Approximately 7603 words.

A GLOSSARY OF IDEAS DISCUSSED IN
HERMAN KAHN’S CLASSIC BOOK:
ON THERMONUCLEAR WAR

INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF HOW TWO DAYS OF INNOVATIVE LECTURES GOT INTO BOOK FORMAT AND AROUSED A WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE IN 1960

The pioneering book On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960) by Herman Kahn, the nuclear physicist, strategic thinker, and futurist, is 652 closely reasoned pages. It uses first to last a vocabulary mostly unknown to the public at its time of publication–and not much better comprehended since then. The awesome subject of the book is, in the author’s precise words, “the deterrence and waging of thermonuclear ‘Central Wars’ between the United States and the Soviet Union….” (p. viii) The book’s complex contents have long posed a challenge for interested readers.

This article and the scholarship attached does something to remedy that situation. After an essay on how the book came into existence, it offers an alphabetical listing of terminology, called here a Glossary, which was slowly prepared by one who was closely involved with editing the original Kahn book into published form. Kahn did not prepare the glossary; and he never got to see it. None of it claims to offer ideas original with this author; everything derives from Kahn’s book. The claim here is that the attentive reader should emerge with some familiarity with the nomenclature of thermonuclear war. Continue reading Nomenclature for a Nuclear Age →

Copyrighted 1959. Approximately 19,578 words.

An Introduction to Space, Based on a Pioneering
Scientific Report to the Congress in 1958

A condensation of The RAND Corporation’s volume Space Handbook, prepared for historically minded readers in a new century.

This is a condensation of the pioneering research study Space Handbook, which was researched and written by Robert Buckheim and other scientists and engineers of The RAND Corporation. It was first crafted early in 1958 in classified form as RM-2289-RC for the Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration of the United States House of Representatives (which was then drafting the National Aeronautics and Space Act). In slightly revised form it was published by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D. C. in 1959.   It became a hardcover book issued by Random House (1959). The original report and book contained many tabulations, diagrams, tables, and engineering renderings.

This condensation for the general public was drafted in the year 1959 by Vaughn Davis Bornet, who was then a recently employed staff member of RAND Administration.   The original 239 page fine print version (301 as illustrated in the book) was reduced to 70 typed pages. The author of each chapter was required to read his portion of the manuscript and sign off on it as a completely accurate summary. (Most of them acquiesced with patient resignation.) Although put in line to be published for a non-specialized audience (finally, with internal order L-23982 of December 11, 1962), it somehow got detoured. The author treasured his handwritten original and kept a clean copy of the final manuscript, expecting ultimate publication. The RAND Corporation is now permitting the condensed version to be published on a nonprofit basis.

Here we have a rendering for the general reader of the scientific and engineering space knowledge of that point in time. The purpose of the entire Space research enterprise, wrote RAND president Frank R. Collbohm to the Congressional Committee in his letter of December 1, 1958 was “the development and accomplishment of a vigorous, adequate astronautics and space exploration program” for the United States. Continue reading When the Space Race Began →