Red Moon Rising

Prologue

PAGE

1 Every second from now on meant 275 fewer pounds: See propellant use specifications at http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/motor.html.

sixteen-ton Strabo crane: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/mobileoperations/html.

2 the nearby horse-track oval outside suburban Wassenaar: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/denhaag.html.

trajectory traced by a billowy white vapor trail: Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 75.

producing a vein of jet exhaust gases at 4,802 degrees Fahrenheit: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/motor.html.

the second battery of the 485th Artillery Battalion: Frederick Ordway and Mitchell Sharpe, The Rocket Team (Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books, 2003), p. 139.

body in a forty-five-degree inclination: Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 97.

3 The gimbaled spinning wheels, rotating at 2,000 revolutions per minute: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/design.html.

Sixty-three seconds into its flight, the rocket ceased being a rocket: Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral, p. 75.

At an altitude of seventeen miles: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 98.

shell painted in a jagged camouflage scheme of signal white, earth gray, and olive green: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/markings.html.

moving at 3,500 miles per hour: Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral, p. 75.

4 Another ten seconds passed, and the rocket reached its apogee of fifty-two miles: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/timeline.html.

4 forward at nearly five times the speed of sound: http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/EvolutionofTechnology/V-2/Tech26.htm.

The time was 6:41 PM: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/timeline.html.

six-year-old John Clarke was freshening up for dinner: John Clarke interview with BBC, September 7, 2004, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/sci/tech/3634212.stm.

the quarter-inch-thick sheet metal that encased it rose to 1,100 degrees: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/design.html.

5 the V-2 slammed into Staveley Road at Mach 3: BBC, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/sci/tech/3634212.stm.

“The best way to describe it is television with the sound off “: Ibid.

“German science has once again demonstrated a malignant ingenuity”: William E. Burrows, This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Race (New York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 102.

Boris Chertok had no trouble finding the big brown brick building: To recreate Chertok’s experiences in Berlin, I have drawn on the English translation of the first volume of his four-volume memoirs, Rakety i Lyudi: Boris Evseevich Chertok, Rockets and People (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration History Series, 2005).

8 “Oh, this German love for details and this exactness”: Ibid., p. 221.

“We have every right to this”: Ibid., p. 362.

“The thing that every laboratory needs the most”: Ibid., p. 221.

“No, we no longer felt the hatred or thirst for revenge”: Ibid.

9 “Occupation of German scientific and industrial establishments has revealed”: John Logsdon, ed., Exploring the Unknown: SuDocNAS 1/1.21, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1995), p. 33.

“The thinking of the scientific directors of this group is 25 years ahead”: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 198.

He was a crack marksman, a recipient of the Knox artillery trophy and the Distinguished Pistol Shot medal: See Toftoy’s official biography at http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/toftoy/memoir.html.

10 “It is no exaggeration to say that almost everything that [the class of] ’26 has done”: Ibid.

“Hey Sarge, what do you think that odor could be?”: Mary Nahas, The Journey of Private Galione: How America Became a Superpower (Enumclaw, Wash.: Pleasant Word Publishers, 2004), p. 276.

11 “They were gray in color, and they looked like skeletons”: Ibid., p. 284.

“From where I was standing, I could see a hidden tunnel”: Ibid.

The only unit that remotely fit that bill was the 144th Motor Vehicle Assembly Company: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/mittel.html.

The Americans had hauled away one hundred intact rockets and had filled sixteen Liberty Ships with 360 metric tons: Ibid.

12 “The problem is this”: Quoted in Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 221.

nearly five hundred Russians, Poles, and Hungarian Jews: Nahas, The Journey of Private Galione, p. 286.

“Most of their bodies have lost both trousers and shoes”: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 262.

5,789 V-2s produced at Mittelwerk: Ibid., p. 263.

13 “I know places where the SS hid the most secret V-2 equipment”: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 278.

One of the biggest windfalls was dug out of a sand quarry in Lehesten: Ibid., p. 339.

had been counterintuitively shortened and flared, creating a larger opening: http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/EvolutionofTechnology/V-2/Tech26.htm.

14 twenty thousand separate parts went into each V-2: Ernst Stuhlinger and Frederick I. Ordway, Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space (Malabar, Fla.: Kreiger, 1994), p. 48.

“down to the last screw”: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 282.

“These documents were of inestimable value”: Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral, p. 151.

15 “My sister goes to university wearing men’s boots”: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 303.

“We’d even hatched a plan to kidnap von Braun”: Ibid.

“One day, a group of men in American Army uniforms entered the school-house in Witzenhausen”: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 202.

16 “It would be an effective straitjacket for that noisy shopkeeper, Harry Truman”: Michael Stoiko, Soviet Rocketry (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), p. 73.

1: The Request

18 Red banners hailing the Twentieth Party Congress: To re-create the Presidium visit to NII-88, I relied on author interviews and e-mail exchanges with Sergei Khrushchev, as well as his memoir, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press, 2000). in the lane reserved exclusively for party high-ups, rode the three other Presidium members… Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich, and Vyacheslav Molotov: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 22, 2005.

pinned little notes with the Russian word prick: William Taubman, Khrushchev: A Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 232.

19 twenty-six-horsepower knockoffs of the 1938 Opel Kadett: http://www.autogallery.org.ru/m400.htm.

row after row after row of mind-numbingly identical five-story apartment buildings: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, The Last Testament, edited by Strobe Talbott (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1977), p. 141.

20 “little man with fat paws”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 352.

“After a year or two of school, I had learnt how to count to thirty”: Ibid., p. 24.

21 “We weren’t gentlemen… sense”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, edited by Strobe Talbott, 2nd edition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 88.

“He could barely hold a pencil in his calloused hand”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 56.

“My father felt this was the best, most honorable profession a man could have”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 22, 2005.

21 “He wanted me to see the theories”: Ibid.

22 “You see, I was studying to become a rocket scientist”: Ibid.

“Every villager dreamed of owning a pair of boots”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, edited by Strobe Talbott, 1st edition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 266.

23 Khrushchev was unsettled by the rise to power of the Republican Party: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.

“the Soviets sought not a place in the sun”: Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), p. 461.

National Intelligence Estimate of September 15, 1954: Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1941-1990: A Documentary Collection (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2001), p. 49.

“agonizing re-appraisal”: Leonard Mosley, Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and Their Family Network (New York: Dial Press, 1978), p. 307.

24 “liberate captive peoples” and “roll back”: Ibid.

prepare for “total war”: Herman S. Wolk, “The New Look,” Air Force Magazine, August 2003, http://www.afa.org/magazine/Aug2003/08031ook.asp.

“to create sufficient fear”: Ibid.

“We shall never be the aggressor”: Ibid.

2,280 atomic and thermonuclear bombs: David Alan Rosenberg, Constraining Overkill: Contending Approaches to Nuclear Strategy, 1955-1965 (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 2003), at http://www.history.navy.mil/colloquia/cch9b.html.

the Strategic Air Command kept a third of its 1,200 B-47 long-range bombers: http://www.vectorsite.net/avb47_2.html.

25 Operation Power House: Ibid.

Operation Home Run: James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-secret National Security Agency (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), p. 36.

“With a bit of luck, we could have started World War III”: Thomas Coffey, Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 245.

“Soviet leaders may have become convinced”: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1941-1999, p. 27.

obliterating 118 of the 134 largest population and industrial centers: Rosenberg, Constraining Overkill, p. 8.

The giant plane could carry 70,000 pounds of thermonuclear ordnance over a distance of 8,800 miles: http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=83. an aging knockoff of the propeller-driven Boeing B-29 with a 2,900-mile range: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/tu-4.htm.

26 to get there visitors had to take a series of right turns: James Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997), p. 238.

27 only three people in the entire country would get one: Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev. An Inside Account of the Man and His Era (New York: Little, Brown, 1990), p. 166.

“it was always in a whisper”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 22, 2005.

28 the president’s advisers had spent much of that summit trying to figure out who was really running the show: Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 392.

built in 1926 by the German firm of Rhein-Metall Borsig: Harford, Korolev, p. 78.

“This is our past”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 103.

29 “Father was no longer a novice when it came to missiles”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 22, 2005.

Beria, much like Hitler’s secret police chief, Heinrich Himmler: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 214.

“We gawked as if we were a bunch of sheep”: Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 2nd edition, p. 46.

except that it was nine feet longer, and of a slightly wider girth, which allowed it to carry extra fuel, doubling its range to nearly 400 miles: Asif A. Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2000), pp. 62-63.

