Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech, and today we're going to
Speaker 1: start a week long journey to talk about a very
Speaker 1: important agency that relates to technology. In many episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, I have referenced DARPA, also known as the
Speaker 1: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It is the research arm
Speaker 1: of the United States Department of Defense, and DARPA projects
Speaker 1: have led to some pretty incredible technologies like the Internet
Speaker 1: and autonomous cars spoiler alert for this week. But what
Speaker 1: about the agency itself? What is its history? So in
Speaker 1: the following episodes, I hope to give you guys an
Speaker 1: insight into one of the most secretive organizations in the
Speaker 1: United States. This agency hides in plain site, and it
Speaker 1: essentially advertises itself with some of its larger profile projects,
Speaker 1: like the various Grand challenges that lead to things like
Speaker 1: autonomous cars and UH and and more advanced humanoid robots.
Speaker 1: So I'll be talking more about some of those in
Speaker 1: my upcoming suite of episodes about autonomous cars. When I
Speaker 1: get into that, I'll cover it a little bit in
Speaker 1: these episodes, but I'll go into more detail when we
Speaker 1: get into the autonomous car suite. Ultimately, the purpose of
Speaker 1: DARPA is to make the United States technologically superior to
Speaker 1: other countries. Is to maintain technological superiority, and that includes
Speaker 1: making high tech weaponry and military systems. It is part
Speaker 1: of the Defense Department. So while many of the stories
Speaker 1: about DARPA have focused on the Gali g whiz that
Speaker 1: texture is amazing kind of side of things, We're gonna
Speaker 1: look at the whole picture, which sometimes gets pritty darn grim.
Speaker 1: But I think it's important to consider both the good
Speaker 1: and the bad. We shouldn't just, you know, focus on
Speaker 1: one at the expense of the other. So to understand
Speaker 1: the climate that would create DARPA, we really need to
Speaker 1: think back to World War Two and the development of
Speaker 1: the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project took advantage of some
Speaker 1: of the most talented physicists and engineers in America, and
Speaker 1: during the course of the development of the atomic bomb,
Speaker 1: which was based off the process of nuclear fission splitting
Speaker 1: the atom, the team also explored the possibility of a
Speaker 1: fusion bomb a k A hydrogen bomb. Now during World
Speaker 1: War Two, the Manhattan Project focused mainly on vision bombs
Speaker 1: because a lot more work was going to be needed
Speaker 1: to make a fusion bomb possible. There was work being
Speaker 1: done on that, but it was trailing way behind. It
Speaker 1: was considered to be far more complicated and difficult to do,
Speaker 1: and therefore it was given low priority because of the
Speaker 1: necessity to build a bomb in a wartime environment. So
Speaker 1: some members of the team ended up being opposed to
Speaker 1: working on a fusion bomb, particularly once the atomic bombs
Speaker 1: dropped on Hiroshima, Nagasaki were deployed, because they were worried well.
Speaker 1: They said, the atomic bombs were already bad enough, the
Speaker 1: fusion bomb would be much much more destructive. There was
Speaker 1: even a fear that such a device might ignite the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: setting setting the atmosphere itself on fire, which would obviously
Speaker 1: kill everyone all over the world after a single detonation.
Speaker 1: The idea that you could have a world ending event
Speaker 1: by detonating one of these bombs. But even without that
Speaker 1: doomsday scenario, the thought was that such a bomb would
Speaker 1: cause such widespread devastation that it would by its nature
Speaker 1: wipe out civilian populations that there'd be no dancing around
Speaker 1: it that you could argue, well, these other bombs we've created,
Speaker 1: we meant for military installations, and tragically that also meant
Speaker 1: that civilian populations were affected because of their proximity to
Speaker 1: those military installations. With a fusion bomb, the effect would
Speaker 1: be so large that you couldn't really use that as
Speaker 1: a justification. It was going to affect millions of people,
Speaker 1: So it raised serious ethical concerns among many who were
Speaker 1: working on the Manhattan Project. After World War Two and
Speaker 1: after the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, there was still ongoing
Speaker 1: debate about whether or not any work should be done
Speaker 1: on creating a hydrogen bomb. Then, in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union would conduct its first test of an
Speaker 1: atomic bomb detonation, and that changed things in the US.
