The Stewart Committee and the Vanguard decision

When the army’s Orbiter proposal was formally submitted to Assistant Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles on 20 January 1955, he set up an eight-member committee to

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study and recommend which satellite proposal should be accepted.15 Its membership consisted of the following:

Stewart, Homer J. C. (Chair) California Institute of Technology/JPL Clement, George H. RAND Corporation

The Stewart Committee and the Vanguard decision

University of Buffalo

U. S. National Committee for the IGY

California Institute of Technology

University of Michigan

General Electric Co. Missile Division

Cornell University

 

The committee was instructed to bear in mind that noninterference with ballistic missile development was essential. They were further instructed that the satellite program was to be a purely scientific rather than a politically motivated program. That undoubtedly led to the committee placing much more emphasis on the scientific results than on early launches.

An early action of the Stewart Committee was to eliminate the Atlas option as potentially taking too long and possibly delaying the development of the military long-range atomic bomb-carrying capability. The committee then set about the task of comparing the Orbiter and Vanguard proposals.

It certainly cannot be claimed that the committee rushed to a snap judgment. In late June, a subgroup made a field trip to JPL and the air force’s Western Development Division. The full committee met on 6-9 July 1955 for an extended set of briefings and a visit to the Glenn L. Martin plant to see the work layout of the Viking rocket. They met from 20-23 July to generate a second draft report, and on July 29, three of the members met with Quarles to discuss a third draft.

Even while the Stewart Committee was hammering out its assessment and rec­ommendation, President Eisenhower, on 27 July, agreed to publicly announce the U. S. satellite program, and did so two days later. Making the announcement before receiving the Stewart Committee report reflected the perceived urgency of the sit­uation. Intelligence reports suggested that further postponement of the news would risk having the USSR make their satellite announcement first. In fact, the Soviets, prompted by Eisenhower’s announcement, did reveal their plans to put a satellite into orbit in the Moscow press just four days later.

Their July deliberations left the Stewart Committee members divided. They met on 3 August to prepare their formal recommendations. That meeting took place without McMath, who was ill at the time. Of the seven voting members attending that meeting, three were in favor of the Vanguard, while two preferred the Orbiter. The other two, explaining that they were not guided missile experts, stated later that they simply went along with the numerical majority. Thus, the vote came out in favor

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Подпись: 188of the Vanguard program. McMath later made it very clear that had he been present, he would have voted for the Orbiter. That would have resulted in a tie vote by the knowledgeable experts, perhaps changing the vote by one or both of the others. As pure speculation, McMath’s presence might have changed the outcome of the Vanguard decision.

Over the years, many factors have been mentioned as having influencing the decision.

This brief summarization discusses the most prominent ones in no particular order.

• Early proposals asserted that the Vanguard would lift heavier payloads into higher orbits.

The comparison is somewhat confused in many accounts, where different items of hardware were contrasted. In the Vanguard program, the instrumented satellite package was separated from the final rocket stage in orbit. In the Jupiter C proposal, the instrument package and final rocket stage remained attached to each other. So if one compares the items that formed the active satellite bodies, the Vanguard II weight (instrumented sphere minus the final stage rocket) was about 24 pounds versus about 30 pounds for Explorer III (instrumented cylinder plus the depleted final rocket stage). However, the total weight carried to orbit for Vanguard was 71.5 pounds (23.7 pounds for the instrumented sphere and 47.8 pounds for the empty rocket case). That contrasts with the 30 pound Explorer III weight that included the 18.5 pound instrument package plus the 11.5 pound final rocket casing.

Vanguard did, in fact, place its satellites in substantially higher orbits. The Vanguard II orbit parameters were 1952 miles apogee and 347 miles perigee, while the comparable Explorer III parameters were 1740 and 119 miles, respec­tively.

• It was asserted that Vanguard had a greater growth potential for heavier payloads in the future.

Heavier versions of both vehicles were eventually flown. Vanguard III (TV – 4BU) was launched on 18 September 1959 with an improved final rocket stage. That version placed about 95 pounds in orbit (52.3 pounds for the instrumented satellite plus 42.3 pounds for the empty final rocket stage). Its orbital parameters were 2190 miles apogee and 319 miles perigee. That represented the end of the path for the practicable evolution of the Vanguard vehicle.

The substitution of the Jupiter IRBM for the Redstone rocket as the first-stage rocket to form the Juno II configuration gave the army an increased payload capability for Earth orbit, and a capability for reaching Earth-escape velocity. The launch vehicle for Explorer 8 placed about 102 pounds in orbit (89.9 pounds

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for the instrumented satellite and about 12 pounds for the separated final rocket stage). Its apogee and perigee heights were 1056 and 253 miles, respectively.

• Early cost estimates indicated that the Vanguard program would be less expensive than the Orbiter program.

