Chapter 5

Specifications for a Manned Satellite

(October - December 1958)

"All right. Let's get on with it !"

These were the informal words of leadership that launched the development of the United States' first manned space flight program. They were spoken by T. Keith Glennan, newly appointed first Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, following a briefing by eight civil service aeronautical engineers who felt ready to become "astronautical engineers." This was exactly a year and three days after national debate and preliminary planning had been precipitated by Sputnik I. Glennan's words symbolized the firm resolution of the Congress, the Eisenhower administration, and the American people to accept the challenge of nature, technology, and the Soviet Union to explore the shallows of the universe.¹

By the first anniversary of Earth's first artificial satellite, Americans generally seemed willing, if not eager, to accept the rationale of scientific experts and engineering enthusiasts that the new ocean of space could now and should now be explored by man in person. The human and the physical energies necessary for man to venture beyond Earth's atmosphere had become, for the first time in the history of this planet, available in feasible form. These energies only needed transformation by organization and development to transport man into the beyond.

If these were the articles of faith behind the first American manned satellite program, they had not been compelling enough to spark action toward space flight before the Sputniks. Public furor was inspired primarily not by the promise of extending aeronautics and missilery into astronautics, but rather by the nationalistic fervor and punctured pride caused by the obviously spectacular Soviet achievements. Faith, fervor, and even some fear were perhaps necessary if the American democracy was to embark on a significant space program. But the people most directly concerned with mobilizing the men and the technology to accomplish manned orbital flight had first to organize themselves.

A Manned Satellite Plan

The establishment of an organization to carry through a manned space flight program depended upon gaining the national decision to create a space agency and then upon defining the objectives of the space agency as a whole and of its highest priority programs in particular. In July 1958 legislative debate had ended in the passage of the National Aeronautics and Space Act. In August administrative power struggles had abated with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's appointments and Senate confirmation of the administrative heads of the new space agency. By September the technical and jurisdictional questions remaining to be solved for an operational manned satellite program had been removed from the open forum by their assignment to the Joint NASA-ARPA Manned Satellite Panel. When Glennan proclaimed that the demise of NACA and the birth of NASA would take effect at the close of business on September 30, 1958, there was reason to suppose that a preliminary organization of the nation's space program was well in hand. But in Washington there was no clear commitment to the precise size or priority of the manned program within NASA, because NASA itself was as yet only a congeries of transferred people, facilities, and projects.²

Earlier attempts to coordinate interservice and interagency plans and procedures for putting a man in space had been ineffectual. During the middle of September, Glennan and Roy W. Johnson, Director of Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), had come to agree on the bare outline of a joint program for a manned orbital vehicle based on the ballistic capsule idea. A month earlier, Hugh L. Dryden, the veteran Director of the NACA, and Robert R. Gilruth, Assistant Director of Langley Aeronautical Research Laboratory, had informed Congressional committees of their plans for a manned capsule and had requested $30 million to proceed with the work. But only when the Joint Manned Satellite Panel was established by executive agreement between NASA and ARPA in mid-September 1958 did plans and proposals begin to jell into a positive course of action.³

Of the eight members of this steering committee, only two were from ARPA. Six had come from NACA and were the principal policy makers who laid down the guidelines and objectives for the first manned space flight program. This group began to meet almost continuously in late September in an effort to establish preliminary plans and schedules for the manned satellite project. Thousands of scientists and engineers over past years made possible their outline report, entitled "Objectives and Basic Plan for the Manned Satellite Project." But technical liaison between military and civilian groups on the immediate working levels provided the specific data for the outline drawn up by this panel: ⁴

I. OBJECTIVES

The objectives of the project are to achieve at the earliest practicable date orbital flight and successful recovery of a manned satellite, and to investigate the capabilities of man in this environment.