Speaker 1: The General Advisory Committee of the US Atomic Energy Commission
Speaker 1: unanimously recommended that the United States not pursue the development
Speaker 1: of a hydrogen bomb. This was all the conscientious objector
Speaker 1: who said such a technology is too terrible to even develop,
Speaker 1: let alone build and deploy. That group would include people
Speaker 1: like Jay Robert Oppenheimer, who was the chairman of the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project. Also Enrico Fermi and Isadore Robbie. They argued
Speaker 1: that the hydrogen bomb would be a weapon so powerful
Speaker 1: that it would just be an evil upon the world
Speaker 1: to build it. But there were other scientists like Edward
Speaker 1: Teller and Ernest Lawrence who were not on the General
Speaker 1: Advisory Committee, but they were in favor of developing a
Speaker 1: hydrogen bomb. They argued that the Soviets would pursue developing
Speaker 1: the hydrogen bomb whether or not the United States did,
Speaker 1: and therefore there would be a gap in in capability
Speaker 1: if the US did not develop it first. There would
Speaker 1: be nothing to stop the Soviet Union from threatening to
Speaker 1: use such a bomb against the US and forced the
Speaker 1: US to surrender, because what country would allow its population
Speaker 1: to be wiped out in such a way if they
Speaker 1: did not have that capability themselves. So President Truman agreed
Speaker 1: with Teller and Lawrence and said that the development of
Speaker 1: a hydrogen bomb should happen in In In nineteen fifty, he
Speaker 1: authorized an official program to develop such a bomb. As
Speaker 1: part of that program, a second nuclear weapons development lab
Speaker 1: would be formed. The original one was the Los Alamos Lab.
Speaker 1: That's where the Manhattan Project tests took place, where the
Speaker 1: atomic bombs were born. The second lab was founded in Livermore, California,
Speaker 1: at the University of California's Radiation Lab, later known as
Speaker 1: the Livermore Lab and later still as the Lawrence Livermore Lab.
Speaker 1: The Los Alamos Group built a bomb based off a
Speaker 1: design that Edward Teller had worked on, and they tested
Speaker 1: this hydrogen bomb in nineteen fifty four. It was a
Speaker 1: proof of concept hydrogen bomb that had been tested two
Speaker 1: years earlier, actually in nineteen fifty two. That was a
Speaker 1: smaller one, but that was based off an impractical design
Speaker 1: for an actual weapon. It was more of a proof
Speaker 1: of concept. This one in nineteen fifty four was a
Speaker 1: working hydrogen bomb. It was part of a test called
Speaker 1: Operation Castle, and it ended up detonating with fifteen mega
Speaker 1: tons of force, which was far far more powerful than
Speaker 1: the group had anticipated. Uh there were stories about during
Speaker 1: the detonation the initial reaction from the observers was one
Speaker 1: of panic that the explosion, because it was so huge
Speaker 1: and the the fire cloud was growing so quickly, that
Speaker 1: there was at least a moment where people began to
Speaker 1: worry that perhaps they had in fact ignited the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and that this was the end. Ended up not being
Speaker 1: quite that bad, but it was much much stronger than
Speaker 1: they had thought. Meanwhile, the Livermore group to which Teller belonged,
Speaker 1: had failed to deuce a working nuclear bomb. When the
Speaker 1: lab was at risk of being shut down, Teller and
Speaker 1: his team presented designs for a mega super bomb. This
Speaker 1: would be capable, according to the design, of delivering a
Speaker 1: ten thousand megaton yield. Keep in mind, the big one
Speaker 1: that was so big that the scientists were scared of
Speaker 1: it was fifteen mega tons. Teller's proposal was for a
Speaker 1: ten thousand mega ton hydrogen bomb. A single bomb of
Speaker 1: that power would be capable of wiping out an entire continent,
Speaker 1: not just a region, an entire continent with one bomb.
