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The New Space Program

On 1 October 1958, the 170 people in Headquarters gathered in the courtyard of their building, the Dolley Madison House, to hear Glennan proclaim the end of the 43-year-old NACA and the beginning of NASA. The 8000 people, three laboratories (now renamed research centers) and two stations, with a total facilities value of $300 million, and the annual budget of $100 million were transferred intact to NASA. On the same day, by executive order the president transferred to NASA Project Vanguard, its 150-person staff, and remaining budget from the Naval Research Laboratory; lunar probes from the Army; lunar probes and rocket engine programs, including the F-1, from the Air Force; and a total of over $100 million of unexpended funds. NASA immediately delegated operational control of these projects back to the DoD agencies while it put its own house in order.

There followed an intense two-year period of organization, build-up, fill-in, planning, and general catch-up. Only one week after NASA was formed, Glennan gave the go-ahead to Project Mercury, America's first manned spaceflight program. The Space Task Group, headed by Robert R. Gilruth, was established at Langley to get the job done. The new programs brought into the organization were slowly integrated into the NACA nucleus. Many space-minded specialists were drawn into NASA, attracted by the exciting new vistas. Long-range planning was accelerated; the first NASA 10-year plan was presented to Congress in February 1960. It called for an expanding program on a broad front: manned flight, first orbital, then circumlunar; scientific satellites to measure radiation and other features of the near-space environment; lunar probes to measure the lunar space environment and to photograph the moon; planetary probes to measure and to photograph Mars and Venus; weather satellites to improve our knowledge of Earth's broad weather patterns; continued aeronautical research; and development of larger launch vehicles for lifting heavier payloads. Cost of the

program was expected to vary between $1 billion and $1.5 billion a year over the 10-year period.

To conduct such a program, NASA obviously needed capabilities it did not have. To that end Glennan sought to acquire the successful Army team that had launched America's first satellite, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Huntsville, Alabama, and its contractor, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The Army balked at losing the Huntsville group, claiming it was indispensable to the Army's military rocket program. Glennan for the time being had to compromise: ABMA would work on NASA programs as requested. The Army grudgingly gave up JPL. On 3 December 1958, an executive order transferred, effective 31 December, the government-owned plant of JPL and the Army contract with the California Institute of Technology, under which JPL was staffed and operated. Glennan renewed his bid for ABMA in 1959; protracted Army resistance was finally overcome and on 15 March 1960 ABMA's 4000-man Development Operations Division, headed

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1963. This contract facility has been the mainstay of NASA's lunar and planetary programs.

by Wernher von Braun, was transferred to NASA along with the big Saturn booster project.

As the 10-year plan took shape and the capability grew, there were many other gaps to be filled. NASA was going to be markedly different from NACA in two important ways. First, it was going to be operational as well as do research. So, it would not only design and build launch vehicles and satellites but it would launch them, operate them, track them, acquire data from them, and interpret the data. Second, it would do the greater part of its work by contract

rather than in house as NACA had done. The first of these required tracking sites in many countries around the world, as well as construction of facilities: antennas, telemetry equipment, computers, radio and landline communications networks, etc. The second required the development of a larger and more sophisticated contracting operation than NACA had needed. In the first years, NASA leaned heavily on DoD for contracting assistance. Since its industrial contractors would be the same aerospace firms who were already doing extensive business with DoD, this was practical and workable, especially since NASA adopted most of the DoD procurement system.

The problem of launch vehicles occupied much attention in these first years. A family of existing and future launch vehicles had to be structured for the kinds of missions and spacecraft enumerated in the plan. In addition to the existing Redstone, Thor, and Atlas vehicles, NASA would develop:

• Scout, a low-budget solid-propellant booster that could put small payloads in orbit;

⚫ Centaur, a liquid-hydrogen-fueled upper stage, transferred from DoD, that promised higher thrust and bigger payloads for lunar and planetary missions;

• Saturn, which was expected to be flying in 1963 (with the proper upper stages it would put upwards of 23 000 kilograms in Earth orbit);

⚫ Nova, several times the size of Saturn, to be started later in the decade for the more ambitious manned lunar flights anticipated in the 1970s.

In addition, work would continue with the Atomic Energy Commission on the difficult but enormously promising nuclear-propelled upper stage, Nerva, and on the Snap family of long-life electric power producers.

As much as larger boosters were needed, an even more immediate problem was how to improve the reliability of existing boosters. By December 1959 the United States had attempted 37 satellite launches; less than one-third attained orbit. Electrical components, valves, turbopumps, welds, materials, structures— virtually everything that went into the intricate mechanism called a booster-had to be redesigned or strengthened or improved to withstand the stresses of launch. A new order of perfection in manufacturing and assembly had to be instilled in workmen and managers. Rigorous, repeated testing had to verify each component, then subassembly, then total vehicle. That bugaboo of the engineering profession, constant fiddling and changing in search of perfection, had to be constrained in the interest of reliability. And since the existing vehicles were DoD products, NASA had to persuade DoD to enforce these rigorous standards on its contractors.

That was only one of the areas in which close coordination between NASA and DoD was essential and effective. In manned spaceflight, for example, there were essentially four approaches to putting man into space:

⚫ the research airplane-the Air Force and NASA were already well into this program, leading to the X-15;

⚫ the ballistic vehicle-NASA's Project Mercury embodied this approach, with Air Force launch vehicles and DoD support throughout;

⚫ the boost-glider-the Air Force had inaugurated the DynaSoar project (later renamed the X-20) in November 1957. A manned glider would be boosted into shallow Earth orbit, bounce in and out of the top of the atmosphere for part or all of a revolution of the planet, and land like an airplane. In May 1958 NACA had agreed to help with the technical side of the project. NASA continued that support;