30 despite all the 15,000-ruble bonuses offered to captive German engineers: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 366.

31 They had hovered over his deathbed like ghouls: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 238.

“If now, at the fountain of communist wisdom”: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1941-1990, p. 50.

7 million Soviet citizens: Roy A. Medvedev and Zhores A. Medvedev, Khrushchev: The Years in Power (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 15.

“Don’t you see what will happen?”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 95. and engulfed 18 million lives: Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), p. 580.

32 “They had to be isolated”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 216.

“All it took was an instant”: Ibid., p. 202.

33 “A change from violence to diplomacy”: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1990, p. 52.

1,548,366 arrested: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 98.

nearly always ended in death: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, p. 20.

“He was taken to Lefortovo prison, interrogated, beaten”: Harford, Korolev, P-52.

34 This time it flew 390 miles: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, pp. 98-99.

“The construction looked utterly incapable of flight”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 103.

The engine, an RD-103 designed by Glushko: Ibid., pp. 100-101.

35 “Korolev walked over to a map of Europe”: Ibid., pp. 103-4.

37 Khrushchev had approved the cinematic thaw: Pavel Loungine, director, The Moscow Skyscraper, British-French documentary film (Paris: Roche Productions, 2004).

Yields were so low that in 1953 per capita grain production: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, p. 58.

38 which required relocating three hundred thousand farmworkers: Ibid. 14 and 20 percent of the Soviet economy, compared to 9 percent for the United States: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1990, p. 175.

39 “the striking re-allocation of expenditures”: Ibid., p. 187.

39 “I was amazed”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.

40 where the thermonuclear warhead would sit: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, pp. 128-29.

41 “small-time cattle dealer”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 267.

“Their relations had become tense”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.

42 “Comrade Khrushchev carries out his work… intensively, steadfastly, actively and enterprisingly”: Ibid., p. 269.

“led us to a stand occupying a modest place in the corner”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 110.

43 Decrees had been signed advocating the “artificial moon”: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, pp. 145, 149.

“You needed the constant support of power”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.

44 “The Americans have taken a wrong turn”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 111.

“It seemed as if he was still debating the matter”: Ibid.

“If the main task doesn’t suffer, do it”: Matt Bille and Erika Lishock, The First Space Race: Launching the World’s First Satellites (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), p. 63.

2: Jet Power

46 “politeness is nice”: Gordon Harris, A New Command: The Story of a General Who Became a Priest (Plainfield, N.J.: Logos International, 1976), p. 116.

“Didn’t you see the speed limit sign back there?”: Ibid., p. 146.

47 so strongly favored the young air force that it now swallowed forty-six cents: Colonel Mike Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals (Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.: Air University Press, 1998), p. 89. Also at http://aupress.au.af.mil/Books/Worden/Worden.pdf.

“You are aggressive. Some would say to a fault”: Harris, A New Command, p. 127. did not enjoy “a great reputation”: John B. Medaris, Countdown for Decision (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960), p. 104.

49 Of the 7,920,000 automobiles sold by Detroit in 1955: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 386.

his salary was diminishing from $566,200 to $22,500: Time, December 1, 1952, at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,817434,00.html.

“what was good for the country was good for General Motors”: http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/wilson.htm.

50 “kennel dogs” and “worry about what makes the grass green”: Time, October 6, 1961, at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,827790,00.html.

“Damn it, how in the hell did a man as shallow”: William Bragg Ewald Jr., Eisenhower: The President (Englewood, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1981), p. 192.

“In his field, he is a competent man”: Robert H. Ferrel, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: Norton, 1981), p. 237.

military spending still ate up more than half the federal budget: http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/amh/AMH-26.htm.

50 the New Look Defense Policy: Herman S. Wolk, “The New Look,” Air Force Magazine, August 2003, http://www.afa.org/magazine/aug2002/08031ook.asp.

51 “ambassadors to unfriendly nations”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 104.

The Redstone was a heavy-lift tactical missile capable of flinging a 3,500-pound nuclear warhead 200 miles: http://www.redstone.army.mil/cron2a.html; also http://www.boeing.com/history/bna/redstone.htm.

52 “to inflict very great, even decisive, damage”: Ferrel, ed., Eisenhower Diaries, p. 324.

“The world in arms is not spending money alone”: Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p. 114.

the air force had spent a mere $14 million developing its ICBM by 1954: Ibid., p. 104.

53 increased missile spending to $550 million in 1955: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 41.

far below the $7.5 billion earmarked for beefing up the bomber fleet: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, p. 187.

Did the accelerated spending “go far enough?”: “Discussion of the 258th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, September 8, 1955,” 15 September 1955, NSC series, box 7, Eisenhower Papers, 1953-1961 (Ann Whitman file), Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.

“I was always convinced that you would move ahead to the top”: Christopher Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 79.

54 “his lack of maturity”: Ibid., p. 105.

“You’re my boy”: Andrew J. Dunar, America in the Fifties (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2006), p. 97.

“Mr. Wilson started to ask some odd questions”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 107.

“it was the first of many shocks to come”: Ibid.55 John Foster Dulles, it was decided, would speak for the administration: Ambrose, Eisenhower, pp. 396-97.

56 “I will never answer another question on this subject”: Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon, p. 104.

“Every piece of scientific evidence that we have indicates”: Ibid., p. 113.

57 “You said something about ‘being afraid’”: Walter J. Boyne, “Stuart Symington,” Air Force Magazine, February 1999, http://www.afa.org/magazine/feb1999/0299symington.asp.

“He is a formidable-looking figure”: Time, January 19, 1948, at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,779517,00.html.

“We feel, with deep conviction”: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, p. 42.

The USSR would have four hundred Bisons and three hundred Bears: John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: US Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military Strength (New York: Dial Press, 1982), p. 45.

“We believe that in the future”: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, p. 87.

58 It revealed a high numeric series, which implied a vast production line: Grose, Gentleman Spy, p. 402.

“unconstitutionally contradicting patriots”: Prados, The Soviet Estimate, p. 44.

only 85 of the 700 new bombers projected by air force intelligence: http://www.thebulletin.org/articles.php?art_ofn=ja01staff.

“You’ll never get court-martialed”: Christopher Simpson. Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), p. 64.

58 many of the air force officers who provided the testimony and information for the hearings were promoted: Prados, The Soviet Estimate, p. 50.

59 “frequent changes of scene and recreation”: Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (New York: Basic Books, 1982), p. 8.

“the much publicized golfing trips, the working vacations, and even the Wild West stories”: Ibid., p. 39.

3: Trials and Errors

60 the continuous blaring of car horns: To re-create the Georgian uprising, I relied on Sergei Stanikov’s eyewitness account, which was published in the Russian journal Istochnik, no. 6, 1995. An English translation by Tahir Asghar is available at http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv5n2/Georgia.htm.

one of the first nations on earth to have adopted Christianity in A.D. 337: http://www.parliament.ge/pages/archive_en/history/his2.html.

61 “Great Son of the Georgian People” had been denigrated: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, p. 70.

“A meeting was held at 4 o’clock in which I was present”: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv5n2/Georgia.htm.

62 they were currently reading the manuscript of a young writer named Boris Pasternak: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 385.

64 nine protesters were officially pronounced dead: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 164.

65 Khrushchev… could easily “be beguiled”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 131.

Glushko was elegant and regal: V. F. Rakhmanin, ed., Odnazhy I Navsegda: Dokumenty I Lyudi o sozdatelye raketnykh dvigateley Valentnye Petrovichye Glushko (Moscow: Mashinostroyenye, 1998), p. 341.

Korolev, on the other hand, never wore a tie unless he had to: A. V Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S. P. Korolev: Uchonie, Inzhenier, Chelovek (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), p. 107.

66 “He ate very quickly”: Arkady Ostashov, Yuri Mozhorin, ed., Nachalo Kosmichiskoy Eri: Vospominaniya Veteranov Raketno-Kosmicheskoy Tekniki, vol. 2 (Moscow: RNITSKD, 1994), p. 44.

the rasp of the needle on the gramophone: Deborah Cadbury, Space Race: The Epic Battle Between America and the Soviet Union for the Dominion of Space (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), p. 78.

“Glushko gave testimonies about my alleged membership of anti-Soviet organizations”: Ibid., p. 85.

67 “For the sake of my sole son”: Harford, Korolev, p. 50.

