386. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for Science and Technology (Wiesner) to President Kennedy1
Following up on our conversation of the other evening, I would like to elaborate on the questions posed by the Russian Venus shot and our relative positions in the general fields of space exploration and science. The most significant factor, as we have said many times, is that the Soviets have developed a rocket as part of their ballistic missile program with considerably more thrust or lifting power than anything we have available. We know that the Soviet booster can put payloads of the order of several tons (the most recent one was announced to be seven tons) in a low orbit, while the best we can do at the present time, using our latest combination rocket Atlas-Agena, is approximately 5,000 pounds. This combination was used to launch the recent Samos shot. These figures indicate that the Soviets have approximately a three-to-one advantage in weight-lifting capability at this time. This corresponds roughly to the difference we believe to exist in the payload capability of the USSR vs. U.S. ballistic missiles.
We do not fully understand why the Soviets chose to make so large a ballistic missile, because it is undoubtedly a nuisance to operate. We suspect that the design was well under way before the feasibility of thermonuclear bombs was proven and that it was probably designed to carry ordinary nuclear weapons which are much heavier. Also, the Soviet Union has been developing ballistic missiles for a considerably longer period of time than has the U.S., so they have had the advantage of an orderly evolutionary program. They began with a relatively short-range missile (200 to 300-mile range), went to a 600-mile missile, then a 900-mile missile, and on up to the IRBM stage, and finally to the present long-range missile. By doing this they were in position to use many of the components developed in one stage for successive stages, possibly making only minor changes and improvements. We, on the other hand, because of our late entry in the missile field, have found it necessary to develop complete missile systems with entirely new components. This has resulted in more duplications in our experimental [Page 880] program than has been the case in the Soviet program. It is my personal opinion, as a matter of fact, that some of this duplication and accompanying difficulty could have been avoided had our program been somewhat better integrated.
We do not expect to have boosters comparable to the present Soviet booster for approximately three years, though I believe we should be able to speed this up with hard work, so that we must expect continued embarrassments of the present type for some time, because in any space exploit requiring large payload capability the Soviet Union is ahead. On the other hand, as we have frequently said, the U.S. has done by all odds the most impressive job of exploiting its payload capability for scientific purposes. The Soviets have done surprisingly little with the opportunities they have had. The most impressive things that they have done were photographing the back side of the moon and transmitting the photographs back to earth (and this was a superb technical performance) and the return of the dogs from orbit. The U.S. has to its credit the discovery and definition of the Van Allen belts; the first precise geodetic use of an artificial earth satellite to obtain refined information on the size and shape of the earth; the first achievement of both active and passive communications satellites; discovery of a large electrical current system about the earth; successful use of weather satellites with cloud cover pictures and earth heat balance measurements; the first measurements of interplanetary magnetic fields; radio communications at inter-planetary distances; and the first simultaneous observation of solar disturbances and associated magnetic storms from interplanetary space and on earth. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to dramatize these things than it is the massive performances by the Soviet Union.
One of the things we must realize is that in dramatizing the space race we are playing into the Soviet’s strongest suit. They are using this accomplishment at home and around the world to prove the superiority of Soviet science and technology and to divert attention from many of their more mundane difficulties. The fact of the matter is that Western science, and particularly American science, is still vastly superior in most fields to Soviet science and they know this as well as we do. Furthermore, in almost any other arena in which we would elect to compete, food, housing, recreation, medical research, basic technological competence, general consumer goods production, etc., they would look very bad. We should attempt to point this out rather than assist them by an official and press reaction which supports their propaganda.