Speaker 1: HERB York, who was a member of this team, would
Speaker 1: later explain the reasoning for that design. He said that
Speaker 1: the US had to employ a really aggressive research and
Speaker 1: development practice to maintain its technological advantage against adversaries, and
Speaker 1: that this unfortunately also meant an escalation of an arms race,
Speaker 1: but that without it, the U s would be endanged
Speaker 1: of being vulnerable to enemy attack. The Livermore Lab would
Speaker 1: continue developing bomb technology, particularly after the Soviet Union tested
Speaker 1: its first hydrogen bomb, and the nuclear arms race was
Speaker 1: picking up speed very very quickly, and the Livermore Group
Speaker 1: was relying upon computer systems based off John von Neumann's
Speaker 1: designs to speed things up. I talked about him very
Speaker 1: recently and in tech stuff. Meanwhile, as engineers were finding
Speaker 1: new and exciting ways to potentially kill millions of people,
Speaker 1: and yes that's me being sardonic, there there was a
Speaker 1: growing concern about what the citizens of the United States
Speaker 1: could do in the event of a nuclear strike on
Speaker 1: the US. So the US had formed a Civil Defense Agency,
Speaker 1: but it became clear early on, at least to the
Speaker 1: people running that agency, that the options open to US
Speaker 1: if a nuclear strike were to be carried out against
Speaker 1: the United States would be limited at best and completely
Speaker 1: ineffective at worst. Concern and fear about nuclear war was
Speaker 1: growing as the Cold War continued. Some people like von Neumann,
Speaker 1: felt that a nuclear confrontation was pretty much a guarantee
Speaker 1: at some point in the future. Now it was that
Speaker 1: philosophy that would become a cornerstone of DARPA. But the
Speaker 1: historical event that would really lead to DARPA's founding happened
Speaker 1: on October fourth, nineteen fifty seven. That's when the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite to
Speaker 1: go into orbit around Earth. Sputnik was transmitting a simple
Speaker 1: signal over radio waves, which meant the US didn't have
Speaker 1: to take the Soviets at their word about launching a
Speaker 1: satellite into orbit. They could pick it up themselves. Ham operators,
Speaker 1: even amateur ones, could pick up the beeping transmission as
Speaker 1: the satellite passed overhead. In fact, my old co host
Speaker 1: Chris Palette would refer to spot Nick as the ball
Speaker 1: what beeps. Spot Nik was launched from an intercontinental ballistic
Speaker 1: miss SOUL and ICBM, and while spot Nik was a
Speaker 1: primitive and limited satellite couldn't do much other than transmit
Speaker 1: this signal, it did mean the Soviets would be able
Speaker 1: to launch payloads across the world to hit a distant
Speaker 1: target such as the United States, and those payloads might
Speaker 1: include something like a hydrogen bomb, and the US population
Speaker 1: was beginning to panic. For years, Americans were convinced that
Speaker 1: their country was well ahead of all others scientifically and technologically,
Speaker 1: and in military matters as well. But the Soviets had
Speaker 1: launched a satellite first, and now that belief in America's
Speaker 1: capabilities was shaken, and that anxiety that citizens were feeling
Speaker 1: was shared by branches of the US military. The Air
Speaker 1: Force and the Navy were both developing long range missiles
Speaker 1: that could be used for weapons or for sending payloads
Speaker 1: to space. The American approach to developing this technology was fractured.
Speaker 1: These branches were working independently to varying greece of success,
Speaker 1: whereas in the Soviet Union it was more focused. Although
Speaker 1: changes at the top of the administration level would make
Speaker 1: setbacks happen in that country, but let's focus on the
Speaker 1: United States. So the nationwide anxiety in the in the
Speaker 1: States grew. On December twentieth, nineteen fifty seven, President Eisenhower
Speaker 1: had previously rejected a report that had the title Deterrence
Speaker 1: and Survival in the Nuclear Age, better known as the
Speaker 1: Gaither Report after h Rowan Gaither, one of the people
Speaker 1: who was working on the panel that produced it. This
Speaker 1: report concluded that there was no effective way to protect
Speaker 1: US civilians from a nuclear war in the case of
Speaker 1: an all out strike from the Soviets, and so the
Speaker 1: United States should produce more nuclear warheads to act as
Speaker 1: a deterrent to say, you don't want to attack us,
Speaker 1: because we'll attack you back, and we'll destroy each other.
Speaker 1: This is that mutually assured destruction strategy. The report also
Speaker 1: warned that the Soviet Union was possibly on the verge
Speaker 1: of producing thousands of I c b ms that might
Speaker 1: deliver a nuclear payload across the world, but Eisenhower knew
Speaker 1: that wasn't the case. He knew something the expert panel
Speaker 1: didn't know because he had access to top secret spy
Speaker 1: information from You two spy planes, which were still highly
Speaker 1: classified at that time. No one outside of a small
Speaker 1: group of people knew that they even existed, but Eisenhower didn't.
Speaker 1: He also knew that information from those You two spy
Speaker 1: planes had shown the Soviets were not ramping up for
Speaker 1: an all our assault. They were not building out an
Speaker 1: infrastructure at a furious pace the way the reports suggested.
Speaker 1: So he rejected this report. He said, this, this does
Speaker 1: not reflect reality. But then someone leaked that report to
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, which then published parts of the report,
Speaker 1: and the subsequent articles sent the United States public into
Speaker 1: a panic that made the Spotnik event look tiny in comparison.
Speaker 1: People were freaking out. The president saw the need for
Speaker 1: action on multiple fronts, including in research and design and innovation.
Speaker 1: So he turned to an unlikely hero. He turned to
Speaker 1: the guy who invented soap operas. I'll explain more in
Speaker 1: a second, but first let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. So the person that we often credit
Speaker 1: as being the inventor or the father of the soap
Speaker 1: opera was Neil H. McElroy, who had been president of
Speaker 1: the consumer goods company Proctor and Gamble. He had started
Speaker 1: off in advertising at the company before he rose to
Speaker 1: the role of president, and in his career he made
Speaker 1: several innovative changes in the way the company would market
Speaker 1: to consumers, including creating ads designed to run during daytime television.