II. MISSION

To accomplish these objectives, the most reliable available boost system will be used. A nearly circular orbit will be established at an altitude sufficiently high to permit a 24-hour satellite lifetime; however, the number of orbital cycles is arbitrary. Descent from orbit will be initiated by the application of retro-thrust. Parachutes will be deployed after the vehicle has been slowed down by aerodynamic drag, and recovery on land or water will be possible.

III. CONFIGURATION

A. Vehicle

The vehicle will be a ballistic capsule with high aerodynamic drag. It should be statically stable over the mach number range corresponding to flight within the atmosphere. Structurally, the capsule will be designed to withstand any combination of acceleration, heat loads, and aerodynamic forces that might occur during boost and reentry of successful or aborted missions.

The document outlined generally the life support, attitude control, retrograde, recovery, and emergency systems and described the guidance and tracking, instrumentation, communications, ground support, and test program requirements.

In only two and one-half pages of typescript, the "Objectives and Basic Plan" for the manned satellite were laid out for the concurrence of the Director of ARPA and the Administrator of NASA during the first week of October 1958. Verbal elucidations of accompanying charts, tables, and diagrams, plus scale models brought along from Langley Field, successfully sold this approach for putting man into orbit. Although the Air Force, Army, and Navy, as well as numerous aviation industry research teams, also had plans that might have worked equally well, the Nation could afford only one such program. The simplest, quickest, least risky, and most promising plan seemed to be this one.⁵

The fact that the Joint Manned Satellite Panel was "loaded" six to two in favor of NASA reflected the White House decision that ARPA would assist NASA rather than comanage the project. The plans of the panel gave the appearance of unanimity among aeronautical engineers on how to accomplish manned orbital flight. Keith Glennan and Roy Johnson were impressed by this consensus but they refrained from making public their commitments for several more months. The tacit agreement among the panel members that no basic technical or scientific problems remained to be solved before moving into development and flight test would be tested by industrial response to the basic plan. If previous research had been sufficiently thorough to allow NASA to begin immediately applying engineering knowledge for the achievement of orbital flight, then the panel's judgment of the state of the art should be confirmed by the aircraft companies. Only Alfred J. Eggers wished to be placed on record as favoring concurrent development of a lifting reentry vehicle.⁶

The panel recommended three types of flight testing programs. First, development tests should verify the components of the manned satellite vehicle "to the point where they consistently and reliably perform satisfactorily, and provide design criteria by measuring loads, heating, and aerodynamic stability derivatives during critical portions of the flight." Second, qualification flight tests should determine suitability of the complete vehicle to perform its specified missions. Third, training and pilot performance flight tests should validate man's "potential for the specified missions."

In this program, all three types of tests will be made with full-scale articles. These tests will be initiated at low velocities, altitudes and loads. They will progress with a buildup in severity of these conditions until the maximum mission is reached. In general, development tests will be completed, followed by qualification tests, and pilot performance and training tests. However, there will be some overlap as the severity of conditions are built up in the flight test program. The number and type of pilot performance and training flights will be determined as the program develops.⁷

Although the conceptual design and the operating philosophy for the manned satellite program were remarkably firm at the time of authorization, specific technical difficulties in development could not be pinpointed in advance. The people who would have to solve them were only then being identified and appointed to their individual jobs. At NACA Headquarters in Washington, Hugh Dryden had presided during the summer over the metamorphosis of NACA into NASA. An established scientist and a proven technical executive, Dryden had been a logical choice if not for the Administrator, then for Deputy Administrator, the second highest position within the space agency. He must decide how many and who should move to Washington to manage the administrative side and to oversee the engineering work. What proportion of effort and funds should NASA spend on developing manned, as opposed to unmanned, spacecraft and rockets? On whom should the immediate responsibility for technical direction of the manned satellite program be put? Where should the locus for ground control of manned space flight operations be placed?

