The Space Race Has Long Led to Business Opportunities – Barron’s

The Soviet Unions launch of the first artificial satellite into orbit on Oct. 4, 1957, set off a full-blown Sputnik crisis in the U.S.

The prospect of Russian nuclear bombs circling above Americas cities had schoolchildren scrambling under desks and politicians scrambling for answers. Was there a missile gap? Were we losing the Cold War?

Eleven days later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower received an official report detailing what should be done to meet the Soviet technological challenge, as Barrons wrote, and thus was born the space race. But our editors werent dazzled by dreams of moon landings or of boldly going where no man has gone before. They had something more prosaic in mind.

Meeting the Russian threat, Barrons wrote, would greatly spur sales of microscopes, test tubes, Bunsen burners, and all the gadgetssome of them incredibly expensiveneeded in todays scientific laboratories. Companies like Owens-Illinois (now O-I Glass ), Corning Glass Works (now Corning ), and Texas Instruments were among those in line to profit, we wrote.

The early space race, to Barrons, was a clear business opportunity. Space exploration, indeed, would benefit many industries and find its way into myriad consumer uses, underpinning the postwar economic boom that powered a prosperous America into the 1960s and beyond.

But, first and foremost, the race for space was a military pursuit, and that is how it began.

Nazi Germany hoped to turn World War II with the V-2 Rocket, the first long-range guided ballistic missile. Launched in September 1944, V-2s rained down terror from Northern England to Lorraine, Barrons wrote in January 1945, when, despite a final German offensive, the European conflicts end was in sight.

When the Allies poured into Germany that spring, American and Russian forces secured as many V-2 rockets, scientists, and technological secrets as possible. The Cold War was on.

The U.S.S.R. held the early lead in space, sending the first dog into orbit in Sputnik 2, then the first man into space in 1961 and the first woman in 1963.

The U.S., painfully slow in getting off the ground, as Barrons put it in 1960, would soon be shooting for the moon. But even before then, American industry was meeting the challenge. The Space Age suddenly is hatching so many golden eggs, we wrote in 1959, the real problem is to determine which, and how many, to brood.

There was Tiros-I, the first weather satellite, promising to reveal such deadly atmospheric disturbances as tornadoes, according to Barrons. It presaged the modern weather forecasting that we all depend on.

AT&Ts plan to launch its own artificial moons in 1962 resulted in Telstar 1, the first active communications satellite. Today, Earths sky is crowded with thousands of satellites (many, like Telstar 1, no longer working but still circling).

Microwave technology, too, was growing by leaps and bounds, according to Barrons in 1958, led by companies like AT&T, General Electric, and Westinghouse.

Theres the integrated circuit, for which NASA was the largest consumer in the 1960s. By 1973, though, Barrons was writing about chips used in Ataris new electronic game Pong, already found in better bars across the country. Today, integrated circuits are essential to computers, mobile phones, and the entire structure of modern civilization.

By the end of the 60s, NASA was working at a frenetic pace, launching five Apollo missions between October 1968 and July 1969. The last one, Apollo 11, landed humans on the moon for the first time.

Yet for all the excitement surrounding that landmark event, Americans were starting to question the vast outlays being poured into the space program. Barrons wondered in 1969 whether men on the moon could accomplish more than robots, and if NASAs $6 billion budget is the wisest use of public funds.

The space shuttle, NASAs next big-ticket item, proved too costly to become the workhorse envisioned, Barrons wrote in a 1999 editorial. Instead of another government project, we argued, the next space race should be conducted for profit. Theres no shortage of capital and capitalists willing to take big risks for big rewards, we wrote.

Houston to Elon Musk: The world is watching.

Email: editors@barrons.com

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The Space Race Has Long Led to Business Opportunities - Barron's