Category Something New Under the Sun

Information about ideas for meteorology satellites in the early 1950s can be found in: RAND’s Role in the Evolution of Balloon and Satellite Observation Systems and Related US Space Technology (page 140 and 141), by Merton E. Davies, William R. Harris; and Inquiry into the Feasibil­ity of Weather reconnaissance from a Satellite Vehicle, by S. M. Greenfield and W. W. Kellogg. This is an unclassified version of USAF Project RAND Report R-218, April 1951.

An unsigned letter, probably from Thomas Haig or Verner Suomi, talks of the work that the writer and Dave Johnson did toward promoting a single national satellite program in the early 1960s. They were unsuccessful, and both a civilian and military program have since run in parallel. Verner Suomi talks of the duplication he saw (page 147). The writer of the letter to Johnson says of a national program, “I don’t think anyone has come close since, and lots of dollars have been wasted as a consequence.”

The patent dispute between Hughes and NASA over the spin-scan cam­era went on for some time. An internal memo from Robert Parent to Verner Suomi of July 8, 1969, outlines the issues and suggests that he and Suomi should put together a chronology in case further action should be taken in future.

Five years later, the dispute was still bubbling along. In a letter dated October 10, 1974, Verner Suomi wrote to Robert Kempf at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. He described when and how he con­ceived of the idea for the spin scan camera and what he subsequently did. Suomi asserts that he considers the patent to belong to the U. S. govern­ment. The dispute was resolved in NASA’s favor.

The report “Space Uses of the Earth’s Magnetic Field” (unclassified report) by Ralph B. Hoffman, 1st Lt. USAF, and Thomas O. Haig, Lt. Col. USAF, describes the passive attitude control possible by designing the satellite so that it can take advantage of Earth’s magnetic field for attitude control.

Chapter fourteen: Keep it Simple, Suomi

I gathered most biographical details about Verner Suomi from interviews with him and his wife and crosschecked these where possible with writ­ten sources and the impressions of those who knew him, which includes nearly everyone in the world of meteorology. I interviewed Dave John­son, Joseph Smagormsky, Robert White, Pierre Morel, Thomas Haig, Leo Skille, Bob Sutton, and Bob Ohckers.

The feud between Reid Bryson and Verner Suomi (page 152) is explored by William Broad in the New York Times of October 24, 1989.

My favorite piece of correspondence to Wexler, clearly written in response to his efforts to drum up support for Verner Suomi’s radiation balance experiment, is from Herbert (Herbie) Riehl, of the University of Chicago (which then had a highly respected meteorology department). Riehl wrote to Wexler on November 28, 1956, from “somewhere over the Rockies” in a plane “with mechanical shakes, hope you have bi­focals.” He said, “Some hours have gone since our early morning encounter, but they have been enough for my latent astonishment at your remarks over satellites to solidify.” Riehl goes on to discuss Earth’s net radiation balance. He adds, “I think this is fundamental information for guiding meteorological research on long (and very long) period changes.”

Wexler presented Suomi’s idea for a radiation balance experiment to the Technical Panel on the Earth Satellite Program (page 154) on the second day of the sixth meeting of the TPESP on June 8, 1956. James Van Allen, with his credentials as the former chair of the Upper Atmosphere Research Panel, headed a Working Group on Internal Instrumentation formed by the TPESP at its third meeting, on January 28. The UARP had received many suggestions for satellite instrumentation following President Eisenhower’s announcement of July 29, 1955. One of these experiments was that of Bill Stroud, from the Signal Corps of Engineers. Van Allen pointed out that Stroud’s experiment had already been approved, and that while not as broad as Wexler’s proposal, it was simpler.

Wexler obtained the backing of the IGY’s Technical Panel on Meteorol­ogy, of which Wexler was chair, for both Stroud’s and Suomi’s experi­ments at the TPM’s eighth meeting, on October 9, 1956.

Suomi and Parent received their formal go-ahead to produce their satel­lite for a Vanguard launch on December 31, 1957, from J. G. Reid, secre­tary to the TPESP.

The account of the Juno II explosion (page 161) comes from Wisconsin State Journal, July 17, 1959.

A draft of the IGY terminal report of Suomi’s radiation balance experi­ment prepared July 27, 1961, by Stanley Ruttenberg, head of the IGY’ program office, gives details of the instrumentation in operation (page 162). It says, “A huge amount of data is accumulating from this experi­ment… only a start has yet been made on reducing this data and analyz­ing it.” Daytime data was less useful than nighttime data, noted the report, because of interference from the ionosphere. It says, “Despite the neces­sary shortcomings of the data there does seem to be a clear indication that large scale outward radiation flux patterns exist and that these patterns are related to the large scale features of the weather.” The report concludes, “The experience being gained from this experiment will be an important factor in designing future meteorological satellite experiments.”

When interesting things like this come up, many of the most important results come out of people’s curiosity, just following up something, and someone over in a corner who is not sup­posed to be doing anything about it usually comes out with the best answers.

—Homer Newell, science programs coordinator for Vanguard, discussing Sputnik at a meeting of the IGY’s Technical Panel on Earth Satellites, October 22, 1957

hen Wall Street opened on Monday, investors scrambled to buy stock in companies connected with missile programs, abandoning other issues and pushing prices to their lowest level in two years.

Two hundred miles to the south in Washington D. C., there was another scramble as the Naval Research Laboratory briefed President Eisenhower and congressional members on the status of Vanguard. James Lay, executive secretary of the National Security council, called the head of the National Science Foundation, Alan Waterman. The status of the U. S.’s satellite plans, Lay said, would be second on the agenda at Thursday’s security council meeting, immediately after a CIA presentation about Soviet defenses. Later that day, Lay called Waterman again; discussion of the U. S. satellite had, he said, now moved to the top of the agenda.

As for the general public, the Saturday morning papers greeted any­one who still did not know of the launch with three-deck banner head­lines. Sputnik squeezed reporting of the drama surrounding desegregation in Little Rock and Jimmy Hoffa’s election as president of the Teamsters Union into a corner of the front page of the New York Times. By Sunday, nothing short of a declaration of war could have rivaled the satellite’s edi­torial supremacy. And a Times editorial stated soberly, “It is war itself rather than any designated enemy against which we must now defend ourselves.” At his home near the Applied Physics Laboratory, Bill Guier tuned in to every radio and TV broadcast. He was thirty-one, a theoretical physicist, and a news junky even in less exciting times. That weekend, Guier was as fascinated as the rest of the country He had no idea that the satellite would change his future.

Nor did George Weiffenbach, then a thirty-six-year-old experimen­tal physicist. He too learned during the weekend of the launch of the satellite. Weiffenbach recalls that he was not particularly excited. His wife says otherwise and remembers eager calls to friends and colleagues.

On Monday afternoon, October 7, Guier and Weiffenbach unknow­ingly took their first steps in the development of a new method of orbital determination and prediction.

Orbital mechanics—the behavior of satellites in orbit—lies at the heart of space exploration. Without a detailed and accurate knowledge of the subject, man-made satellites would be useless, because no one would know where they were or were likely to be. And no one would know the time and posi­tion at which a satellite instrument made an interesting observation, such as of an atmospheric disturbance with the makings of a hurricane. Yet it is impractical to follow all satellites throughout their orbits. Hence observa­tions are made of part of the orbit and that information feeds into the math­ematical relationships that describe behavior in orbit. Once the orbit is determined, the satellite’s future behavior—its position at given times—can be predicted. Orbital predictions allow mission planners to determine, say, when the space shuttle should lift off if it is to dock with the Mir space sta­tion. They allowed the operators of the Transit navigation satellites to calcu­late exactly where the spacecraft would be at every two-minute interval in their orbits, thus providing navigators with a reliable celestial fix.

All of the groups observing Sputnik—amateurs and professionals alike—were tackling the problem of its motion within the framework of classical physics laid down over the previous three centuries by the likes of Johannes Kepler (working with Tycho Brahe’s data), Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton.

Brahe (1546 — 1601) was an astronomer who in the days before tele­scopes designed and built instruments that enabled him to measure the angles to heavenly bodies. His story is well known in the annals of science because he recognized the importance of basing theory on accurate obser­vations rather than philosophical speculation. His observations of the orbit of Mars were invaluable to Kepler (1571 — 1630) when Kepler was seeking a fundamental description of planetary motion.

Kepler assumed, though this was far from generally accepted at the time, that Copernicus had been correct in asserting that the planets moved around the sun. With this assumption, Kepler explored numerous mathe­matical models, seeking one that would lead to a description of planetary motion consistent with Brahe’s data.

Kepler’s belief in the integrity of Brahe’s data kept him at his calcula­tions through years of poverty and illness, calculating and recalculating until finally, theory was consistent with observation. Kepler found that to fit Brahe’s observations, the planets must move in ellipses—a geometric figure that has two foci; in the case of Earth-orbiting satellites, one focus of the satellite’s orbit is the center of mass of the earth. Kepler next described in a mathematical relationship how a body in orbit sweeps out equal areas of an ellipse in equal times. In a third law, he described how planetary orbits relate to one another mathematically.

In reaching these conclusions Kepler was forced to burn his intellec­tual bridges, cutting himself off from both views of the universe that were accepted in his day. First, by accepting the Copernican assumption, he was no longer in sympathy with the Catholic Church; second, he had given up the Greek view of the planets moving in circles. This second view was particularly hard for Kepler to abandon. Indeed, it was a view that Galileo was never able to abandon.

At one stage, Kepler thought that the orbits might be circular, but when he made calculations based on this assumption there was a small dis­crepancy with Brahe’s data that kept him at his calculations until he finally concluded that the planetary orbits are elliptical. With less confidence in Brahe, Kepler could easily have stopped his laborious calculations before reaching his fundamental insight.

Kepler was ecstatic. Soon after he formulated the last of the three laws that bear his name, he wrote, “Nothing holds me; I will indulge my sacred fury…. If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you are angry, I can bear it; the die is cast, the book is written, to be read either now or by posterity, I care not which….”

Though Galileo (1564-1642) never accepted elliptical orbits, his giant strides in mechanics provided, along with Kepler’s work, a solid sci­entific basis for Isaac Newton (1642— 1727). Among other things, Newton discerned and formulated the all-important law that force is equal to mass times acceleration. All of the different methods of observing the satellite’s position, Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s included, sought different ways to gather information that could make use of this law—the so-called second law of motion—within the concept of orbits established by Kepler.

Newton’s second law (F = MA) and Kepler’s second law allow math­ematicians to deduce six numbers that give an approximate description of an orbit. In tribute, these numbers—or elements—are named after Kepler. One gives the orbit’s shape, that is, how elliptical it is, whether it is extremely elongated or close to circular. This element, termed eccentric­ity, is defined as the distance between the two foci divided by the length of the major axis. The closer the value of eccentricity is to one, the more elliptical the orbit. An eccentricity of zero describes a circle.

A second element, the semimajor axis, gives the size of the orbit. Two more describe the orbit’s orientation in three dimensions with respect to the celestial sphere, and a fifth pinpoints that orientation with respect to the earth (respectively, inclination, ascending node, and argument of perigee). The sixth element is the time at which the satellite is at the ascending or the descending node, that is, the time at which the satellite crosses the plane of the equator heading either north or south. It is more usual to use the ascending node.