Glushko had also been in the camps: Rakhmanin, ed., Odnazhy I Navsegda, pp. 424-33.

Korolev had engaged in a long-running affair with Glushko’s sister-in-law: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 89.

68 “Sergei Pavlovich, your Horche is beautiful, but it’s not a fighter plane”: Chertok, Rockets and People, pp. 350-51.

“I’m not afraid of anyone in the whole wide world”: Ibid.

69 The solution was the RD-107: Valentin Glushko, Raketnie Dvigateli GDL-0KB (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Agentsva Pechatiy Novosti, 1975), pp. 328-29.

69 But if the central R-7 engine block was designed to operate longer, the four peripheral boosters could be jettisoned: Novosti Kosmonavtiki, vol. 15, no. 7 (August 2005), pp. 67-69.

70 Korolev favored using small gimbaled thrusters: Ibid., vol. 15, no. 8 (July 2005), pp. 56-59.

But Glushko was violently opposed to the idea: Yuri Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya Imeni S. P. Koroleva (Korolev: RKK Energiya, 1996), p. 75.

could withstand the heat that would be generated during the 24,000-feet-per-second atmospheric reentry: Ivan Prudnikov, Aviatsiya I Kosmonavtika, vol. 1, no. 2 (1994), p. 39.

postimpulse boost: Timofei Varfolomeyev, Space Flight Magazine (UK), August 1995, p. 262.

71 “I’ve been sent the protocol of the latest tests”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 124. how many pounds of thrust were produced per each pound of propellant consumed per second: Wernher von Braun et al., Space Travel: A History (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 136.

But Glushko’s engines had come up short, at 239 and 303.1 respectively: Georgiy Vetrov, ed., S. P. Korolev I Evo Dela: Svet I Teni v Istorii Kosmonavtiki (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), pp. 220-21.

72 “At present time, we are completing static testing of the rocket”: Ibid., p. 369.

WE WANT BREAD, FREEDOM, AND TRUTH: Filip Lesniak, Biuletyn Instituty Pamiecy Narodowek, at http://www.ipn.gov.pl/biuletyn5_12.htm.

73 thirteen-year-old Romek Strzalkowski fell dead: Polish Academic Information Center, University of Buffalo, at http://www.info-poland.buffalo.edu/exhib/Poznan/june1956.html.

“The Poles were vilifying the Soviet Union”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 1st edition, p. 198.74 “From the airport we went to”: Ibid., p. 200.

“To all those suffering under communist slavery”: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/hungary_1956.htm.

eighty were killed: http://www.info-poland.buffalo.edu/exhib/Poznan/june1956.html.

75 “The Soviet government is prepared to enter into the appropriate negotiations”: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB76/doc6.pdf.

“This utterance is one of the most significant to come out”: Grose, Gentleman Spy, p. 348.

defiantly summoned the Soviet ambassador, Yuri Andropov: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB76/doc7.pdf.

“We have no choice”: Minutes of October 31, 1956, Presidium meeting, at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB76/doc6.pdf.

76 “Bombs, by God!”: Grose, Gentleman Spy, p. 349.

“The Soviet Air Force has bombed the Hungarian capital”: See online transcript at http://news.bbc.co.Uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/4/newsid_2739000/2739039.stm.

77 “Khrushchev’s days are numbered”: Grose, Gentleman Spy, p. 337.

4: Tomorrowland

78 As the incumbent, Ike was able to rise above the political fray: Dunar, America in the Fifties, p. 123.

79 “In regard to the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles”: Erik Bergaust, Wernher von Braun (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1976), p. 245.

“it will be better for the country”: Ibid.80 “If we let down our standards to speed production”: Harris, A New Command, p. 134.

“The lack of a sound, experienced, military-technical organization”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 57.81 “In all honesty, I do not think”: Ibid., p. 60.

“Can you picture a war”: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 410.

“somewhat distorted and exaggerated picture”: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, p. 82.

“satisfactory state of reliability”: Ibid.

“I don’t know how to show… teeth with a missile”: Ibid., p. 84.82 “We see too few examples of really creative”: Ibid., p. 80.

“The aircraft industry, and particularly the Douglas Aircraft Co.”: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, pp. 252-53.

83 “It was not a big decision”: Ernst Stuhlinger, December 8, 1997, interview with Michelle Kelly for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, NASA Oral History Transcript at http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/participants.htm.

“Screen them for being Nazis?”: Dennis Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998), p. 41.

84 impregnable blackness: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 70.

“To my continental eyes”: Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, p. 8.

Fort Bliss, an old cavalry outpost built around the rough adobe walls: http//www.bliss, army.mil/museum/fortblisstexas.htm.

85 “A line of waiters in black suits, white shirts, and bow-ties: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 241.

“German Scientist Says American Cooking Tasteless”: El Paso Times, December 4, 1946.

“We hold these individuals to be potentially dangerous”: James McGovern, Crossbow and Overcast (New York: William Morrow, 1964), p. 247.

“I never thought we were so poor mentally”: Paul Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (New York: Berkley, 2001), p. 61.

86 As wards of the army: Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral, p. 215.

“Daily life was quite regulated”: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 77.

“SPECIAL WAR DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEE. In the event that this card is presented off a military reservation”: Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral, p. 223.

they catch a screening of Zorro at the Palace Theatre, go shopping at the Popular Dry Goods Company: http://www.elpasotexas.gov/walkingtours.

87 playing cello in a string quartet of rocket scientists: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 11.

“Prisoners of peace”: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 237.

87 “Frankly we were disappointed”: Daniel Lang, “A Romantic Urge,” New Yorker, November 7, 1951, p. 89.

88 “We’ll put you on ice”: Stuhlinger, NASA 1997 Oral History.

“control of German individuals who might contribute”: http://www.milnet.com/cia/nazi-gold/art04.html.

“threat to world security”: Lieutenant David Akens, Army Ballistic Missile Agency Historical Monograph (Huntsville, Ala.: Redstone Arsenal, 1958), p. 25, at http://www.redstone.army.mil/history.

“We were distrusted aliens”: Bob Ward, Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2005), p. 67.

89 when three hundred thousand sorties were flown: http://www.usafe.af.mil/berlin/quickfax.htm.

“when we might have completely destroyed Russia and not even skinned our elbows”: David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993), p. 25.

“greatest act of stupidity of the McCarthyist period”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 138.

The historic hamlet was home to fifteen thousand genteel southerners: http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/cron2a.html.

90 “We had some concerns here”: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 77.

The fledgling ABC network was backing the venture with $4.5 million in loan guarantees: Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, p. 84.

91 whose hourly pay in 1954 had just been increased from seventy cents to a dollar: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 386.

“In our modern world”: March 9, 1955, “Tomorrowland” telecast, Walt Disney Treasures, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Burbank, Calif., 2004, stock no. 31749.

The show attracted 42 million viewers: J. P. Telotte, “Disney in Science Fiction Land,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, Spring 2005, http://www.finarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0412/is_l_33/ai_nl3717415.

92 to launch a satellite using a modified Redstone missile for less than $100,000: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 119.

“The atmosphere of the earth acts as a huge shield”: http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/chapter2.html.

93 “I am impressed by the costly consequences”: Ibid.

94 “It must be restated”: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1990, p. 59.

“I wouldn’t care if they did”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 51.

5: Desert Fires

95 wads of rubles that Korolev kept in an office safe: Harford, Korolev, p. 4.

96 building nine tracking stations deep in the Kazakh desert over the first 500 miles: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, pp. 156-57.

A gigantic vise with collapsible jaws, pivots, and counterweights: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, pp. 76-77.

a combination of silica and asbestum with textalyte: Prudniko, Aviatsiya I Kosmonavtika, p. 39.

97 The pace of construction at Tyura-Tam had been so frenetic: Baikonur Cosmodrome Foundation: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur_foundation.html.

a fire alarm was inadvertently triggered, setting off sprinklers: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 157.

98 “What the hell are you doing?”: Boris Chertok, Rakety I Lyudi, vol. 2 (Moscow: Mashinostroyeniye, 1996), pp. 185-86.

“Get him out of here”: Yuri Mozzhorin, ed., Dorogi v Kosmos, vol. 1 (Moscow: MAI, 1992), p. 114.

“That was Korolev”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 221.

99 “Give me a crane, some cash”: Mozzhorin, ed., Nachalo Kosmichiskoy Eri, p. 67.