The People In Charge

Glennan and Dryden decided many questions of appointment quite naturally by allowing informal working arrangements to become formal. Glennan's fellow Clevelander, Abe Silverstein, Associate Director of NACA's Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory, was appointed Director of Space Flight Development. Silverstein had been the technical director of research at Lewis since 1949 and had worked closely with Dryden since March and with Glennan since August in planning the early organization of NASA.⁸ As reflected by his title, manned programs per se were supposed to occupy only about one-third of Silverstein's time. He brought with him from Cleveland three other scientist-administrators of demonstrated talents to handle most of his staff work concerning the manned satellite program, which then was a minor portion of Silverstein's responsibility compared with his concerns over propulsion development. Newell D. Sanders became Silverstein's Assistant Director for Advanced Technology. But the primary relations between Washington and the field activities for manned space flight development were to be handled by George M. Low, who eventually became chief of an Office of Manned Space Flight, and Warren J. North, a former NACA test pilot who at first headed an Office of Manned Satellites, then of Space Flight Programs. Dryden and Glennan depended heavily upon Silverstein and his aides for the technical review and supervision of the division of labor among the various NASA field centers. But the locus of manned space flight preparations remained with the small group of Langley and Lewis personnel under Gilruth, the group that had zealously researched, planned, and designed what was to become Project Mercury.

Dryden desired to conserve the character of the three primary NACA centers as national laboratories specializing as necessary in applied and advanced research for aeronautics and astronautics. Glennan agreed to assign the large new development and operational programs to distinct, or at least reorganized, groups of people. The directors of the Langley, Ames, and Lewis Research Centers should continue their aeronautical and missile work with a minimum of disturbance while expanding the proportion of their research devoted to space. NASA Headquarters personnel, temporarily located in the Dolley Madison House, across Lafayette Square from the White House, should be able to coordinate agency-wide activities without too much interference in the high degree of local autonomy at the research laboratories near airfields in Virginia, California, and Ohio.

With the birth of NASA all the former NACA laboratories had their names changed. Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, from 1920 until 1940 the first and only research lab for NACA, became on October 1, 1958, the Langley Research Center. Located on the Virginia peninsula, across Hampton Roads from Norfolk, the Langley laboratories flanked one side of old Langley Field, one of the pioneer U.S. military airfields; for 10 years now the Air Force had called it the Langley Air Force Base. NASA's 700 acres there contained buildings and hangars more permanent and other structures more unusual than were normally found at military airfields. On opposite edges of the runways, about 3,000 civilians in 1958 worked at facilities worth more than $150 million. About 700 of these people were professional engineers and self-made scientists whose major tools were 30 different wind tunnels. Also they had experimental models, operating aircraft, shops, and laboratories for chemistry, physics, electronics, and hydrodynamics.⁹

As a national aeronautical laboratory Langley supported little if any "pure" or "basic" science, in the sense of independent individual investigations in pursuit of knowledge as opposed to utility. But it had long provided a world-renowned institutional setting for "applied science." Both research and development were carried on there without prejudice.¹⁰

Now that the "sky" was to be redefined in terms of "aerospace," man's mastery of dimensions at least five times higher than he had ever flown required radically new social as well as technological inventions. Silverstein was asked by Dryden to help Gilruth create an entirely new management organization, composed primarily of Langley personnel, without disrupting other work in progress. The Director of Langley Research Center, Henry J. E. Reid, was on the verge of retirement, and responsibility for administering Langley had devolved to Floyd L. Thompson. Neither Reid nor Thompson was close enough to the manned satellite working level, where events were moving so rapidly, to assume charge of the special organization taking shape there.