Kepler’s elements, however, are only averages. Any additional force, such as an inhomogeneity in the earth’s gravitational field, that acts on the satellite causes it to deviate from the average path described by Kepler’s elements. The deviation might be small and local or might cause the entire orbit to precess; that is, the orbit can rotate about an axis in such a way as to sweep out a conical shape. Thus a description of a satellite in near-Earth orbit requires eight parameters: the six Keplerian elements and two preces­sion terms. While such a description is more accurate than that provided by the Keplerian elements alone, it is still only an approximation. Only by giving the positional coordinates at given times can an accurate orbit be described, and this is what the Transit team eventually did.

On Monday, October 7, people were still struggling simply to observe Sputnik. The Minitrack stations were being adapted; only some of the Baker-Nunn cameras were in place; the first confirmed Moonwatch sightings, in Woomera and Sydney, Australia, would not be made until the next day.

Across the ocean in England, at Jodrell Bank and the Royal Aircraft Establishment, radio telescopes were waiting for Sputnik. They tracked the satellite by keeping its signal at the focus of their dishes, and the angle of the telescope relative to a fixed north-south line and to the horizon gave respectively the azimuth and elevation of the satellite. These data can be used to determine the Kepler elements. When in April 1958 Guier and Weiffenbach published a brief summary of their methods and results in scientific correspondence to the journal Nature, they compared the orbit they calculated for Sputnik I with those from Jodrell Bank and the RAE. There was good agreement.

Once their technique was developed, Guier and Weiffenbach’s orbital determination could, unlike those from Minitrack and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, be based on observations from a single satellite pass. Eventually, for truly accurate orbital determinations their technique would be applied to the observations collected by many ground stations over a twelve to eighteen hour period. When reversed, the technique allowed position to be fixed at a receiver on Earth from one satellite pass, the basis of Transit.

As Guier and Weiffenbach made their separate ways to work that Monday, all this was shrouded in the future. They knew each other slightly as fellow members of the research center. They had worked together on some of the same projects during the previous few years. By chance, that Monday they ate lunch at the same table in the canteen. Just as at the White House and the Pentagon, Sputnik was the focus of conversation.

Guier thought the satellite was superb. Yet his history was not one that obviously suggested an admirer of Soviet ingenuity. As a graduate stu­dent in the late 1940s, he had heard Edward Teller, “father of the hydrogen bomb,” call for physicists to fight a new kind of technological war. In a world newly afraid of atomic power and rife with the political tensions that would lead to the Berlin Wall, Teller’s call to arms seemed logical to Guier. Guier joined APL’s research center in 1951.

Like Guier, Weiffenbach believed in the importance of weapons research and in the protection that technological supremacy could afford. He had been in Europe during the war and had been among those waiting in the summer of 1945 for orders to go to the Pacific. On his demobiliza­tion, the government paid for his education, something his parents could not have afforded to do, through the provisions of the GI Bill. It seemed right to Weiffenbach to work to strengthen national security, both because of what he had seen in Europe and to repay the nation for his education.

Guier’s choice had a consequence that, though small in the scheme of things, was indicative of the times. He had a German friend behind the

Iron Curtain. Their correspondence helped Guier with the language stud­ies necessary for his doctorate. Guier did not see this man through a polit­ical lens, and he was staggered when his thesis director advised him to end the correspondence. The Soviets might exploit the relationship, said the professor, and even if they didn’t, the letters could damage Guier’s career.

At first Guier ignored the advice, but a summer internship at Los Alamos changed his mind. Assigned to work on computer models of nuclear explosions, he learned of the secrecy surrounding nuclear weapons, of the comparative simplicity of some of the physics, and the great fear in government circles that the Soviets would soon have similar technology. These fears were heightened when the Klaus Fuchs and Rosenberg scandals erupted. Fuchs, a British physicist, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, an American couple, gave atomic secrets to the Soviets. Fuchs was imprisoned, the Rosenbergs executed. In this climate, Guier became acutely aware of the Cold War and reluctantly ended his correspondence.

Accepting the political realities of their world, Guier and Weiffen- bach settled down to conduct basic research in support of weapons sys­tems. The Soviets were the enemy.

And yet…

Here was something new, the first foothold in space. The lunch group asserted, with the scientist’s classic understatement, that Sputnik was not trivial. APL staff, deeply involved in missile and radar work, knew this well. And despite its provenance, Sputnik was intriguing.

The lab was not involved with the IGY. Thus people at APL, cer­tainly at Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s low level, had no inside track to what little was known about Sputnik. Nor was there any involvement with the planning for Minitrack. Their ignorance of the IGY’s discussions about the limitations of Doppler and the advantages of interferometry freed Guier and Weiffenbach from the conventional wisdom about satellite tracking and orbital analysis and ultimately stood the pair in good stead.

Lunch wound down.

Guier and Weiffenbach decided to rectify the surprising fact that in a lab bristling with antennas and receivers nobody was listening to Sputnik’s signal. That was all: an indulgence of curiosity. They did not intend to make a serious attempt to determine and predict Sputnik’s orbit, but only to calculate roughly when the satellite would reappear over Washington.

When he got back to his lab, Weiffenbach attached a wire to the back of a receiver and prepared to tune in. He knew—how, given the wide­spread publicity, could he not—that Sputnik was broadcasting an intermit­tent signal at about twenty megahertz.

Serendipity, that great friend to science, now lent a hand for the first time. Weiffenbach’s receiver, working on the same principle as any ham radio operator’s equipment, added the satellite signal of approximately twenty megahertz to a reference frequency of twenty megahertz, resulting in an audible “beat” note—Sputnik’s distinctive beep beep. But Weiffen­bach’s reference frequency was special; it was broadcast by the nearby National Bureau of Standards as a service to scientific laboratories, and it was at a precise twenty megahertz.

Some few hours later, when their rampant curiosity turned slowly to a controlled scientific interest, Guier and Weiffenbach started recording the beat frequency along with the national time signal during each pass of the satellite from horizon to horizon. And that was the raw data from which they developed a new technique for orbital analysis and provided the sci­entific underpinning for a satellite navigational system. Without a precise reference signal, they could not have extracted the information they did. Had the reference signal been broadcast from a more distant site, its quality would have been degraded on passage through the atmosphere, and again they could not have extracted the information they did.

As they waited for the satellite to come over the horizon, Weiffen­bach fiddled with the knobs of his receiver. The airwaves were buzzing. Disembodied voices mimicked the satellite’s signal. Others repeated, “this is your Sputnik … this is your Sputnik.” Then—faintly—Weiffenbach picked up an English-language broadcast from Moscow. It gave the times when the satellite would be over the world’s capitals. They knew when to listen.

By now a crowd had gathered. During the next few days there would at times be so many people in the lab that Weiffenbach could scarcely squeeze through to his receiver. As they waited, there were a few mur­murs, not serious, that perhaps the signal was a fake. Most wondered whether the signal would carry information; measurements, perhaps, of the satellite’s temperature—the first remote measurements (telemetry— measurement at a distance) from space.

The same question arose at a meeting of the IGY’s satellite panel on October 22. Inevitably, the main topic on the agenda was a discussion of when America would be ready to launch its own satellite. But the panel also discussed, without reaching a conclusion, whether it could squeeze money from the budget to analyze Sputnik’s signal for telemetry Bill Pick­ering said that even if the signal did carry temperature or pressure mea­surements, they would be useless without knowing how the Soviet instru­ments were calibrated. Homer Newell observed that maybe someone unconnected with the IGY’s work would decipher Sputnik’s message. (The Soviets had said, incidentally, that there would be no telemetry from their first satellite.)

The discussion was academic: Sputnik stopped transmitting a few days after that meeting. And long before October 22, Weiffenbach and Guier had concluded that there was no telemetry.

In Weiffenbach’s lab, the crowd heard Sputnik’s beep for the first time late on Monday afternoon. Guier, an amateur musician with good relative pitch, cocked an ear. Surely the pitch of the beat note was changing. Of course, he said, it must be the Doppler shift. The change was subtle, a mat­ter of about an octave over twenty minutes. It was this phenomenon, known to every physics student, that was to provide the key to the Applied Physics Laboratory’s work on geodesy and Transit.

The Doppler shift is, at heart, conceptually quite easy to grasp. Its consequences can reveal much about the natural world. Astronomers, for example, find it of great utility when studying the motion of stars. But, as with much else in physics, once one goes beyond the basic description of a phenomenon, things become complicated, and the Doppler effect is not easy to exploit in the real world. For this reason, some mistrusted Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s work. Others were suspicious of their mathematical analysis. The two scientists, recalled Guier, would be told “reliably” what criticism this scientist or another had made of their work and were all but told they were cheating.

A straw poll soliciting descriptions of the Doppler effect elicited com­ments ranging from the general statement that it has to do with the way the sound of a car’s engine changes, to the statement that frequency increases as a source moves toward you and decreases as it moves away. Given its importance to Transit and the understandable vagueness of many, it seems worth describing the basic concept in some detail.

The Doppler shift, which is a consequence of a moving frequency source, is usually introduced to unsuspecting physics students through a discussion of how and why the pitch of a train’s whistle changes as the train races past. It is pointed out that the change in pitch occurs even though the pitch of the whistle would not be changing if you were sitting next to it on the train’s roof.

I’d prefer to start at the seaside, and to tackle the train analogy later.

Imagine facing the ocean for twenty seconds and counting the waves as they crash into you. Now imagine walking into the ocean to meet the waves head on. More waves will reach you in those twenty seconds than if you had stood still. Now imagine walking out of the ocean directly away from the waves, and you can see that fewer crests will reach you in twenty seconds than if you had remained stationary. So the number of waves gen­erated by the ocean in a given amount of time (the transmitter frequency) remains constant, but the number of wave crests encountered (received frequency) increases or decreases because of your motion relative to the waves. The difference between the transmitter frequency (ocean waves rolling in per second) and the received frequency (wave crests encoun­tered) can be thought of as the Doppler frequency—the amount by which the received frequency differs from the transmitter frequency because of relative motion between a frequency source and a receiver.

Now imagine that the ocean is unnaturally well behaved and that the wave crests are spaced evenly (the transmitter frequency is constant). You are walking into the ocean at a steady pace. In the first twenty seconds you encounter a certain number of wave crests. If your pace and direction for­ward stay the same, how many wave crests do you encounter in the next twenty seconds compared with the first twenty seconds?

The same number, of course, because nothing about the ocean waves or about your motion with respect to them has changed between the con­secutive twenty-second intervals. So the frequency received, which was Doppler-shifted upwards by your initial motion forward, remains constant. A graph of received frequency against time would be a straight line parallel to the horizontal, or x-axis. When you turn around and retrace your steps at exactly the same pace, the frequency received will be Doppler-shifted downwards and will remain constant at that value. A graph of received fre­quency against time would also be a straight line parallel to the x-axis, but this time at a value below the transmitter frequency. Momentarily, as you stop and turn, you will be buffeted by waves at the natural frequency of the ocean.

