New Moons Rising - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 15

on January 31, 1978, the Reverend J. Bruce Medaris—he was ordained as an
Episcopal priest in 1970, ten years after retiring from the military—called Van-
guard “an ill-conceived, expensive, idealistic project which caused the United
States to pay out a pretty penny to help that project reinvent the wheel.” 79
Cold War realities probably doomed Eisenhower's approach from the start.
While he pursued a strategy of following dual military and civilian paths into
space, reflecting the society he led, Khrushchev was under no similar con-
straints and saw the satellite effort as merely part of the arms race. His son,
Sergei, later recalled that Khrushchev did not fully grasp the historic and sci-
entific significance of the Sputnik feat until reading worldwide press cover-
age. 80 If Khrushchev initially failed to appreciate the propaganda value of being
first into orbit, he lost no time capitalizing on it afterward. Soviet claims to
have successfully tested an icbm in August 1957 had drawn skeptical and dis-
missive responses, but Sputnik's radio signal, beeping on and off every three-
tenths of a second at a much lower frequency than agreed upon for the igy,
had been heard by amateur radio operators worldwide. In the days following
the launch, most Americans listened to the sound on radio and tv, and many
watched the night sky trying to catch a glimpse of it. As an exclamation point,
the Soviets announced what they called a new and “mighty” hydrogen weapon
three days after Sputnik. 81 Fears surged that if Soviet missiles could deliver a
satellite into orbit, they would soon be capable of carrying atomic bombs. When
the news broke, Vanguard's technical chief Milton Rosen was in France with
his wife, Sally. She later recalled that their French friends were worried about
a Soviet attack. 82 Such fears were not unfounded, given implied Soviet threats
against London and Paris the year before, when Britain and France supported
Israel's invasion of Egypt following nationalization of the Suez Canal. 83 In the
weeks following Sputnik, Nikita Khrushchev conducted a virtual victory lap
and wound up as Time magazine's “Man of the Year” in the January 1958 issue,
for having the biggest impact on world events. 84
Raising Expectations
In the days following Sputnik, not only was Eisenhower grilled in public, he
was getting an earful in private. C. D. Jackson, a former campaign aide and
special assistant who served two stints as the president's speechwriter, offered
a blunt assessment in a confidential memo dated October 8: “Within the past
thirty days we have been treated to as skillfully executed an example of psy-
chological warfare orchestration as I have ever seen.” 85 Jackson was a psycho-