“Take it away”: Chertok, Rakety I Lyudi, vol. 2, p. 177.

Korolev developed strep throat and had to take frequent penicillin shots: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 159.

“We are working under a great strain”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 159.

100 “We are criminals”: Vladimir Parashkov and Konstantin Gerchik, eds., Niezabivayemi Bajkanur (Moscow: Rosijskoye Kosmichiskoye Agenstvo, 1998), p. 107.

“What can they do to us?”: Chertok, Rakety I Lyudi, vol. 2, p. 183.

101 “He was a brilliant scientist”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, February 15, 2006.

They were “worthless”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 159.

One general had famously groused: Author interview with Peter Gorin, Williamsburg, Virginia, March 6, 2006.

“You can’t count on Malinovsky”: Chertok, Rakety I Lyudi, vol. 2, p. 184.

102 Korolev was fixated on the notion: Harford, Korolev, p. 3.

“And you and your rocket”: The following exchange is quoted in Yaroslav Galovanov, Korolev: Fakti I Mythi (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), pp. 502-8.

103 “When things are going badly”: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 159.

“Sergei was about three”: Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S. P. Korolev, p. 29.

104 As a side business, the family had a small but highly successful brine operation: Natalia Koroleva, Otets, vol. 1 (Moscow: Nauka, 2001), p. 27.

“He didn’t have any friends of his own age”: Harford, Korolev, p. 19.

that his estranged father, whom he was not permitted to see, would try to kidnap him: Koroleva, Otets, vol. 1, p. 65.

“I felt I needed to keep him at home”: Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S. P. Korolev, p. 30.

Korolev built giant dollhouses and cried frequently: Koroleva, Otets, vol. 1, p. 62.

“A poster appeared”: Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S. P. Korolev, p. 29.

No one in Nezhin had ever seen an airplane before: Koroleva, Otets, vol. 1, p. 68.

105 “Mother, can you give me two new bed-sheets”: Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S. P. Korolev, p. 30.

“Hunger, chaos”: Ibid.

106 “hang onto the barbed wire”: Ibid.

“He was not interested in small talk”: Koroleva, Otets, vol. 1, p. 116.

1922 daily planner: Ibid., p. 134.

“Oh Mother, if you could only see”: Ibid., p. 121.

107 “That was the definitive moment”: Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S. P. Korolev, p. 32.

Polytechnical Institute of Kiev, which produced such graduates as Igor Sikorsky: Harford, Korolev, p. 26.

“To my dear friend Piotr Frolov”: Koroleva, Otets, vol. 1, p. 325.

when he met two rocket enthusiasts, Friedrich Tsander and Mikhail Tikhonravov: Georgy Vetrov, Korolev I Kosmonavtika: Pervye Shagi (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 33.

108 “the air of a man who had already sampled the mysteries”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 124.

Tikhonravov would coin the term cosmonaut: V. Davydova, “100-letie So Dnya Rozhdeniya M. K. Tikhonravovna,” Novosti Kosmonavtiki, October 2000, p. 61.

Korolev hit upon the idea of grafting it to a tailless, trapezoidal glider: Vetrov, ed., S. P. Korolev I Evo Delo, p. 33.

109 “But Father, how could your plane land”: Natalia Koroleva televised interview for the documentary film The Secret Designer, Ryan Productions., Toronto, 1994.

“Nikita, come to the Kremlin”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, pp. 233-34.

“We will bury you”: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, p. 75.

110 The attack on Nikita Khrushchev began: The account of the attempted coup against Khrushchev is drawn from several interviews with Sergei Khrushchev in early 2006, his memoir of his father, Nikita Khrushchev’s own multivolume memoirs, and William Taubman’s Khrushchev.

111 a cow “knocking about the whole country”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 318.

“Leonid Ilyich barely had time to utter the first words”: Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev, p. 237.

“You’ve become the expert on everything”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, February 10, 2006.

“They couldn’t, as long as Father retained the loyalty of two key people”: Ibid.

112 signed 38,679 execution orders: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 320.

“roared like an African lion”: Ibid., p. 323.

113 “Okay, Boris, you continue playing sick”: Chertok, Rakety I Lyudi, vol. 2, p. 190.

6: Pictures in Black and White

115 On the morning of August 28, 1957: A list of all U-2 Soviet overflights can be found at http://www.spyflight.co.uk/u2.htm and at http://www.blackbirds.net/u2/u2-timeline/u2tl160.html.

The black, single-engine craft bore little resemblance: A physical description of the U-2 is available at http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/u2/ and at http://www.area51specialprojects.com/genesis_u2.html.

116 filling the tanks from portable fifty-five-gallon oil drums: Richard Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 118.

a 12,000-foot-long spool of high-resolution Kodak film: Michael Beschloss, Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), p. 92.

At 4:00 AM a doctor measured his temperature, pulse, and blood pressure: Lieutenant Colonel Charles Wilson, USAF, “Flying the U-2,” http://www.blackbirds.net/u2/u-2mission.html.

117 Richard Bissell sat in his downtown office on H Street, across from the Metropolitan Club: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 98.

“We must find ways”: James R. Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), p. 79.

Jewish grandparents had emigrated from the same part of Odessa: Philip Taubman, Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of American’s Space Espionage (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), p. 93.

118 Mark Twain House: Ibid., p. 115.

Allen Dulles was a significant shareholder: Grose, Gentleman Spy, pp. 371-73.

119 but Secretary Quarles had opted to go with a rival design by Bell Labs: Chris Pocock, “From the Shadows—Early History of the U-2,” Code One Airpower Magazine, January 2002, http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archive/2002/articles/jan_02/shadows/index.html. See also Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 93.

The contract was shrouded in such secrecy: The classified nature of the program is described by Garfield Thomas, vice president of ISR programs at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, at http://www.area51specialprojects.com/genesis_u2.html.

Even within the White House staff, only two people: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace: The White House Years, 1956-61 (New York: Doubleday, 1965), p. 544.

120 “The ampoule should be crushed between the teeth”: Taubman, Secret Empire, p. 178.

“We told Eisenhower”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 121.

Only three bolts… connected: Beschloss, Mayday, p. 92.

“Holy smokes”: Taubman, Secret Empire, p. 131.

“Well, boys”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 84.

“If the Soviets ever capture one of these planes”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 546.

121 Boyle’s law: Wilson, “Flying the U-2.”

“This is what would happen”: March 9, 1955, “Tomorrowland” telecast, Walt Disney Treasures, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Burbank, Calif., 2004, stock no. 31749.122 “I was assured”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 546.

123 “coffin corner”: Wilson, “Flying the U-2.”

Every U-2 flight required presidential approval: Beschloss, Mayday, p. 118.

A U-2 had exploded once: http://www.blackbirds.net/u2/u2-timeline/u2tl50.html.

124 “seemed somewhat startled and horrified to learn that the flight plan”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 112.

125 Only the new P-30 radar: Alexander Orlov, The U-2 Program: A Russian Officer Remembers, speech at 1998 CIA symposium, at http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/winter98_99/art02.html.

“According to fully confirmed data”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 159. Also author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, February 10, 2006.

“What I remembered most”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, February 10, 2006.

126 The forays, or “ferret” missions as they were known: Douglas Stanglin, Susan Headden, and Peter Cary, “Secrets of the Cold War: Special Report,” US News & World Report, March 15, 1993, pp. 30-52.

“Representations and recommendations”: Ibid., p. 34.

“It would have meant war”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 157.

127 “The notion that we could overfly them”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 113.

“For the first time”: July 17, 1956, CIA memorandum, CIA-RDP62B00844R00200020017-3. Declassified August 26, 2000.

128 “A few days ago a super-long-range”: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 161.

129 From its dish network atop a 6,800-foot peak: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 225.

130 “Stop sending intruders into our air space”: Orlov, The U-2 Program.

“Father thirsted for revenge”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.

131 “They blamed us”: Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), p. 182.

a Ford repair shop at Fifth and K streets: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 104.

“I don’t ‘believe’ that the Soviets are ahead”: New York Times, February 6, 1957.

132 “Every day we don’t reverse our policy is a bad day for the Free World”: Ibid., August 18, 1957.

a West Coast military think tank, the RAND Corporation: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 46.

“Gone was the folksy fellow”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 145.

133 SR-71 Blackbird: http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/sr-71/html.

Bissell was alarmed that it was not even at the blueprint stage: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 134.134 to personally inspect every Jupiter C launch: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 243.