Once you make it to dry land, turn back to the waves. They are now behaving in a very peculiar way The wave fronts are aligned exactly paral­lel to one another, wave crests evenly spaced. They roll in at a rate of 100 per second. You walk directly into them, along a path perpendicular to the wave front. You are walking at a pace which in one second permits you to cover a distance equal to six wavelengths. So in one second you encounter 106 wave crests. (Transmitter frequency is 100 waves per second, or cycles per second; the received frequency is 106 cycles per second and the Doppler frequency is 6 cycles per second.)

Now instead of walking a path perpendicular to the wave front, walk into the ocean at a slant. The number of waves crests you encounter in a second will still be greater than if you stood still (will be Doppler shifted upwards), but it will not be as great as if you took the perpendicular path. The received frequency and whether or not it is shifted upwards or down­wards and by how much depends on the relative motion between you and the wave front. See the diagram below.

The same logic can be applied to the sound waves of a train’s whistle and to radio waves from a satellite.

Let’s take the train. If you and the train remain stationary, the number of sound waves emitted by its whistle in a given time is the number that you hear in that time, just as the number of waves rolling ashore in a given time interval was equal to the number of wave crests that hit you when you stood still.

If you are standing on the track and the train is moving directly towards you at a constant speed, the rate at which the range between you and the train changes remains constant just as when you were moving into the water along a path perpendicular to the wave front at a pace of six
wavelengths per second. So the frequency received from the train’s whistle is shifted upwards because of forward motion and remains constant at the new value as long as that relative velocity (speed and direction) remain constant. Then as the whistle moves through you, for a moment you hear the natural frequency of the whistle (the Doppler shift is zero). Then the train moves away and the frequency is Doppler shifted downwards, and that Doppler shift also remains constant while the relative velocity remains constant. This is all logically equivalent to what happens as you walk in, turn, and walk out of the ocean.

Now what happens if you are standing off at some distance on one side of the track? The rate at which the distance between you and the train changes is no longer constant. That is, the relative velocity between you and the source is no longer constant. So the Doppler shift is no longer constant.

The diagrams below, where marks on the track represent the train’s position at, say, fifteen-second intervals, show how the rate of change of distance between train and observer changes with time, and how that change depends on how close the listener is to the track.

Again there is a logical equivalence between walking into the ocean at a constant angle or changing the angle as you walk into the waves. Thus, the amount by which the Doppler frequency is shifted above the transmit­ter frequency decreases gradually as the train moves towards you, until at the point of closest approach the received frequency is affected neither by the forward nor retreating motion of the train. Afterwards, the frequency con­tinues to decrease.

Graphs of received frequency against time would look like those in the next two diagrams.

The observer is further away from the track in the example below com­pared with the one above. If you look at the way distance is changing with time in the train diagrams, that is, at the way the relative velocity changes with time, the graphs make sense. This relative velocity, on which the Doppler shift depends, changes less the further away the moving source remains from the listener. Hence the change in frequency is less pro­nounced in the diagram below.

Sputnik was in motion, so its transmission was Doppler-shifted. Unlike the train whistle of our example, however, the frequency arriving at the lab was way outside the range of human ears. Instead, the received frequency was combined with a reference signal to give a “beat” signal in the audible range. Guier’s musician’s ear detected changes in the beat frequency as a change in pitch.

Many amateur listeners who heard the phenomenon dismissed it as receiver drift. Guier and Weiffenbach did not, first, because they were physicists listening to a moving frequency source and the concept of Doppler shifting was probably hovering not too far from conscious thought; second, they both knew that they had a good reference source and that Weiffenbach’s experimental experience would have enabled him to recognize receiver drift or the consequences of a poor reference source for what it was.

Before Guier and Weiffenbach heard the Doppler shift, they were lis­tening to Sputnik out of the same curiosity that drove the Moonwatchers and the rest of the country. Once they recognized the Doppler shift, they became more serious.

As Sputnik’s beep faded over their horizon for the first time, they decided to record the sound of the Doppler shift simultaneously with the national time signal. Although they had no particular idea of what they would do with the recordings, they knew that those beeps, which were exciting imaginations across the world, would give them the scientist’s bread and butter: data. And with application and imagination, data can become information.

Another pass was to occur that night. Guier went home to collect a high-quality tape recorder he had recently bought. Back in the lab, Weif­fenbach tuned in well before the satellite appeared. They wanted to collect the complete Doppler shift resulting from a pass from horizon to horizon. During the remaining two and a half weeks that Sputnik transmitted, they recorded the Doppler shift every time the orbit carried the spacecraft within range of the lab. And thus the Soviets provided the experimental setup that was the first step to enabling the Polaris submarines to fix their position at sea more accurately and opened the way to a global naviga­tional system.

Serendipity, in the form of timing and human relationships, now made its second appearance. Weiffenbach, the experimentalist, and Guier, the theoretician, found they worked well together. Experimental and the­oretical physicists, and this is something of an understatement, do not always see eye to eye. During the coming six months, the two men’s skills and outlooks would mesh, gearing up their productivity In later years as they got to know one another better and were part of the team developing Transit, they would have their offices close together so that they could more easily discuss the problems they encountered.

Sputnik’s launch came at the right time for both men. Each was ready for a new project. Guier was feeling a new-found confidence, having emerged recently from chairing an APL committee doing technical work on long-range missile guidance systems for the president’s Science Advi­sory Committee. Weiffenbach had things to prove. He had been scooped twice, once on work for his doctorate.

By Tuesday, Guier and Weiffenbach knew that there was no teleme­try, but they had the recordings. With these they intended to calculate roughly when the satellite would next appear over their horizon. To esti­mate the satellite’s next appearance, they decided to apply physics in the way that the lab had when designing the proximity fuze which detonates a shell on its closest approach to a target. All they needed to do was to find the distances at the point of closest approach between the satellite and the lab—the point where the Doppler frequency was zero—during several passes. If they found these distances, they would have enough data to determine approximate values for the Keplerian elements and to pre­dict roughly when a satellite in that orbit would next be at its closest to the lab.

In taking this approach, Guier and Weiffenbach were applying physics in a well-known way, but the difficulties they encountered were to lead to an innovative interpretation of the Doppler data.

Given APL’s previous work with proximity fuzes, perhaps it was inevitable that Guier and Weiffenbach should have started as they did. An artillery shell emits a radio signal that is reflected from the surface of the target. At the point when the shell has made its closest approach to the tar­get and begins moving away, the Doppler shift is zero and the fuze deto­nates the shell. The technique was important, too, to the lab’s missile work. Missiles would telemeter the Doppler-shifted radio signals that were reflected from the target back to APL’s engineers, who would analyze them to ascertain how closely the missile had approached its target.

Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s first step, therefore, was to turn their recordings into the tables of frequency versus time needed to plot a graph of the satellite’s Doppler shift, because the information from that graph, the Doppler curve, was needed in the equation to find the distance when the satellite was closest to the lab (in missile parlance—the miss distance).

Today, and indeed not too long after Weiffenbach and Guier began their work, automated equipment, the inner mysteries of about which the scientist need not be concerned with, would have done the job. That October, Weiffenbach operated the equipment—a wave analyzer—manu­ally. It was standard equipment, and the natural frequency of the electrical circuits it contained could be adjusted by hand. When a frequency on a recording coincided with that of the analyzer’s circuitry, the analyzer would record a spike. All of the recordings were fed through by hand and the circuitry adjusted laboriously until fifty values of frequency and time had been extracted for each pass.

Sometime early in the process, Guier and Weiffenbach had been joined by two engineers, Harry Zinc and Henry Elliott. Zinc had also been keen to listen to Sputnik. Unknown to Guier and Weiffenbach, he and Elliott had put together equipment with a moderate-gain antenna that was capable of providing a stronger signal than that obtained by the wire attached to Weiffenbach’s receiver.

The four took turns with the tedious job of turning the recordings into tables of frequency and time. An unglamorous task, but an essential part of the scientist’s life—data reduction.

Work began in earnest on Tuesday, October 8. Very quickly, things began to look ambiguous and complicated. Eventually, from this confusion came the idea that led the scientists to being able to determine an orbit from a single satellite pass—the idea that, when turned on its head, was the basis for the Transit system.

The relative importance of written and oral records varies from section to section and even within sections, as does the balance between primary and secondary sources. In chapter one, for example, secondary sources were the only ones I had access to.

Even when there are records, they can be scanty or one-sided. The IGY, for example, is well recorded by the National Academy of Sciences, but the individual scientists, such as Verner Suomi, do not have extensive records. Often, the scientists and technologists were too busy as pioneers to record in detail what they were doing, and posterity was the last thing on their minds.

The NAS archives, which were of importance to the prologue; chapters two, three, and eleven; and to parts of the other sections have been well mined, and others have written extensively of the IGY and its relationship to the subsequent development of space science in the U. S. My “angle” was to explore the same material for the seeds of space technology and of application satellites.

Both oral and written primary sources are of equal importance to the navigation section. The pre-Transit chapters were possible only because of long and repeated interviews, while the chapters on Transit were possible only because of the material in APL’s archives.

The meteorology section is based on interviews, a few primary sources, and secondary sources. It provides the clearest example of the emergence of application satellites from the IGY. But access to declassified primary sources will eventually make the history of meteorology satellites much more complete.

The communication section is the most heavily based on primary source written records, supplemented with a few interviews.

Prologue

The primary source of material for the prologue (also for chapters two, three, and eleven) is the archival material about the International Geo­physical Year stored at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC.

Of particular importance were minutes of the USNC Committee of the IGY; minutes of the Executive Committee of the IGY, and the minutes of the Technical Panel on Rocketry The account of James Van Allen’s din­ner party (page 1) comes from an oral history given by Dr. Van Allen to David DeVorkin in February, June, July, and August of 1981 for the National Air and Space Museum.

Observations about Lloyd Berkner’s character were pieced together from impressions gained by reading minutes of IGY committee meetings (page 1). His name crops up in records for communications and meteorology satellites and in the development of early U. S. space policy. The biograph­ical files at the NASA History Office describe a naval officer who, when he died, was buried with full military honors and someone who opposed scientific secrecy. Besides being the originator of the idea for the IGY, Berkner was president of the International Council of Scientific Unions.

Drawer 1 of the archives of the National Academy of Sciences contains program proposals for the IGY, including one from Paul Siple highlight­ing concerns then felt about global warming (page 3).

Drawer 2 of the NAS archives contains the minutes of the first meeting of the U. S. National Committee for the IGY held 26-27 March 1953. Also in drawer 2 are to be found tentative proposals for the IGY 1957-1958 prepared by the USNC for the IGY, 13 May 1953 (page 3).

The anecdote that administration officials said, “Joe, go home,” was related by Kaplan himself in a speech to mark the tenth anniversary of Explorer (page 4). A copy of the speech was among Verner Suomi’s papers.

The account of what happened in Rome in 1954 and the budget figures for the IGY are found in Vanguard—A History, by Constance Green and

Milton Lomask (page 4). The book is part of the NASA History Series, SP4202.

Information about President Eisenhower’s intelligence needs (p. 4-5) and his national security policy comes mainly from. . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age, by Walter McDougall (Basic Books, 1985). This book addresses what has been the central mystery of the U. S. space program—why the Eisenhower administration chose the Vanguard rather than the Explorer program for the development of the first U. S. satellite.

