This was particularly true where our younger and less experienced pilots were concerned.

By the mid-1940s, Draper's interest was shifted from fire control and he began the all-consuming task of developing the inertial guidance equipments. Applied to both spacecraft and boosters they also became the ship's navigation systems and the guidance systems for the Navy's fleet ballistic missiles and the Air Force's ICBMs. His systems were the prototype for many commercial transport automatic navigation systems as well as those applied to military aircraft.

In August of 1945, Draper had proposed to the Armament Laboratory of the Air Force's engineering activity at Wright-Patterson AFB that he build a "Stellar Bombing System." The report included a statement to the effect that "robotizing the system for use with guided missiles" was feasible. In the postwar euphoria that factor was not emphasized. Khruschev's polemics in the 1950s, which included missile threats, brought renewed attention worldwide to the issues raised by the substance of the debate.

In the background Draper flew a stellar-aided inertial system in the late 1940s and a pure inertial system in 1953. SPIRE, developed by Roger Woodbury, and systems-engineered by Don Atwood at Draper's laboratory, was that revolutionary system. Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, peopled in key positions by a few German refugee scientists and exmilitary engineers, had quietly begun a program which became in time ATLAS. They were impressed with SPIRE's performance but not its rather formidable size. Draper had sold himself and his laboratory to the Convair decision-makers to the extent that he got a small contract to design inertial guidance and control for the evolving Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile using down-sized SPIRE components. When the nation began to gear itself to the ICBM