80th Anniversary of the US Space Age? Upper Atmospheric Science and Rocket Soundings in the American Southwest

Typically, historians mark the beginning of the Space Age with the launch of the Soviet Union Sputnik I satellite into Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. However, more than a decade earlier in 1946, the US government organized a group of scientists from various military agencies, universities, and civilian research laboratories to launch a series of suborbital rockets into outer space for scientific study. This group became known as the “Rocket Panel,” and it guided much of the country’s rocket-based research into the conditions of the upper atmosphere and outer space until the creation of NASA. This presentation asks: How does the history of the Space Age in the United States change when we approach it from the vantage point of the Rocket Panel in 1946 rather than from the Sputnik moment of 1957? From the beginning, rocket panelists recognized that the research techniques they were developing would catalyze major breakthroughs in the scientific understanding of the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. However, the incremental development of scientific and technical knowledge generated by panel members and their associated institutions stood in stark contrast to the sudden splash of Sputnik I, which rippled through the halls of power in Washington. Approaching the origins of the US Space Age through the Rocket Panel also reveals that drawing politically relevant distinctions between “civilian” and “military” research activities in outer space was a years long process—a consequence more of institutional frictions and political calculations than from principled objections to civil-military collaboration. By placing the origins of the US Space Age in 1946, we gain a richer understanding of where outer space fits in the history of the United States, and importantly, we better grasp how the relationship between the US national security state and science evolved in the early Space Age.