The existence of the Killian panel is well known, and its existence is writ­ten about in numerous accounts of the time, but McDougall’s discussion is the most exhaustive I encountered (page 4).

The most detailed and up-to-date information about the Killian panel (page 4) and its influence on the Eisenhower administration’s policy and of the way that national security considerations impacted the develop­ment of the IGY are to be found in R. Cargill Hall’s article “The Eisen­hower Administration and the Cold War, Framing American Astronautics to Serve National Security,” in Prologue, Quarterly of the National Archives.

The exact sequence of events in which Donald Quarles, assistant secretary of defense for research and development, approached senior scientists of the IGY is not clear when one looks at Cargill Hall’s article and the sequence of events that surrounded planning of the IGY (page 5). How­ever, minutes of the IGY suggest that in the light of Cargill Hall’s article, some senior scientists other than Joseph Kaplan knew or guessed the national security agenda that necessitated developing a satellite with a largely civilian flavor.

The first meeting of the USNC of the IGY was chaired by Joseph Kaplan (page 3).

During the third meeting on November 5 — 6, 1954, James Van Allen commented on the usefulness of rocketry studies. At this time, though various international bodies had endorsed the idea of a satellite program forming part of the IGY, Van Allen’s presentation referred to sounding rockets, i. e., those that carry instruments aloft but fall back to Earth with­out entering orbit.

During the fourth meeting, on January 14 and 15, 1955, Harold Wexler spoke of gaps in the meteorological data, and Homer Newell, in the absence of James Van Allen, told the committee that the sounding rock­etry work would be undertaken entirely by the agencies of the Depart­ment of Defense, provided that the National Science Foundation secured the necessary funding from Congress.

By this time, much of the debate concerning the importance to the United States of adopting a satellite program as part of the IGY had moved to the USNC’s executive committee and to a working group of the technical panel on rocketry (see notes and sources for chapter three) as well as to the National Security Council.

Reports on Leonid Sedov’s announcement at the sixth meeting of the International Astronautical Federation in Copenhagen appeared in the Baltimore Sun as well as in other newspapers, dateline August 2, 1955 (page 6).

Details scattered through chapter 15 come from the following: Interviews with Verner Suomi, Bob Ohckers, Bob Sutton, and Leo Skille.

“Initial Technical proposal for a ‘Storm Patrol’ Meteorological Experi­ment on an ATS Spacecraft” by V. E. Suomi and R. J. Parent, September 28,1964;

“Spin Scan Camera System for a Synchronous Satellite” prepared for NASA by V. E. Suomi and R. J. Parent—July 1965; and “The Spin Scan Camera System: Geostationary Meteorological Satellite Workhorse for a Decade.” Optical Engineering 17 (1),January—February 1978.

Books of Value for the Meteorology Section

Planet Earth: The View from Space, by D. James Baker (Flarvard University Press, 1990).

Watching the World’s Weather; by W. J. Burroughs (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Weather Cycles: Real or Imaginary; by W. J. Burroughs (Cambridge Univer­sity Press, 1992).

Bill Guier sees an equation as paragraphs of lucid prose. There are nuances and implications stemming from the relationship that the equation establishes between different aspects of the physical world. To George Weiffenbach, numbers, their intrinsic values and relationship to one another, are like a film. How they change tells him how the physical events that they represent are unfolding. These ways of viewing the world are quite usual for physicists, and the one is typical of theoretician, the other of the experimentalist.

Each understood something of the others outlook and could, to some extent, see from the other’s viewpoint. The combination proved in­valuable.

Some textbooks still describe the miss-distance method that Guier and Weiffenbach initially adopted as the basis for Doppler tracking. It is not the technique that APL developed. Had Guier and Weiffenbach stuck to determining miss distances, they would not have had tracking data that were accurate enough for a good orbital determination, because one of the values needed in the calculation is satellite transmitter frequency. Sputnik’s oscillator, though loud and clear, was varying slightly from its nominal value in an unknown way. Those at the IGY who had discounted Doppler as a means of obtaining tracking data had done so precisely because they were concerned about the stability of the oscillators that generated the radio signals. Oscillator stability would be of concern, too, in the method that Guier and Weiffenbach developed, but their approach offered a way to tackle the problem.

On Tuesday morning, October 8, Guier and Weiffenbach were still thinking in terms of miss distance. And they were conceptualizing the problem. As is usual when creating a mathematical model of a physical phe­nomenon, they simplified the problem. In this way, they would find out what general principles were at play before turning to the inherent com­plexities of this particular case. They assumed that the satellite was moving in a straight line, just like our train. Since they were looking only for the range at the point of closest approach, the simplification was reasonable.

Guier and Weiffenbach knew all but one of the values needed to calculate miss distance, and that value—the range rate when the Doppler
shift was zero—was available experimentally from the slope of the curve as it passed through T = 0 in the graphs of frequency against time. It is the steepest part of the curve.

Guier recalls watching colleagues plotting graphs, fitting plastic splines to them and measuring the slope, then looping string around the lab to represent an orbit and marking the miss distances with rulers. It was for fun as much as anything, though such a physical representation of the orbit does give a conceptual idea of what is going on in three dimensions.

To two people who saw what Guier and Weiffenbach saw in equa­tions and numbers, the ruler and string approach was not the way forward. They determined the maximum slope from tables of frequency and time using a mechanical calculator. Soon, they switched to the lab’s new Umvac ПОЗА, APL’s first fully digital electronic computer. With its combination of vacuum tubes and transistors, the ПОЗА could perform several thou­sand additions per second, zipping through the tables of time and fre­quency far more rapidly than was possible with a mechanical calculator. It was an advance on APL’s partly analog machine—a type of computer that performed arithmetic operations by converting numbers to some physical analogue, say length or voltage.

By the late 1950s, university departments were slowly converting to digital machines, but not all scientists and engineers had, as yet, seen the value of computers. So, even though their project was not sanctioned offi­cially, Guier and Weiffenbach had no problem getting time on the computer, something that would not have been the case even a few months later.

When Guier and Weiffenbach first turned to the Univac, some of their colleagues asked, Why do you need a computer to calculate the slope of the curve? Given that they intended only a rough calculation, the ques­tion was reasonable. Guier, however, had worked with computers at Los Alamos. Though those machines were mechanical and rattled and banged around once Guier had fed in the numbers and instructed the machine to add or multiply, he had been won over by them. To him, the 1103A was a luxury, and he was happy to find a problem for the new machine.

It was no easy job, however, to program those early computers. A task that would take an hour to code in a higher-level language such as FOR­TRAN might take eight hours to code in assembly language, where each mathematical operation had to be coded for separately. If two numbers were to be multiplied together, the code needed to tell the computer in which memory locations to find each number, in what location to carry out the multiplication, and where to store the result.

Guier wrote instructions for those writing the code. As the orbital determination grew more elaborate, the number of code writers increased, and it not always possible to tell what each programmer had done. Guier started to insist that code be accompanied by notes describing why a par­ticular approach had been taken, and, though it looked like a tedious task, he learned assembly language himself in order to provide some continuity in the software effort (of course, this all took place before the word soft­ware had been invented). Thus APL, like others at the time, started to for­malize software development.

Today s computers can translate high-level languages, which are rich in symbolic notation, into the low-level assembly language that the machine “understands.” Computers then did not have the memory to hold the pro­grams needed for such a translation. To make matters worse, code writers often had to go back to the basic binary words of zeros and ones, which the limited symbology of assembly language represents, in order to find errors.

Despite what today would seem to be daunting limitations, the Uni- vac ПОЗА was a godsend to Guier’s and Weiffenbach s research.

As the two sought values for the miss distance, they soon recognized the ambiguities inherent in the approach. In the case of the train, it is easy to see that the way the frequency varies depends on how close the listener is to the track. But if you have only a tape recording, how do you know whether that recording was made two yards to the east or two yards to the west of the track? In the two-dimensional case, you are stuck with the ambiguity. In the case of the satellite, the earth is rotating beneath its orbit, and the east-west symmetry is broken.

But there are other ambiguities. Consider the train again; a recorder two yards west of a north-south track will record the same frequency shift if it maintains its westward distance but moves a mile due north. Fortu­nately, satellites inhabit our three-dimensional world. Rather than moving in a straight line, the satellite’s path with relationship to the lab might be a shallow or pronounced arc, near to the lab or like a distant rainbow, low or high on the horizon, and the arcs could be at many different angles. For each arc, the relative motion between the lab and the satellite, and thus the Doppler shift, was different.

Guier and Weiffenbach began to recognize the richness of the situa­tion, its complexity. The miss distance soon ceased to look like a particu­larly interesting value to calculate. They were beginning to suspect that their Doppler curves might contain a lot more information about satellite motion than was immediately apparent.

So they decided to explore, to find out how much information the data contained. To do this they needed to know how the Doppler data changed for different orbits. But only one satellite was aloft. Guier turned to the computer and created a general mathematical description of an orbit that would then generate the theoretical Doppler shift associated with a hypothetical satellite’s motion.

Guier pulled together the geometry, trigonometry, and algebra required to describe a generalized ellipse in space and the relationships between the ellipse, the lab, and the center of the earth. He drew up flow charts showing how his mathematical description of this physical phenom­enon could be turned into a computer program.

The model assumed the earth to be spherical, which it is not, and orbits to be circular, which they are not, though Sputnik’s orbit was nearly so. The idea, again, was to deal first with the simplest possible situation in order to clarify the underlying principles. This construction of a general­ized mathematical representation is akin to preparing a canvas for an oil painting. Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s painting would prove to be ambitious.

They began to generate theoretical Doppler curves. Of course, they were not creating curves but churning out lists of Doppler-shifted fre­quencies and times for the computer to work through, looking for ways in which the Doppler data varied as the orbital path varied. These numbers were octal rather than decimal, so instead of a counting scheme based on the digits 0 to 9, the digits run only from 0 to 7.

Guier and Weiffenbach pored over these numbers, and as necessary turned to their mechanical calculator to convert octal to decimal. They decided to make their model more realistic and so included mathematics describing the earth’s oblateness (a bulging at the equator caused by the centrifugal force resulting from the earth’s rotation). Oblateness causes orbits to precess because the Earth’s gravitational field is not uniform, as it would be around a homogeneous sphere. Inclusion of a term for oblate­ness was the first brush stroke on the newly prepared canvas.

In 1957, geophysicists thought they had a good understanding of the earth’s shape and structure and thus of its gravitational field. They turned out to be very wrong. Observations of satellites in near-Earth orbit showed all kinds of deviations from Keplerian orbits, each one rep­resenting some variation in the gravitational field, which in turn was a result of inhomogeneities in the earth. The field of satellite geodesy was established to tease a new understanding of the earth from these observa­tions of satellite motion. In 1957, the revolution that satellite geodesy pre­cipitated in our understanding of the earth had not yet begun, and the mathematical model that Guier devised to generate orbits was extremely rudimentary compared with what is possible today. In the years following Sputnik’s launch, observations of satellite motion would lead to many more brush strokes on Guier’s mathematical canvas, each representing a newly understood aspect of the Earth’s structure and its associated gravi­tational field.

