Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 127

REVIEW ESSAY

The Other
Space Race
Eisenhower and the Quest
for Aerospace Security

Nicholas Michael Sambaluk, Naval Institute Press,
Annapolis, Maryland, 2015, 316 pages

Lt. Col. John H. Modinger, PhD, U.S. Air Force, Retired

T

he Other Space Race is fascinating look at the early
years (1954–1961) of the celebrated “Space Race”
between the United States and the Soviet Union.
It is full of fascinating sidebars fleshing out the context
of the times in vivid detail and peaking with the lunar
landing in 1969.
Regrettably, until now, President Dwight D. “Ike”
Eisenhower’s role has received rather superficial treatment in this race saga. Many mistakenly derided his
administration as being caught off guard by the Sputnik
launches and supposedly playing mere catch-up.
However, The Other Space Race highlights an important
reality: Eisenhower was far more programmatic in his
approach to space and more intimately involved in the
strategic policy-level decision making than is generally
acknowledged. Much of this oversight is understood
through the lens of his leadership style. Historian Stephen
Ambrose, an Eisenhower biographer, noted that Ike “had
gotten through many a crisis simply by denying that a
crisis existed.” In the aftermath of Sputnik, his usual resort to calmness failed to quell the uproar, but his ability
to shape the direction of U.S. space exploration would
influence policymaking thereafter.
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

The book is much more than an account of
Eisenhower’s personal involvement. The inherent tension
is clearly exposed between Ike’s desire to use space as a
window into Soviet capabilities to prevent misperception
and worst-case thinking— quite possibly leading to nuclear Armageddon—and the Air Force’s contrarian approach
foreseeing space weaponization as inevitable. A newly independent, brash Air Force viewed itself as the vanguard
of American defense in a future dominated by spiraling
technological feats where second place—so its leaders argued—would consign the Nation to certain doom against
a relentless Communist foe intent on domination.
Sambaluk unambiguously illuminates how disconnected Air Force senior-leader thinking was from the
strategic initiatives Eisenhower was trying to crystallize
at the dawn of a new frontier. A clear example of these
competing philosophies regarding how best to achieve
space security was the “Dyna-Soar” project. A focal point
throughout the book, it was a piloted, reusable, boostglide spacecraft that launched like a rocket and recovered by landing like an unpowered glider. To supporters,
Dyna-Soar would enable the United States to control
the “ultimate high ground.” To detractors, the project
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