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Untitled 17
I
can recall watching the sunlight reflect off of Sputnik as it passed over my home on
the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, Dr. Robert R. Gilruth recalled to the audience at the Sixth
International History of Astronautics Symposium meeting in Vienna, Austria, in 1972. It put
a new sense of value and urgency on the things we had been doing. When one month later the
dog, Laika, was placed in orbit in Sputnik II, I was sure that the Russians were planning for
man-in-space.
1
The American response grew from an unusual concatenation of eventsa
Russian satellite and a dog in orbit, a NACA Pilotless Aircraft Research program, the presence
of a large assemblage of German rocket scientists in Huntsville, Alabama, and the sudden
unemployment of a Canadian fighter production team. Congress, with NACA/NASA
assistance, provided leadership in devising the manned space programs and set the stage for
the bold scheme to land an American on the Moon.
In the summer of 1958, as Congress deliberated space legislation, Dr. Hugh Dryden,
NACAs Director, called Gilruth and Abe Silverstein, the director of the Lewis Research
Center, to Washington to begin formulating a spaceflight program. Silverstein and Gilruth
shuttled back and forth from their home offices, usually spending four or five days a week in
Washington. For several months, Silverstein noted later, Gilruths interests had quickly moved
in the direction of manned spaceflight.
2
Gilruth assembled a small group of associates and advisors, including Max Faget, Paul
Purser, Charles W. Mathews, and Charles H. Zimmerman of the Langley Laboratory; Andre
Meyer, Scott Simpkinson, and Merritt Preston of the Lewis Laboratory; and many others on an
as needed basis. He brought in George Low and Warren North from Lewis and Charles
Donlan from Langley to help polish the plan in the late summer. The product of these intensive
sessions was much more than an organizational format for a work project; it was an
engineering design for putting an American in space. As Gilruth said, we came up with all of
the basic principles of Project Mercury, including a pressurized capsule with a blunt face and
a conically shaped afterbody containing a contour-shaped couch, to be launched variously by
an Atlas or a Redstone, and including a special cluster design proposed by Paul Purser and
Max Faget, to be called the Little Joe, to test an emergency escape device and a water-
landing parachute system.
3
Congress, meanwhile, was deliberating the Eisenhower administrations legislation,
introduced by Lyndon B. Johnson and Senator Styles Bridges, calling for the creation of
NASA. Hearings were being conducted before the Senate Select Committee on Space and
Astronautics, chaired by Johnson, and the House Select Committee on Aeronautics and Space
Exploration, chaired by Congressman John W. McCormack.
In July 1958 before final approval of the NASA legislation, Gilruth, with Silverstein and
Dryden, presented the concept for manned spaceflight to Dr. James R. Killian (Scientific
Advisor to the President) and the Presidents Scientific Advisory Board. Gilruth and Dryden
subsequently appeared before the House Select Committee on Aeronautics and Space
Exploration, which began hearings on August 1, and explained the manned spaceflight
CHAPTER 2: The Commitment to Space Suddenly Tomorrow Came . . .
18
initiative. Concurrent with the approval of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958,
the House created a standing committee on science and astronautics on July 21, headed by
Congressman Overton Brooks of Louisiana. Subcommittees included a committee on
Scientific Training and Facilities headed by George P. Miller of California, a Subcommittee
on Scientific Research and Development headed by Olin E. Teague of Texas, a
Subcommittee on International Cooperation chaired by Victor L. Anfuso of New York, and a
Subcommittee on Space Problems and Life Sciences under Congressman B.F. Sisk of
California. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act
on July 29. Although the act referred to manned and unmanned space vehicles, it by no
means specified that the American or NASA activities in space necessarily involved
placing men or women in space. Not all were convinced (nor would be as the years passed)
that a space program and putting humans into space were necessarily synonymous.
Nevertheless, in those first weeks following approval of the act, Silverstein and Gilruth urged
Dryden to create a special task group to implement a manned spaceflight program.
