Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [85]
The navy’s Vanguard missile was given priority for America’s first post-Sputnik launch on December 6, 1957. However, the vehicle blew up on the launch pad, on live television, humiliating the United States in the eyes of the world. Newspapers called it “Flopnik” and “Kaputnik.” (NASA Headquarters—Greatest Images of NASA)
America’s second launch attempt would be a closely guarded affair. In the control room at Cape Canaveral in January 1958, Wernher von Braun (second from right, below) conferred with his colleagues as they waited for the weather to clear. (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center)
Finally, on January 31, 1958, America’s first satellite, Explorer, is catapulted into space atop von Braun’s Jupiter-C rocket. (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center)
There was, of course, no “them” in the Presidium any longer. By September 1957 the Communist Party’s ruling body was Khrushchev’s personal rubber stamp. The dissenting voices were all gone, replaced by loyalists like the fainthearted but trustworthy Brezhnev, and newcomers like Andrei Gromyko, who replaced the turncoat Shepilov as foreign minister and was scheduled to travel to Washington in the first week of October to meet John Foster Dulles for the first time. The mutineers had been dealt with—though not in the customary Stalinist fashion that they had so ardently supported. In a testament to Khrushchev’s reform of the dictatorship of the proletariat, not a single conspirator was shot or even arrested. Molotov was dispatched to Outer Mongolia, to serve out his sentence as the Soviet ambassador in dusty Ulan Bator. Kaganovich was appointed director of a remote potassium mine in the Perm province of the Ural Mountains. Malenkov was sent to manage the Ust-Kamenogorsk electric power station on the equally desolate Irtysh River in Kazakhstan, while Shepilov was dispatched to Kyrgyzstan to teach central Asian children the tenets of Marxist-Leninism. They were effectively banished into internal exile, but they would live out their natural lives.
Korolev’s gambit had its desired effect. Opposition to the substitute satellite melted away almost as quickly as it had welled up at the previous meeting. The military men sat silent, and Glushko lowered his eyes in defeat. He may not have shared his rival’s dreams of space conquest, but he certainly did not want to be the nail that stuck out. “Nobody wanted to be accused of dragging their feet,” General Gerchik recalled, in the event that the United States did launch first and Khrushchev later came looking for answers and scapegoats. One after another, the commission members meekly raised their hands. The final decision was unanimous.
The only outstanding question, the launch date, was settled at the next meeting. On September 23, the same day as the Little Rock riot that spurred Eisenhower to action, the commission formally informed the Kremlin that PS-1 was scheduled for liftoff on October 6, 1957. It was official. The “Iron King,” as the petrified staff at OKB-1 sometimes called Korolev, had won. The stubborn Chief Designer had finally gotten his shot at space.
• • •
Liftoff was scheduled for 10:20 PM on Sunday, the sixth of October, under the cover of darkness because American spy planes roamed the skies during the day. It also turned out that the late hour was ideal for PS-1 to attain its desired orbit. The launch itself would be strictly secret in case it failed, and Korolev took every precaution to ensure that Washington did not get wind of his intentions. In the huge assembly hangar not too far from the spartan little house the Chief Designer kept at Tyura-Tam, the R-7 lay prone on a train-sized dolly, its copper-clad exhaust nozzles burnished to a bright orange under its flared white skirt. It was model number 8k71PS, sixteen feet shorter than its predecessors, and technicians in surgical smocks