Conspiracy Claims: The Soviets were well ahead of the Americans, setting many firsts, including the first satellite. This proved that their technology was better, but they couldn't get to the moon, how then could the US?

History Claims: Being first isn't always proof of technological advantage. Other factors have to be considered as to why the two players were where they were. In fact the US had the technology to successfully launch a satellite prior to the Sputnik 1 launch, but because of politics the team which finally went on to launch Explorer 1 had been banned from even attempting a launch before that.

In the race for space the Soviets well and truly fired the first shots. Many in the Western World greeted the news of Earth's first artificial satellite with fear rather than joy of the new space age world. The idea of the Soviets being able to launch a nuclear weapon into orbit was a resounding terror that was spoken of openly, even in the halls of power in Washington DC and other world capitals. All the US had in response to this launch was a rocket that exploded 2 seconds after launch. But was the US really so far behind the USSR in the early space race, or was there something other than technology holding them back, and what was the US technology state at the time of Sputnik 1?

The beep that shocked the world

On the 4th of October, 1957, the world's radios were tuned to listen to something that had never been heard before. A simple and barely audible beep was being received, the source? An 84 kg, 580mm diameter sphere of 2mm thick aluminium metal with a 1 watt radio that had just become the Earth's second moon.

It wasn't supposed to be. The 1.4 tonne ISZ satellite designed by Mikhail K. Tikhonravov, one of the most prominent Soviet aerospace engineers, was meant to be put into orbit as a celebration of International Geophysical Year. But it was not ready in time. In response to this Sergei Korolev, the Chief Constructor of the Soviet Ballistic Missile program, hurriedly developed Sputnik 1 as a replacement and this was the satellite that was launched on the Soviet R-7 ICBM instead. The satellite orbited the Earth until the 4th of January, 1958, although it only transmitted for 21 days. Tikhonravov's satellite was to become Sputnik 3 and was launched on the 15th of May, 1958.

The road to Sputnik had begun on the 30th of January, 1956, when the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Council of Soviet Ministers passed a decree for the creation of an artificial satellite. Tikhonravov's unit of OKB-1 completed the preliminary design of the ISZ minilab on the 1st of July, 1956 and it was approved as the first Soviet satellite on the 3rd of September the same year. However, because of delays in the building of the satellite, the R-7 missile was ready before the ISZ, and realising that the planned satellite would not be ready before the year was out, and the hastily made ball that would become Sputnik 1 was launched as a replacement instead.

Rockets and Politics

Meanwhile things weren't going all that easily in the USA either. In June of 1954 the Army and Navy started talks on a co-operative venture to launch a satellite. Wernher von Braun presented his favoured method, that of using the Redstone missile, with an upper stage cluster of Loki rockets. Two months later at a further meeting, the Office of Naval Research agreed and Project Orbiter was created. By December of 1954 the group had drafted and submitted plans for the creation and launch of a number of satellites. When the US National Committee for the International Geophysical Year announced the desire to launch a satellite, and with their proposal backed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL), the Project Orbiter team felt they were well on the way to getting the required permission for launch. It wasn't to be however. Assistant Secretary of Defense, Donald Quarles, created the Stewart Commission, an eight member committee to determine which of three project proposals would be chosen to represent the USA in this venture. The joint Army-Navy Project Orbiter proposal was in competition with by the Navy Research Laboratory (NRL) who recommended that the Viking research rocket be adapted to carry satellites, and with the Air Force who proposed that the Atlas missile could be adapted to carry satellites.

By a vote of 5 to 2 (one member was absent) The Commission voted to accept the NRL submission. They gave several reasons for this, although other uncited reasons were also suspected. They claimed that the NRL submission would not be likely to interfere with the creation of new ballistic missiles and that the Viking research rocket had already proven its worth as a scientific carrier vehicle. Added to this was that the Redstone rocket was a military missile and that President Eisenhower's desire was that U.S. scientific satellite research be distanced from the military. Further they claimed that, although the Redstone had already been shown to be able to enter space, the Project Obiter proposal offered a poor tracking system and was of inferior scientific value. What wasn't said, though was highly prominent was that the Redstone's designer, Wernher von Braun, was a German who had been a member of the Nazi Party and the Lead designer of the V-2 rocket. Amongst a number of the leaders of America, it was unthinkable to have the first American satellite launched by a rocket designed by an ex-Nazi.