4
That the American response to Sputnik should literally be to put an American in space
did not reflect prevailing public opinion or the conventional wisdom of the aeronautical,
scientific or military communities. Even among NACA/NASA personnel, many, including
senior people, believed that the projected manned spaceflight program was an overreaction at
best, a stunt at worst, and necessarily temporary in either event. The conventional wisdom
was more closely aligned to the idea that manned spaceflight was very premature and could
develop only after the technology evolved from unmanned spacecraft. Moreover, many
Americans still possessed some innate
disaffection for things mechanical, or
robotic, that had to do with the further
intrusion of machines in the garden of
American life or, more so, into the
heavens. Flight in any dimension was
something some Americans had had
difficulty with since the days of the Wright
brothers. Despite their reservations and
skepticism, Americans had an equally
strong, but ambivalent fascination with the
machine. Space vehicles, if such were to
be, clearly needed the benign control of the
human hand. Although totally unrelated to
the in-house NACA/NASA deliberations, a
feature article by a prominent political
leader in a prominent engineering journal
reinforced the arguments in support of
manned space vehicles.
In Congress, Senator Lyndon Johnson
had become an advocate of a broader
understanding of the new Space Age. The
August edition of the American Engineer
Lyndon Johnson knew intuitively that space was not
simply something out there, but something
intimately associated with the quality of life on
Earth. He believed space was the first new physical
frontier to be opened since the American West. 19
The Commitment to Space
featured an article by Lyndon Johnson, who stressed that America was badly underestimating
the Space Age. Although security had been our first concern, and properly so, Johnson
suggested that the overwhelming focus on satellites and missiles missed the point. The
ultimate [purpose] of space vehicles is the transport of man through outer space near or to the
Moon, some of the planets, perhaps even to other galaxies. . . . Whatever the date, manned
space vehicles will bewhen they comefar less of a detail, far more a pinnacle of accom-
plishment than we now think. The Space Age, Johnson said, will have an impact of the
greatest force on how we live and work. We are underestimating the meaning of this whole
new dimension of human experience. We have entered a new frontier, he said, the first new
physical frontier to be opened since the American West.
5
Affairs now moved very quickly.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Dr. T. Keith Glennan as the first Adminis-
trator of NASA, and Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, who had headed NACA, to be Deputy Administrator.
They assumed their posts on August 19. Glennan, born in Enderlin, North Dakota, in 1905,
earned a degree in electrical engineering from Yale University in 1927. His first employment
was in the new sound movie industry, before joining Electrical Products Research Company,
a subsidiary of Western Electric. He became involved primarily in administration rather than
research, at times heading divisions of Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Vega
Airlines. During World War II, Glennan joined the Columbia University Division of War
Research and soon became director of the Navys Underwater Sound Laboratories at New
London, Connecticut. He became president of Case Institute of Technology in 1947 and
elevated it into the ranks of the top engineering schools in the Nation. He served as a member
of the Atomic Energy Commission between 1950 and 1952. The Space Act declared that
NACA shall cease to exist . . . , and Glennan announced its close on September 30 and the
beginning of NASA on October 1. It is a time of metamorphosis, he said, . . . it is an
indication of the changes that will occur as we develop our capacity to handle the bigger job
that is ahead . . . We have one of the most challenging assignments that has ever been given to
modern man.
6
A few days after NASA became operational, Max Faget, Warren North, Dr. S.A.
Batdorf, and Paul Purser went to Huntsville and spent an intensive 2 days discussing with
Wernher von Braun and some 30 other engineers and military officers the participation of the
Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) and Redstone in the launch of a manned capsule. On
October 7, Glennan, Dryden, and Roy Johnson, Director of the Armys Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA), heard Gilruths final proposal for manned spaceflight that had been
approved by a joint NASA/ARPA committee, and which essentially reflected the summer
work of Gilruths task group. Within two hours, Gilruth said, we had approval of th