“I knew our national effort”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 134.

135 “in view of the competition we might face”: http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/chapter2.html.

“It was unfortunate”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 14.

“Ellender said that we must be out of our minds”: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 96.

“in the nearest future, the USSR will send a satellite into space”: Mstislav Keldysh, ed., Tvorcheskoye Naslediye Akademika Sergeya Pavlovicha Koroleva: Izbranye Trudy I Dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), p. 376.

136 “The creation and launching of the Soviet”: F. J. Krieger, Behind the Sputniks (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1958), p. 329.

“The Astronomical Council of the USSR”: Ibid., p. 288.

“It was hard not to feel that I was being set up”: Nixon, RN, p. 167.

“Dear Dick, I find that while I have thanked”: Ibid., p. 181.

138 “He flashes gold cuff links”: Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 338.

“I’m going to have to bring up the nigger bill”: Ibid., p. 326.

“Southern whites are not bad people”: James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 81.

139 “What he had not done was provide leadership”: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 409.

“I got the impression at the time”: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 686.

140 “We’re trapped”: And all other Little Rock quotes from inside high school quoted in Melba Patillo Beals, Warriors Don’t Cry (New York: Pocket Books, 1994), pp. 87-88.

“The colored children [were] removed to their homes for safety purposes”:

The Mann telegram is available online at the Eisenhower Library under telegrammanntopresident92457 at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/LittleRock/littlerockdocuments.html.

“Troops not to enforce integration”: Ibid., under DEtroopstoArkansas at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/LittleRock/littlerockdocuments.html.

“A weak President”: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 987.

7: A Simple Satellite

142 The meeting had not gone as Korolev had hoped: The narrative of this account is drawn primarily from K. V. Gerchik, Proryv v Kosmos (Moscow: Veles, 1994), though the opinions of its participants are drawn from a wide array of sources listed below.

143 “I suggest we begin preparations to launch”: Gerchik, Proryv v Kosmos, p. 29.

“This proposal was a big surprise”: Ibid.

“All these space projects”: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 87.

144 an unrealistic time frame: V. V. Favorskiy and I. V. Meshcheryakov, eds., Voyenno-Kosmicheskiye Sily: Kosmonavtika I Vooruzhennyye Sily, vol. 1 (Moscow: Sankt-Peterburgskoy Tipografia Nauka, 1997), p. 34.

“The Directorate of Missile Weapons”: Yuri Mozzhorin, Tak Eto Bilo (Moscow: Tsnimash, 2000), p. 71.

“development of an artificial satellite for photographing the earth’s surface”: Vetrov, ed., S. P. Korolev I Ego Delo, p. 232.

145 who had been the youngest member ever elected to the prestigious Academy of Sciences: Akademiya Nauk SSSR: Membership Directory, vol. 2 (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), p. 61.

Korolev’s greatest proponent was openly skeptical: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 154.

146 which, at Tyura-Tam, was just over 1,000 feet per second: Ivan V. Meshcheryakov, V Mire Kosmonovtiki (Novgorod: Russian Merchant Publishers, 1996), pp. 45-46.

147 “Why, Sergei Pavlovich?” and “Because it’s not round”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 535.

The silver-zinc chargers alone weighed 122 pounds, providing power: Valentin Glushko, ed., Kosmonavtika Entsiklopediya (Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia, 1985), pp. 290-91.

“Mindless malice”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 159.

148 “Do you know when Russia will build the bomb?”: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 25.

“German scientists in Russia did it”: David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 748.

149 The mutineers had been dealt with: Taubman, Khrushchev, pp. 368-69.

“Nobody wanted to be accused of dragging their feet”: Gerchik, Proryv v Kosmos, p. 30.

150 the commission formally informed the Kremlin that PS-1 was scheduled for liftoff on October 6, 1957: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 165.

It was model number 8k71PS, sixteen feet shorter: Timofei Varfolomeev, “Soviet Rocketry Conquered Space,” part 1, Spaceflight Magazine (UK), August 1995, pp. 260-63.

151 “Silence fell whenever the Chief Designer appeared”: Harford, Korolev, p. 129.

which sat on a felt-covered cradle in a sealed-off “clean room”: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 90.

“Coats, gloves, it’s a must”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 161.

Tikhonravov had pressurized the sphere with nitrogen: Glushko, ed., Kosmonavtika Entsiklopediya, pp. 290-91.

“I saw a crowd gathered around the satellite”: Mozzhorin, ed., Nachalo Kosmichiskoy Eri, p. 23.

152 “What does it mean?”: Galovanov, Korolev, pp. 537-38.

An overhead crane lifted the twenty-seven-ton empty shell: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 74.

153 “Well, shall we see off our first-born?”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 538.

A grainy and undated Soviet video: Fifty Years of RKK Energya (Moscow: RKK Energya [videotape], 1996).

over the next hour and ten minutes, the rocket was raised: Hubert Curien, Baikonour (Paris: Arnaud Colin Editeur, 1994), p. 147.

over the 120-foot-deep, five-football-fields-wide: Igor Barmin, Na Zemle I V Kosmosy (Moscow: VP Barmin Design Bureau of General Machine Building, 2001), p. 80.

Marshal Nedelin, in particular, was unhappy with the Soviet arrangement: Ibid., p. 93.

154 “Technical banditry”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 538.

“Let’s not make a fuss”: Ibid.

“OK, dear”: A. Polyektov, Kosmodrome Bajkonur; Nachale (Moscow: Veles, 1992), p. 86.

155 “Nobody will rush us”: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 165.

“T minus ten” and countdown instructions re-created from the following sources: Chekunov recollection in Gerchik, Proryv v Kosmos, pp. 68-73. Official timeline launch card reprinted in Natalia Koroleva, Otets, vol. 2, p. 309.

Also from Chertok, Raketi I Lyudi, vol. 2, pp. 197-98. And from Ishlinskiy, ed., Akademik S. P. Korolev, pp. 448-64.

158 At 116 seconds a fiery cross appeared: Novosti Kosmonavtiki, no. 7, August 1997, p. 9.

The engines had run out of fuel at 295.4 seconds: Ibid,

at 142 miles in altitude instead of 147 miles: Ibid.

“Separation Achieved”: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 89.159 “Quiet”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 540.

“This is music no one has ever heard before”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 164.

“Hold off on the celebrations”: Mozzhorin, ed., Nachalo Kosmichiskoy Eri, p. 64.

160 BEEP, BEEP, BEEP: Ibid.

8: By the Light of a Red Moon

161 a man so hated in Huntsville that some rocket scientists had once burned his effigy in Courthouse Square: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 98.

“We could not shed a single tear”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 152.

162 “Sour Kraut Hill”: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 78.

The jobs of five thousand skilled workers: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 218. bureaucratic guerrilla campaigns that were beginning to take their toll: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 127.

163 “timing his comings and goings so that Grandmother”: Harris, A New Command, p. 7.

over one hundred thousand dollars in his trading account: Ibid., p. 43.

“We must make it perfectly clear”: Bille and Lishoke, The First Space Race, p. 117.

soaring 662 miles high over a 3,335-mile arc: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 130.

“In various languages”: Von Braun et al., Space Travel, p. 156.

164 At fifty-three, he was almost exactly: Neil McElroy’s biographical information can be found at http://www.nndb.com/people/102/000057928.

“Our whole organization was thoroughly fired up”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 154.

“two-star generals were serving drinks to three-star generals”: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 111.

165 the young officer rudely interrupted McElroy: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 155.

“General Gavin was visibly shaken”: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 261.

“Damn bastards”: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 131.

“Now look”: Ibid.166 “Von Braun started to talk as if”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 155.

“We knew they would do it”: Ibid.

“There was no chance”: Bille and Lishoke, The First Space Race, p. 118.

“For God’s sake, cut us loose”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 155.

167 “It was imprudent to admit we had retained those rockets”: Harris, A New Command, p. 155.

“It beeped derisively over our heads”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 156.

168 “Missile number 27 proved our capabilities”: Ibid.

“When you get back to Washington”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 131.

64 percent, according to a Gallup survey: Time, October 14, 1957.

169 “Dear Dick, I had been hoping to play golf this afternoon”: The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 18 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pt. 3, chap. 6, document 365.

“Sherman Adams was cold, blunt, abrasive”: Nixon, RN, p. 198.

