The Great Big Engine That Didn't

On the evening of October 4, 1957, at a party at the Soviet Embassy, Russian and American scientists celebrated "the greatest scientific research program ever undertaken," the International Geophysical Year. As part of the IGY, both Russia and the U. S. were expected to orbit space vehicles. Everyone anticipated the U. S. would do it first and its Vanguard program called for orbital liftoff in November, 1957. About 6 p.m. word came that a Soviet R-7 rocket had pushed a satellite, Sputnik, into orbit.

According to journalist, Paul Dickson, "The scientists and engineers assembled at the embassy party were thrilled. Cheers rang out. Within minutes, one of the most impenetrable buildings in Washington was putting out the welcome mat to reporters...Vodka flowed."

President Eisenhower was pleased. He wanted a system of spy satellites to monitor soviet military activity and forewarn of a surprise attack. But overflights of a sovereign nation were forbidden and no precedent existed that declared deep space to be international. Sputnik established that precedent. "We were certain," Eisenhower wrote later, "that we could get a great deal more information of all kinds out of the free use of space than they could."

Not everyone was happy. Comparisons to Pearl Harbor abounded. "Soon they'll be dropping bombs on us the way school boys drop rocks from freeway overpasses" said Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson. "Control of the very heavens was at stake" was the way writer Tom Wolfe put it.

Ex-Nazi rocket genius, Wernher von Braun, now the lead scientist of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, was furious. At the time of Sputnik's launch, Defense Secretary designate, Neil McElroy, was touring von Braun's operation in Huntsville, Alabama. Von Braun, usually cool and politically savvy, lost it: "We knew they were going to do it!" he yelled at McElroy. "Vanguard will never make it. We have the hardware on the shelf. For God's sake, turn us loose and let us do something!"

Von Braun did have the hardware on the shelf. On September 20, 1956, over a year before Sputnik, his group had launched a 4-stage Jupiter-C rocket from Cape Canaveral. The first three stages attained a speed of 13,000 miles an hour, a height of 862 miles and a distance down range of 3550 miles. The fourth stage could have easily slipped a satellite into orbit. But the fourth stage was filled with sand.

As the means to establish deep space as open, the Jupiter-C carried extra baggage: it was developed from and looked a lot like von Braun's infamous V-2, the supersonic explosives-carrying rocket that had terrified England in the late stages of World War II. The Jupiter-C, part of the Army's intercontinental ballistic missile program, was obviously first and foremost a weapon. Vanguard's smaller rockets and smaller payloads would be seen as instruments of research and hence had the green light to orbit first. But Vanguard would not see success until spring 1958 and its post-Sputnik failures generated headlines like "Dudnik," Flopnik" and "Kaputnik."

How could a technologically backward country like Russia beat the acknowledged world leader into space? Did they have spies? Maybe. Some speculated that our hyper-materialism had left us more interested in developing color television and the princess phone than space-conquering vehicles. Such theories quickly disappeared in favor of another: The Russians beat us into space because they had better schools.

In late 1956, U. S. News & World Report ran an interview with historian Arthur Bestor, author of Educational Wastelands: The Retreat From Learning in Public Schools, under the headline, "We Are Less Educated now than 50 Years Ago?" Shortly after Sputnik, the magazine brought him back to explain "What Went Wrong With U.S. Schools." Mostly the fault rested with the misguided spin-off from progressive education known as "life-adjustment education." "In the light of Sputnik," said Bestor, "'life adjustment education' turns out to have been perilously close to 'death adjustment' for our nation and our children." Life-adjustment education wastes time on trivialities. "That's why the first satellite bears the label, 'Made in Russia.'"

This was absurd. Life adjustment education was invented in 1945. A 9th-grader in 1945 would have been at most two years out of engineering school in 1957, hardly of an age to lead rocket development. Von Braun, a unique prodigy involved in rocketry since he was 17, was 45.

Still, pictorial proof of Russian student supremacy arrived in March, 1958 in the form of a five-part series in Life. The cover of the first installment read "Crisis in Education" in red letters on a black background. In photos, stern-faced Alexei Kutzkov looked at the reader from Moscow while easy-smiling Stephen Lapekas gazed out from Chicago. Inside photos showed Alexei doing complicated experiments in physics and chemistry and reading aloud from Sister Carrie.

Stephen, by contrast, retreated from a geometry problem on the blackboard and the caption advised, "Stephen amused class with wisecracks about his ineptitude." Seated at a typewriter in typing class, Stephen tells us "I type about one word a minute."