Speaker 1: Because his research showed that many women in the United
Speaker 1: States were watching daytime TV, so he decided that each
Speaker 1: product within Procter and Gamble would have its own marketing
Speaker 1: team creating ads aimed at women to air on daytime TV,
Speaker 1: and they would be inserted into shows that would have
Speaker 1: ongoing storylines from show to show soap operas. In other words,
Speaker 1: he directed those teams to uh do this, and they did,
Speaker 1: and he sold a lot of soap. In his own words,
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty seven, just two days after Sputnik went
Speaker 1: into orbit, he was sworn in as the Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense in President Eisenhower's administration, an interesting move to go
Speaker 1: from president of Procter and Gamble to the Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 1: McIlroy proposed that the United States form a new agency
Speaker 1: called the Advanced Research Projects Agency or ARPA. The DARPA
Speaker 1: name would come later, and go and then come back
Speaker 1: again anyway. McIlroy's vision was for an agency that would
Speaker 1: oversee scientific and technological research and development in multiple fields
Speaker 1: and applications, all with an eye towards securing the United
Speaker 1: States as the most technologically advanced and capable country in
Speaker 1: the world. He was advocating that the U s invest
Speaker 1: not just in the immediate crisis of answering the Soviets
Speaker 1: displays of technological capabilities and the uh space race that
Speaker 1: would soon follow, but also to constantly work toward the
Speaker 1: future of innovation, not just to focus on a single
Speaker 1: problem and once that was solved, to finish, but to
Speaker 1: be an ongoing concern. The agency's job was to future
Speaker 1: proof weapons and defense technologies. McIlroy's proposal one support from politicians,
Speaker 1: but it won a lot of criticism from military officers.
Speaker 1: Part of what McIlroy was proposing was using area to
Speaker 1: advance the US's efforts to exploit outer space, and the
Speaker 1: various branches of the armed forces all claimed that that
Speaker 1: was their domain. They didn't want to surrender it. They
Speaker 1: all had their own projects in line, and they were
Speaker 1: worried about money being diverted from their efforts into some
Speaker 1: other one. They were thinking it was all going to
Speaker 1: dilute the field. The Joint chiefs of Staff didn't want
Speaker 1: to see this agency form, but Eisenhower, who himself was
Speaker 1: a former five star general, was out of patients. He
Speaker 1: did not like the constant disagreements between the various military branches,
Speaker 1: or the fact that different branches were independently pursuing similar
Speaker 1: goals but not sharing resources. He felt there was too
Speaker 1: much waste, not enough focused, enough cooperation, and so on
Speaker 1: January seven, nineteen fifty eight, Eisenhower authorized a budget to
Speaker 1: McElroy for the founding of our PA. Now, the initial
Speaker 1: budget for the founding was about ten million dollars, but
Speaker 1: over the course of nineteen fifty nine, the first full
Speaker 1: year of our PA really running projects, it would have
Speaker 1: a budget of more than half a billion dollars, which
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen fifties was an incredible, incredibly huge
Speaker 1: amount of money. It's huge. Now, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: I would not refuse half a billion dollars, but back
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine that was even more of an enormous,
Speaker 1: unimaginably huge sum Eisenhower revealed the need for ARPA to
Speaker 1: the United States and his nine State of the Union address,
Speaker 1: he said, we need an organization dedicated to this pursuit
Speaker 1: of innovation. He laid out the case, and he simultaneously
Speaker 1: casted a lot of shade on the top officials of
Speaker 1: the various military branches. There was a bit of a
Speaker 1: reprimand in that State of the Union address. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: U S Army was preparing to answer the U S
Speaker 1: s RS spot Nick with the launch of the first
Speaker 1: U S satellite called Explorer one. Now, unlike spot Nick,
Speaker 1: which really just orbited the Earth and beeped a lot,
Speaker 1: the Explorer one was packed with instruments meant to do
Speaker 1: some serious research. And the Explorer one would detect the
Speaker 1: Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth, making it the
Speaker 1: first space instrument to produce a major discovery, but Eisenhower
Speaker 1: felt the task of developing, building, launching, and administering space
Speaker 1: missions should not fall to the army, so that would
Speaker 1: be at least initially part of ARPA's domain. To head
Speaker 1: up the new ARPA agency, McElroy would name Roy W.
