Chapter twenty: Syncom

Chapter 20 is a distillation of information from the following documents, presented in chronological order; though extracts from one document or an appendix may have been useful for explaining some other part of the unfolding events.

Interviews with Rosen and Roney provided detail that do not appear in the written record. I have included it where it seemed to make sense. For example, it was Rosen who told me that T. Keith Glennan first told Puckett that he was “talking through his hat” when Puckett presented the company’s idea for a 24-hour satellite (page 212). Though Glennan was interested in what Puckett said, Glennan knew that НАС then knew nothing about satellites and that the 24-hour satellite idea was far from conservative. Glennan might well have said what Rosen recalls he said.

April 26, 1960 Rosen completes evaluation of life and reliability of the proposed satellite, focusing on electronics and TWT design. A handwrit­ten note from Puckett says, “This looks very promising. Thanks.”

May 1960: A hefty, mathematical document from Williams entitled “Dynamic Analysis and Design of the Synchronous Communication Satellite.”

A memo from J. W. Ludwig to C. G. Murphy and A. E. Puckett of May 2, 1960, discusses a meeting with E. G. Witting, of the Army, and a represen­tative of the Office of Defense Research and Engineering (Mr. Evans). Hughes learned that the Army was already considering other 24-hour satellite proposals and that Herb York, DDR&E, was “intensely interested in the Hughes program.”

On May 19,J. W. Ludwig sent a memo to A. E. Puckett about a forth­coming request for proposals (July 1, 1960) from the Army for the Advent 24-hour communication satellite.

June 1960: Synchronous communication satellite, proposed NASA exper­imental program by the НАС Airborne Systems Group. Proposal included details of Jarvis Island where НАС was at that time proposing it should build a lunch site.

A memo from Lutz for file copied to Rosen on June 3, 1960, summarizes in detail presentations by Pierce, Jakes, and Tillotson from Bell Telephone Laboratories at a conference at the end of May.

Letter from Douglas Lord, technical assistant to the Space Science Panel, thanking Allen Puckett for the Hughes presentation to the President s Science Advisory Committee.

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Harold Rosen told me the anecdote of how the meeting came to be set up (page 212).

July 26, 1960, Puckett confirms a meeting requested by Abe Silverstein for Hughes to present its satellite proposal to Keith Glennan.

Technical memos in the meantime show Williams’s preoccupation with dynamics studies and his involvement with NASA’s Langley field center.

Memo from John Richardson to C. G. Murphy of August 12, 1960, talks of GT&E’s evaluation of the Hughes satellite. Richardson believed that the GT&E reaction was quite good. GT&E asked Hughes for justification of the life expected for the TWT; how the telemetry system could be protected from disruptive tampering and how the Hughes assertion that ten launches would be needed for one successful satellite could be recon­ciled with the company’s plans for three launches.

An internal memo from Ralph B. Reade to Roy Wendahl raised concern about internal conflicts in the field of satellite communication and the company’s fragmented approach to military customers.

September 14, 1960: preliminary cost estimates of a commercial commu­nication satellite. Total: $15.75 million, including $4 million for the Jarvis Island launch site.

A letter from John Rubel to A. S. Jerrems dated September 22, 1960, refers to a visit he had made a few weeks earlier to Hughes.

On October 25, 1960, Rosen wrote back to Witting refuting all the spe­cific criticisms that Witting made of the НАС proposals. Rosen con­cluded, “In our opinion, the Hughes proposal, if implemented, would achieve all the objectives of the present program, but at an earlier date and lower cost.”

Memos in September, October, and November show that НАС held meetings with GT&E, The Rand Corporation, Bell Telephone Laborato­ries (November 2, 1960), ITT, and British Telecommunications.

A Letter from Allen Puckett to Lee DuBridges, president of Caltech, written on November 18, 1960, refers to their discussions about commu­nication satellites at the Cosmos Club.

Memo from Allen Puckett to J. W. Ludwig of December 14, 1960, con­cerning NASA’s forthcoming RFP for a medium-altitude active satellite.

Memo from Bob Roney to Allen Puckett on December 23, 1960, con­cerning the need for budget decisions for the 24-hour communication satellite program for 1961.

In a memo of January 6, 1961, Puckett informed Rosen, Williams, Hud­speth, and a few others that Lutz would once again be evaluating their communication satellite proposal.