Using their basic model in October 1957, Guier and Weiffenbach generated more theoretical orbits. They changed imaginary perigees, then the inclinations, ascending nodes, and eccentricity, and they observed what impact these changes in the Keplerian elements had on the theoretical Doppler curves generated by the computer. By this stage, they had com­pletely lost interest in calculating miss distances.

Given the multiplicity of tasks and the extent to which they exchanged ideas, it is hard now for Guier and Weiffenbach to remember who did what when, but they agree that at some point in those first days, Guier recognized that the detail of the Doppler curve must change in a unique way, depending on the geometry of the satellite pass. This was the conceptual breakthrough that others failed to see or, if they saw it, did not use: that each ballistic trajectory of the satellite generates a unique Doppler shift. They asked, Could they find the Keplerian elements that would generate theoretical Doppler curves that matched experimental observations of a real pass? If they could—bingo! The Keplerian elements fed into the theo­retical model would be the elements defining Sputnik’s orbit. They could test their findings by predicting the time that the real satellite would be at a given position if it had the Keplerian elements they had found by this method.

They knew enough from their observations and knowledge of physics to make rough initial guesses about Sputniks Keplerian elements. They fed these to the computer, generating theoretical lists of Doppler shifts. They watched the output, the reams of octal numbers, looking at how closely the theoretical values matched the observations for a particular pass.

Their project was still not sanctioned officially, but other members of the research center knew that something potentially interesting was afoot.

Their boss, Frank McClure, always insightful if not always diplomatic, was watching—at a discreet distance. From time to time, the trademark pipe of Ralph Gibson, APL’s director, appeared stealthily around a corner.

At some time in the first few weeks, when things happened in a less orderly fashion than this account suggests, Guier heard that Charles Bit- terli, one of APL’s few computer programmers, was writing an algorithm for a standard statistical tool, known as least squares fitting, that would be very useful in Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s research. Guier went in search of Bitterli.

Bitterli, who needed a real-life test problem, was happy to oblige by making his work available. An algorithm is a step-by-step set of instruc­tions for carrying out a computational process. When translated into a computer program, it becomes a standard tool to be pulled out when needed. Today, thousands exist in software libraries. Back then the task of building such libraries had scarcely begun.

Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s problem was that vast numbers of theoret­ical Doppler curves could be generated by varying the Keplerian elements. If it were not for the fact that the physics ruled out some combinations, the number of options would have been impossibly large. Even with the limits that physics imposed, there were many possibilities.

Each theoretical curve had to be checked point by point against observations of Sputnik’s Doppler curves. One theoretical curve might at first look like the best match, but then a comparison point by point could well show that it was not. Further, once they found the best possible match, they needed some quantitative way of assessing how good that fit was, and thus what the errors in the Keplerian elements probably were. So an algorithm for least-squares curve fitting, a statistical technique for find­ing the curve that best represents a set of experimental data, was very desirable to Guier and Weiffenbach. Bitterli’s program, which was for linear equations only (those whose graph is a straight line), had to be generalized for nonlinear equations relating many parameters. It was now that it became apparent that new methods would have to be learned and that specialists in numerical analysis would be needed.

Bitterli’s algorithm worked well, and the comparison of theoretical and observed curves speeded up. Even so, and despite the fact that their intuition was working full time as they made informed guesses about the input values of the Keplerian elements, they couldn’t generate a match that was close enough to be of any help in defining Sputnik’s orbit. Yet, theoret­ically, the method should work.

What next? Check everything; examine the setup for recording the Doppler shifts—connection by connection. Review the raw data, the cal­culations. Weiffenbach combed through everything he could think of. He concluded that the data were good. Guier reviewed the theory, the equa­tions, and the computer programs, which by now could have covered enough rolls of wallpaper to decorate a small room. They discussed the problem with one another and with colleagues, listened to critiques, and incorporated suggestions that seemed apt.

They continued to feed the computer the initial conditions that rep­resented their best guess about the satellite’s orbit. Then the computer would run through the calculations to produce the Doppler shift associ­ated with those elements. The process was iterative, with small changes being made to the starting conditions and fresh Doppler curves generated for each set of conditions. Sometimes, it looked as though they had found as good a fit as they were going to find. Listening still to their intuition, they were convinced they could find a set of Keplerian elements that would generate a theoretical Doppler curve even closer to the experimen­tal data. The new Keplerian elements would sometimes make the curve first grow away from a fit, but then as small changes were made, the theo­retical curve would grow closer than it had been before. The process was a little like finding yourself in a valley, only to climb through trees and find a deeper valley beyond. But still, the match was not good enough.

They grew despondent, questioned themselves, and searched some more. They noticed that from one experimental curve to the next, the fre­quency of the transmitter varied. Sputnik’s oscillator was not stable. Exactly as those planning tracking for the IGY had feared, transmission frequency could not be treated as a constant. But Guier and Weiffenbach needed to know the transmitter frequency in order to generate theoretical Doppler curves.

Now they started varying the value of the transmitter frequency. The same principle applied as when varying the Keplerian elements: if they could find a fit between theory and experiment, then the theoretical val­ues of transmitter frequency as well as of the Keplerian elements must be the values of the actual setup. The task was now way beyond what would have been possible without the recently installed Univac.

The whole process was barreling along when Sputnik I suddenly stopped transmitting. Guier and Weiffenbach had data to work with retro­spectively, much of which still had to be reduced. In practice therefore, Sputnik’s, silence made little difference, but psychologically it was disap­pointing to Guier. The pair were also beginning to suspect that an aspect of the physical world that they had thought could be ignored—the iono­sphere—was, in fact, significant. They were right. But to solve the problem they needed another satellite transmitting two frequencies.

Once again the Soviets obliged. Sputnik II was launched November 3, 1957. It transmitted at twenty and forty megahertz. With these two fre­quencies they could make the correction necessary to solve their problem. Theory and experiment started to come together.

Shortly after the launch of Sputnik II, they did it—found a theoreti­cal curve that gave them Sputnik’s orbit. It was nowhere near as accurate as later orbital determinations would be, but they had a method to determine all the Keplerian elements and the transmitter frequency from data col­lected during one satellite pass over one ground station. Guier and Weif­fenbach were delighted. It was the first time, recalls Guier, that they jumped for joy. Henry Elliott, who with Harry Zinc had joined Guier and Weiffenbach shortly after their work started, recalls being ecstatic. Bitterli, who went on to code far more complicated programs than a least-squares algorithm, came to see this work as one of the most important accom­plishments of his professional career.

Guier and Weiffenbach were now on the edge of new ground, sur­veying terrain that was full of quagmires and briars. The basic computa­tional and statistical methods existed for a novel method of orbital deter­mination and prediction, one that did not rely, as did every other, on measurements of angle. The same computational and statistical techniques would be applied, in an inverted manner, to satellite navigation.

Guier and Weiffenbach suspected that their method was correct to within two or three miles. McClure suggested checking their predictions against orbits determined by other groups. They compared their results with those from Jodrell Bank and the Royal Aircraft Establishment and found good agreement. Later they checked their orbital predictions for Sputnik II and the first American satellite, Explorer I, with Minitrack’s results. Again, the methods gave comparable accuracies.

The insight that each orbital trajectory had a unique Doppler shift associated with it was not new physics; rather, it was an inevitable conse­quence of the Doppler phenomenon in the dynamic, three-dimensional world. Nevertheless, Guier and Weiffenbach were the first to recognize that consequence and its implications for orbital determination.

More importantly, they got the process to work in the real world, where very little behaves ideally. If they had stopped to think about the task too much, they might have concluded that the method would never work to any useful degree of accuracy. If they had known more than they did initially about orbital mechanics, the ionosphere, or the discussions at the IGY, they might not have started their work as they did and thus not developed their techniques.

Some people who heard of their research found it hard to believe that all of the Keplerian elements and the transmitter frequency could be found by fitting a theoretical curve to one experimental set of data. But the trajectory of every satellite pass, part of a definable orbit, has a unique Doppler shift. And in three dimensions the ambiguities of two dimensions are eliminated. The method, to use their terminology, worked because of its exquisite sensitivity to the range rate. It was an excellent example of applied physics, and the danger is that it might sound trivial in the telling, particularly a telling that leaves out the mathematics. To fall back on scien­tific cliche, the task was nontrivial.

Chapter one, inasmuch as it refers to Sergei Korolev, is based on secondary sources. Anyone interested in an account based on primary sources should look for a bio­graphy by Jim Harford that was published this fall (1997) by John Wiley and Sons.

Even the secondary sources about Sergei Korolev are sparse, and in each case it was essential to consider carefully who wrote it, where the author was at the time, and when and where the account of Korolev was published. I also attempted to establish whether any given anecdote had similar sources or whether it came from genuinely independent accounts. I have allowed my imagination to have more play in this chapter than in the rest of the book.

Despite being the chief designer of cosmic rocket systems, Korolev was unknown in the West at the time of the launch of Sputnik (page 8). In a 1959 bibliography on Soviet missiles and state personnel (Library of Con-

gress reference TL 789.8.R9H21) intended to give the U. S. technical world information about Soviet activities, Korolev is listed in a publica­tion from HRB-Singer only as someone interested in liquid-fueled rocket engines.

Grigory Tokady, a defector, first disclosed that Korolev was the chief designer for the Soviet space program during a meeting of the British Interplanetary Society in 1961. His revelation was not widely reported.

One of the best accounts of Sergei Korolev’s early life is by Yaroslav Golo­vanov, Sergei Korolev: The Apprenticeship of a Space Pioneer (Novosti, 1976). The book gives a brief account of the launch of Sputnik, but otherwise is devoted entirely to Korolev’s youth; his early poetic efforts; and his rela­tionships with his mother, grandmother, and stepfather (pages 15 and 16).

It is the only book I found that explores the events and relationships that shaped the man. Clearly, the author has interviewed many people who knew Korolev and has tried to evaluate some of the folklore that has grown up around him, in particular, Korolev’s purported meeting with Tsiolkovsky. Irritatingly, Golovanov’s account stops before Korolev was arrested by Stalin’s secret police. The author is reported to have completed a full biography, written in Russian, and to be in search of a publisher.

Details of Korolev’s state of mind in prison in Moscow, his activities there, and the impact that his incarceration in Kolyma had on him appear in Georgii Oserov’s book, published in Paris, En Prison avec Tupolev (A. Michel, 1973). Oserov was in prison with Korolev and the elite of national aeronautics.

Walter McDougall’s book. . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age chronicles the USSR’s fascination from Lenin’s time with technology and the country’s national goal of achieving technical supremacy. This goal led to internal tensions and confrontations between the government and the intelligentsia.

McDougall describes how Marshal Tukhachevsky became a victim of Stalin’s purges and how in 1938 the rocketeers, including Korolev, joined Stalin’s earlier victims, the aircraft designers, in the Gulag’s prison camps.

McDougall reports that Korolev’s failures in early 1957 encouraged his rival Chalomei to attempt to have him dismissed.