The project director of the manned satellite program should therefore be the man who had already directed it through its gestation period - Robert R. Gilruth. As Assistant Director of Langley and the former chief of the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD), he had long nurtured Maxime A. Faget and his associates, the conceptual designers of the NACA manned satellite. After the consolidation of professional consensus at Langley behind the Faget plan in March 1958, Dryden and his Washington associates Ira H. Abbott and John W. Crowley, Jr., had given Gilruth authority to get underway.¹¹

Gilruth had come to Langley after earning his master's degree in aeronautical engineering at the University of Minnesota under Professor Jean Piccard in 1936. He had been a leader in research during the development of transonic and supersonic aircraft, becoming the man in charge of structures, dynamic loads, and pilotless aircraft studies at Langely in 1952. During the decade of guided missile development, Gilruth had served on some six scientific advisory committees for the military services and for NACA. His eminence was widely recognized both as a scientist-engineer and as a research administrator. Furthermore, he was eager to continue his leadership of the vigorous group of younger engineers working with Faget.¹²

As soon as Gilruth and Faget returned with Glennan's verbal approval "to implement the manned satellite project," Thompson, acting director of Langley, began making arrangements to establish in separate facilities at the Unitary Wind Tunnel Building the self-appointed group already working on space flight. Charles J. Donlan, Technical Assistant to the Director of Langley, was asked to serve as Assistant Project Manager. Under Gilruth and Donlan, 33 Langley personnel, 25 of these engineers (14 of them from PARD), were officially transferred on November 5, 1958, to form the nucleus of a separate organization to be called the Space Task Group.¹³

Although the new Task Group was responsible directly to Washington, its initial composition and actions were left largely to local initiative. The Langley group had anticipated by two months the official actions and had discussed organization of a "Manned Ballistic Satellite Task Group." Called by some of its secretaries the "Space Task Force," it had acquired 10 to 15 men from Lewis Research Center when Silverstein in July had directed them to commute to Langley to aid in working out detailed designs for structure, thermal protection, and instrumentation in the program. This informal Langley-Lewis working arrangement gradually integrated and expanded as the Space Task Group took shape through the following year.¹⁴

Gilruth's authorization gave him two hats: one as project manager of the Space Task Group, and the other - announced May 1, 1959 - as assistant director of a new NASA "space projects center" to be located near Greenbelt, Maryland, about 15 miles northeast of the Nation's capital. In Washington, Dryden and Silverstein were making plans for this space development facility to accommodate the NASA inheritance of Project Vanguard and about 150 of its personnel, transferred from the Naval Research Laboratory. Such a facility might easily double as an operations control center. At this time the scientific and operational aspects of manned satellites appeared to complement the tracking network and instrumentation for the Vanguard satellites. So as soon as the building could be constructed on an agricultural experimental farm at Beltsville, Maryland, the Space Task Group would move there. In the interim Langley would continue to furnish lodging and logistic support while a space flight operations center was being built. All this was to change about two years later when it became apparent that the scope, size, and support for manned space endeavors called for an entirely separate center.¹⁵

Everyone connected with the Space Task Group in the first several months of its existence was too busy preparing and mailing specifications, briefing prospective contractors, and evaluating contractor proposals to take much interest in organization charts. A kind of executive committee, forming around Gilruth and Donlan during November and December, gradually organized itself along functional lines. Gilruth and Donlan, Faget and Paul E. Purser, Charles W. Mathews, and Charles H. Zimmerman formed the core of this first executive council. Other senior NACA engineers on the original STG personnel list, men like Aleck C. Bond, Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., Howard C. Kyle, George F. MacDougall, Jr., and Harry H. Ricker, Jr., also played important roles in the initial formulation of the technological plan of attack.

Of the 35 members of the original group from Langley, only eight provided administrative or clerical services. Thus, with the 10 additional-people from the Lewis laboratory, Gilruth and Donlan had 35 scientist-engineers to assign to specific technical problems. Those 14 who came directly from PARD continued working on implementing their designs, as they had been doing for almost a year. Five men came from the Flight Research Division of Langley, two came from the Instrument Research Division, two from the Stability Research Division, and one each from the Dynamic Loads and Full-Scale Tunnel Research Divisions. Some of these, men like William M. Bland, Jr., John P. Mayer, Robert G. Chilton, Jerome B. Hammack, Jack C. Heberlig, William T. Lauten, Jr., and Alan B. Kehlet, had made substantial professional investments in the space flight program at a time when this was still some risk to their careers. Being a Buck Rogers buff was not yet quite respectable.¹⁶

