I wonder why Americans not used Von Braun Jupiter C to launch it's satellite before Sputnik

[Pawelk198604]

I rewatch BBC documentary "Space Race" i wonder why US Government have put priority on Vanguard despite that Jupiter-C and Explorer satellite was better design.

[xenomorph555]

Because they wanted an 100% american rocket/satellite. They thought getting Germans to do it would look embarrassing internationally. Also there's the issue of corruption, navy high command being more powerful politically or something like that.

[Red Iron Crown]

Hindsight is 20/20. They were doing what they thought was best.

[Meecrob]

A by-product is that Eisenhower could say "Soviets did it first!" with regards to satellite overflights of sovereign nations. At the time he was pushing for an "Open Skies" agreement, but the Soviets would not sign iirc.

[magnemoe]

A by-product is that Eisenhower could say "Soviets did it first!" with regards to satellite overflights of sovereign nations. At the time he was pushing for an "Open Skies" agreement, but the Soviets would not sign iirc.

Yes, international law was unclear about satellites at that time so they wanted an obvious civilian / scientific profile without military hardware.

Soviet solved this for them.

[Jovus]

Von Braun was a persona non grata to the Department of Defense and the Department of State at the time, due to suspected continuing .... sympathies. (Utterly groundless, I might add.)

As a result, the Navy spent a good several years failing to make rockets (and employing Robert Heinlein on the project, no less!) before finally giving up and having von Braun solve their problems in a couple months.

[Kryten]

They wanted it to be seen as having civilian aims-Vanguard, based on a civilian sounding rocket rather than a missile, was perfect for this. The NRL was also a much more open semi-civilian establishment than the army effort with Jupiter, or the other navy effort at China Lake (which was hence kept classified).

[Streetwind]

It should also be added that launching things into space was an incredibly unpopular idea back then. It truly excited a small handful of people who consumed science fiction stories, and they were able to convince a few government people to support their efforts "for science", but on the grand scale of things? People had no idea what to even do with the concept of spaceflight. Put something into a long-term orbit of the Earth? Why would you do that? What use could it possibly have? Dumbest idea ever. It only costs money and then just sits there. You can get the same research value out of short flights. Maybe put something in orbit once just to confirm the theory, but that'll be it. (Communications and camera technology at the time wasn't nearly sophisticated enough to make properly worthwhile satellites, either.)

And then the Soviets launched a satellite because Korolev wanted to prove that he could.

It was that that really woke the US up - and not only in the sense of "how embarrassing, they were first". But also: Sputnik was just a battery and a transponder, but hey didn't know that. They assumed - had to assume - that the Soviets HAD the technology to make a real, functional spy satellite, or at least something able to send coded messages to Soviet agents worldwide (they actually spent a huge effort on trying to crack the assumed "Sputnik code"). That the enemy had figured out that having satellites is worthwhile. And they realized how incredibly far ahead such capability would put them. So that's when the US started throwing serious resources at satellites.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Streetwind

[Vanamonde]

Did they care about spy sats? The concern was that if the Russians could put a transmitter up there, they might be able to put a warhead up there.

[Bill Phil]

The very small payload of the Jupiter-C isn't very good for spysats...

They wanted to do it with a civilian rocket. But then the Russians succeeded in Sputnik, and Vangaurd failed. So they launched it.

[Kryten]

Did they care about spy sats? The concern was that if the Russians could put a transmitter up there, they might be able to put a warhead up there.

The potential would have been clear-the USAF and navy had stated reconnaissance satellite programmes before Sputnik was even launched. They knew about the R-7 and it's capabilities as a missile before then-there had been public announcements.

[Lohan2008]

Perception of Von Braun being sympathetic to the nazzi's (false of course).

Edited April 4, 2015 by Lohan2008