An agenda of an Institute of Defense Analysis meeting shows Rosen scheduled to brief the group between 10:30 and 11:00 on January 10, 1961. Rosens write-up of the meeting on January 12 was directed at Allen Puckett. I noted that the panel was critical of Advent and that his description of the Hughes 24-hour satellite elicited “generally favorable comment.”

In a memo to C. G. Murphy and F. P. Adler, dated January 13, 1961, Sam Lutz demonstrated a less enthusiastic view of the 24-hour satellite, advo­cating extensive additional work and comparisons with passive and medium-altitude active satellites.

Memo from S. G. Lutz to Allen Puckett and A. V. Haeff of February 10, 1961. Subject: review of satellite communications. Lutz wrote a negative and critical report of the 24-hour satellite.

Telegram from Rosen to Rubel of February 28, 1961, apparently responding to remarks by Bill Baker, of Bell Telephone Laboratories.

March 1961: НАС report, “Stationary Satellite, Island Operation Phase.”

Memo from Allen Puckett to F. P. Adler of April 20, 1961. Subject: a con­versation Puckett had had with John Rubel and Rubel’s suggestions regarding the actions that Hughes should take (НАС archives: Commer­cial Communication Satellites 1990-05, Box 6 DoD Communication Satellite).

Memo from C. Gordon Murphy to J. W. Ludwig of April 27, 1961. Sub­ject: A conversation Murphy had had with Rubel.

Letter dated May 8, 1961, from Allen Puckett to John Rubel. Subject: A Program for Interim Satellite Communication.

Memo dated May 11, 1961, from Williams to Hyland, outlining the mis­takes he thought the company had made with respect to developing the 24-hour communication satellite.

Telegram dated May 18, 1961, from Jack Philips to R. E. Wendahl, telling him that Hughes had just been informed that they were unsuccessful in their bid for Project Relay.

Memorandum for the Associate Administrator from Robert Nunn and Leonard Jaffe to Robert Seamans, dated June 6, 1961. The memo states, “It is recommended that NASA immediately embark on a project leading to tests of a simple, light weight communication satellite at 24-hour orbital altitudes. …” This memo formalized a situation that Seamans and Rubel had worked to bring about.

Memo from A. S. Jerrems to Allen Puckett dated June 19, 1961.Jerrems wrote, “Here is another bulletin on the Rubel situation. In a telephone conversation this weekend, Rubel advised me that he spent all day Satur­day (June 17) in a meeting with NASA to discuss communication satel­lite plans. He was inscrutable about the detailed content of the meeting, but he made a statement to the effect that in his opinion, НАС prospects for getting a synchronous satellite funded were better now than they had ever been.”

A letter of June 23, 1961, from Roswell Gilpatric, deputy secretary of defense, to James Webb. He writes, “Mr. Rubel has told me about the plans that he and Dr. Seamans are formulating for an interim synchronous satellite communication experiment with potential for an interim opera­tional capability within the next 12 to 24 months. … I regard the pro­posed program as complementary to those [Rely and rebound (Echo-type satellite)] and the Advent project. … You have my assurance of support in the event that, in your judgement, their proposals should be adopted.” With this letter, Gilpatric set aside the informal agreement that NASA would not develop synchronous-altitude satellites.

Memo from A. S. Jerrems to J. H. Richardson, Allen Puckett, and R. E. Wendahl of July 20, 1961, on the possibility of an early synchronous-orbit experiment. НАС still did not know that both NASA and the DoD were proposing a sole-source contract. After dinner and talks with Rubel, Jer – rems wrote, “Although the proposed five week study program for Hughes, which Rubel and Seamans described to us at the end of June, has not yet been kicked off as we hoped it would be, the planning for the Special Program is not quiescent. There have been a continuing series of meetings between NASA and the DoD to iron out the definition of the ground roles for НАС ”

On August 9, 1961, Alton Jones, project manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center and James McNaul, acting project manager for the U. S. Army Advent Management Agency, signed a contract to be jointly pur­sued by NASA and the DoD for the preliminary project development plan for a lightweight, spin-stabilized communication satellite.

On August 12, 1961, Maj. Gen. G. W. Power, director of developments in the Office of the Chief of Research and Development, wrote to Rosen rejecting his ideas for a lightweight, spin-stabilized communication satel­lite.

Bell Systems was well aware of the promise of communication satellites at synchronous altitudes and also aware of the station-keeping difficulties. In a paper written in November 1962, K. G. McKay wrote an internal paper on the pros and cons of synchronous satellites. He wrote, “The synchro­nous satellite must be placed at a specific point in space with exactly the right velocity and kept there for the life of the satellite. It is a bold con­cept and I am confident that some day it will be achieved” (box 840902 – AT&T archives).

