Page "Space Race" Paragraph 19

Initially, President Eisenhower was worried that a satellite passing above a nation at over, might be construed as violating that nation's sovereign airspace.

He was concerned that the Soviet Union would accuse the Americans of an illegal overflight, thereby scoring a propaganda victory at his expense.

Eisenhower and his advisors believed that a nation's airspace sovereignty did not extend into outer space, acknowledged as the Kármán line, and he used the 1957 – 58 International Geophysical Year launches to establish this principle in international law.

Eisenhower also feared that he might cause an international incident and be called a " Warmonger " if he were to use military missiles as launchers.

Therefore he selected the untried Naval Research Laboratory's Vanguard rocket, which was a research-only booster.

This meant that von Braun's team was not allowed to put a satellite into orbit with their Jupiter-C rocket, because of its intended use as a future military vehicle.

On 20 September 1956, von Braun and his team did launch a Jupiter-C that was capable of putting a satellite into orbit, however the launch was used only as a suborbital test of nose cone reentry technology.

Had von Braun's team been allowed to orbit a satellite in 1956, the Space Race might have been over before it gained sufficient momentum to yield real benefits.