WORLD-CIRCLING SPACESHIPS: How the RAND Corporation Envisioned the Satellite (1946).

 The May 2, 1946 memo with the preliminary design concepts

Mental Floss article at The Rand Corporation: The Think Tank That Controls America (mentalfloss.com)

Download the "Plans" for free here: Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship | RAND

The RAND Corp. - think tank -  was the child of General "Hap" Good and the CEO of Douglas Aircraft as they considered the vast mental resources of the MANHATTAN PROJECT being wasted as the war ended.

Identified as a non-profit organization its roots were with the military and the industrial complex grown large through the vast national war effort. A power block that later President Eisenhower would warn the American people against as he left office. The potentials for misuse of all that research, loss of that brain power, and the encouragement of continued 'out of the box' thinking was a tremendous lure and temptation. America had grown into a "Might" as it answered the challenges in a global conflict but he was also aware that might did not always equate with right. 

The great issue facing everyone in those days was the development of weapons and projects devoid of ethical or moral compasses. The embodiment of adopting methods and rationales out of step with both of those in a form of "fighting fire with fire."  In becoming a world power, there was the great risk we would lose our souls.

Fear, paranoia, and unguided science paved a way for the American people to one day gaze into the Abyss and see ourselves reflected. 

The old saw about being "able to do something did not mean that was something that should be done" was alive and well in a ethical and moral desert of post-WW2.  War (with its suspicions, paranoia, and hate) was the devil we knew and so we continued to dance into the future with that partner.