Rejections of the Hughes Proposal

From Maj. Gen. Marcus Cooper, Air Research and Development Com­mand, to Allen Puckett on 3 January 1961: “Since your 3 November visit here… analyzed in detail the Hughes Aircraft Company proposal for a synchronous altitude active communication satellite. In general their find­ings reveal that the proposal is technically marginal in several respects, and tends to be overly optimistic. . . .” Cooper goes on to say that in view of the results expected from Advent, he did not think that “we should pro­ceed further with the Hughes proposal at this time.”

From E. G. Witting, deputy director of research and development, to Mr. J. Bartz, assistant manager, for contracts, writing on October 11, 1960, in response to a letter from НАС of April 22, 1960. Witting writes, “Your proposal has been thoroughly evaluated by the Army and it has been determined that the project would not meet the present requirements of the Army for intercontinental communications.”

Documents that contributed to the general framework of the chapter:

“Syncom (Interim Communication Satellite) Chronology,” possibly pre­pared in the spring or summer of 1963, giving dates of John Rubels involvement with Syncom between 10 April 1961 and 6 February 1963.

Advent chronology from 14 April 1960 to December 1961 (John Rubels papers).

Policy statement for exploitation of НАС communication satellite, undated and unsigned.

Preliminary history of the Origins of Syncom, by Edward W. Morse (NASA Historical Note No. 44) September 1, 1964. Some aspects of this report, about agreements between NASA and the DoD for instance, con­firm details in earlier chapters in this section (John Rubel’s papers).

Although John Rubel was interested in Syncom, others in the Office of Defense Research and Engineering were less keen. Dr. Eugene Fubmi, for example, was not (Author’s interview with John Rubel). In a memo dated March 26, 1962, Fubini was still arguing strongly in favor of Advent (John Rubel’s papers).

R. H. Edwards to D. D. Williams, 19 January 62, “Separation of syncom payload from the third stage” (НАС archives 1987-44 box 1).

“Torques and Attitude Sensing in Spin-Stabilized Synchronous Satellites,” by D. D. Williams, American Astronautical Symposium, Goddard Memor­ial Symposium, March 16-17, 1962.

Post Syncom decision:

Interest in Syncom grew once it had become an official project. An inter­nal НАС memo date 9 May 1962 from C. Gordon Murphy to R. E. Wendahl discussed a visit by the commanding general of the U. S. Army Advent Management Agency, who was interested in HAC’s ability to pro­vide a replacement for the Advent Spacecraft.

By June 18, Robert Seamans was writing to John Rubel about NASA’s plans for a follow-on Syncom program—a five-hundred-pound spacecraft that would permit the “incorporation of 4 independent wide­band transponders, redundant control systems and sufficient on-board auxiliary power to operate the system continuously.” Such a satellite, as a memo from Robert S. McNamara, dated May 23, 1962, shows, would provide a suitable alternative to Advent (John Rubel’s papers).

Memo from John Rubel, deputy DDR&E, to the assistant secretary of the Army, January 25, 1962. Subject: DoD support of NASA—Syncom com­munication satellite test (John Rubel’s papers).

Documents for general background to the communication section

“Telephones, People and Machines,” by J. R. Pierce, Atlantic Monthly; December 1957.

“Transoceanic Communication by Means of Satellite,” by J. R. Pierce and R. Kompfner, Proceedings of the IRE, March 1959 (David Whalen, from George Washington University).

“Satellites for World Communication,” report of the Committee on Sci­ence and Astronautics, U. S. House of Representatives, May 7, 1959.

Project Summary: Project Courier Delayed Repeater Communications Satellite. November 17, 1960 (John Rubel’s papers).

Memorandum for the President, presented to Cabinet December 20,

1960 (David Whalen, from George Washington University).

A Chronology of Missile and Astronautic Events, Report of the Commit­tee on Science and Astronautics, U. S. House of representatives, March 8, 1961.

Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs, delivered to a joint session of Congress, May 25, 1961 (David Whalen from George Washington University).

“Hazards of Communication Satellites,” by J. R. Pierce, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, May/June 1961.

“The systematic development of satellite communication systems,” by K. G. McKay for presentation to the American Rocket Society, October

1961 (box 840902, AT&T archives).

“The Commercial Uses of Communications Satellites,” by Leland S. Johnson (The RAND Corporation, June 1962).