From Glennan's approval of the project until the formal establishment of the Space Task Group on November 5, and indeed for some months later, it was by no means certain how much support and what priority the manned satellite program might receive. Some NACA careerists were hesitant to join an operation that might easily prove abortive. So far Gilruth had no specified billets to fill nor any public, formal mandate from Headquarters. He and Silverstein worked together very closely through the shuttle service of George Low on Silverstein's staff, who divided his time between Washington and STG. The hectic early days, cluttered and confused, made the future of the Task Group appear less than certain. Although NASA Headquarters had received from ARPA and allocated to Langley the necessary funds to get started, NASA seemed to prefer the science programs it had inherited along with instrumented satellites. The Space Task Group wanted full and explicit support of the development engineering necessary for a manned satellite. But the members did not let lack of documented clarity from the policy level dampen their enthusiasm or activity. Throughout October, trips and conferences by key personnel verified at the working level and in the field what could and could not be done to implement policy planning in Washington. To many of the younger engineers under Gilruth, NASA's initial organizational confusion offered opportunity for initiative at the local level to accomplish more than directives from Headquarters in getting an American into orbit.¹⁷

In order to avoid the danger of converting the Langley Research Center into Langley "Research and Development" Center, Dryden insisted that the Space Task group should be separated from the mother institution and attached to the Beltsville Center. Some Langley engineers welcomed the opportunity to participate in a full-fledged development program; others, more research-oriented, abhorred the idea. In managing the Space Task Group, Gilruth had to reconcile these attitudes, to recruit talent and screen zeal, and to create an organization capable of developing into hardware what had been conceived in research.

"Aerospace" Technology

One of the scientific questions of the International Geophysical Year that had to be answered before the orbital mechanics of a manned satellite could be specified in detail was: where precisely does Earth's atmosphere end? By late 1958 the aeromedical fraternity, following Hubertus Strughold's lead, had accepted the conceptual outlines of "space-equivalent altitudes," with refined definitions of the "aeropause," as a general biological guide to answer a slightly different question: where does space begin? But upper-atmospheric studies, based on the actual behavior of the six or eight known artificial satellites plus the data gained from a few rocket probes and about 100 comparable sounding rockets and balloons, were neither definite enough nor codified well enough to plan the precise height at which man should first orbit Earth.¹⁸

The NASA/ARPA mission specification of a circular orbit to be achieved by "the most reliable available boost system … at an altitude sufficiently high to permit a 24-hour satellite lifetime" (before the natural decay, or degradation, of the original orbit because of slight but effective upper-atmospheric friction) had carefully avoided a commitment to either a booster or an orbital altitude. The Space Task Group proceeded on the assumption that both apogee and perigee of the manned ballistic satellite should be within the rough limits of 100±25 miles high. The Task Group chose 100 statute miles (87 nautical miles) as the nominal average altitude to ensure a full-Earth-day lifetime for the one-ton manned moonlet.

The outer limits of Earth's atmosphere, where it blends in equilibrium with the solar atmosphere or plasma, seemed around 2,000 miles, and the "edge" of the outer ionospheric shell was thought to be perhaps 4,000 miles above sea level, but these were irrelevant parameters for orbit selections. ICBM performance data at that time made it certain that the "most reliable available boost system" could not boost a 2,200-pound ballistic capsule even to the 400-or-so-mile "floor" of the Van Allen belt.¹⁹

The Atlas ICBM was still "the most reliable available boost system"; there was as yet no viable alternative booster. All preliminary hardware planning had been based on the assumption that the Atlas would prove its power and prowess very soon. The NACA nucleus of NASA was composed for the most part of aeronautical engineers, airplane men not yet expert with missiles and rockets. Few of them at first fully realized how different were the flight regimes and requirements for the technology of flight without wings.