Speaker 1: Johnson as director. Johnson had been a vice president of
Speaker 1: General Electric, and the deputy director would be Rear Admiral
Speaker 1: John Clark. McIlroy whittled down the list of candidates for
Speaker 1: chief Scientists to two people. One of those two people
Speaker 1: was Herb York, the guy who was part of Edward
Speaker 1: Teller's team. The other was Werner von Brown, the German
Speaker 1: scientist who had been a prominent figure in Germany's rocketry
Speaker 1: program during World War Two. The United States had brought
Speaker 1: Von Brown over as part of Operation paper Clip, in
Speaker 1: which the United States would put to work many former
Speaker 1: Nazi scientists on US projects. Not all those scientists were
Speaker 1: necessarily sympathizers with the Nazis, I should add some of
Speaker 1: them probably were, but not all of them were. But
Speaker 1: all of them ended up being put to work in
Speaker 1: the US, and or at least all the ones that
Speaker 1: the US picked up and Van Brown had a condition
Speaker 1: that if he were to be offered the role of
Speaker 1: Chief Scientists over at ARPA, he also wanted to bring
Speaker 1: over a dozen or so of his peers who had
Speaker 1: been brought over an Operation paper Clip, and ultimately McElroy
Speaker 1: decided that this was probably not a good move for
Speaker 1: the young agency. It might look really bad to have
Speaker 1: a government agency merely completely staffed with former Nazi scientists,
Speaker 1: so he chose to put herb York in the role
Speaker 1: of chief Scientists instead. The two major areas that ARPA
Speaker 1: would initially focus on were military space activities and anti
Speaker 1: missile strategies. Essentially, how can the US rapidly match the
Speaker 1: Soviets capabilities while simultaneously counteracting any possible advantage they might
Speaker 1: have attained over the United States? And it would be
Speaker 1: a good time to talk about how the agency worked
Speaker 1: in general. So our path is not some big, super
Speaker 1: secret laboratory with scientists and engineers pouring out various liquids
Speaker 1: into other various liquids, or running electricity through stuff and
Speaker 1: shouting it's alive. It's more like an RFP and funding operation.
Speaker 1: So an RFP as a request for proposal. It's where
Speaker 1: an organization states a goal that it wants to achieve,
Speaker 1: maybe some general guidelines on how it it assumes this
Speaker 1: goal will be achieved, and then invites qualified organizations or
Speaker 1: individuals to apply to be part of this project, essentially
Speaker 1: to receive funding from our PA in order to pursue
Speaker 1: these goals and to achieve them. So with our path,
Speaker 1: these were proposals to develop technologies that would contribute to
Speaker 1: the defense of the United States in some way, shape
Speaker 1: or form. These r fps can arrange from very specific
Speaker 1: to extremely broad. Our PA tends to work with research facilities, universities,
Speaker 1: and defense contractors a lot. The agency can set parameters
Speaker 1: and collaborate with these parties, but ultimately it exists to
Speaker 1: a minister those programs. And a lot of stuff was
Speaker 1: happening all at once at this time. In fact, this
Speaker 1: episode and the next one in particular, are going to
Speaker 1: have a lot of concurrent things happening. And it's because
Speaker 1: it's very hard to jump around. If I were to
Speaker 1: go just chronologically, I would have to switch gears so
Speaker 1: frequently that it would be Oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: you remember when I was talking about twenty minutes ago
Speaker 1: about such and such, Well, here's what was happening then,
Speaker 1: and I thought that would be too confusing, so instead
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and focus project by project. In general,
Speaker 1: so ARPA was gearing up to develop space technologies and
Speaker 1: an umbrella of programs dedicated to bringing down missiles that
Speaker 1: was called Project Defender that was starting to shape up.
Speaker 1: That would become the biggest project of ARPA at least
Speaker 1: in those early years. But while all that was going on,
Speaker 1: President Eisenhower was also exploring the possible ability of a
Speaker 1: nuclear test ban. The fallout, both literal and figurative, of
Speaker 1: the Castle Operation tests was catastrophic, and things were bound
Speaker 1: to get worse as both the US and the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union continued to build up nuclear arsenals and test nuclear warheads.
Speaker 1: Eisenhower wanted to arrive in an agreement with the USSR
Speaker 1: and with Khrushchev to bring nuclear weapon tests to an end,
Speaker 1: but there was a big concern what if one side
Speaker 1: stuck to the agreement while the other one didn't. How
Speaker 1: could the United States be certain that the Soviets would
Speaker 1: stay true to such an agreement. And so one of
Speaker 1: the big projects that area would launch, in addition to
Speaker 1: the Defender and military space projects, would be called VILA
Speaker 1: v E l A. Now, the purpose of VILA or
Speaker 1: VELA if you prefer, was to create systems that could
Speaker 1: detect a nuclear weapons test. VILA had three sub programs.
