Here at Coffee House, we normally exhume a piece from The Spectator archives on Fridays. But we thought we’d make an exception, today, for the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s ascent into
space. The piece below is actually the only one that the magazine ran at the time, and is by the politician/journalist/author Desmond Donnelly. If you can get past the dubious generalities about
“less sophisticated peoples” and “magic carpets” — which themselves say something about the shift in what public figures may and may not commit to print — there are
some thought-provoking and quite prescient points to be found within it:
The Magic Carpet, Desmond Donnelly MP, The Spectator, 21 April 1961
Major Gagarin’s space flight was a major initiative of public relations in the Cold War and it was so intended. The plot of Soviet thought was clear — it was to show the uncommitted Afro-Asians, struggling with the practical problems of living on the breadline, the technological advantages that may come to those who throw their lot in with the Communist bloc. Amongst less-sophisticated peoples, where the dream concept of the magic carpet has always appealed, this idea is very important. Additionally, there is the touch of political-religious significance, as when Major Gagarin asserted his conviction that ‘the party’ would always help him if he got into difficulties up there in space.
In terms of hot war, the implications are more obscure. It may be that power will pass eventually to the nation which controls the space immediately around the Earth. This aim of breaking the nuclear deadlock is undoubtedly behind the Russian intention to establish manned space stations in orbit; but for the moment the effectiveness of military missiles carrying nuclear deterrents remains undiminished; and the importance of Polaris as the second-strike weapon is not affected.
The question arises of how the Soviet Union has been able to reach this fantastic achievement, when forty years ago her peoples were largely illiterate. The answer lies in one sentence — the priorities that it is possible to impose and sustain in a ruthless dictatorship. The sunlit spaceman must be balanced against the grey world of the vast majority of Soviet citizens.
Up to now, it is as though there were two Russias. There has been the glittering, forward-looking Russia that launched the first sputnik, and which only the privileged few have been allowed to enter. There has also been the shoddy Russia, of out-of-date designs and goods, produced by antiquated production engineering. That is the only Russia that Common Man in the ‘socialist’ society knows and has ever know.
This fact is understood clearly by the average Soviet citizen, as it shown by the letter that Pravda published some months ago on its front page for the purpose of refuting it. The letter – which was probably ‘inspired,’ because of its language and placing — stated, ‘What do sputniks give to a person like me? So much money is spent on sputniks that it makes people gasp. If there were no sputniks, the Government could cut the cost of cloth for an overcoat in half and put a few electric flat-irons in the stores. Rockets! Rockets! Who needs them now?’
The fact that Pravda attached such importance to this view is significant. So far the two Russias have never met. But as Mr. Khrushchev recognised in his Red Square speech on Friday, one day the new technologies of modern Russia will be made available to backward Russia, with political consequences not yet possible to foresee.
The Russian success also owes a great deal to German technology. When Peenemunde was overrun at the end of the war, 70 per cent of the German V2 rocket team was captured and transported to Kapustinyar. They were set to work in 1946 with overriding priorities. They began by firing V2s a hundred miles. Then, 250 miles — and so on. Eventually, they reached 4,000 miles. By this way of proceeding, by intermediate stages, the Russian project ensured the success of the engineering. From this also the Russian engineers have developed the huge boosters that launched Major Gagarin’s capsule.
The extent of the sustained effort was also amazing. For instance, it was know here in Britain, as far back as 1954, that the Russians were sometimes firing as many as eight rockets in a day from the rocket range near Stalingrad. When one thinks of the cost of one rocket, one grasps the overall cost of the Soviet programme.
The Americans, on the other hand, adopted a less practical approach. Their original intention was not to proceed by intermediate stages, but to build a rocket to fire 6,500 miles on its first flight. The result was that the basic engineering went wrong; and in 1954, the United States was virtually forced to start again, eight years behind the Soviet Union.
Next, the Americans made the mistakes of too many schemes and of competing priorities. The first understanding, certainly so far as Britain was concerned, was that the United States would concentrate upon the inter-continental missiles, whereas Britain would devote her effort to the intermediate ranges —hence Blue Streak. But it was discovered that the United States had continued with multitudinous projects of varying ranges. And this became one of the factors in the decision to cancel Blue Streak.
Finally — and in the long run this is almost certain to be a correct policy — the Americans have been striving for perfection, whereas the Russians have concentrated on simplicity. It is as though the United States has been concerned with developing a beautiful precision watch and the Soviet Union has been satisfied with the crude alarm clock, so long as it works and tells the time. Eventually, this different concept may place the United States in a much better position to exploit the scientific possibilities of space research, as opposed to the political.
What are the implications for those of us here in Britain who are concerned with political policy? The first and most obvious is the idea of the diminishing world. Certainly those who in our body politic still worship the twenty-mile English Channel, a barrier to be preserved at all costs, will soon look what they are — foolish and little men. And eventually, as smaller nations are merged for political and military reasons into much bigger confederations, the two power blocs will increasingly dominate the earth.
We have to be under no illusion that the Cold War will continue — probably for our lifetime and even for the lifetime of our children — until, by evolution or revolution, there are men in both Moscow and Peking who are prepared to give up their present attempt to dominate the rest of mankind. To that extent, our admiration for Soviet achievement must also be accompanied by the warning undertone that Russia’s and China’s rulers are implacable and uninhibited enemies of Western society and most of the tolerance and values in which we believe; and that these enemies are not bound by Western ethics. World government is most likely to come about when the Cold War eventually blows itself out and the power blocs merge as man looks outwards. But that is at least a hundred years off.
There is another more immediate and practical consideration for Britain that has so far escaped all but a few junior members of the British Government. It is the imperative need for Britain herself to enter the space age.
The British contribution should be separate and connected with out present role of being the world centre of cable and telephone communications. Already the worldwide traffic in this form of contact is so increasing that the existing systems of radio telephones and cables will be quite inadequate by the end of the 1960s. The alternatives are either more long-distance cables, eventually costing many hundreds of millions, or a practical programme of tele-communication satellites, costing between £15 million and £20 million a year, but which will earn many hundreds of millions in the 1970s and 1980s. The simple question is not whether we can afford to do it, but how we must do it if we still intend to remain, for commercial purposes, the world centre of communications.
Here, we also have to remember that the British (and European) concept of long-distance communication is still quite different from that of both the average American and Russian. When you discuss long-distance telephone systems with an American, he usually begins by assuming that you mean ‘coast-to-coast.’ When you answer that the mean ‘overseas,’ he shows understanding and answers, ‘You mean Hawaii?’ In the case of the Russian it is much simpler — there are only a mere handful of men within the Soviet Union who have ever in their lives envisaged making a telephone call to somebody outside the Communist bloc. And for historical reasons, neither of these two space competitors thinks yet in the historical terms that Britain still does — although the American telephone companies are now showing great interest.
The plain fact is that we cannot foresee at this moment the full implications of the space age. But we have to reject the complacencies, bearing in mind that the technical and scientific advisers of the British War Office as late as 1908 rejected the aeroplane as ‘a costly contraption of no practical applications whatsoever.’ Or, more recently, in 1945, the nuclear physicists who could see no application of the atomic bomb beyond a very big bang. Or, in 1948, the pundits of our radio industry who claimed that the market for television in Britain was limited to 50,000 sets.
One thing, however, is clear. Space technology will dominate all other technologies, covering the entire industrial spectrum — electronics, metals, fuels, ceramics, machinery, plastics, textiles, thermals, cryogenics and many others.
If Britain is not associated with the continuing exploration of these technologies, she will very rapidly cease to be a technological nation. And when that happens, our prospect of sustaining fifty million people in this island ceases too.
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