The Vanguard costs turned out to be much higher than early projections, while the Orbiter/Jupiter C cost was closer to its projection. But a meaningful final cost comparison is probably not possible, as the Jupiter C development made heavy use of hardware left over from the RTV program, while most of the Vanguard development and procurement (with the exception of two Viking rockets left over from the sounding rocket program) was for new hardware.

• Both adherents asserted that the state of their developmental efforts was well advanced.

The developmental work to complete the Vanguard vehicle was much more complex and troublesome than anticipated, and unanticipated problems with the contractor developed, thus causing many protracted delays. The first successful launch of a Vanguard test payload was not made until 17 March 1958, five months after Sputnik 1 was launched, and a year and a half after the successful test firing of the army’s three-stage RTV The first successful launch of a Vanguard payload withafull scientific package (Vanguard II) did not occur until 17February 1959, over a year after the Explorer I launch, and after the end of the IGY.

The modification of the Jupiter C, on the other hand, was much further advanced and simpler, so that it was possible to make a quick response once the army was given the go-ahead.

• The Vanguard proposal included detailed information about the problems of satellite tracking and orbit determination, while the Orbiter proposal was com­paratively lacking in that area.

• The NRL was highly experienced in building and launching miniature scientific instrumentation, while the army group lacked that experience.

The NRL experience began with the preparation of rocket payloads for the V-2 launches during the postwar 1940s and continued with the development of instruments for the Aerobee, Aerobee-Hi, and Viking sounding rockets, among others. They had a formidable in-house capability and an excellent record of facilitating the use of research instruments by university and other institutional research groups. In other words, they were well established within the upper – atmosphere research community.

The Huntsville group had experience with launching scientific payloads with their V-2 rockets at White Sands, but they were not experienced in constructing those instruments and were not nearly as well known within the scientific research community.

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Подпись:• Those conducting the military rocket programs in all three services were un­der tremendous pressure to deploy IRBMs and ICBMs as quickly as possible, following the Soviet demonstration of a nuclear bomb-delivering capability. The navy’s Vanguard program was more thoroughly decoupled from military rocket development than were the army and air force plans. Therefore, awarding the program to NRL was expected to cause the least disruption to the nation’s military programs.

Possible additional factors have been mentioned during the intervening years. For example, it has been suggested that there may have been antipathy to having “those German V-2 designers” lead the American satellite program. Although that might possibly have been true within some circles, I saw no evidence for it within my circle of associates. Although not involved in the Orbiter/Vanguard decision-making process, I did work closely throughout the 1955-1960 period with many of the scientists and engineers in the Vanguard program, with U. S. IGY program officials, and, of course, with the Huntsville and JPL technicians, engineers, scientists, and managers. In all of my contacts, there was a consistent overriding concern with simply getting on with the challenge of entering the new space arena. Never did I hear any indication that prejudice against the German group had been a significant factor in the decision in favor of the Vanguard.16

It has also been suggested that the decision might have been unduly influenced by the fact that one of the most influential of the Stewart Committee members, Richard Porter, worked for the General Electric Company, which was responsible for building the Vanguard engines. Countering that argument, Homer Stewart was closely aligned with the Orbiter program through his work at JPL. The fact of the matter is that it would have been impossible to assemble a committee of individuals who were sufficiently knowledgeable about rocketry to make a sound judgment, but where no one was aligned with any of the companies involved in the technical programs. Although it will be forever impossible to know the private motivations of the individuals involved, I never detected any hint that the issue of vested interests might have been a factor in the decision, either pro or con.

Van Allen once gave his interpretation of the reasoning behind the Vanguard deci­sion as being “military-political in nature—to avoid revealing the propulsive capabil­ity of the United States and to avoid alarming foreign nations with the realization that a U. S. satellite was flying over their territories.”17 All evidence supports Van Allen’s assertion. At least in the pre-Sputnik military and intelligence-gathering thinking, one of the main objectives of the U. S. IGY satellite program was to establish the basic principle of “freedom of space.” That was deemed essential, among other reasons, in order to prepare the way for the United States to operate future intelligence-gathering reconnaissance satellites without precipitating “space warfare.”

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Programmatic speed was secondary to maintaining a strong nonmilitary flavor. Thomas A. Heppenheimer later summarized:

[Von Braun’s] satellite would have Army written all over it. His project center would be Redstone Arsenal, the chemical warfare plant that had become a facility for military rockets.

His booster, the Redstone, was a weapon in its own right, able to carry the atomic bomb. Against this nakedly bellicose background, the IGY would represent too thin a veil. The world would see von Braun’s satellite as a mere prelude to an invasion of space by military force.

But Milton Rosen’s proposal was something else entirely. His booster would derive from Viking and Aerobee, which had become known as research rockets launched for scientific purposes. The Naval Research Laboratory, which would serve as the project center, didn’t have the gamy reputation of Redstone Arsenal. It was known as a true center of research, with well-regarded scientists who had made important contributions in their fields.18

It was stated at one point that the ideal arrangement might be to combine the army rocket capability with the navy tracking and instrumentation capability, as had been planned earlier for Orbiter. But by the time of the Stewart Committee deliberations, it was clear that that arrangement was highly impractical because of the interservice rivalries that were by then rampant.