“Aeronautical and Astronautical Events of 1961,” report of NASA to the Committee of Science and Aeronautics, U. S. House of Representatives, June 7, 1962.

“Communication by Satellite,” by Leonard Jaffe, International Science and Technology, August 1962.

“The dawn of satellite communication: a cooperative achievement of technology and public policy,” by John A. Johnson (НАС archives).

“Communication satellites,’"Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets 14 (7),July 1977 pp. 385-394.

“Benefits in Space for Developing Countries,” by Theo Pirard, Aerospace International May/June 1980.

“Satellite links get down to business,” High Technology Magazine, June 1980.

“Rocky Road to Communication Satellites,” draft of material prepared by Barry Miller for a lecture in the early 1980s (НАС archives).

“The History and Future of Commercial Satellite Communication,” by Wilbur L. Pritchard, IEEE Communications Magazine 22 (5), May 1984.

“The Bell System,” Encyclopedia of Telecommunications (Marcel Dekker, 1991).

“The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T),” Encyclope­dia of Telecommunications (Marcel Dekker, 1991).

“History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System,” in Transmission Technology; edited by E. F. O’Neill (AT&T archives 85-70382).

“The Development and Commercialization of Communication Satellite Technology by the United States,” by George Hazelrigg Jr. Draft in the NASA History Office.

How the World was One, by Arthur C. Clarke (Bantam Books, 1992).

[1] The Eisenhower administration wanted to establish the freedom of space by launching a civilian scientific satellite. Such a satellite would pave the way for America to launch reconnaissance satellites that could fly over foreign territory without eliciting inter­national protest or retaliation. Only a few of the scientists participating in the IGY knew of the administration’s secret purpose, and it is not yet clear who these were. In fact, it is only now that historians are beginning to fully uncover the political relationship between the IGY and the reconnaissance satellite program. See. . . the Heavens and the Earth: a political his­tory of the space age, by Walter A. McDougall (Basic Books, 1985), which contains an exten­sive review of Eisenhower’s intelligence needs and posits, on the basis of documents then

[2] The information about the Killian panel’s recommendations and the approach that Quarles made to members of the U. S. National Committee of the IGY comes from R. Cargill Hall’s article in the Quarterly of the National Archives.

[3] Robert Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket on March 16, 1926. It reached an altitude of 41 feet and landed 184 feet from the launch site.

[4] Leonov told this story to Jim Harford, who is writing a biography of Sergei Korolev to be published by John Wiley and Sons in October 1997.

[5] Much of the information about Korolev’s early life is drawn from Yaroslav Golvanov’s book—Sergei Korolev: The Apprenticeship of a Space Pioneer.

[6] The words in quotation marks are extracted from Golovanov’s lengthier account, which appears in Sergei Korolev: The Apprenticeship of a Space Pioneer.

[7] In October 1953, President Eisenhower’s National Security Council endorsed a policy dubbed the “New Look.” This policy’s aim was that the United States should seek obvious strategic superiority and use rhetoric indicating a willingness to use it. The think­ing was that such a policy would deter Soviet aggression and return the diplomatic initiative (post Korea) to the U. S. and permit lower budgets. Eisenhower and his advisors had deter­mined that lower military spending was necessary because the levels at the time endangered national security as much as did inadequate arms. From. . . the Heavens and the Earth: a Polit­ical History of the Space Age, by Walter McDougall. Basic Books (1985).

[8] R. Cargill Hill points out that the president knew from intelligence gathered by the U2 spy planes that the Soviet Union did not have masses of ICBMs aimed at the U. S. The intelligence came from the illegal flights over Soviet territory, and Eisenhower told Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on the day before the telecast that he would not tell the nation that the United States had the ability to photograph the Soviet Union from high altitudes.

[9] At least two other people should be mentioned in connection with the early days of civilian weather satellites. They are Robert White and Fred Singer. White, who retired in 1995 as president of the National Academy of Engineering, was the head of the Weather Bureau and administrator of NOAA in the 1960s and 1970s. He was an influential sup­porter of satellite meteorology. Fred Singer, who was a member of the Upper Atmosphere Research Panel and worked for a while at the Applied Physics Laboratory, oversaw impor­tant engineering advances to TIROS. He was, says White, and is, a fascinating person and a maverick. His most recent provocation to the scientific community is a disbelief in the human contributions to global warming. In the early 1960s, several other people joined the new field of satellite meteorology, and anyone interested in learning about the technology in detail should see Margaret Eileen Courain’s Ph. D. thesis, Technology Reconciliation in the Remote Sensing Era of US Civilian Weather Forecasting, Rutgers University (1991).