Speaker 1: They were codenamed Hotel, Uniform, and Sierra. These programs sought
Speaker 1: to design and build technology that could detect a nuclear
Speaker 1: explosion through atmospheric sensing or seismic sensing, so in other words,
Speaker 1: testing for radioactive isotopes that are perhaps airborne, or looking
Speaker 1: for any tremors in the Earth that could indicate the
Speaker 1: detonation of a nuclear warhead. That way, the United States
Speaker 1: could say, hey, we picked up the evidence that you
Speaker 1: in fact did detonate nuclear war warhead despite the fact
Speaker 1: that we've agreed to this. This test band back to
Speaker 1: space for a second. So ARPA came into being shortly
Speaker 1: before NASA. ARPA NASA both were launched figuratively speaking, the
Speaker 1: same year nineteen. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration became
Speaker 1: official on October one, nineteen fifty eight, so several months
Speaker 1: after ARPA had begun. ARPA, therefore was the agency responsible
Speaker 1: for overseeing the development of space technologies like launch vehicles
Speaker 1: for those first several months, and ARPA began to fund
Speaker 1: programs dedicated to developing different types of rockets. One of
Speaker 1: those was designed from vor von Brown's team. Von Brown
Speaker 1: had led the development of a booster rocket technology that
Speaker 1: his team called the Juno five. This design, which was
Speaker 1: never built as the actual design was made, would find
Speaker 1: itself it's it's design would find itself as the basis
Speaker 1: for future rockets. It was a multi stage approach and
Speaker 1: essentially it evolved into what would become the Saturn launch vehicle.
Speaker 1: In addition to the Juno five program, ARPA authorized the
Speaker 1: development of a liquid oxygen slash hydrogen upper stage rocket.
Speaker 1: This one was called Centaur, and the upper stage design
Speaker 1: would become part of launch vehicles like Atlas the Titan three.
Speaker 1: In the Titan four, it was intended to fly on
Speaker 1: Saturn launch vehicles, but that never actually happened. While ARPA
Speaker 1: began those programs, the agency would eventually transfer them over
Speaker 1: to NASA in nineteen fifty nine as that agency began
Speaker 1: to take on the role of developing the non military,
Speaker 1: civilian US space program. I've got more to say about
Speaker 1: the earliest days of Darba, but before I get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Before
Speaker 1: I jump off the topic of space for a little bit,
Speaker 1: another ARPA initiated project I should mention is the Television
Speaker 1: and Infrared Observations Satellite Program or TYROS t I r
Speaker 1: O S. TYROS would be the prototype satellite for weather reporting, research,
Speaker 1: and forecasting. It grew out of an older Army project
Speaker 1: called Janus, which is making me think of James Bond
Speaker 1: type stuff. But the project was not just about sussing
Speaker 1: out the technology we would need to design and build
Speaker 1: to achieve the goal. It was also about the process
Speaker 1: of bringing together all the pieces that you would need
Speaker 1: to make it happen, which included scientists, engineers, contracting firms,
Speaker 1: federal agencies. So it was a real practical test of
Speaker 1: the administration side of URPA, not just its scientific prowess,
Speaker 1: but how could it bring together all these different components
Speaker 1: to work towards a unified goal. It was really complicated.
Speaker 1: So it's one thing to build brand new technology that
Speaker 1: no one's made before, but it's another to navigate all
Speaker 1: the various bureaucracies in the academic, industrial and political worlds.
Speaker 1: TYROS would become the first weather satellite to be placed
Speaker 1: in orbit, and it happened on April first, nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: It sent back messages as a television signal to a
Speaker 1: ground station at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The mission wasn't
Speaker 1: meant to last a super long time. I want to
Speaker 1: say Tyros was an operation for like seventy six days,
Speaker 1: but in the course of those seventy six days it
Speaker 1: would send back twenty two fifty two images via TV
Speaker 1: signal back to Earth. In addition to transferring the civilian
Speaker 1: based space projects to NASA, ARPA would transfer the military
Speaker 1: projects to the various branches of the U. S Military,
Speaker 1: which of the agency to focus on other programs like
Speaker 1: nuclear test detection technology of the Vela project and the
Speaker 1: anti missile technologies in the Defender project. So in order
Speaker 1: to counteract missiles, first you gotta know where those missiles are.
Speaker 1: So before McElroy and Eisenhower had established ARPA, the President's
Speaker 1: Science Advisory Committee produced a report calling for the need
Speaker 1: for technologies that could detect, track, and identify a large
Speaker 1: number of objects moving at high altitudes and speeds. In
Speaker 1: n ARPA would respond to that need by holding a competition,
Speaker 1: and the goal was to design a two dimensional phased
Speaker 1: array radar that had automatic beam steering control. Now that
Speaker 1: sounds complicated, but the basic idea is actually pretty simple
Speaker 1: to grasp. Radar sends out radio waves and then it
Speaker 1: listens for the returning echoes after the radio waves have
Speaker 1: bounced off something and come back to the transmitting area
Speaker 1: for being received by a new antenna. The timing on
Speaker 1: those echoes you know how long it went out versus
Speaker 1: came back, and the frequency of the returning waves will
Speaker 1: tell the radar operator how far away something is and
Speaker 1: whether it's moving toward or away from the radar station.