Not yet ready to lie down, the Army issued a memorandum which was highly critical of the NRL satellite program, the paper citing its low probability for success and showing an overly lengthy time frame to develop the launch vehicle. The NRL quickly rebutted this memorandum and less than a month later, on the 9th of September, the Stewart Committee approved the NRL satellite program, now named Project Vanguard. Project Orbiter was finally killed, and the Army was strictly forbidden from attempting to launch any satellites. They were, however, authorised to extend the Redstone program with the creation of the Jupiter rocket, a move that lead to the establishment of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), however on November 26, 1956 the Army's missile program was given a further blow when it was issued a "roles and missions" memorandum that stripped it of, and prevented it from deploying, any rocket with a range that exceeded 200 miles. Shortly after, the joint Navy-Army program ended with the Navy pulling out of the Jupiter Project. To rub salt into the open wound, a final request and proposal to be involved in satellite launching and launch up to six satellites starting in September 1957, was rejected in April of that year.

As the Army had predicted, the Vanguard Project was rushed, and setback after setback plagued the development of the missile. A prototype was finally tested in December of 1956, and a successful suborbital testflight was completed on the 1st of May, 1957, but the rocket was still not ready when the Soviets walked onto the world stage with the launch of Sputnik 1 in October of 1957. At the time of this launch, ABMA was hosting the Secretary of Defense designate, Neil McElroy. They made a strong plea to him that they be allowed to launch satellites, and the Army put forward a hastily prepared proposal stating they could do so within four months of being given the go ahead. Major General J.B. Medaris, the head of ABMA secretly instructed von Braun to remove the Jupiter C hardware which they had placed into protective storage just months before in case of this eventuallity, and to start the preparations for launching a satellite. He then met with William Pickering, the director of JPL, to start discussing the satellite package which would be used.

With a loss to the Soviets in the first step into space, and facing a growing public fear about the Soviet nuclear capablities, President Eisenhower announced that the Vanguard Project would be attempting to launch a satellite before the end of 1957, something the NRL were unprepared for. They had not been planning a full orbital launch until later in 1958, and most saw the announced launch as unlikely to succeed. Secretary of Defense McElroy managed to convince Eisenhower to reconsider the Army Ballistic Missile Agency's satellite proposal and just days before the second successful Soviet launch of Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957, it was decided that von Braun and his team were to be given permission to prepare a satellite launch as a backup to the Vanguard Project. They were told a week later, however they weren't given permission to launch, and were told instead that should the Vangaurd be successful, they would lose the right to launch any satellite, a move that prompted Medaris, von Braun and Pickering to all tender their resignation. This action resulted in ABMA finally being given the permission they had desired for so long. ABMA was allowed to launch its own satellites regardless of the outcome of Vangaurd. The team swung into action to fully prepare for a January 29th launch. The man who had for so long rejected for satellites by the Department of Defence had what he had always wanted, his missiles at last were to be used for a peaceful purpose, that of launching satellites. The question was which satellite to launch.

Following President Eisenhower's announcement, the Vanguard Project team attempted to launch the grapefruit sized satellite, TV-3, into orbit on December 6th. It failed. Just two seconds after the main engines ignited, the rocket exploded. With the failure of Vangaurd, von Braun's time to shine had come

As can be seen, though the US was second to launch a satellite, the reason for that was not technology. The Army had the ability to launch a satellite in 1955, but were repeatedly denied the opportunity to do it. Even as late as April 1957 the US could have beaten the Soviets to launching Earth's first satellite, but once more ABMA was refused the premission they required to act. It was purely because of political reasons that the US lost the race to launch a satellite, not, as the hoax proponents claim, because of any lack of technology.

Conspiracy Claims: When Explorer 1 was launched it was discovered that there was a belt of intense radiation surrounding and shielding the Earth. This radiation was 10,000 times stronger than the detector could register and would be instantly fatal to anyone trying to pass through them.

Science Claims: While no one expected the belts to exist, the Hoax Proponents overstate both the size and the strength of these belts, as well as the type of Radiation they contain. While the radiation levels did overwhelm the detector of Explorer 1, this was because the detector was resonably sensitive and so was easy to overwhelmed. The levels were never 10,000 times it's ability to detect however.

Because the Van Allen Belts are a major part of the Hoax Proponent claims, we will be revisiting them a number of times. While most Apollo Sites would deal with all of the Van Allen Belt claims on one page, because this is more an attempt to give a cronological order of the Space Program, than an attempt to just to deal purely with the hoax claims, we will revisit these claims again throughout the pages dealing with Gemini, the Unmanned Probes to the Moon, the Russian Lunar Attempts, Apollo 11 and in a little bit more in the Space Shuttle and IIS sections. Here we will deal mostly with the finding and mapping of the belts.