“Golf in Newport was enjoyable”: The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, vol. 18, pt. 3, chap. 6, document 366.

170 “an economy of abundance”: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 587.

And tax revenues were coming in at a disappointing $72 billion: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 213.

in an effort to trim half a billion dollars from the $3.5 billion monthly defense bill: Robert A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Threat (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 119.

170 “The developments of this year”: Ferrell, ed., Eisenhower Diaries, p. 347.

the putting green he had installed just outside his patio doors: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 398.

171 played golf for the fifth time that week: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 22.

“an event of considerable technical and scientific importance”: John Foster Dulles Papers, Dwight Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/15.html.

“without military significance,” “A neat technical trick,” “A silly bauble,” “in an outer space basketball game”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 10.

“hunk of iron”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 187.

“a propaganda stunt”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. xv.

like a “canary that jumps on the eagle’s back”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 186.

“Listen now”: Time, October 12, 1956.

“Soviet Fires Earth Satellite”: New York Times, October 5, 1957.

172 “Here in the capital”: Richard Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks (New York: Doubleday Headline Publications, 1958), p. 9.

173 “a great national emergency,” comparisons to the shots fired at Lexington and Concord, “a technological Pearl Harbor”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. xvi.

“chilling beeps”: Time, October 14, 1957.

“The reaction here indicates massive indifference”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 3.

only 13 percent of Americans saw Sputnik as a sign: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 23.

174 “When I asked what this country should do”: Shirley Ann Warshaw, ed., Reexamining the Eisenhower Presidency (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1993), p. 108.

“I have been warning about this growing danger”: New York Times, October 5, 1957.

“a National Week of Shame and Danger”: Time, October 21, 1957.

“We now know beyond a doubt”: New York Times, October 5, 1957.

175 “liked nothing better than to careen over the hills”: Woods, LBJ, p. 313.

an air-conditioned, glass-enclosed, forty-foot-high hunting blind: Ibid.

“Soon they will be dropping bombs on us”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 117.

“a full and exhaustive inquiry”: Henry Dethloff, Suddenly, Tomorrow Came (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1994), p. 3.

176 “I made sure that there was always one companion”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), p. 105.

“I knew there was only one way to see Russell everyday”: Ibid., p. 103.

some 4 percent of the U.S. population would report seeing Sputnik: International Affairs Seminars of Washington, “American Reactions to Crisis: Examples of Pre-Sputnik and Post-Sputnik Attitudes and of the Reaction to Other Events Perceived as Threats,” U.S. President’s Committee on Information Activities Abroad Records, 1959-1961, box 5, A83-10, Dwight D Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/oct58.html.

177 “We can’t always go changing our program”: Warshaw, ed., Reexamining the Eisenhower Presidency, p. 109.

“Ike Plays Golf, Hears the News”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 22.

“This was a place where Eisenhower went wrong”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 107.

177 “I can’t understand why the American people”: Ibid.

178 “There was no doubt that the Redstone” and other quotes from October 8, 1957, White House damage-control meeting: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/sputnik-memo/images/memo-page2-1.gif.

179 “The rocketry employed by our Naval Research Laboratory for launching our Vanguard” and all other quotes from October 9, 1957, press conference: Official White House transcript of President Eisenhower’s Press and Radio Conference no. 123. October, 9, 1957, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/sputnik/pressconferenceoct91957pg.1pdf.

182 “A fumbling apologia”: http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/chap11.html.

“A Crisis in Leadership”: Time, November 4, 1957.

“be in some kind of partial retirement”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 120.

“He is not leading the country”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 8. mind-numbing sedatives: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 120.

“courageous statesmanship”: Ibid.

“penny-pinching,” “complacency,” “lack of vision,” “incredible stupidity”: http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/chap11.html.

“No greater opportunity will ever be present”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 149.

“The issue of [Sputnik], if properly handled”: Ibid.

183 “Its velocity was breathtaking”: Woods, LBJ, p. 262.

“making cowboy love”: Ibid., p. 263.

184 Go to Congress, he urged Ike: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 147.

“We do not, as of yet, know if the satellite is sending out encoded messages” and all other quotes from October 10, 1957, NSC meeting: Memorandum on the 339th meeting of the National Security Council, Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.Eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/sputnik/summaryofdiscussion339thmtgoctl119571ofl4.pdf.

186 “The country will support it”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 20.

announcing that the Vanguard program would launch “a small satellite sphere”: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/sputnik/pressconferenceoct91957pg.lpdf.

“We who could coldly appraise”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 160.

187 “far, far out on a limb”: Ibid., p. 162.

“I had neither money nor authority”: Ibid.

9: Something for the Holidays

188 “Just another Korolev launch”: Nicholas Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 65; see also Harford, Korolev, p. 122.

189 The man whose popularity had so intimidated Joseph Stalin: Thumbnail bio of Zhukov is drawn from http://www.worldatwar.net/biography/z/Zhukov. See also Albert Axell, Marshal Zhukov: The Man Who Beat Hitler (London: Longman, 2003).

190 “Where you find Zhukov, you find Victory”: http://www.worldatwar.net/biography/z/Zhukov.

191 Khrushchev had unilaterally slashed troop forces by a staggering 2 million men: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 379.

191 “shark fodder”: Ibid.

a further round of three-hundred-thousand-troop reductions: Ibid.

“Some voices of dissatisfaction were heard”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 43.

“I can’t go to battle with generals who have to travel with field hospitals”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 225.

192 “He assumed so much power”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 44.

“Father feared that Zhukov saw General Eisenhower as an example”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

“I see what Zhukov is up to”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 44.

“saboteur schools”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

“a South American-style military takeover”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 44.

193 “His unreasonable activities leave us no choice”: Ibid., p. 45.

194 a small and unobtrusive squib would appear on the back page of Pravda: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 250.

The evening sessions had run well past ten: The account of the meeting in Kiev is drawn from telephone interviews with Sergei Khrushchev in September 2006 and from his memoir.

195 “I’ll be back”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, pp. 259-60; also author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

196 the lead story in Pravda on the morning of October 5: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 533.197 orbital decay: I. V. Meshcheriakov, V Mire Kosmonavtiki (Nizhny Novgorod: Russki Kupets, 1996), pp. 35-36.

crossing the equator every ninety-six minutes at a sixty-five-degree angle: Valentin Glushko, ed., Malenkaya Entsiklopedia Kosmonavtiki (Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia, 1970), p. 520.

The exact number would turn out to be ninety-two days: Ibid.198 “We were all too focused”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 543.

“It was late”: Chertok, Rakety I Lyudi, vol. 2, p. 195.

“We thought the satellite”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 104.

“This date”: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 197.

“The whole world is abuzz”: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 524.

199 green for foreign press clippings, red for decoded diplomatic traffic: Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev, p. 128.

“The achievement is immense”: Manchester Guardian, October 6, 1957.

“Myth has become reality”: Le Figaro, October 7, 1957.

“A turning point in civilization”: New York Times, October 6, 1957.

“in contrast with the first steps in the atomic age”: Monographs in Aerospace History no. 10: USIA, October 17, 1957, Report on World Opinion, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/45thann/html/pubs.

“validation of the superiority of Marxist-Leninist technology”: Ibid,

“the planetary era rings the death knell of colonialism”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 131.

200 “With only a ball of metal”: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 171.

The European Assembly in Strasbourg… and other examples of shaken faith in the United States: Monographs in Aerospace History no. 10: USIA, October 17, 1957, Report on World Opinion, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/45thann/html/pubs.

200 “Public opinion in friendly countries shows decided concern”: Ibid.201 “People all over the world are pointing to the satellite”: Time, October 21, 1957.

“World’s First Artificial Satellite of the Earth Created in Soviet Union”: Pravda, October 6, 1957.

202 “The average American only cares for his car”: Harris, A New Command, p. 182.

“We could never understand”: David Akens, Army Ballistic Missile Agency Historical Monograph (Huntsville, Ala.: Redstone Arsenal, 1958), appendix A, at http://www.www.army.redstone.mil/history.

203 he astounded Korolev by asking where the satellites were placed: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, p. 169.

“People in the Soviet Union did not complain during that era”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

“I remember walking in Red Square”: Natalia Koroleva, interview in televised documentary film The Secret Designer (Toronto: Ryan Productions, 1994).

“They are well provided for”: Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos, p. 128.

“Our most brilliant missile designer could not hold a candle to Sergei Pavlovich Korolev”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 77.