Since World War II winged guided missiles or pilotless drone airplanes had given way to rocket-propelled ballistic projectiles; by 1958 the industrial base and engineering competence for missilery had matured separately from and tangentially to the aviation industry.²⁰ If the manned satellite program were to become the first step for sustained manned space flight, a new synthesis between science and engineering and a new integration between the aircraft and missile industries would be necessary. "Space science" and "aerospace technology," terms already made popular by the Air Force, were now in the public domain, but their meanings were vague and ambiguous so long as they held so little operational content. Silverstein, Crowley, and Albert F. Siepert, the men who became the first executive directors of the top three "line offices" of NASA Headquarters, indubitably had their debates on programming operations for NASA and the Nation. But on the need for new syntheses and reintegrations of established disciplines and industries there could be no debate. NASA's legal mandate to coordinate and to contract for cooperative development "of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles" was second only to its first objective in the Space Act, expanding "human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space."²¹

The complex prehistory of NASA and the manned satellite program began to impinge on NASA policy. It affected project planners as soon as they set forth their intention to put a man into orbit. Industrial and military investments in feasibility studies to this same goal had been heavy. The Space Task Group decided in mid-October to withdraw from all contacts with industrial contractors while finishing its preliminary specifications for the manned satellite capsule. STG thus avoided any accusations of favoritism, but lost about two months in time before it was able to acquire the latest classified and proprietary studies and designs by other organizations.

Three most pertinent examples of industrial research going on concurrently with government research and leading up to seminal proposals for manned satellite specifications were those studies being conducted by the Convair/Astronautics Division (CV/A) of the General Dynamics Corporation in conjunction with the Avco Manufacturing Corporation, studies by the General Electric Company in conjunction with North American Aviation, Inc., and those by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation. The CV/A-Avco proposal to the Air Force in April 1958 for a spherical drag-braked manned satellite was followed by more reports by CV/A in June and November, and these proved that the builders of the Atlas were exploring every avenue for civilian uses of their booster rocket. Convair men like Karel J. Bossart, Mortimer Rosenbaum, Charles S. Ames, Frank J. Dore, Hans R. Friedrich, Byron G. MacNabb, F. A. Ford, Krafft A. Ehricke, and H. B. Steele had a continuing interest in seeing their fledgling weapons carrier converted into a launch vehicle for manned space flight, either with or without an upper stage.

At NASA Headquarters, Abe Silverstein decided early in November to formalize his earlier approval of Faget's plan for the "bare Atlas." On that basis a formal bidders' briefing for the capsule contract was planned for November 7. Only after mid-December, when all the proposals were in, did STG learn how great had been other industrial investments in research for a manned ballistic satellite.²²

Although the Atlas airframe, design, and systems integration had all grown directly out of Convair engineering development, the liquid-fueled rocket engines for the Atlas, as well as for the Redstone, Jupiter, and Thor missiles, were all products of the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation, Inc. Hence North American, when teamed with another corporate giant, General Electric, appeared also to be a prime contender for the manned satellite contract. The Space Task Group was only dimly aware at this time of the specifications that had emerged from North American and General Electric as proposals for the Air Force's "Man-in-Space-Soonest" studies, but it did know at least that its own ballistic capsule plan was at variance with the "high lift over drag" thinking at North American.²³

Back in May 1957, five months before Sputnik I, James S. McDonnell, Jr., the founder and president of a growing aircraft corporation bearing his name, gave an address at an engineering school commencement ceremony. He predicted a speculative timetable for astronautics that placed the achievement of the first manned Earth satellite, weighing four tons and costing one billion dollars, between the years 1990 and 2005 A.D. One year later, in a similar address, McDonnell sagaciously abandoned his timetable and said:

I think it is fortunate that the Soviets have boldly challenged us in [space science and exploration] … . Their space challenge is a fair challenge. We should accept this challenge and help to turn it primarily into peaceful channels.

