The concept of a “cold war,” imbued by America’s new communist enemy, justified peacetime weapons development expenditures comparable to the fast pace of advancing technological developments of WWII. A year after “Uncle Joe’s” Soviet Union had been America’s staunch, WWII ally, the situation reversed.
In 1946, diplomat George Kennan explained cold war policy: He wrote, “The Soviet Union is a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus Vivendi.” As a result, America’s only choice was the “long-term, patient, but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
In 1963, my father was an Air Force instructor for the ICBM programs, Titian, Atlas, and other ICBM nuclear missile delivery systems, pressed into service as boosters for NASA’s emerging space program. At the time, I remember missile officers visiting our home discussing how public morale had been flagging since the late fifties and enthusiasm for the cold war was now at an all time low.
Less than six months earlier, after barely squeaking by an all-out nuclear war, the Cuban missile crises had made Americans chillingly aware of just how tenuous the situation was. Americans had tired of building bomb shelters and "duck and cover" drills.
In April 1961, just a year and a half prior to the missile crisis, Yuri Gagarin had been the first man in space, followed shortly thereafter by Alan Shepard in May 1961 in a spacecraft he named "Freedom 7." On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the moon before the end of the decade. Thus by 1961, the space race had begun in earnest and just in time for the military, as the cold war reached its zenith a year later with the Cuban missile crises.
By mid-1963, Americans had tired of funding the cold war. Congress was balking at spending more R&D and procurement dollars for massively expensive, missile-based weapons. Due to technological limitations, past missile systems, like the Snark and Bomark, had proven to be expensive, short-lived, "white elephants." Then there was “Project Pluto”. . . It was at this time my father brought an Air Force training film to our school (on base) that depicted the Air Force role in developing the then nascent space program.
One aspect of the film's focus was the Van Allen radiation belt surrounding the earth. The film's narrator commented how the Van Allen Belt was the single, most difficult problem that would have to be overcome before humans could leave low orbit. The issue was shielding for the spacecraft. The narrator explained that sufficient shielding required for a moon flight would make the launch vehicle too heavy to leave the ground!
Fast-forward six years. 1969, man was walking on the moon with no mention of the Van Allen Belt or any need for radiation shielding, let alone how, or if, this problem had been addressed and overcome. In a short six years, the most difficult problem faced in making a moon flight simply disappeared without mention. I always wondered about that.
One thing that did happen as the “space race” ramped up to the moon missions, was it brought Americans solidly on board with support for further missile and satellite technical development, critical not only for those NASA space missions, but for military missile technology as well.
It was as if the grim reality of the cold war had been turned into a sporting event. "Our team versus their team" was now the prevailing mentality among the American people. "Go team America! Beat them evil commies to the moon and beyond!" had become the new battle cry.
In eight, short, years, America had gone from barely being able to launch a man into low orbit to walking on the moon. This feat no doubt represented, by far, the most rapid technological development in human history, exceeding even that of the computer, which at the time of the moon flight, had less capacity than a modern, hand-held, graphing calculator.
Even as Neil Armstrong took “one giant leap for mankind,” communist cold war "dominoes" had segued into a conventional ground war in Vietnam. By the late 1960s, the former intensity of the cold war nuclear threat had become little more than dim memory in America’s consciousness, overshadowed by the hot, conventional war in Vietnam.
As for missile technology, the USS George Washington conducted the first successful submerged SLBM launch with a Polaris A-1 on 20 July 1960. By the late 1960s the Polaris A-3 was deployed on all US SSBNs with a range of 4,600 kilometres (2,500 nmi). Submarine SLBM technology was approaching its technological peak in 1972, bringing major advances in missiles, warheads and accuracy by the end of the Vietnam War.
The Trident SLBM series was the apogee of the Navy’s nuclear submarine missile program. Curiously, the Trident II SLBM came online in 1990 at the very same time Soviets were pulling the plug on communism. Almost the moment the Soviet Union went dark, the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command was disbanded, effectively eliminating two legs of the military’s M.A.D. triad, leaving the SSBN as the primary "deterrent."
Ten years later, a new, non-nuclear, “Muslim threat” would emerge to once again threaten American sovereignty. In the meantime, NASA’s manned space program would be reduced to low orbit missions with the Space Shuttle, until finally stopping altogether. The “space race” had accomplished its mission.
