia will build the bomb? Never,” Truman had scoffed. When presented with incontrovertible evidence that the Soviets had indeed split the atom, Truman responded, “German scientists in Russia did it—probably something like that.” Even after the USSR had further narrowed the atomic gap with a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb in 1953, Moscow was still the butt of American jokes. Russia couldn’t possibly smuggle a suitcase bomb into the United States, went one popular punch line, because the Soviets hadn’t yet perfected the suitcase.
Such perceived slights drove Khrushchev to push his scientists harder to prove the critics in Washington wrong. But Korolev did not want to dwell on the time-consuming setbacks of the reentry problem. In the months required to completely redesign the warhead shield, momentum would be lost. Meanwhile, he had a rocket on its way to Tyura-Tam, and a record waiting to be broken. The Americans were surely not sitting idly by as the clock wound down on the International Geophysical Year. Korolev decided to turn the screws up a notch on his cautious fellow commission members. “I propose,” he said airily, “that we put the question of the national priority of launching the world’s first satellite to the Presidium. Let them settle the matter.”
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (front row, center) and members of the Presidium in 1955. At the far left of the front row is Lazar Kaganovich, deputy premier, and next to him is Nikolai Bulganin, chairman of the Council of Ministers. To the right of Khrushchev are Soviet premier Georgi Malenkov and defense minister Klimenti Voroshilov. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
Khrushchev often asked his son, Sergei, an engineering student, to accompany him on visits to the Soviet Union’s rocket research facilities. (Photograph courtesy Sergei Khrushchev)
The tenacious Chief Designer of the Soviet missile program, Sergei Korolev, emerged from the Stalinist gulag to lead the Soviet Union into space. His identity was considered a state secret and his name never appeared in any news reports about missiles or satellites. (From the collection of Peter A. Gorin)
Major General John Bruce Medaris (left) was in charge of the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which employed the top engineers from Nazi Germany’s rocket program but which got scant support from the Pentagon. He is shown here with Brigadier General Holger N. “Ludy” Toftoy, who had whisked the scientists out of Germany in the summer of 1945. (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center)
Charles E. Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of defense, was the former president of General Motors and his charge was to bring down costs at the Pentagon. At his confirmation hearings, he said he did