Other less detailed accounts of Korolev’s early years exist. The Kremlin and the Cosmos, by Nicholas Damloff (Knopf, 1972), for example, provides a good summary of Korolev’s schooling without the attempts that Golo­vanov makes to explore his psyche. The account is hopelessly inadequate once one enters the difficult years of arrest, concentration camps, and divorce. Daniloff does, however, mention briefly that there were “trying and despairing situations” in Korolev’s life.

Daniloff also gives an account of the launch of Sputnik and of the engineers retiring to an observation bunker a kilometer from the launch pad (pages 10, 18, and 19).

Aleksei Ivanov, an engineer who worked on Sputnik, also recounts the launch (pages 10, 18, and 19) in an article in Isvestia marking the tenth anniversary of Sputnik. He wrote, “I watch not moving my eyes away, fearing to blink so as not to miss the moment of liftoff.”

Another book, more a hagiography than a biography, about Korolev is Spacecraft Designer: The Story of Sergei Korolev (Novosti, 1976). The author, Alexander Romanov, says that he first met Korolev in 1961. If one is care­ful, some details seem worth extracting from this book. The author describes Korolev as a heavyset man, a description that photographs sup­port. His account of Korolev’s small, wood-paneled office with black­board, chalk, lunar globe, bronze bust of Lenin, and model of Sputnik seems plausible, as does his account of a formidable intellect and an ener­getic man with willpower, energy, and vision.

Romanov repeats uncritically the story that Korolev met Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Kaluga in 1929. Romanov reports that after that meeting, Korolev said, “The meaning of my life came down to one thing—to reach the stars.”

Romanov demonstrates Korolev’s dedication to rocketry with an extract from a letter that Korolev wrote to his second wife in which he wrote, “The boundless book of knowledge and life… is being leafed through for the first time by us here.”

Romanov also reports that it was Korolev who wanted Sputnik to be spherical, which, given Korolev’s authority in the program, seems likely. Romanov says that Korolev said, “It seemed to me that the first Sputnik must have a simple and expressive form close to the shape of celestial bodies.”

More details of Korolev’s character—his strictness, compassion, and demanding nature—appear in a collection of essays entitled Pioneers of Space, which were compiled by Victor Mitroshenkov (Progress Publishers, 1989). Korolevs engineering intuitiveness apparently amazed his colleagues.

In one of the essays, Nikolai Kuznetsov, who headed the cosmonaut training center from 1963, wrote that Korolev liked the cosmonauts to meet the ground staff so that “cosmodrome specialist and cosmonaut could look one another in the eye.” It was Korolev’s way of ensuring that work on Earth was carried out conscientiously. This, together with his recorded friendship with cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Alexei Leonov, is the basis for my saying on page 8 that Korolev cared deeply about the fate of his cosmonauts.

Another essay by Pavel Popovich and Alexander Nemov says that peo­ple found Korolev either sincere, unpretentious, and accessible, or mercilessly strict and demanding with slackers. He was, they say, intolerant of vanity.

The essays include brief accounts of the months before the launch and contain nice details, such as Korolev’s habit of lifting his little finger to his eyebrow when vexed.

Other books in which snippets of information about Sputnik, Korolev, and the space race appear that back up information from the main sources include Soviet Rocketry; Past, Present and Future, by Michael Stoiko (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970); Russians in Space, by Evgeny Riabchikov (prepared by Novosti Press Agency, published New York, Doubleday, 1971); Soviet Writings on Earth Satellites and Space Travel, editor Ari Stern – field (Freeport, NY, Books for Libraries Press, 1970); Red Star in Orbit, by James Oberg (Random House, 1981). Oberg quotes Solzhenitsyn as say­ing that Korolev worked on his rocket at night; The Sputnik Crisis and Early United States Space Policy, by Rip Bulkeley (Indiana University Press, 1991), and Race into Space:The Soviet Space Program, by Brian Harvey (Ellis Horwood, a division of John Wiley, 1988).

A description of the location of the Baikonur cosmodrome and the rela­tive position of Korolev’s cottage can be found in this 1986 edition of Janefs Spaceflight Directory.

Information about the events of the IGY meeting on rockets and satellites in Washington, DC, appears in the archives of the National Academy of Sciences.

The IGY meeting in Washington was reported in the New York Times, October 4, 1957.

The anecdote about Korolev’s conversation with Alexei Leonov a few nights before he died comes from Jim Harford. Harford also talked to me about Korolev’s visit to Peenemiinde after World War II.

Khrushchev’s views on the significance to the Soviet Union of ICBMs are to be found in his autobiography, Khrushchev Remembers:The Last Testa­ment, translated by Strobe Talbot (Little Brown).

Khrushchev describes his casual attitude toward Korolev’s news of the launch of Sputnik to James Reston in an interview published in the New York Times on October 8, 1957. Khrushchev says he congratulated Korolev, then went to bed.

An understanding of what life in prison was like for Korolev can be found in The First Circle, by Aleksandor Solzhenitsyn.

Though chapter one is about Korolev because it was his satellite that opened the space age, Robert Goddard was the man who built and launched the first liquid-fueled rocket—a fact of which Korolev was well aware. A companion book for anyone interested in the pioneering days of rocketry therefore is Robert H. Goddard: Pioneer of Space Research, by Milton Lehman (Da Capo Press, 1988). The footnote about the launch of the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket comes from this book. Lehman’s book was published first as This High Man (Da Capo Press, 1963).

I found information about general historical events, such as the coup that Khrushchev faced down in June 1957 (page 11), in A History of the Soviet Union, by Geoffrey Hosking (Fontana, 1985).

There was so much material for this section that the only way to make sense of it was to put it all together into one big pot, to arrange it chronologically, and to construct a series of calendars for the years in which I was interested. I also put the dates of major importance for world events and other developments in the space program on the same calen­dars. This gave me a good feel for what was happening when, and high­lighted some nice ironies between the Telstar and Syncom programs that I would otherwise have missed.

Primary source material came from AT&T, the Hughes Aircraft Com­pany, John Rubel, Bob Roney, the NAS, NASA, and the American Her­itage Center.

Interviewees were John Pierce, Harold Rosen, Tom Hudspeth, Bob Roney, Robert Davis.

AT&T’s highly professional archive yielded masses of information about Telstar and some, though to a lesser extent, about Echo.

The НАС archives give a good sense of the work that Harold Rosen and Don Williams et al. did, as well as demonstrating the company’s internal wrangles and its lobbying of NASA and the DoD.

Bob Roney had personal papers that supplemented the more extensive records from the НАС archive.

John Rubel’s papers cover the ground from the perspective of the Office of Defense Research & Engineering. The view from this office is not always the same as that from other departments of the DoD.

NASA’s records (thanks once again to David Whalen for these) gave, not surprisingly, the agency’s side of the story

I had more material from AT&T and the НАС and John Rubel than from NASA, so the story unfolds primarily from their perspective, though I have tried to synthesize different policy and technical viewpoints.

Chapter sixteen: The Players

TAT-1 capacity (page 171) from Signals, The Science of Telecommunication, by John Pierce and Michael Noll. Scientific American Library (1990).

The Space Station (page 172), Its Radio Applications, by Arthur C. Clarke, 25 May 1945 (typed manuscript).

“Extra-Terrestrial Relays, Can Rocket Stations Give World-Wide Radio Coverage,” by Arthur C. Clarke, published in Wireless World, October 1945 (page 172) (From John Pierce).

“Orbital Radio Relays,” by J. R. Pierce, Jet Propulsion, April 1955 (pages 172-173).

Pierce’s views of Rudi Kompfner, medium-altitude satellites, and Harold Rosen (pages 174—175) from interviews with Pierce, his oral history at Caltech, memos, and his autobiography (see notes for chapter 17).

Damn, I’m going to wrangle a place on that project.

—Harold Black, Transit team member, on hearing of Guier and Weiffen – bach’s work on orbital determination and prediction at the end of 1957

n November 8, 1957, Ralph Gibson dipped into the director’s dis­cretionary fund for $20,000 to fund Project D-54—to determine a satellite orbit from Doppler data, and he assigned technical and engineer­ing support to Guier and Weiffenbach.

Shortly afterwards, Guier and Weiffenbach briefed their colleagues in the research center, some of whom would later play an important part in the development of Transit. One, Harold Black, was bowled over. Guier had explained methods and coordinate systems that were on the edge of his understanding, and Black knew that he wanted to be a part of the work. He would be, but not for a few more months. Not until the Transit program was underway.

In the closing months of 1957, Guier and Weiffenbach were tackling the problem of the ionosphere—the region of the earth’s upper atmo­sphere where solar energy separates electrons from atoms and molecules, creating layers of free electrons that reflect or refract radio waves. Reflected waves pass round the curve of the Earth and carry transmissions from, say, Voice of America, or provide medium – and high-frequency channels for voice communication. Higher frequencies pass through the ionosphere, enabling communication between the ground and a satellite.

On passage through the ionosphere, radio waves interact with the free electrons, and the frequency of a signal received on Earth from a satel­lite appears different from the frequency transmitted by the satellite. This muddies the water if you are trying to relate the Doppler shift to the satel­lite’s motion. There is a qualitative explanation that gives a rough idea of what is happening.

Radio waves are, of course, examples of electromagnetic radiation. Sputnik’s oscillator was creating an electric field (with its associated mag­
netic field), and the influence of the field extended through space. The field’s influence set the free electrons of the ionosphere oscillating with the same frequency as the field. The oscillating electrons set up their own elec­tromagnetic fields, which, in turn, extended their influence out through space. The fields from Sputnik’s oscillator and from the free electrons were of the same frequency but were not exactly in step. They overlapped. If one returns to the wave analogy of electromagnetic radiation, it as though the crests of the waves from the field generated by the free electrons occurred at a slightly different time than the crests of the waves from the satellite oscillator’s field. So a receiver on Earth detected more wave crests over a given time than it would if the ionosphere were to conveniently disappear (convenient at least for this application).

The Doppler shift (received minus transmitted frequency) is related to the range rate, that is, to the way the satellite’s position with respect to the lab was changing. So when the received frequency was altered by the presence of the ionosphere, the satellite’s path appeared to be different from what it actually was.

How could the receiver distinguish between the number of crests received in a given time as a result of ionospheric refraction as distinct from the number of crests detected because of the Doppler shift?

It couldn’t. And because Sputnik I generated only one frequency, there wasn’t much that Guier and Weiffenbach could then do by judi­ciously juggling theory and observation. Fortunately, the Soviets launched Sputnik II, and Weiffenbach started recording both frequencies. By com­paring the two signals received, and knowing, from theory, that the iono­spheric effect was roughly inversely proportional to the square of the transmitter frequency, they were able to calculate the amount by which the ionosphere altered the received frequency. They were able, therefore, to remove the effects of the ionosphere from their experimental data. Once Guier and Weiffenbach corrected for ionospheric refraction, the frequen­cies computed were those due to the satellite’s motion and not to passage through the ionosphere. Needless to say, this again sounds far simpler than it was, and considerable effort subsequently went into theoretical and experimental explorations of the ionosphere’s nature.

