Space policy of the United States
The space policy of the United States includes both the making of space policy through the legislative process, and the implementation of that policy in the United States' civilian and military space programs through regulatory agencies. The early history of United States space policy is linked to the US–Soviet Space Race of the 1960s, which gave way to the Space Shuttle program. At the moment, the US space policy is aimed at the exploration of the Moon and the subsequent colonization of Mars.
History[edit]
Truman administration[edit]
In the aftermath of World War II, President Harry S.Truman approved Operation Paperclip between 1945 and 1959, a secret US intelligence program in which more than 1600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, including Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were brought to the United States from Germany for US government employment to gain a US military advantage in the Soviet–American Cold War. The Space Race was spawned when the Soviet Union comparably relocated more than 2200 German specialists in Operation Osoaviakhim one night in 1946.[15]
Von Braun was a strong proponent of spaceflight. It is believed that he and his team were technically capable of launching a satellite several years earlier than the Soviet launch of Sputnik-1 in 1957, but the Truman administration did not consider this a priority. He may also have been the coiner of the concept of space superiority, and he lobbied the Truman administration for the construction of a nuclearly armed space station, which was to be used as a weapon against the Soviet Union.[16] He often spoke in public speeches about the need and feasibility of such a space station, to garner public support for the idea, although he never talked publicly about its intended armament. Similarly, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the RAND Project was secretly recommending to the US government a major effort to design a man-made satellite that would take photographs from space, and to develop the rockets necessary to put such a satellite in orbit.[17] Already in May 1946, the organization released a Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship, which was a proposal for a United States satellite program.[18][19]
Truman established the Joint Long Range Proving Ground at Cape Canaveral, which would later on become the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.[20] From 1949, the United States government used the site to test missiles. The location was among the best in the continental US for this purpose, as it allowed for launches out over the Atlantic Ocean, and is closer to the equator than most other parts of the United States, allowing rockets to get a boost from the Earth's rotation. In 1951, the Air Force established the Air Force Missile Test Center at Cape Canaveral. The Army, Air Force, and the Applied Physics Laboratory started in 1950 their use of Aerobee sounding rockets on a variety of physics, aeronomy, photography, weather, and biomedical missions,[21] and reached beyond the 100 kilometres (62 mile) boundary of space in 1952.[22] Meanwhile, the Navy fired its Viking rocket to a record-breaking 136 miles (219 km) in August 1951.[23]: 167–171, 236
Eisenhower administration[edit]
In December 1953, the US Air Force had pulled together all its various satellite efforts into a single program known as Weapon Systems-117L (WS-117L). In October 1956, the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. got the first WS-117L production contract, but a diplomatic problem associated with aerial surveillance worried President Eisenhower and held back the spy satellite program.[17]
President Dwight Eisenhower was skeptical about human spaceflight, but sought to advance the commercial and military applications of satellite technology. Prior to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, Eisenhower had already authorized Project Vanguard, a scientific satellite program associated with the International Geophysical Year. As a supporter of small government, he sought to avoid a space race which would require an expensive bureaucracy to conduct, and was surprised by, and sought to downplay, the public response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik.[24] In an effort to prevent similar technological surprises by the Soviets, Eisenhower authorized the creation in 1958 of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), responsible for the development of advanced military technologies.[25]
Space programs such as the Explorer satellite were proposed by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), but Eisenhower, seeking to avoid giving the US space program the militaristic image Americans had of the Soviet program, had rejected Explorer in favor of the Vanguard, but after numerous embarrassing Vanguard failures, was forced to give the go-ahead to the Army's launch
Later in 1958, Eisenhower asked Congress to create an agency for civilian control of non-military space activities. At the suggestion of Eisenhower's science advisor James R. Killian, the drafted bill called for creation of the new agency out of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The result was the National Aeronautics and Space Act passed in July 1958, which created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Eisenhower appointed T. Keith Glennan as NASA's first Administrator, with the last NACA Director Hugh Dryden serving as his Deputy.
NASA as created in the act passed by Congress was substantially stronger than the Eisenhower administration's original proposal. NASA took over the space technology research started by DARPA.[24] NASA also took over the US crewed space program, Man In Space Soonest, from the Air Force, as Project Mercury.