The schools never recovered from Sputnik. Sputnik wounded their reputation and as the scab formed, something else always came along to re-open the lesion: In the 1960s schools were blamed for the urban riots (but not credited for putting a man on the moon). In the 1980s, " A Nation At Risk" blamed them for allowing the Germans, South Koreans, and Japanese to race ahead of us competitively (but not credited for the longest sustained economic expansion in the nation's history which followed)

And today? Tough Choices or Tough Times warns of oncoming economic disaster. Leaders and Laggards, ditto. Eli Broad and Bill Gates have ponied up $60 million to "wake up the American people" (Broad is 73 years old. Has he been asleep all this time?). So far, billionaire hedge fund investors are taking the heat for today's sub-prime mortgage debacle. But if by the time you read this, two months after it was written, the catastrophe has rippled through the economy and produced a true recession, don't be surprised to see it being laid at the feet of Horace Mann and John Dewey.

Comments

[JustAnotherJoe]

I agree. Schools really aren't so bad. Here's a link to an article about the scientists and engineers responsible for Sputnik:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21069777/page/4/

The money quote for me was at the end when former cosmonaut Georgy Grechko commented that even if the Russians had devoted the resources to go to the moon, "the American electronic industry was superior". He didn't mention schools at all.

How do you suppose that our electronic industry got better? Would it have something to do with companies like Texas Instruments devoting resources to perfect solid state electronics to make consumer products like color TVs smaller?

I'm not so sure that our country's current problems can be traced to losing its technological edge. We're up to our eyeballs in gadgets from iPods to A-bombs. We know how to build stuff. What we don't know is how to play well with others. Even that problem can't be dumped totally on the schools, although some have tried.

[bobble]

i too, began reading the article thinking it was another unfair blasting of the american school system. thankfully, i read the whole thing before posting.

of course the american school system is not faulty! the united states has outpaced the world in almost every field of technology. where we haven't, it's simply because money was was not spent on it (ie the original space race and sputnik). after JFK focused the budget resourses on space, we left the russians in the dust.

today, we have corporations telling us we need to import foreigners because the school system is not turning out enough high tech graduates. this is baloney. it's a matter of money again. this time, the corporations have found cheaper workers, and to get the H1B visa limits raised they tell us they can't find qualified workers. but if you look at the starting salaries offered to graduates in computer science, you find that they have gone down for the last 6 years! if there was really a shortage of talent, the offers would have gone way up. its clear that corporations are using H1B visas to replace american tech workers with cheap labor from overseas. shame on you bill gates, for lying through your teeth in front of congress.

[dchavern]

This is avery strange post. Are you saying our schools really aren't so bad? If so, I wonder what objective evidence you would cite for that proposition.

Our schools are really, really bad. Part of it is an educational environment built around the needs of administration and teachers, rather than kids. Part of it is anti-intel­lectualism in our society and an unwillingness to push the vast majority of students towards academic excellence. And part of it is laziness and dishonesty -- including an unwillingness to say clearly "if you are not adept at English and math you will very likely to fail in the future economy."

If we don't change the course of education, we will be embarrassed in many worse ways than Sputnik.

[CaptainVideo]

"Our schools are really, really bad."

What objective evidence would you cite for THAT proposition?

As the article points out, the Jupiter C could have beat the Sputnick, but Eisenhower wanted the Soviet Union to go first to establish the precedent that deep space overflight of sovereign nations was acceptable, that is, that the territories of nations did not extend upward into space. If the U.S. had gone first, the Soviet Union could easily have argued that the overflight of its territory by the satellite was a violation of its air space, especially given the fact that the U.S. was violating Soviet air space with the U-2 flights. The Soviet Union did not want to complain about this because they did not want to admit that they could not shoot them down and only complained after they actually had succeeded in shooting one down.

[joebaggadonuts]

Gerald,

Your viewpoint is not clear. Also you are not suggesting any solution nor identifying the problem with sufficient clarity.

I think the Russian and Soviet block schools were better than the US schools in the 50s, and certainly in the 60s. I think you are saying that they became better because of the red herrings abounding at the time of the sputnik launch. If that's what you are saying, I think it is partly true, but also the hullabaloo led lots of kids at the time into engineering and science in the US, and we could use some of that now.

Thanks.

[Doofus]

A very misleading piece, on the whole.

As was said back in the day (c. 1958),
no matter who was ahead in the 'Space
Race': 'Their Germans beat our Germans!'

Both US & USSR rocketry programs were established
by German rocketeers of WW2 vintage.

The National Defense Education Act of 1958
produced huge numbers of scientists, engineers
and technicians in the 1960's, who went on to
create the US technology boom of the 1970-90,
which is responsible for *much* US wealth
& prosperity even now.