Fortunately, the IGY was generating new observations of the iono­sphere. Of particular importance for greater theoretical understanding were the Naval Research Laboratory’s data showing that the then existing simplified description of the ionosphere was less complete than had been thought previously. The nonuniform electron density through a cross sec­tion of the ionosphere raised concerns at APL that more than two fre­quencies would be needed to correct for ionospheric refraction with suffi­cient accuracy Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s work with Sputnik II did not settle this question.

Another potential complication was that electron density, which influences the amount of refraction, varies with the amount of energy the sun is pouring onto the earth. There are, for example, more free electrons at noon than at night, and the density varies according to the latitude, the time of year, and the stage of the solar cycle.

Thus in November 1957, the ionosphere was the first quagmire that Guier and Weiffenbach encountered as they analyzed their Doppler data. Their experience led them to conclude in the first Transit proposal, erro­neously as it turned out, that the ionosphere would be the biggest obstacle to developing a navigation system.

Once the Transit program was underway, Weiffenbach and then Guier and then others tackled the ionospheric physics in greater detail and with more sophistication than in Guier and Weiffenbach’s initial paper in April 1958, entitled Theoretical Analysis of the Doppler Radio Signals from Earth Satellites.

Weiffenbach went back to basics, studying Maxwell’s equations describing the behavior of electromagnetic waves as well as the equations that provide a theoretical and simplified description of the ionosphere. He collected much of the published data and satisfied himself that theory and experiment seemed to be in synch. Weiffenbach’s aim was to find the opti­mum frequency for Transit given the constraints that physics and current or foreseeable technology imposed. Ideally, the highest possible value should be chosen, but electronic components of the day did not work at the higher frequencies. Such juggling of theory and practicality was an essential aspect of determining the early specifications for Transit, and it focused the minds of many other satellite designers.

By the end of 1958, Weiffenbach had concluded that two frequencies should do the job. The analysis he submitted to Richard Kershner, the team leader, warned that only experiment would clarify the situation, and the first experimental Transit satellite was aimed at doing just that.

Guier’s later basic theoretical analysis, bolstered by results from early experimental satellites and discussions with Weiffenbach, showed that for Transit’s purposes, physical phenomena such as the irregularity of electron density could be ignored, and that two frequencies provided an accurate enough correction for ionospheric refraction.

Shortly after the first Transit proposal was written in April 1958, they realized that the earth’s magnetic field would also affect passage of radio waves through the ionosphere. Therefore, Weiffenbach, who became responsible for space physics and instrumentation at APL, recommended circularly polarized transmitters. Such transmitters were not unusual, but Henry Riblet, who went on to head space physics and instrumentation at the lab, had to modify existing designs so that they would be suitable for the spherical surface of Transit. Having chosen circular polarization, Tran­sit’s designers were constrained in their approach to stabilizing the satellite in orbit. Thus the physics affects the technology and each technological decision affects others.

As 1957 drew to a close, Guier, later responsible for space analysis and computation, was refining the mathematical model. Weiffenbach was gath­ering data and improving the experimental setup, and together they con­tinued to explore what the model could tell them about orbits. In the meantime they were reading madly, educating themselves in ionospheric physics and orbital mechanics.

Around this time they met someone who was to become their “good angel.” His name was John O’Keefe, and he was working with the Van­guard tracking team, was in fact at the radio tracking station near Washing­ton D. C. on the morning after the launch of Sputnik I.

O’Keefe, who was to become a pioneer of satellite geodesy, had stud­ied the moon’s motion in search of clues to the nature of the earth’s gravi­tational field and had eagerly anticipated the launch of satellites. For the previous year, in preparation for the space age, he had studied orbital mechanics every morning before going to work. He was devastated when the Soviets launched first.

O’Keefe, whose son heard Sputnik’s Doppler shift on a ham radio set, was intrigued when he learned of the quality of Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s Doppler data. He went to APL to take a look and was impressed. When Guier and Weiffenbach determined Sputnik’s orbit, O’Keefe was astounded; he didn’t think they would be able to get that much informa­tion from the data.

Yet there was actually even more in the data. Later, the same curve­fitting technique enabled them to vary values for ionospheric refraction and thus to find indices of refraction in addition to transmitter frequency and the orbital parameters.

O’Keefe tweaked Guier and Weiffenbach about their lack of knowl­edge of the ionosphere and pointed out, too, that the Earth’s gravitational field would turn out to be far more complicated than people yet realized. He brought much humor and knowledge of physics to their relationship.

As a regular attendee at IGY meetings, O’Keefe was up-to-date on emerging results. In the following year, he would analyze observations of Vanguard i, known as “the grapefruit,’’ and he recognized that for the satel­lite to be in the observed orbit, the Earth must be pear-shaped in addition to being oblate. The southern hemisphere, in effect, is larger than the northern hemisphere.

The pear-shaped term for the Earth eventually became the second brush stroke on the canvas of that very simple mathematical model that Guier had initially constructed for his and Weiffenbach’s research during the autumn of 1957. And when the gravitational consequences of the pear-shaped earth were folded into the model, the fit between theoretical and experimental curves improved yet again, reducing the error of the orbital determination and prediction.

Immediately after the launch of Sputnik I, O’Keefe had very little data to work with. Hence his fascination with Guier’s and Weiffenbach’s Doppler curves. He invited them “downtown” to Washington D. C. to meet the Vanguard’s Minitrack team. At the time the Minitrack group was inundated. Calls were coming in from many people whom they really didn’t want to talk to. Guier and Weiffenbach fell into the category of nui­sance, and to their chagrin, the Minitrack people dismissed them and their work. The rebuff rankled. Weiffenbach recalls thinking, “OK, we’ll show you; you will take notice.”

Throughout the early part of 1958, Guier and Weiffenbach focused on improving orbital determination. By early spring, they thought they had the satellite’s position to within two or three miles, and they began writing their key paper on the theoretical analysis of Doppler data. But what next?

It was their boss, Frank “Mack” McClure, head of the lab’s research center, who took the next step. McClure seems to have been a compli­cated character. Various descriptions crop up from those who knew him: smart as hell; prone to terrific rows; blunt; impatient; enormous ego (I doubt this was a unique characteristic); someone who “didn’t fool himself about himself” recalls Weiffenbach. Certainly he seems to have impressed the research center’s scientists with the breadth and depth of his knowl­edge of physics.

At this time McClure’s main interest was in solving the problem of insta­bilities in the burning of fuel in solid-fuel rockets, one of the critical technolo­gies for the Polaris missiles. Hence he was spending a lot of time at Special Pro­jects, as was the man who became the Transit team leader—Richard Kershner.

On Monday, March 17,1958, Frank McClure called Guier and Weif­fenbach to his office. He told them to close the door; a clue, they knew, that something interesting or classified would be said. McClure asked them, Can you really do what you say you can? In the manner of the best courtroom attorneys, McClure was asking a question to which he was sure he already knew the answer. Guier and Weiffenbach did not know this, but they answered yes.

In that case, McClure told them, if you can determine a satellite’s orbit by analyzing Doppler data received at a known position on the earth, it should be possible to determine position at sea by receiving Doppler data from a satellite in a known orbit. The navigation problem, in fact, would be easier, argued McClure, because only two values—latitude and longitude—would have to be determined.

McClure sketched out the concept. The satellite would transmit two continuous waves, which would allow a receiving station on a submarine to record two Doppler curves and to correct for ionospheric effects. The satellite would also broadcast its position at the time of the transmission.

The submarine’s inertial guidance system could then provide an esti­mated value of latitude and longitude. A computer program would gener­ate the Doppler curves that a submarine at that estimated location would receive from a satellite at a known position. It would then continue to generate Doppler curves that would be received at nearby values of lati­tude and longitude. When a best fit was found between the estimated and received Doppler curves, those values of latitude and longitude would be the latitude and longitude of the submarine.

Thus the method that Guier and Weiffenbach had developed would be used in two ways. First, to find a satellite’s orbit by observing it from ground stations at well-determined locations, allowing a prediction of its position. The positions for the next twelve hours would then be uploaded

From left to right:William H. Guier, FrankT McClure and George C. Weiffenbach. Drs. Guier and Weiffenbach first employed Doppler tracking to determine the orbits of satellites when tracking Sputnik. Dr McClure used this principle as a basis for inventing a worldwide navigation system. Courtesy of Applied Physics Laboratory.

twice a day. Second, the same computational and statistical techniques would provide a means of fixing latitude and longitude.

McClure asked them what they thought. They agreed that it sounded plausible. Go away, McClure told them, and do an error analysis.

They did. After the computer simulations they had been working with, simulating the errors in the navigation scheme proposed by McClure was, they say, next to trivial. They looked at the answers and didn’t believe them. They seemed too good. They wondered whether they had left something out, but they knew that they had not. So they increased the errors in the assumed depth and speeds of the submarines as well as several other parameters. Then they went back and told McClure that it would work, and work beautifully.

McClure smiled and said, “I know.”

McClure told Guier that he had had the idea the weekend before and had called Richard Kershner. The two of them, who frequently spent time together away from the lab, had fleshed out the idea over the week­end. They had concluded that the navigation method would work if Guier and Weiffenbach could do what they said they could.

On the day after his meeting with Guier and Weiffenbach, McClure sent a memo to Gibson, APL’s director. The topic was “satellite Doppler as a means of ship navigation.” McClure suggested that APL’s patent group should consider seeking protection for the idea. He pointed out that “While the possible importance of this system to the Polaris weapons sys­tem is clear… an extension of thinking in regard to peacetime use is to me quite exciting.” Other advantages did not escape him, and he added that the establishment of such a system “ … might provide a wonderful cold war opportunity…. This would put the U. S. in the position of being the first nation to offer worldwide service through its venture into outer space.” Work on a technical proposal began immediately.

Developing specifications for a complex engineering system is like plan­ning an elaborate meal without reference to recipes, knowing only what combinations are most likely to work, what fresh produce is likely to be available, and making last-minute adjustments for what is not. The occa­sion for the meal guides the process. First there is the overall plan of suit­able and compatible courses. Then comes the detail, working out all of the recipes, testing quantities, temperatures, cooking times.

McClure defined the occasion and made clear what the “diners” would swallow. He knew the technical needs of Polaris in detail, but of equal importance was his sense of the technological likes and dislikes of Special Projects. If he thought Special Projects wouldn’t like a particular technical approach, he would point that out.

Several factors, therefore, converged to ensure that the Transit pro­posal would win the backing that it did in the face of opposing schemes that were emerging for satellite-based navigation. First, APL was present­ing a good idea and had some smart people able to see it through from theoretical analysis to engineering application. Second, the lab had an acknowledged history of completing complex and difficult applied physics and engineering projects, starting with the proximity fuse. (The Naval Research Laboratory’s experience with Vanguard after the success of Vi­king, however, showed that previous success is not always a harbinger of future triumphs.) Neither factor would have been enough alone, but Tran­sit would clearly have been dead in the water without the lab’s expertise and reputation. Additionally, of the emerging ideas for satellite navigation, Transit met the needs of Special Projects and, because of the Brickbat-01 status of Polaris, was compatible with national priorities.

Of the competing schemes, one, taking angles to emitting radio waves was impossible because the antennas needed would have been far too large for submarines. Even had the antennas been usable by the surface fleet, the scheme would not have been serious competition for Transit because the surface fleet was not expressing a strong desire for improved position fixing, nor had its missions the same high priority as those of Spe­cial Projects.