* * *

So, fellow pilgrims, welcome to the wondrous age of astronautics. May serendipity be yours in the years to come as man stands on the earth as a footstool and reaches out to the moon, the planets, and the stars.²⁴

Off and on since Sputnik II, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation's Advanced Planning Group had assigned first 20, then 40, and, from April through June 1958, some 70 men to work on preliminary designs for a manned satellite capsule. Led by Raymond A. Pepping, Lawrence M. Weeks, John F. Yardley, and Albert Utsch, these men had completed a thoroughgoing prospectus 427 pages in length by mid-October 1958. People at Langley had been aware of this work in some detail, but when NACA and PARD became part of NASA, a curtain of discretion fell between them and STG. The McDonnell proposal was repolished during November before it took its turn and its chances with all the rest of the bidders.²⁵

While interested aerospace companies were endeavoring to fulfill the Government's plans and specifications for a manned satellite, a number of men in the institutional setting at Langley were busily engaged in final preparations for the bidders' conference. Craftsmen like Z. B. Truitt and Scott Curran, in the Langley shops, fabricated new models of both the couch and the capsule for demonstration purposes. Engineering designers like Caldwell C. Johnson and Russell E. Clickner, Jr., reworked multiple sets of mechanical drawings until Faget and the Task Group were satisfied that they had the architectonic engineering briefing materials ready for their prospective spacecraft manufacturing contractors. Gilruth, Donlan, Mathews, and Zimmerman meanwhile approved the block diagrams of systems as they evolved. They looked over their requirements for outside support in future launching operations, flight operations, trouble-shooting research, and crew selection and training. With everything going on at once among half a hundred men at most, there was no time now in STG for second thoughts or doubts about whether the "Faget concept" would work.²⁶

Questions of policy and personnel at the time of the organization of NASA and during the birth of this nation's manned space flight program were affected significantly by a conflict then existing between the experts on men and the experts on missiles. In the eyes of the Space Task Group, the medical fraternity, particularly some Air Force physicians, was exceedingly cautious, whereas the Space Task Group seemed overly confident to some Air Force medical men and some of their pilots. During the deliberations of the joint NASA-ARPA Manned Satellite Panel, the contrast between the technical aspects of the Air Force's "Man-in-Space-Soonest" proposal and the Faget plan sponsored by the Langley-PARD group had been resolved in favor of the latter. Air Force planners of the Air Research and Development Command early had accepted a basic ground rule specifying 12 g as the design limit for capsule reentry loads. They had opposed the so-called "bare Atlas" approach, which would carry the risk of imposing accelerations up to 20 g in case of a mid-launch abort. As a last resort they too had turned to the standard Atlas as the most feasible launch vehicle even though, Faget believed, Air Force aeromedical experts had not accepted the significance of the physiological demonstrations by Carter C. Collins and R. Flanagan Gray on the Navy's centrifuge at Johnsville in July that man could sustain 20 g without lasting harmful effects. In calculating the risks in manned space flight, the group at Langley saw this event as having paramount importance.²⁷

To ensure that NASA would have intelligent liaison and some expertise of its own in dealing with military aeromedical organizations, one of the early official actions of the NASA Administrator was the appointment on November 21 of a Special Committee on Life Sciences, headed by W. Randolph Lovelace II. This committee, composed of members from the Air Force, Army, Navy, Atomic Energy Commission, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and private life, should provide "objective" advice on the role of the human pilot and all considerations involving him. However, NASA and particularly STG would soon discover certain difficulties with this, as with other, review committees "having a certain amount of authority … yet no real responsibility" for seeing that the program worked properly.²⁸