204 “When we announced the successful testing of an intercontinental rocket”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 237.

205 “Initially, Father believed”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, September 15, 2006.

Yangel, a few months earlier, had successfully tested the R-12: Oruzhe Rossii, vol. 4 (Moscow: Military Parade, 1997), p. 77.

lobbying Nedelin to push for the R-16: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 182.

206 “In his able proposals”: Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos, p. 72.

“You know”: Khrushchev’s exchange with Korolev and Mikoyan is in Golovanov, Korolev, p. 544.

207 Khrushchev had commissioned poems: Harford, Korolev, p. 122. commemorative stamps: Golovanov, Korolev, p. 542.

“Now we are ahead of America”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 71.

208 “Nowhere else would you find”: Ibid.

Beijing had blasted Khrushchev’s assault on Stalin as “revisionist”: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, p. 72.

promised Mao missile technology, starting with the R-2: Semenov, ed., Raketno Kosmicheskaya Korporatsiya Energiya, p. 66.

209 He had the parts to assemble one more rocket: Chertok, Rakety I Lyudi, vol. 2, p. 199.

211 The hardware would have to come entirely off the shelf: Harford, Korolev, p. 132.

212 “My wife and I”: in Mozhorin, ed., Nachalo Kosmicheskoy Eri, p. 64.

“We’re returning to Tyura-Tam”: Ibid.

10: Operation Confidence

213 “What next?”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 94.

“Shoot the Moon, Ike”: Time, November 11, 1957.

213 “Plunge heavily into this one”: http://www.spacereview.com/article/396/1.

214 “Let’s not look for scapegoats”: Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics and Space Act: Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop Conducted April 3, 1992, Monographs in Space History no. 8, http://www.history.nasa.gov/40than/legislat.pdf.

215 “Sputnik II absolutely made the decision for them”: Ibid.

“The greatly increased size of the second Sputnik”: Time, November 11, 1957.

“whether the Soviet Union might be using some new form”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 143.

“As Chairman of the Committee”: www.spacereview.com/article/396/1.

“It’s a real circus act”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 44.

216 “demonstrates that the USSR has outstripped”: Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos, p. 128.

“the freed and conscientious labor of the people”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 103.

“to be less concerned with the depth of the pile”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 140.

“While we devote our industrial and technological might”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 19.

“It’s time to stop worrying about tail-fins”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 77.

“We’ve become a little too self-satisfied”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 139.

“an intercontinental outer-space raspberry”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 17.

217 “From the echoes of the satellite”: Warshaw, ed., Reexamining the Eisenhower Presidency, p. 111.

“The fact that we were able to launch the first Sputnik”: Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Kosmos, p. 127.

“The United States can practically annihilate”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 223.

218 GENTLE IN MANNER, STRONG IN DEED: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 219.

“It misses the whole point”: Warshaw, ed., Reexamining the Eisenhower Presidency, p. 112.

General Bruce Medaris watched the address with an equal mix of bewilderment and frustration: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 165.

219 “somewhat cherubic” and “as disarmingly pleasant”: Taubman, Secret Empire, p. 88.

Squirrel Hill: Harris, A New Command, p. 147.

“Hang on tight, and I will support you”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 165.

seriously considering quitting the army: Ibid., p. 168.

220 “So far as the public could judge”: Ibid., p. 166.

“The time for talking”: Ibid., p. 169.

“The real tragedy of Sputnik’s victory”: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 132.

“could be very damaging to what the President was trying to do”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 169.

a devastating report: Prados, The Soviet Estimate, p. 72.

221 “deeply shocking”: Sherman Adams, First Hand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961), p. 413.

221 “Its disclosure would be inimical”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 221.

“It will be interesting to find out how long”: Ibid.

“The still top-secret Gaither Report”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 98.

222 “Arguing the Case for Being Panicky”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 150.

“Another tranquility pill”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 47.

“It was by no means a blood, sweat and toil speech”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 34.

“Two Sputniks cannot sway Eisenhower”: Ibid, pp. 45-46.

sinking by 22 percentage points: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 151.

“In a matter of a few months”: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 156.

“The bill’s best bet”: Ibid., p. 161.

“Eisenhower was skeptical about the loans”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 195.

223 A new $ 100-million-a-year Astronautical Research and Development Agency: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 112.

“I’d like to know what’s on the other side of the moon”: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 453.

“a depression that will curl your hair”: Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. 121.

Unemployment was expected to jump by as much as 1.5 million: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 213.

224 “In effect there was no clear cut authority”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 167.

“They are trying to delude Congress”: Harris, A New Command, p. 183.

“Either give me a clear-cut order”: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 134.

“I’m afraid my language”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 168.

“a fierce religious zeal” and a “pious belligerence”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 127.

225 “Vanguard will never make it”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 155.

“all test firings of Vanguard have met with success”: Ibid., p. 166.

stop sending him “garbage”: Kurt Stehling, Project Vanguard (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p. 119.

“almost developed”: Ibid., p. 60.

“For all practical purposes the Vanguard vehicle was new”: Constance McLaughlin Green and Milton Lomask, Vanguard: A History (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1970), p. 177.

226 “It was either forgotten, or not understood”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 60.

simultaneously drew paychecks from the aerospace companies: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 240.

assertions from the Glenn L. Martin Company: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, pp. 54, 62.

Vanguard’s budget: Ibid., pp. 62, 105, 131.

“I question very much whether it would have been authorized”: Percival Brundage, April 30, 1957, Project Vanguard memorandum to the president, Bureau of Budget files, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, at http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/iik4.html.

227 “piece by rotten piece”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 119.

227 There were moisture problems, poorly located pressure indicator lines, unsoldered wire connections, corroded and leaky fittings: Ibid., pp. 109-11.

“What! You want to put a ball in that rocket?”: Ibid., pp. 87-88.

“We’re never going to make it”: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, p. 131.

228 “an unaccepted, incompletely developed vehicle”: Ibid., p. 177.

“An astonishing piece of stupidity”: Time, October 21, 1957.

the Stewart Committee had been “prejudiced”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 60.

229 “the funds estimated by Secretary Quarles were totally inadequate”: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 21.

Wilson interviewed by Mike Wallace: Ibid., p. 47.

“Implicit in all the criticism”: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 457.

a crack team of Wall Street lawyers: Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), p. 1022.

230 “He never asked the head of my organization”: Eilene Galloway, NASA Oral History transcript, at http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Herstory/GallowayE/EG_8-7-00.pdf.

“He was really like a dynamo”: Ibid.

“The timing was perfect”: Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics and Space Act: Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop Conducted April 3, 1992, Monographs in Space History no. 8, http://www.history.nasa.gov/40than/legislat.pdf.

“Crisis had become normalcy”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 226.

“His aides who sometimes caught him with a faraway look”: Mosley, Dulles, p. 439.

Gallup polls had shown that most American voters did not mind Ike’s frequent weekday golf outings: Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. 40.

231 “Oh little Sputnik, flying high”: Roger D. Launius, Sputnik and the Origins of the Space Age, monograph at http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/sputorig.html. “As I picked up a pen”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 227.

“You may be President in twenty-four hours”: Nixon, RN, p. 184.

232 “The Vanguard tower was clear against a starry sky”: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, p. 206.

“Bird Watch Hill”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 122.

233 filled the airwaves with all manner of facts: Ibid.

Though missiles had been tested at the complex since the summer of 1950: http://www.patrick.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet_print.asp?fsID=4514&page=1.

“The rocket looked unkempt”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 21.

234 the most ambitious and expensive installment of his “Man in Space” series: Introduction by Leonard Maltin to Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond, commemorative DVD package, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Burbank, Calif., 2004, originally aired December 4, 1957.

235 Wolfsschanze: This account of the July 1943 meeting is drawn from Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 192.

and film that had been shot using several cameras simultaneously: Ward, Dr. Space, p. 33.

236 “seemed a pretty dowdy type”: Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, p. 27.

somewhat more reluctant decision in 1940: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 41.

237 “But what I want is annihilation”: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 192.

“The Führer was amazed at von Braun’s youth”: Ibid., p. 278.

238 Porter was instrumental in scuttling: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 240.

239 “Ten, nine, eight…”: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, pp. 208-9.

“Oh God! No! Look out! Duck!”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 24.