Speaker 1: The thing about waves, though, is that you can combine
Speaker 1: them in different ways to either boost the signal in
Speaker 1: certain directions or to cancel out the signal in certain directions.
Speaker 1: Noise canceling headphones do this, so we're going with sound
Speaker 1: waves here instead of radar waves or radio waves, but
Speaker 1: stick with me. Noise canceling headphones will produce sound waves
Speaker 1: that are in one eighty degrees out of phase with
Speaker 1: incoming noise. So if you were to graph out the
Speaker 1: sound waves of the ambient noise in the room, you
Speaker 1: would have peaks and valleys. Right, you've seen sound waves
Speaker 1: or depictions of sound waves before, the noise cancelation technology
Speaker 1: will produce troughs and peaks that are in one degrees
Speaker 1: out of phase, so the peak on one on the
Speaker 1: ambient sound will match up with the trough of the
Speaker 1: sound produced by the noise canceling headphones, and ultimately those
Speaker 1: two opposing waves cancel each other out. The phased array
Speaker 1: would do something similar. You would have a transmitter or
Speaker 1: lots of transmitters actually sending out a signal to a
Speaker 1: series of radar antenna. Between the transmitters and the antenna,
Speaker 1: you would have a phase shifter which can change the
Speaker 1: signal slightly before it gets to the respect of antenna.
Speaker 1: The phase shifters are controlled by a computer, and the
Speaker 1: computer runs calculations so that the phase of the signals
Speaker 1: going to each antenna are such that the computer can
Speaker 1: electronically steer the direction of the radar beams. That eliminates
Speaker 1: the need to actually physically turn the antenna. You don't
Speaker 1: need to mechanically move them at all. Using the physics
Speaker 1: of waves, the computer can strengthen the signal in certain
Speaker 1: directions and eliminate it in others, effectively pointing the beam
Speaker 1: electronically just by tweaking those phases. It's pretty cool. The
Speaker 1: project became known as the Electronically Steered Array Radar or
Speaker 1: s R E s a R. It was a success.
Speaker 1: The Bendix Corporation built it and it was a proven technology.
Speaker 1: Star would lead to the development of the FPS eight
Speaker 1: five and extremely powerful radar that became part of the
Speaker 1: Space Track system overseen by the Air Force. The FPS
Speaker 1: E D five is thirteen stories tall. The radar consists
Speaker 1: of five thousand, one hundred thirty four transmitters, four thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred sixty receivers, five thousand, nine hundred twenty eight
Speaker 1: transmitter antennas. It's truly enormous. Construction on the FPS A
Speaker 1: D five began in nineteen sixty two. It was meant
Speaker 1: to go into operation in nineteen sixty five, but there
Speaker 1: was a fire at the facility that pushed everything back
Speaker 1: and it wasn't ready to go until nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: But it can track up to two hundred objects simultaneously.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty ARPA and the c i A partnered
Speaker 1: to fund another program. This one was called Corona, which
Speaker 1: used to be a top secret classified project that's since
Speaker 1: been declassified. Now it's no surprise as to why it
Speaker 1: used to be top secret. Corona was a series of
Speaker 1: spy satellites. The original Corona satellite was the first imaging
Speaker 1: reconnaissance satellite, meaning it would take actual photographs of the
Speaker 1: areas that would pass over to collect intelligence on behalf
Speaker 1: of the United States. So the idea was you would
Speaker 1: make this satellite. It was only designed to go into
Speaker 1: orbit for a relatively short amount of time, going over
Speaker 1: the Earth maybe a dozen two dozen times, collecting images
Speaker 1: as it goes along, and then ejects a capsule that
Speaker 1: contains the film because it was actually shot on film.
Speaker 1: They used a film camera and have that returned to
Speaker 1: Earth where the United States military officials would retrieve it,
Speaker 1: and then you could go over all the images. So
Speaker 1: the early history of Corona actually predates the founding of
Speaker 1: our PA. The US recognized the need to develop reconnaissance
Speaker 1: satellites in the nineteen fifties. The YOU two spy plane,
Speaker 1: which was effective over much of the world, was not
Speaker 1: as useful when it came to the Soviet Union because
Speaker 1: the USSR had developed high quality radar systems capable of
Speaker 1: picking up the U two. So initially the hope was
Speaker 1: that the YOU two would only be needed for a
Speaker 1: year or so before a satellite solution could take its place,
Speaker 1: because the satellite would pass at an altitude so great
Speaker 1: that radar would probably not be able to pick it up.