Another scheme, radar ranging, might have met the needs of the U. S. Air Force, but although Air Force missions did have a high priority and the Air Force had proven in its ten years of existence to be highly success­ful at lobbying the government, the preferred scheme within the Depart­ment of Defense at that time was to develop inertial guidance for aircraft. Since aircraft are not aloft for months at a time, the errors do not have as long to accumulate as they do during a submarine’s tour of duty. (Radar ranging resurfaced as the technical basis for the GPS satellites, which have replaced Transit.)

Also operating in APL’s favor was the lab’s relationship, as the consul­tant assessing the Polaris weapons system overall, with Special Projects. The organizational relationship was bolstered by professional relationships at all levels and by McClure’s political astuteness in making his inside knowledge of Special Projects work to further the technical acceptability of the Transit proposal. In short, the people who proposed Transit were the right people, in the right place, at the right time, and with the political and scientific smarts to see it through.

There was another influential factor, and that was Richard Kershner’s reputation. Kershner’s approach to technical problems was similar to that taken by Captain Levering Smith, then technical director of Special Proj­ects. Commander “Chuck” Pollow, who assisted in the day-to-day man­agement of Transit, is convinced that the perception that Special Projects and Smith had of Kershner was critical to Transit’s initial acceptance. And the Transit team members are convinced that Kershner was critical to the success of Transit.

A flavor of the times described in this chapter comes from my interviews with William Pickering, Milton Rosen (technical director of Project Van­guard), John Townsend, and Herbert Friedman (of the Naval Research Laboratory and a member of the USNC).

When the Soviet embassy’s party began (page 21) on the evening of October 4, 1957, did Anatoli Blagonravov know that Sputnik had been launched? William Pickering thinks not. John Townsend doesn’t know, but he says that Homer Newell (scientific program coordinator for Pro­ject Vanguard), who was with them, was convinced that Blagonravov did know.

My physical description of Blagonravov comes from reports in the New York Times during the week of the conference (page 22). I’m guessing that he drank vodka.

Management of Advent (March 1961): including TAB F—Memorandum from the Acting Secretary of Defense of the Army and the Secretary of the Air Force, subject, Program Management of Advent (15 September, 1960); and TAB G—Recommended Action: Memo for Signature of Sec­retary of Defense.

The problems in the Advent program were spelled out by, among others, Harold Brown, DDR&E, on May 22, 1962, in a memo for the secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. In an appendix, Brown states categorically that the contractors management of Advent (General Electric) was poor. He also wrote, “During 1961 and until February 28, 1962, USAAMA (Army Advent Management Agency) decided to gamble on the contrac­tors to realize first a March and then a June firing date. The rate of expenditures rose to twice the amount allowable on the basis of available funds and the whole project went out of balance; training, ground equip­ment and operational control rooms were fully engineered before the spaceborne equipment was out of the breadboard stage; schedules were manipulated to a point where the completion date of the first flight arti­cle was set ahead of the engineering test model” (John Rubel’s papers).

Memorandum for John H. Rubel, Deputy Director of Defense Research & Engineering, from Ralph L. Clark, Assistant Director for Communica­tions, dated January 17, I960. A number of policy documents on commu­nication satellites are attached. These are: Briefing paper for Mr. Gates, subject: Cabinet paper CP60-112—Communication Satellite Develop­ment, December 19, 1960; Draft policy presented by ODRE to the unmanned spacecraft panel of the AACB; Summary of Cabinet Paper CP60-112/1, December 23, 1960; Briefing paper by Clark and Nadler setting out their concerns with the Cabinet Paper; draft of a policy state­ment prepared by the service secretaries summarizing the DoD’s role and interest in communication satellites (John Rubel’s papers).

Memorandum for Members of the Unmanned Spacecraft Panel: State­ment of NASA Program Philosophy on Communication Satellites. November 21, 1960 (НАС archives).

The NASA Communication Satellite Program, February 9, 1961 (John Rubels papers).

“United States Policy Toward Satellite-Based Telecommunications,” cir­culated among a small group by John Rubel in April 1961 (John Rubel’s papers).

Informal Notes of the Interim Steering Committee for Satellite-Based Telecommunications Policy, second meeting, held in the Pentagon, 11 May, 1961. Appendix В was:“DoD Position on what Technical Charac-

teristics and Capabilities DoD Desires from a Commercially Operable Satellite-Based Telecommunication System”. Appendix C: Industry – Department of Defense Cooperation in Satellite-Based Telecommunica­tions (John Rubel’s papers).

A memorandum dated September 6, 1960, records a meeting at AT&T’s headquarters on that day. The meeting discussed a request from NASA for information about Bell System’s plans for satellite communication and research. Memo gives AT&T’s policy views. The views were laid out in a letter of September 9 to T. Keith Glennan, which said that satellites should be operated by commercial companies, not government, and that enough information existed from Echo 1 for Bell to want to proceed immediately to work on active repeaters. (Box 85080203, AT&T archives).

AT&T was clearly fighting for a comprehensive role in satellite commu­nication, as numerous documents in AT&T’s and NASA’s records show. For example; on March 10, 1961, Jim Fisk, head of BTL, sent a letter to Richard S. Morse, assistant secretary of the Army, expanding on an infor­mal proposal sent by Bell to Morse on March 3. Even though the letter refers to Bell’s ideas for an experimental, not operational, program, the proposal’s completeness, with all the control that it would have ceded to AT&T, might reasonably have raised concerns in government over the extent of the control that the monopolistic AT&T would yield over something as vital as international communications.

Fisk wrote, “Bell Systems’ interest is simply stated: communication satellites promise a natural extension of the present microwave common – carrier networks and a natural supplement to present overseas radio and cable circuits.”

Specifically, Fisk proposed that Bell should design, construct, and pay for the fixed ground stations in the U. S.; arrange for foreign ground sta­tions with overseas common carrier partners; design, construct and pay for repeaters, providing frequencies for specific military uses as well as common carrier uses; accommodate the experimental requirements of the other common carriers on terms mutually agreeable; provide systems engineering assistance to the Department of Defense from the develop­ment of transportable or mobile ground terminals; provide systems engi­neering assistance to the Department of Defense to adapt the low-orbit satellite repeaters into synchronous orbit repeaters when the orbiting, ori­entation, stabilization and station keeping problems of that satellite are solved; cooperate with the Department of Defense in the initial launch operation, and share the costs of launching, as may be agreed; work with other Department of Defense contractors on portions of the program of primary military interest to insure efficient planning and to insure system compatibility.

The tensions between NASA and AT&T at both policy and technical levels are also well documented. A letter from Fred Kappel, the presi­dent of AT&T, to James Webb, the administrator of NASA, written on April 5, 1961, says, “It has come to my attention that an article that The Wall Street Journal carries… that NASA has yet to receive any firm pro­posal from any company.” Kappel goes on to write, “In view of the events which have taken place during the past few months, this state­ment… is of deep concern to me. The specific events to which I refer are as follow.” Over four pages, Kappel itemizes approaches made by AT&T to NASA (George Washington University, passed to me by David Whalen).

The Department of Justice’s concerns about the antitrust implications of AT&T’s plans for an operational communication satellite system are men­tioned in various places. One source is a memo for Alan Shapley from James Webb, NASA administrator, dated August 12, 1966. In this memo Webb also makes the point that the RCA proposal (Relay) was clearly the best for the “experimental and research requirements of NASA, although not necessarily the best for the first step toward an operational communi­cation satellite as desired by AT&T” (NASA History Office).

A memorandum for the record by Robert Nunn of December 23, 1960, describes a meeting between himself; John Johnson, NASA’s special coun­cil; and Attorney General Roberts. They were discussing a paper on com­munication policy to be submitted to the White House. December 1960 was, of course, the eve of the Kennedy administration. The policy ques­tion at stake was private or public promotion of communication satellites. All acknowledged that AT&T might be the only company capable of owning and operating an operational system of communications satellites. Roberts said, “Whatever we do, we cannot act as though NASA is putting AT&T into a preemptive position…” And he said,“. . . we cannot assume. . . that when all is said and done AT&T will emerge owning and operat­ing a system. . .Nunn explained/4 … the feeling in the White House apparently favors taking a position on principle which the succeeding administration will be obliged to overturn if it does not concur. Rogers said that this was unrealistic. Their aim was to find a way of supporting the White House’s stance in favor of the private sector without “seeking to nail down the conclusion concerning what the government will or will not do in future.”

A memorandum for the special assistant to the administrator at this time spells out AT&T’s dominance of international communication. The voice segment (cable and radio) was operated exclusively by AT&T. Some nine­teen companies competed for telegraph traffic (NASA History Office).

A number of policy documents and internal ODR&E memos point out that the solar minimum of 1964 to 1966 would reduce radio communica­tion circuits by up to two-thirds. These include a letter from Jerome Wiesner, who wrote on July 7, 1961, to Robert McNamara urging him to give his personal attention to the strengthening of the Defense Com­munications Agency.

The cooperation between NASA and the DoD with respect to which organization would develop which satellites (at least at the highest levels) is apparent in a letter from James Webb to Robert McNamara, secretary of defense. On June 1, 1961, Webb wrote, “I also wish to take this oppor­tunity again to make clear my firm intent that you are kept informed of activities concerning communication satellites and that your views and interests are kept in mind at all times.” At lower levels, and even within the separate organizations, relationships were not always so open. A memo from James Webb to Hugh Dryden, dated June 16, 1961, says, “I think it important that we not ever indicate that some of our military friends, par­ticularly those down the line in the services, may not have had full access to all the information, documents, and so forth relating to the kind of decisions that Mr. McNamara, Mr. Gilpatric, and I have made on the big program” (David Whalen from NASA History Office).

The issue being discussed at this time was NASA’s involvement in synchronous altitude, or 24-hour; communication satellites. The succeeding agreements that NASA and the DoD had, first that NASA should develop only passive satellites and then that it develop only medium-altitude satellites was explained to me by John Rubel.

Letter from James Webb, NASA administrator, to the director of the Bureau of the Budget, dated March 13, 1961. On communication satel­lites, Webb wrote, “This proposal specifically contemplates that this Administration should reverse the Eisenhower policy under which $10 million of the NASA active communication satellite program would be financed by private industry In my view this would not be in the public interest at this stage in a highly experimental research and development program” (David Whalen, NASA History Office).

A memorandum, dated April 28, 1961, for John A. Johnson, NASA gen­eral council, from James Webb, on the subject of a letter to Fred Kappel, president of AT&T, gives Webb’s view that government should not reach a hasty decision about its policy on experimental programs, such as com­munication satellites, without thoroughly considering all possible interest groups (David Whalen from the NASA History Office).

Memorandum for the associate administrator, dated May 16, 1961, con­cerning expansion of the active communication satellite program, by Robert Nunn. The memo discusses the policy issues and the public ver­sus private development of operational communication satellites.

Summary of the Comsat Bill:

Comsat stock was issued on June 2, 1964. There were ten million shares at $20 per share. The net proceeds to Comsat were $196 million. Half the capital was raised from individuals and half from 150 communications companies.