It is clear, certainly in hindsight, that one crucial element of the decision had not been given sufficient weight, even though some of the committee members and others believed it strongly. The assembly of the Viking, Aerobee-Hi, and solid-fueled third stage into a smoothly functioning whole was far more difficult than originally envisioned by the Vanguard team.

It should be remembered that the Vanguard program was, in the final analysis, a fully successful one in terms of its originally stated objectives. During the IGY, it placed a satellite into a durable orbit, proved by suitable tracking that it was there, and used it to conduct a scientific experiment. Vanguard I, launched on 17 March 1958, had such a high orbit that it is still circling the Earth 50 years later, and will continue to do so for many years to come. The Minitrack system worked perfectly in tracking the satellite and recovering its data, and the Moonwatch program provided high-quality optical tracking. It performed passive experiments by determining the Earth’s shape from long-term tracking of the orbit, and that the Earth’s atmosphere was far more extensive and variable in extent than previously believed. Vanguard II, launched on 17 February 1959, contained a major active scientific instrument—the Stroud cloud cover experiment. And on 18 September 1959, Vanguard III carried a suite of magnetometer, X-ray, and environmental instruments.

It is unfortunate for Vanguard that the Soviet launch of Sputniks 1 and 2 completely changed the rules of the game. Before that, the United States was moving along deliberately but steadily with the development of a complex new and essentially nonmilitary system, attuned to meeting its goals by the end of 1958. The satellite

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Подпись:program was clearly given a lower priority than the military rocket development programs. Having the Soviets beat us into orbit immediately subjected the space endeavor to a different set of rules. The public perceived the Soviet accomplishment as a demonstration of the superiority of their technology, and they clamored for a quick demonstration that we were not lacking in that regard. The space program instantly became a major factor in the ongoing U. S.-USSR cold war.

The army’s program was quickly approved after the first two Sputnik launches as a backup to the Vanguard. Using what by that time was a well-tested primary launch vehicle, coupled with continuing bad luck for the Vanguard program and a wealth of good luck for the army, the first Explorer was launched before the first Vanguard could be orbited.

In retrospect, probably the Vanguard program’s biggest mistake was in responding to the pressure of the Sputniks by billing their December vehicle test as a major effort by the United States to join the Soviets in space. The spectacular failure on 6 December subjected the United States, and the Vanguard program, to public and international humiliation and ridicule. The Vanguard program was never able to overcome that state of affairs.

The Vanguard program had many important lasting effects on the burgeoning U. S. space program. Many of its planning and oversight methodologies and capabilities served as the model for NASA after its formation. In reality, the overall Vanguard program served as one of the major starting points for the entire fabric of U. S. scientific satellite program formulation and management.

The Vanguard launch vehicle was designed and developed in 30 months, a time that is remarkable by any standards. It was highly efficient and otherwise technically remarkable. The use of unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine as the fuel in the Aerobee – derived second stage vehicle was a significant new departure, as was much of the design of that stage. The air force later used that design in their series of Thor-Able boosters. The fiberglass-encased third-stage rocket in Vanguard III was a pioneering development that contributed to the later success of the Scout launch vehicles. The “strapped-down” gyroscope platform, the rotatable exhaust jets of the first stage turbo pump, and the C-band radar beacon antenna, all of which originated with Vanguard, were employed in other later rockets.

The Minitrack network of ground tracking and data receiving stations supported all early satellite launches, and provided tracking and orbital data recovery for them. The value of the army’s Explorer I would have been greatly diminished without the coverage they provided from the wide-ranging array along the North American east coast and South American west coast. Explorer III depended on them exclusively for recovering the data from its onboard tape recorder. Their tracking data, coupled with

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the Vanguard orbit computational capability, served as the primary source of early satellite positional information. When NASA was formed in the fall of 1958, the Minitrack facilities became the nucleus of NASA’s ground network for Earth orbiting satellites. Likewise, the Vanguard data processing center evolved into the early NASA orbit determination and data-processing capabilities.

The satellite hardware design and fabrication capabilities, too, were remarkable. The entire later space program benefited from the Vanguard efforts in designing highly reliable, small, and low-powered circuits and components. Many of the Vanguard personnel joined the Goddard Space Flight Center when it was formed in the fall of 1958, carrying with them their expertise in building, testing, and launching both the primary satellite structures and the scientific instruments housed in them. Their long­standing experience with scientific experiments dating back to the post-WWII days with the V-2 rockets put them into a unique position to lead an energetic program of scientific discovery at Goddard, and to work effectively with scientists in other institutions, including the universities. The legacy of those pioneers is still evident today.