The National Aeronautics and Space Act created a new civilian space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), built in part from the half-century-old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which was already dedicating half its resources to space-related projects, including Vanguard and the X-15 suborbital space plane. Chosen as NASA’s first administrator was the president of Case Institute of Technology, T. Keith Glennan, a former member of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Within the first week of NASA’s creation, the Air Force terminated its nascent Man in Space Soonest initiative. NASA would now oversee a new civilian-run program, named Project Mercury, dedicated to putting the first Americans into space. Instead, the Air Force would concentrate on its own piloted winged space glider, known as Dyna-Soar, which, after being launched on top of a ballistic missile, would allow military crews to service satellites, conduct aerial reconnaissance, and possibly intercept enemy satellites.
Despite the idealistic rhetoric about exploration and adventure, it was impossible to conceal the reality that the civilian agency planned to send Americans into space atop repurposed military missiles developed to deliver warheads and transport reconnaissance spy satellites. The United States therefore chose to emphasize the open, peaceful, and cooperative nature of its civilian space program, which stood in contrast with the secretive and militarily aligned Soviet effort.
Remarkably, the Soviet Union had never placed a high priority on launching the world’s first artificial satellite. Rather, its military rocket program had been developed to inform the world that Russia had the capability to strike other nations with nuclear weapons. Sputnik was an unexpected dividend after von Braun’s Soviet counterpart, Sergei Korolev, developed a heavy-lifting rocket—the R-7—capable of delivering a six-ton nuclear warhead. But the Soviet warhead turned out to be far lighter than the original estimate; Korolev had designed a rocket much more powerful than needed.
Korolev realized the R-7 could put a satellite in orbit, if that was of interest to the Kremlin. Following Eisenhower’s International Geophysical Year announcement, Korolev sent a memo noting that should Russia want to set a world record by launching a satellite, they could do so at practically no additional cost. When Khrushchev gave his consent, he never anticipated the alarmist reaction in the United States. While the Soviet space program’s principal purpose was—and remained—military, Sputnik’s overnight success suddenly elevated the role of space research in the eyes of the Kremlin, making it an engineering, scientific, and propaganda priority.
NASA’s charter specifically restricted it from any responsibility for military defensive weapons or reconnaissance satellites. That separation between NASA and the Pentagon allowed it to act as Washington’s public face for promoting scientific research, furthering exploration, and bolstering national prestige, while deflecting attention from ongoing military space initiatives. In fact, during NASA’s first year of operation, the Pentagon’s space budget was nearly 25 percent larger.
NASA’s formation left the fate of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville uncertain, with both General Medaris and von Braun taking a predictably negative view of the new civilian agency. In addition to the existing NACA facilities, NASA brought the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Navy’s Vanguard group under its umbrella. Glennan, NASA’s new administrator, proposed bringing half of von Braun’s group at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency within NASA, an idea that von Braun immediately killed by using his celebrity status to sway political and public opinion. Both General Medaris and von Braun feared that under NASA, the Huntsville group would lose its unique position and become a small part of a larger, and probably dysfunctional, government agency.
As 1958 came to a close, President Eisenhower surprised the world with his own space-propaganda stunt, intended to deliver multiple messages. One was a message of peace; a second was a bit of blatant saber rattling directed at the Soviets; a third was a ploy to silence Eisenhower’s critics; and a fourth was a sly dismissal of America’s premier space-age celebrity. Under tight secrecy, an Air Force Atlas missile weighing more than four tons was launched into orbit. Transmitted from a tiny box inside the huge Atlas, a recording of Eisenhower’s voice proclaimed, “America’s wish for peace on Earth and goodwill toward men everywhere.” By orbiting the entire Atlas missile—an achievement of little distinction in itself—the United States could technically claim to have placed the heaviest satellite into space.
Still, it wasn’t lost on the Soviets that the sentiments voiced on the tape had in fact been delivered by a new ICBM, specifically designed to transport a thermonuclear warhead. Nor was it lost on von Braun and many in the media that Eisenhower had excluded the Army’s team in Huntsville from a starring role in a space-age first, intended to boost American prestige. The head of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency, which oversaw Project SCORE as it was called, described it as essentially “a propaganda ploy designed to put a really big, heavy object into space as a means of silencing press and congressional complaints about small payloads and rocket failures.”
The media gave the stunt plenty of coverage during the holiday season, but it ultimately achieved little of importance, not even as the first device to transmit a message from space to people on Earth. It was quickly forgotten. Von Braun had concluded that despite their potential to revolutionarily change society, communications satellites would never engage the public or motivate politicians to fund a massive space effort like the piloted program he envisioned. He knew that the fear of annihilation, the loss of military superiority, or the erosion of national prestige were greater motivators among those in power, just as they had been in his dealings with the Third Reich. He was intrinsically aware that the public’s imagination would be fully engaged only when an intelligent being was on board a spacecraft, providing a vicarious adventure of a singular and historic nature.
And, indeed, nothing NASA undertook during its first year captured the public’s attention more than the selection of the nation’s first astronauts. It was this step that brought the dream that had consumed the minds of Clarke, Ley, von Braun, and many others for nearly three decades to the verge of reality.
Sensing that this was not only a good story but also a turning point in human history, journalists searched for a way to portray the men who would experience the unique, dangerous, and otherworldly. Even though there was little to distinguish the first seven astronauts from any other group of military pilots when NASA introduced them at a Washington, D.C., press conference in April 1959, the media rapidly promoted them as exemplars of American masculinity, courage, resourcefulness, and intelligence.
Though they spoke of wanting to travel into space in the near future, both Clarke and von Braun were already a few years older than John Glenn, who at age thirty-seven was the oldest of the seven Mercury astronauts. He had been chosen from an initial group of five hundred applicants, with the finalists representing the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Five had experienced air combat in World War II or Korea, and the same number had been military test pilots. All were reported to have IQs greater than 130, and, coincidently—or not—all were firstborn or only children. Coming from a fraternity of combat fliers and jet jockeys, the Mercury Seven, as they came to be called, had no intention of being treated like confined lab rats in a glorified orbiting science experiment. They saw themselves first and foremost as active pilots.
However, neither they nor NASA were prepared for how