The background of American space interest before the 1954-1955 period remains comparatively obscure, even to specialists. But perhaps because the years between 1945 and 1957 had seen slight American space enterprise, and perhaps because Americans little like to be told of their failings, the details received no significant attention. The purpose of this brief study is to gather some of the threads of space enterprise in the 1946-1956 period. For obvious reasons, attention is concentrated on the American scene and, still more narrowly, on the role of the United States Air Force. Nevertheless, an attempt has been made to provide some perspective on other activities related to that general theme.
Available sources are few.
He had completed the draft of a more detailed treatment of Air Force space programs by the middle of 1962, but its publication date remained uncertain. No other Air Force history deals with the period in any depth. Of course, a phalanx of popular writers of variable talent and uncertain knowledge had flooded the market with pseudo science treatises on space flight by 1960, but none of these writers made much use of official documents, and most were more concerned with dramatics than with the relatively prosaic background to the Sputnik years. Dr. Bowen, in Air Force headquarters, provided both advice and specific information from his own research, while cheerfully acceding to the use of some material he had laboriously gathered for his own work. Bits and pieces of data came from the office of the command historian and from a skimpy lot of documents collected by the author during an earlier assignment to the Aeronautical Systems Division.