11: Goldstone Has the Bird

240 “What happened yesterday has made us…” and all other quotes from NSC meeting no. 347: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/Sputnik/nasasearchreport.pdf, see NSC series, box 9, Ann Whitman File.

where polls conducted in Britain and France prior to Sputnik’s launch had shown that only 6 percent: McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, p. 240.

241 “Why doesn’t somebody go out there, find it, and kill it”: Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, p. 117.

“Oh, what a Flopnik”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 158.

Kaputnik, Splatnik, Stallnik: Time, December 16, 1957.

“This incident has no bearing on our programs”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 72.

242 Sputnik Cocktails: Witkin, ed., The Challenge of the Sputniks, p. 4.

“our worst humiliation since Custer’s last stand”: Time, December 16, 1957.

Already, the Glenn L. Martin Company: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, p. 210.

“This program has had unprecedented publicity”: Time, December 16, 1957.

“It lies with the President”: Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, p. 117.

“How long, how long oh God”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 173.

95 percent of his speech and motor skills: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 229.

“There were open and widespread suggestions that the President resign”: Time, December 9, 1957.

“It is the whole free world that is sick in bed with Ike”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 59.

243 “In my mind was the question”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, pp. 230-31.

The move would inspire a running joke: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 144.

“This man is not what he was”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, p. 234.

245 The Chief Designer was diagnosed with arrhythmia, coupled with “over-fatigue”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 175.

a region-wide search for Tsander’s grave: Ibid.

246 tales of the mixed-breed terrier Laika: Harford, Korolev, p. 132.

astonishingly detailed descriptions of the devices: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 207.

“Tell me, Sergei Pavlovich”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 82.

247 “to deliver the Soviet Coat of Arms to the Moon”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 179.

“Korolev works for TASS”: Harford, Korolev, p. 116.

“Before you begin your questioning”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 178.

248 “The chief reason”: Philip Nash, The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1951-1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 20.

248 “was being authorized to proceed on a ‘top-priority’ basis”: Caro, Master of the Senate, p. 1025.

“With feelings much different from those”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 190.

249 “Proposal for a National Integrated Missile and Space Vehicle Development Program”: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 262.

“like a yo-yo”: NASA Oral History series, http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Ballistic/SchrieverBA/schrieverba.pdf.

“Sputnik woke us up”: Ibid.

“So I also closed the door”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 188.

tried to covertly buy the Itek Corporation: Taubman, Secret Empire, p. 229.

In the summer of 1957, Bissell, Edwin Land, and Jim Killian: Ibid., p. 230.

250 “Our first goal was to put the genie back in the bottle”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 135.

“I had to invent an elaborate cover explanation”: Ibid., p. 136.

251 “Some awful needles were stuck into this thing”: Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics and Space Act: Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop Conducted April 3, 1992, Monographs in Space History no. 8, http://www.history.nasa.gov/40than/legislat.pdf.

“We will be walking a very tight wire with our lives”: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 226.

252 “There are too many people in government who have the right to say no”: Harris, A New Command, p. 191.

“At the Pentagon they shudder when they speak of the ‘gap’”: Prados, The Soviet Estimate, p. 80.

“a leaky ship, with a committee on the bridge”: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge, p. 118.

“Speaking so fast”: Caro, Master of the Senate, p. 1023.

“Control of space means control of the world”: Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, p. 145.

253 “Light a match behind Lyndon and he’ll orbit”: Caro, Master of the Senate, p. 1025.

“I’m not going to ask you about the precise date”: Green and Lomask, Vanguard, p. 214.

“Do not admit to the presence of the vehicle”: Harris, A New Command, p. 184.

“I desire it well understood”: Bille and Lishock, The First Space Race, p. 127.

“Personal observation had convinced me”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 193.

254 It consisted of four stages: http://www.history.msfc.nasa.gov/milestones/chpt4.pdf.

extending the Redstone’s burning time from 121 to 155 seconds: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/explorer/index.html.

“Ship it to Florida, it will do the job”: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 275.

255 “It became quite obvious that every effort”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 196.

“We bootlegged the whole job”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 169.

“thought it would be wise to prepare it in such a way”: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, pp. 134-35.

256 “Almost every reference to Army-developed hardware was stricken”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 196.

256 “This is our biggest challenge”: Ibid., p. 188.

257 “just about as thoroughly bored”: Nash, The Other Missiles of October, p. 35.

“The symbols of 1957 were two pale, clear streaks of light”: Time, January 6, 1958.

“make some specific arrangements”: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 223.

“I decided to confine the annual message”: Ibid., p. 240.

258 “We could see the Army preparations on their launch pad”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 159.

259 “The night was miserable cold and wet”: Ibid., p. 163.

“Our people did not take kindly to the idea of sitting”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 200.

260 “Above our meeting in the hangar hovered a ghostly”: Stehling, Project Vanguard, p. 175.

261 “an ardent Nazi” who had “denounced his colleagues to the Gestapo”: Cadbury, Space Race, p. 12.

polysulfide aluminum and ammonium perchlorate: http://www.history.nasa.gov/sputnik/expinfo.html.

262 apex predictor: Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun, p. 136.

“Do you really want to rely on this alone?”: Ibid., p. 137.

winds… reaching 225 miles per hour: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 263.

263 “What’s happened? What are you going to do?”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 207.

264 “Highly marginal. We do not recommend that you try it”: Ibid., p. 209.

winds… still gusted at 157 miles per hour: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 276.

“Everyone was going on sheer nerve”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 210.

a twenty-four-year-old first lieutenant by the name of John Meisenheimer: Harris, A New Command, p. 187.

“Every man on the crew was conscious that the hopes of a Nation”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 212.

265 “The searchlights are going on and lighting up the vehicle”: Time, February 10, 1958.

“There is nothing that I have ever encountered”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 212.

“When the countdown reaches zero, the bird will not begin to rise immediately”: Time, February 10, 1958.

266 “Go, baby! Go!”: Harris, A New Command, p. 189.

“No. Let ’em sweat a little”: Time, February 10, 1958.

267 “I’m out of coffee and running low on cigarettes”: Harris, A New Command, p. 189.

“Do you hear her?”… Do you hear her now?”: Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 278.

“Wernher, what’s happened?”: Ibid.

“Goldstone has the bird!”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 224.

Epilogue

269 “It represented only a symbolic counter threat to the United States”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 80.

“It would have been better to dump them in the sea”: Nash, The Other Missiles of October, p. 3.

270 “It is entirely possible that having a failure in the oxygen equipment”: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/dl/u2incident/departmentstatementonU25560.pdf.

at 8,500 feet by grappling hooks attached to the front of a C-119 military plane: Taubman, Secret Empire, p. 321.

271 “Those friggin missiles”: Nash, The Other Missiles of October, p. 3.

a catastrophic explosion: Mikhail E. Kuznetsky, Bajkonur, Korolev, Yangel (Voronezh: Voronezh, 1997), p. 127.

272 So poor were the harvests that the Soviet Union faced food shortages: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, pp. 118-19.

197 of the 200 full members: Ibid., p. 172.

273 Soviet industrial growth began to slow dramatically in the mid-1960s: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1941–1990, p. 191.

“I did everything I could to patch up their friendship”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, p. 79.

the cause of death was complications during routine surgery: Harford, Korolev, p. 279.

274 more commonly known as the Scud: Russian Arms Catalog, vol. 4, Strategic Missile Forces (Moscow: Military Parade Publishers, 1997), pp. 44-45 (in English).

because he refused to endorse escalating America’s involvement in Vietnam: http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=erpn-stusym.

275 “You want to threaten? We will answer threats”: Dunar, America in the Fifties, p. 294.

The hidden hand: Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency, p. vii.

a reevaluation that coincided, in part, with the declassification: Dunar, America in the Fifties, p. 326.

276 His farewell address to the nation in January 1961: Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 615.

Donald Quarles… was to have succeeded Neil McElroy as secretary of defense in 1959: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/donaldau.htm.

Joseph P. Kennedy offered Medaris a job: Harris, A New Command, p. 213.

he accepted the presidency of the Lionel Corporation: Ibid., p. 216.

he was ordained an Episcopal priest: Ibid., p. 254.

Paris Match, the glossy French magazine, published a glowing article: Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun, pp. 163-64.

Arthur Rudolf… was quietly extradited to West Germany: Simpson, Blowback, p. 39.

278 it supplies the boosters that orbit private U.S. satellites: Author telephone interview with Paula Korn, Sea Launch Public Affairs Office, November 11, 2005.