On the Edge of Earth: The Future of American Space Power

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Picture 1: Works of Jules Verne and other authors of science fiction had a profound effect on rocket pioneers Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard. In this illustration depicting a scene from The Earth to the Moon, passengers experience weightlessness. Picture 2: The American Robert H. Goddard helped transform the pseudoscience of rocketry into a respectable discipline of systematized knowledge and laid the technological foundation for today's satellite launch vehicles and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Unless noted otherwise, all images courtesy of NASA. Picture 4: On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the 184 lbs. Sputnik satellite, the first to orbit the Earth. Picture 3: The German government was the first to give significant support to rocket development. The V-2, developed by the Nazi regime as a "Weapon of Retribution," was the child of Wernher von Braun's engineering team and forerunner of 20th century rockets. Von Braun would go on to become an American hero. Picture 5: From right to left, Von Braun, James van Allen, and William Pickering (director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) celebrate the January 31, 1958, launching of the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, which carried Van Allen's radiation detector. Explorer 1 (the happy trio hold a full-scale replica) stayed in orbit for more than twelve years. Picture 6: President Eisenhower poses on national television with a scale model of the Jupiter nose cone, the first to be recovered from outer space. (Courtesy of Army Aviation and Missile Command) Picture 7: Posing for Life Magazine. A contemplative Hermann Oberth, front and center, dominates this portrait. Wernher von Braun is sitting on the table, and Eberhard Rees, his colleague from V-2 days in Germany, stands behind him. Standing off to the left is Major General Holgar N. Toftoy, who helped move Von Braun's team and equipment to the United States. Ernest Stuhlinger, ballistic missile research director at the Army Ballistic Missile Research Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, is seated in the chair behind Oberth. (Courtesy of Army Aviation Missile Command) Picture 8: President John F. Kennedy and Wernher von Braun (center) discuss the Saturn Launch System in May 1963. Robert Seamans is to the left of von Braun. Picture 9: A Delta 2 rocket. Picture 10: U.S. Landsat imagery of the San Francisco Airport. (Courtesy of spaceimaging.com) Picture 11: The U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellite shown here teams up with NASA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites to monitor weather conditions across the globe. (Courtesy of Air Force Space Command) Picture 12: The U.S. Defense Support Program satellites provide early warning data to U.S. Strategic Command and will remain the primary space-based early warning and cuing assets for U.S. ballistic missile defense systems until the constellation of DSP satellites are replaced later this decade by the Space Based Infrared System. (Courtesy of Air Force Space Command) Picture 13: The Global Positioning System satellites have revolutionized modern navigation techniques using a highly accurate atomic clock to provide precise information to anyone, anywhere, at any time of the day regarding latitude, longitude, altitude, travel velocity and direction, and time. (Courtesy of Air Force Space Command) Picture 14: U.S. Air Force Milstar satellites route sensitive military tactical and strategic message traffic and conversations. (Courtesy of Air Force Space Command) Picture 15: Defense Satellite Communications System spacecraft provide the bulk of the Defense Department's long haul, high priority satellite communications. Picture 16: A Titan IVB/Centaur rocket launches the Cassini orbiter on its seven-year journey to Saturn. The Titan IV is a heavy space launch vehicle used to carry Defense Department payloads, such as Milstar and DSP satellites, and classified NRO satellites into space. Picture 17: An Ariane 5 launch. The European^ Space Agency's Ariane commercial launch program relies on the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, to boost payloads into orbit. Picture 19: The satellite's field of view is far wider than that offered by airborne cameras, as this image of the earth taken during an Apollo mission demonstrates. Picture 18: In this December 1999 photo, NASA astronauts use the...