Security in Space

The world is about to watch a strange and exciting show: U.S. industry, led by scientists and engineers and backed by the U.S. Government, is headed for outer space. The cost of the campaign will be as astronomical as its objective, but the men who lead it consider its success a national necessity. They point out that the earth's atmosphere is an insignificant film, thinner in proportion than the skin of an apple, and that military technology is about to outgrow it, as it outgrew the earth's surface two world wars ago. Navigation of the air-film is no longer enough. No nation will be safe unless it can also navigate the vacuum that hangs overhead.

The new status of space flight, formerly made suspect by visionaries and fiction writers, was not defined in public until the Convair Division of General Dynamics Corp. held its Astronautics Symposium at San Diego (TIME, March 4). Planned as a small confab of space-minded missile men, the conference ballooned into a crammed mass meeting of engineers and scientists representing airplane, electronic and instrument companies as well as universities and all three armed services. A few years ago most of these hardheaded characters would not have attended a space-flight meeting except incognito. Now they are eager.

Dollars for Space. The change in their attitude was caused by Government money tossed into guided missiles in billion-dollar chunks. Everyone at the San Diego meeting realized that missiles will soon replace aircraft as prime consumers of taxpayers' funds. For forward-looking space-flight workers that is already history. Next step beyond missiles is true space navigation, and no manufacturer who wants to stay on the Government's contract list can afford to neglect it. So practically every outfit even remotely connected with aircraft or missiles was represented at San Diego, and trying hard to look as space-minded as possible.

All of the 50-odd papers had been censored to preserve guided-missile secrets, but since nearly all of them were fruits of research done by high-salaried professionals paid directly or indirectly by the Air Force, they gave a good idea of what the Air Force considers worth investigating. Elaborate papers, for instance, figured how to jockey a spaceship through the atmospheres of planets other than the earth. The conclusions were rather vague because too little is known about those , atmospheres, but obviously someone in authority thought that a preliminary survey was worth paying for.

Other papers showed that much work has been done on radio equipment to communicate with spaceships and inhabited satellites. The probable reactions of human bodies and minds to space conditions have been carefully investigated, mostly by Air Force physicians. Other scientists have tried to predict how much damage will be done to spaceborne objects by solar X rays and ultraviolet rays, and by micrometeorites. Still others have worked on instruments for space navigation, on how to select space crews, how to train them and how to keep them alive with the least possible amount of food and oxygen.

This research has not yet produced anything like space flight. There is an enormous difference between an intercontinental guided missile and an "inhabited" spaceship or satellite. But the missiles, nevertheless, are excellent instruments of approach. Their rocket motors, thin-skinned tanks, delicate guidance systems, etc. can also be used for hitting the moon with a charge of flash powder. This is considered less difficult than boosting a heavy thermonuclear warhead-to a city-sized target 5,000 miles away, and some Air Force groups think that it would be worth doing as a demonstration of U.S. spacemanship. It is probable, however, that space flight will develop through halfway points other than moon shooting for propaganda.

Satellites First. The first stage of military space flight after the earth-to-earth missiles will probably be an unmanned reconnaissance satellite. The peaceful, 212-lb. satellite of Project Vanguard will have no military value, but rocket motors exist that can put a much heavier satellite into a permanent orbit. If big enough, it could carry a telescope and a scanning device to send radio pictures of what it sees down to its sponsors. It might also report bursts of heat or light: signs that someone has exploded a nuclear charge or fired a large missile on the far side of the earth.

Ability to detect hostile missiles at the start of their flights will be an important advantage in the uneasy world of the future when each major nation has the power to blast its enemies by long-range rocketry. When the missiles plunge down through the atmosphere, they can be detected for only a few last minutes of flight, and this leaves little time for counteraction. But if a satellite sees them blasting off deep in enemy territory, the home team has a better chance to hit them with counter-missiles before they return to earth.

The satellites will be subject to enemy attacks and to attempts to make them ineffective by jamming their radio signals. Space combat might begin in this remote and bloodless way, rather as air combat began in World War I with pilots shooting at each other with ineffective side arms.

Later stages could be less remote. Air Force interest in the care and feeding of space crews indicates that manned space vehicles are part of its long-range thinking. Perhaps manned satellites, armed with defensive weapons, will come first, with small landing tenders to carry the men back to earth after their tours of duty. There was some discussion of this subject at the San Diego conference, and most authorities seemed to believe that bringing men back uncooked through the atmosphere is not forbiddingly difficult. Finding them when they land on the broad face of the earth may prove harder.

Space Navies. If one nation has established a manned, armed satellite as a pillbox revolving around the earth, rival nations will be forced to find means of destroying it. They may try manned vehicles that could maneuver handily like PT boats of space. These vehicles could harass enemy satellites, shooting them down with space torpedoes or filling their orbits with steel shot revolving in the opposite direction at 20,000 m.p.h. Next step might be space destroyers to deal with the space PT boats.

No one is eager to predict when such bizarre developments will take place--if ever. The nations of earth may decide that space navies armed with thermonuclear missiles are undesirable. The U.S. Air Force, however, cannot count on this. It must assume for the present that space armaments and space combat are probable outgrowths of existing missile technology. Any other assumption might be almost as dangerous as dependence on saber-armed cavalry.

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