Speaker 1: But setbacks and bottlenecks kept all of that from happening quickly,
Speaker 1: and so the YouTube had to stay in operation longer
Speaker 1: than they had intended, including over the USSR and whenever
Speaker 1: soviets would detect a YouTube that would raise danger of
Speaker 1: a confrontation, one that might begin with shooting down a plane,
Speaker 1: possibly end with escalating tensions, and it could potentially result
Speaker 1: in armed conflict. So there was a need to find
Speaker 1: a sneak kere way to spy on people. On May one,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty the U S s R did shoot down
Speaker 1: a YouTube plane, which justified those fears that people had
Speaker 1: had in the fifties. By that time, the Corona project
Speaker 1: had been in development for quite a bit but had
Speaker 1: yet to have a successful flight. Now I could do
Speaker 1: a full episode about Corona in the future. It was
Speaker 1: a fascinating project, but we're gonna skip ahead a little bit.
Speaker 1: So the project had numerous early failures. You had one
Speaker 1: attempt was a misfire on the launchpad. Three attempts failed
Speaker 1: to achieve orbit to went into orbit, but the orbit
Speaker 1: was considered highly eccentric, in other words, not useful. UH.
Speaker 1: One of them prematurely ejected its film capsule, which was
Speaker 1: again meant to res atmosphere for a retrieval uh. But
Speaker 1: there was another one that just the camera failed completely.
Speaker 1: One of them the camera worked for a short while
Speaker 1: but failed nearly immediately afterward. So from teen fifty eight
Speaker 1: until nineteen sixty, the Corona project was a series of
Speaker 1: misfortunes and failures, ranging from near success to total catastrophe.
Speaker 1: This was the case until essentially August of nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: ARPA and the CIA had provided the funds needed to
Speaker 1: push to actual success. So while the project predated Arba,
Speaker 1: ARPA was able to put funds to it to keep
Speaker 1: it going long enough for the team to actually get
Speaker 1: it to work. So in August nineteen sixty, the Discoverer
Speaker 1: thirteen spacecraft was a successful proof of concept. Discoverer, by
Speaker 1: the way, was the public cover name for the Corona
Speaker 1: classified missions, so the United States would admit that it
Speaker 1: was launching a payload into space. It was kind of
Speaker 1: hard to cover that sort of stuff. Up and they
Speaker 1: called it Discoverer, and they claimed it was a scientific
Speaker 1: research satellite, but in fact it was a reconnaissance satellite.
Speaker 1: So the Discoverer thirteen had a successful launch. I guess
Speaker 1: that's ironic that it was thirteen and was lucky. It
Speaker 1: orbited the Earth several times, it ejected its return capsule successfully.
Speaker 1: The return capsule was retrieved, even though it landed hundreds
Speaker 1: of miles away from where they had planned it to go.
Speaker 1: But this particular satellite didn't have a camera aboard. It
Speaker 1: was really just a diagnostic flight to see if the
Speaker 1: tweaks that had been made to the spacecraft would actually work. Uh.
Speaker 1: The hardware was delivered directly to the Smithsonian and the
Speaker 1: well first the President, then the Smithsonian after retrieval, because
Speaker 1: there was no need to cover it up. The secret
Speaker 1: spy stuff hadn't been part of it. So everyone just thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's cool. We shot something up into space and then
Speaker 1: we were able to retrieve it. That would obviously be
Speaker 1: an important component when we get to the point when
Speaker 1: we were ready to send people up there. So everyone
Speaker 1: kind of bought that this was a step toward putting
Speaker 1: people in space. In reality, the Discover fourteen project, the
Speaker 1: one to follow of the first successful flight would be
Speaker 1: the first to capture actual images on a successful launch
Speaker 1: that happened on August eighth, nineteen sixty, It carried a
Speaker 1: twenty pound load of film. It made seventeen orbits of
Speaker 1: the earth, including seven flyovers of Soviet territory, and it
Speaker 1: took numerous images. In fact, it took enough images that
Speaker 1: it produced more than all the YouTube missions that had
Speaker 1: ever flown over the Soviet Union up to that point combined,
Speaker 1: but at a lower resolution. The resolution was somewhere around
Speaker 1: forty feet, meaning that was the smallest it could image,
Speaker 1: so not super sharp pictures. Well, that wraps up this
Speaker 1: first episode about DARPA the origins of DARPA. We have
Speaker 1: tons more to cover, and I hope you will join
Speaker 1: me for the next few shows where we look more
Speaker 1: into the UH, the history and evolution of the agency
Speaker 1: and some of the technologies it was instrumental in pion
Speaker 1: you ring. It's a fascinating thing. I've got a few
Speaker 1: other things I want to talk about. First of all,
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with me, the
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