Explorer 1 takes flight

At last, with the permission to launch a stellite into orbit, Wernher von Braun and his team needed a satellite and needed one fast. With a launch date of the 29th of January 1958, they had only three months to ship the rocket to Cape Canaveral and prepare it for launch. Because of their support for the Project Orbiter proposal, Major General J.B. Medaris, head of ABMA, hd already gone to JPL in Califorina and asked them for their help in this matter and so JPL was assigned to satellite development for ABMA. As luck would have it, a group from the Iowa State University had been working in conjuntion with JPL and had the idea of creating a small satellite designed to measure the solar radiation of space. It had been known for some time that the sun ejected material in the form of solar radiation, but there had never before been a way to measure the true amount it was sending out. The head of the team to investigate this was Professor James Van Allen, and basing the reading on what could be measured below the atmosphere with their current balloon tests, they had designed a small satellite to learn the truth. Explorer 1 was shaped like a rocket itself. Just over 2 metres long, the first metre was taken up by the detector, an altimeter, a small radio and batteries to run the experiment. The second half was a solid fuel booster designed by JPL which would be used as a fourth stage for the launch vehicle.

Unlike the first Soviet satellite, Sputnik 1, and the Vangaurd Test Vehicle satellites, Explorer 1 was to be an actual science experiment, and so the results would be awaited with anticipation. With the Jupiter C (Juno) Rockets already out of storage and being prepared for launch an entire month before AMBA was even given permission to prepare for a possible launch, the final preperations for their first launch when realtively smoothly, the first parts of the rocket arriving at the Cape on the 20th of Dec, less than three weeks after the Vanguard disaster. It would still be another month before the rocket was taken to pad 26a and made ready for launch, but with the last stages of the Juno put into place, and the satellite payload from JPL in place, the dress rehersal countdown on the 27th of Janaury, 1958 was on time and went perfectly.

The first major stumbling block to the renewed project was the weather. With the rocket on the pad and ready to launch, the high altitude jet stream dipped down over Florida, and not wanting to risk the launch due to the high speed, high altitude winds, the launch was scrubbed on both the 29th and 30th. Then on the 31st, with the winds dropping to a safe level, they were ready and in a late night launch, the rocket lifted off at 10:48pm EST, rising quickly into the sky. Everyone involved held their breath and waited.

Exactly two hours later, at 12:48am the first signal was heard. The San Gabriel Valley Amateur Radio Club near Pasadena, California, had picked up the faint sounds of the satellite, now offically called Explorer 1. The team was waiting for news from the Goldstone radio tracking station in Earthquake Valley, California though, and, though eight minutes later than expected, within a few minutes of the first contact, "Goldstone had the bird." Explorer 1's orbit had reached been confirmed.

Conspiracy Claims: The radiation of the VA Belts was so intense that it instantly fried Explorer 1. One of the group who was working on the project looked at the readings as they died and exclaimed, "Oh my god, space is radioactive!"

History Claims: Explorer 1 continued to transmit until May 30th of 1958, four months after it was launched. It burned up on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere on March 31st, 1970, 12 years after its launch. It was followed by two successful missions, 3 and 4 (2 and 5 were failures,) each which would spend over two months mapping the Van Allen Belts. The readings from the radiation counter were very confusing at first, and it took several months for them to finally be interrupted. The readings would increase slowly as expected, and then suddenly drop to zero. As such, any excited exclamation as to the radioactivity of space is highly unlikely because no-one in the team initially realised the significance of these data drops.

A Surprise in Space

It was soon determined that the delay had been caused by the rocket entering a higher orbit that had been planned; however the higher elliptical orbit was still perfect for the job at hand. The geiger counter was soon sending back data with every pass, though because it was only reporting to one tracking station, this was only received for a short period during each orbit. The results at first appeared to be exactly as expected, a gradual rise in radiation levels that matched the results from the high altitude balloon tests. That was until the satellite hit an altitude of 2,000 kilometres. Suddenly, high above the South American continent, the readings dropped to zero. This was highly unexpected and none of the Iowa team understood its ramifications. It was a mystery that would remain until the successful launch of Explorer 3 nearly two months later on March 26th.

Virtually identical to Explorer 1 there were a few differences to Explorer 3, including a tape to record the full results of the orbit and more tracking stations. Over the 93 days prior to its orbit decaying, the Iowa based team was able to view the results of the radiation experiments. It was during this time that the realisation that the "zero" readings in fact resulted from an overloading of the counter itself.

In the following years, more satellites including Explorer 4, 7, 12, and 14 would all be used to perform further testing of the strength, position, and make up of the Van Allen Belts and by the mid-60's and the launch of Explorer 25 in 1964, Van Allen and his team had a very good understanding of these belts. The Iowa team wasn't alone in their study though, and the Soviets were launching their own satellites into these belts, the first being Sputnik 3 in May of 1958. Unfortunately the data on the belts was transmitted at the height of Sputnik 3's orbit as it passed over Australia and since the Soviets had no tracking station, nor would they tell the Australian's how to decode the data, this information was unable to be accessed for some time. However, by the time of the Gemini Program, both the US and Soviets had used a number of satellites to study and map these intense radiation belts.