Sweating It Out

Politely, in the week of the Congo, the President of the U.S. congratulated the Premier of the Soviet Union on launching a "space vehicle" to Venus (see SCIENCE). Politely, Nikita Khrushchev thanked John Kennedy, and hoped that the two nations could some day explore space together. Nonetheless, the Russians touched off their newest giant skyrocket with a propaganda torch, highlighting the sad fact that the U.S. has no rocket engines to match the feat--and is not likely to have them for four or five years. Even the orbiting last week of two relatively pint-sized Discoverer satellites (XX and XXI) served to dramatize the U.S. lag in the big boost.

At first there was good reason for the Russian lead. In 1954, when the Soviets began work on their intercontinental ballistic missiles, they needed an engine powerful enough to lift their outsize nuclear warheads. They gave top priority to that goal and developed the 800,000-lb.-thrust, liquid-fueled booster engine that has since provided the power for their spectacular out-space shots as well as their ICBMs. The U.S., with a smaller warhead, did not require such massive power, settled on the 360,000-lb.-thrust Atlas engine, still the biggest in the U.S. space arsenal.

But with U.S. missiles safely on the way, President Eisenhower's scientific advisers still dawdled on the big rocket engine, preferring to put U.S. energies into less spectacular, and more fruitful, space research with small rockets. Finally, under pressure from those who saw the vast advantage the Communists would have in space exploration through their ability to lift heavy loads aloft, the Eisenhower Administration got moving in 1958 on the 1,500,000-lb.-thrust Saturn booster, a relatively primitive design of eight engines in a single cluster. The Saturn has been static-tested, but will not be operational until 1965 or 1966. Only recently has the program been allotted anything more than a shoestring budget for research and development.

"We have sufficiently large boosters to protect us militarily," said President Kennedy at his press conference last week, "but for the long, heavy explorations into space, the Soviet Union has been ahead, and it is going to be a major task to surpass them." Echoed Hugh Dryden, deputy administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, who appeared before the House space committee: "You can't buy back four years." The lag, he said, is a matter of "some concern," but the U.S. will now just have to "sweat it out."

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