Air Force historian's review of The First Space Race (and a discount sale!))

This is our favorite of the First Space Race reviews, by a professional aerospace historian.  

Published in government (not subject to copyright) publication High Frontier, Air Force Space Command's professional journal (the journal is now, sadly, extinct: we hope it will be picked up as the AFSPC transition to U.S. Space Force continues).  

(The paperback version is now on sale via Amazon at only $4.85!!!!)

Book Review

The First Space Race: Launching the World’s First Satellites. 

By Matt Bille and Erika Lishock. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. Illustrations. Photographs. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xviii, 214. $19.95 Paperback ISBN: 1-58544-374-3

Nobody should assume the history of American and Soviet space programs during the 1950s has been chiseled in stone. Matt Bille and Erika Lishock [ed: now Erika Maurer] make this perfectly clear in their new book titled The First Space Race. 

Through thoughtful analysis of events generally familiar to space historians and vigorous pursuit of details obscured by the passage of time, the authors supply new insights to one of the Cold War’s most dramatic chapters. As the legendary James Van Allen admits in the foreword, this volume even provides still-living participants in that race with a “much improved context for their own fragmentary knowledge.” 

It took several centuries to lay the foundations for successful launch of the world’s first artificial, earth-orbiting satellites in the late 1950s. During the 17th century, Johannes Kepler and Sir Isaac Newton formulated the necessary theories of motion. Edward Everett Hale and other science-fiction writers in the 19th century inspired serious spaceflight theoreticians like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Hermann Oberth, and Robert Goddard at the dawn of the 20th century. The pace of actual hardware development quickened at mid-century under the leadership of brilliant engineers like Wernher von Braun, Sergey Korolev, Theodore von Karman, and others. 

Long-range rockets built by the US and USSR could travel through outer space to deliver thermonuclear warheads halfway around the globe. 

Informed visionaries recognized the feasibility of using those same rockets to launch satellites that would enhance national security. While long-range rocket and satellite development occurred within the military establishments of the US and USSR, plans for the International Geophysical Year (July 1957-December 1958) committed both countries to launching satellites for scientific research. The Soviet Academy of Sciences created a Commission for Interplanetary Communication, chaired by academician Leonid Sedov, to oversee its IGY satellite program. Meanwhile, a committee headed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Homer Stewart selected the US launcher and satellite from among several proposals by the military services. 

On 4 October 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. After the US Navy’s failure to launch a Vanguard satellite on 6 December, the Army put Explorer 1, America’s first satellite, into orbit on 31 January 1958. Both nations commenced “storming the heavens” with civil and military satellites. 

Bille and Lishock drew information from a variety of sources—written and oral, primary and secondary, older and recent— to tell this complex story in a relatively straight-forward, simple style. They discuss how erroneous “facts” have crept into the literature over time. For example, the color scheme on museum models of Explorer 1 differs from the actual flight article. Furthermore, the Goldstone tracker could not have confirmed that Explorer 1 was in orbit, because Goldstone was set up months later to support the Pioneer lunar probes. The authors analyze in depth the Stewart Committee’s choice of the Navy’s proposal over the Army’s, the relationship between early military and civil satellite programs, and the question of whether the US purposely refrained from being the first to launch a satellite. Finally, they surprise readers with a description of NOTSNIK, a “secret competitor” that aimed to place tiny satellites in orbit via a five-stage booster launched from a US Navy fighter aircraft. 

When one considers that neither Bille nor Lishock is an academically trained historian, the rigor of their research methodology becomes all the more remarkable. Anyone wanting to know how these two associates with the global consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton successfully managed this project should read their article titled “Chronicling Space: Adventures in Space History” in Quest 11:4 (2004), pp. 7-13. The authors explain its genesis and evolution from a manuscript titled “Little Star: The History and Promise of Small Satellites” toward the published work that is the subject of this review. 

Along the way, Bille and Lishock had the good fortune to interview such space luminaries from the 1950s as James Van Allen, Milton Rosen, Ernst Stuhlinger, Fred Durant, and William Pickering. They also learned that obstacles sometimes thwart research plans, that serendipity can play a delightfully rewarding role in the discovery of information, and that the practice of historical writing involves more than merely recording names and dates. 

The First Space Race engages interested readers to the point where they will have difficulty putting it down before turning the last page. Bille and Lishock have achieved a wonderful balance between the American and Soviet sides of the story. Their new research and refreshing analyses correct inaccuracies that have crept into the literature over the decades and prompt space historians to question causal connections they once took for granted. Despite a few editorial errors, this volume offers space professionals a window on how past spaceflight successes might broaden our perspective on future possibilities.

Reviewed by Dr. Rick W. Sturdevant, Deputy Command Historian, HQ Air Force Space Command