RAND and the complicated space policy
Have you ever hear RAND-corporation(1)? Under the cover of this corporation, the USA made it's first space missions, and the Explorer I satellite was made under the supervision of the RAND-engineers. The Explorer I satellite (2) was the final operation of NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) (3)what changed its name to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) (4). The launch date of Explorer I was January 31, 1958, and NASA was established on October 1, 1958.
So this was the reason, why sometimes Explorer I is mentioned to launch by NACA, not NASA. The reason, why RAND was established was that this company's mission was to offer a forum, where scientists and engineers, who have different backgrounds and scientific specialties can discuss freely the problems, what the space rocket and space engineering would face. There were three problems.
1) How to create enough powerful rocket?
2) What the spacecraft should do at orbiter?
3) And how to explain that thing to taxpayers, who will pay the mission?
The worst problem was to find the real mission to spacecraft, what will send to space. And the second problem was to get fund for that project because of that time, during the cold war the congress was more interesting about the bombers and conventional systems for carrying the nuclear weapon to USSR. And the thing that NASA must offer was the solution, which can be used in both, military and scientific purposes.
One of the things, why Explorer I send to the orbiter was that this system's mission was to meter the cosmic radiation around the Earth because the manned flight to space would require highly accurate information about the radiation around the Earth. Another idea was to test the Geiger-meters ability to find the nuclear missile and maybe impact to that target. So if the spacecraft would use Geiger-meter it would be aimed easily to the nuclear weapon, which sends the gamma-rays and that thing can be used to aim the counter-missiles to those incoming targets.
The idea of the manned space project was of course to prove the technical capacity of those systems. But when we are thinking things like Mercury capsule, the idea was at the same time create the technology, which allows returning the nuclear warhead. The ability to return the nuclear bomb was the reason, why the major part of the nuclear capacity of the nuclear powers is in the strategic bombers.
Many people think that FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment Systems) (4) are always very high-yield systems. The thing is that FOBS is the normal nuclear weapon that can be less than a kiloton class neutron bomb to 50 megatons thermonuclear system. When this kind of system is returned, the crew must just change the heat protection shield.
So the ability to return those warheads from the orbiter would make possible to replace the strategic bombers by using the missiles. The idea of this type of FOBS can also have multipurpose missions. That system can detonate in the trajectory of incoming missiles, and it can also use to attack the enemy targets on the ground, atmosphere and sea area, where they can detonate air or underwater. The thing is that this kind of system can have multiple mission profiles that make them extremely dangerous and effective weapons.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Advisory_Committee_for_Aeronautics
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_1
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System
Homepages of RAND: https://www.rand.org/
Homepages of NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Launch_of_Friendship_7_-_GPN-2000-000686.jpg
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