[10] See RAND’s Role in the evolution of balloon and satellite observation systems and related US space technology, by Merton E. Davies and William R. Harris, published by the RAND Corporation.

[11] Technology Reconciliation in the Remote Sensing ERA of US Civilian Weather Forecasts, Courain, Rutgers University.

[12] Satellites in an orbit со-planar with the equator at an altitude of nearly 22,300 statute miles are called geostationary satellites because they can be regarded as stationary with respect to a particular point on the Earth, because the satellite takes about the same time to complete its orbit as the Earth takes to turn once on its axis. The satellite, however, is not exactly stationary with respect to the Earth because of the gravitational abnormalities caused by the Earth’s inhomogenous structure, but by the time of Suomi’s and Parent’s pro­posal, observations of satellites like Transit were beginning to improve the accuracy of grav­itational models, making it possible to predict shifts in the satellite’s position.

[13] The idea of taking advantage of a spinning satellite for an automatic east-west scan was not uniquely Suomi’s. A similar idea existed in the world of photo reconnaissance. Merton Davies, of the RAND Corporation, and Amron Katz had encouraged adaptation of a panoramic camera for high-altitude photography. Then Merton Davies had realized that the camera could be fixed to a spinning spacecraft to achieve an automatic east-west scan as a satellite, not in a geostationary orbit, traversed its orbit. From RAND’s Role in the Evolution of Balloon and Satellite Observation Systems and Related US Space Technology. Edwin Land showed the first satellite reconnaissance photographs from such a system to President Eisen­hower on August 25, 1960.

[14] In 1946, Louis Ridenour, an engineering professor at the University ol Pennsyl­vania, independently put forward the idea that a satellite in synchronous orbit would be a good place for a radio relay.

[15] The U. S. Air Force had an alternative approach to passive communication. This involved distributing five hundred million copper threads with a thickness one-third that of a human hair into orbits two thousand miles above the Earth. These would be spaced at five hundred-foot intervals and create an artificial ionosphere. It was not a popular idea with optical and radio astronomers. The scheme was initially called Project Needles, but because the name seemed too descriptive, it was changed to Project Westford. An attempt to distrib­ute the copper threads failed on October 21, 1961. In a research proposal prepared for inter­nal consumption, John Pierce and his colleague Rudi Kompfner said that Project Westford had very little to recommend it.

[16] Aerospace companies had their own ideas. Lockheed, for example, proposed that it, together with RCA and General Telephone and Electronics, should launch a system of spin-stabilized satellites into twenty-four-hour orbits. GTE had also had earlier discussions with the Hughes Aircraft Company.

[17] The story today has come almost full circle, and commercial plans for fleets ot medium altitude communication satellites pose a challenge to geostationary telecommuni­cation satellites.

[18] John Pierce knew them all: Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, who discov­ered the cosmic background radiation using the horn antenna developed for the Echo spacecraft; and John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter H. Brattain, who invented the transistor. Transistor, incidentally, is Pierce’s neologism. Walter Brattain asked him what to call the new device. Pierce writes in Signals: “I told him “transistors,” it seemed logical enough. There were already Bell system devices called thermistors, whose resistance changed with temperature, and varistors, whose resistance changed with current. I was used to the ring of those names. Also, at the time we thought of the early point-contact transistor (then nameless) as the dual of the vacuum tube; in the operation of the two devices the roles of current and voltage were interchanged. The reasoning was simple. Vacuum tubes have transconductance, resistance is the dual of conductance, and transresistance would be the dual of transconductance, hence the name transistor.”

[19] Bandwidth measures the frequency spread. John Rubels figures in a memo from DDR&E were that 20 words per minute in Morse code takes 9 cycles, 100 words per minute by teletype channel needs 75 cycles, voice telephone takes 3,500 cycles (3.5 kc), scrambled voice takes 50,000 cycles (50 kc), commercial TV takes 6,000 cycles (6 me). Today we would say Hertz rather than cycles.

[20] How clearly a signal is heard depends then on the power of the transmitter and the distance over which the signal is sent as well as on the signal-to-noise ratio and the bandwidth of the transmission. The noise, heard as static, comes from many sources. It might, for example, be interference from terrestrial transmissions, such as the Baltimore TV station that drowned out Transit M’s signal or the electromagnetic field generated by vibrat­ing electrons in the receiving circuitry.