On a similar but lower plane, Gilruth asked for and received from the military services three professional consultants for an aeromedical staff. Lieutenant Colonel Stanley C. White from the Air Force and Captain William S. Augerson from the Army were physicians with considerable experience in aerospace medicine, and Lieutenant Robert B. Voas from the Navy held a Ph. D. in psychology. Thus both NASA and STG ensured the autonomy of their medical advice while at the same time they tapped, through White, the biomedical knowledge gained by the Air Force in its "Man-in-Space-Soonest" studies and, through Augerson, that gained by the Army and Navy through joint biosatellite planning.²⁹

Calling for a Capsule Contractor

The Space Task Group was ready by October 20, 1958, to initiate the formal quest for the best builder of a spacecraft. Silverstein, Gilruth, Donlan, Faget, Mathews, and Zimmerman had decided what they wanted; now the top-priority need was to decide which contractor would be most competent to construct, at maximum reliability and speed and with minimum cost and risk, the first manned spacecraft.

Preliminary specifications for capsule and subsystems were mailed by the Langley procurement office to more than 40 prospective firms on October 23, 1958. Thirty-eight of these companies responded by sending representatives to the bidders' conference at Langley Field on November 7. The briefing was conducted by Faget, Alan Kehlet, Aleck Bond, Andre Meyer, Jack Heberlig, and several others from STG and Langley. The verbal exchange of ideas at this meeting was preliminary to corporate expressions of interest expected by STG before mid-November. After that the Task Group would mail out formal specifications as the basis for bid proposals to be submitted before December 11, 1958. After his part of the briefing, Faget was asked by one of the representatives whether the retrorockets described could also be used for escape. Faget said no and explained why not. He then made it clear that any alternative capsule configurations would be considered "provided that you incorporate the retrorocket principle, the non-lifting principle, and the non-ablating heat sink principle."³⁰

Nineteen of the companies present expressed interest in the competition; they were mailed copies of STG's 50-page "Specifications for Manned Space Capsule" on November 14, 1958. This document, officially numbered "S-6," formally described STG's expectations of the missions, configurations, stabilization and control, structural design, onboard equipment, instrumentation, and testing for manned orbital flight, but significantly it did not deal in detail with reliability, costs, or schedules for flight testing.³¹

By December 11, the deadline for bid proposals, the list of original competitors had narrowed to 11; there was a late starter in Winzen Research, Inc., whose proposal was incomplete. All but three of these manufacturers had been engaged for at least a year with feasibility studies related to the Air Force plans for a manned satellite. Of the 11, the eight corporations with deepest investments were Avco, Convair/Astronautics, Lockheed, Martin, McDonnell, North American, Northrop, and Republic. The three other bidders were the Douglas, Grumman, and Chance-Vought aircraft companies. Significantly perhaps, certain other major missile and aircraft companies, like Bell, Boeing, and United Aircraft, were not represented. Bell was preoccupied with the Dyna-Soar studies; Boeing also was working on Dyna-Soar and had obtained the prime contract for the Minuteman missile system; and United Aircraft sent its regrets to Reid that it was otherwise deeply committed.³² Other military research and development contracts, such as those for the XB-70 "Valkyrie" and XF-108 were also competing for the attention of the aerospace industry.

The Space Task Group and NASA Headquarters meanwhile had worked out the procedures for technical assessment of these manufacturers' proposals and for contractual evaluations and negotiations. At Langley, a Technical Assessment Committee headed by Donlan was to appoint 11 component assessment teams to rate the contending companies in each of 11 technical areas. The classification system set up by the Space Task Group to evaluate these competitors for the spacecraft contract illustrated the major areas of concern.

Between four and six research engineers sat on each of the following 11 components assessment teams: systems integration; load, structure, and heatshield; escape system; retrograde and landing system; attitude control systems; environmental systems; pilot support and restraint system; pilot displays and navigational aids; communications systems; instrumentation sensors, recorders, and telemeters; and power supplies. Each area was rated on a five-point scale ranging from excellent to unsatisfactory; the scores from these ratings were averaged to provide an overall technical order of preference.

All this had to be done over the Christmas holidays and while the Task Group was moving from the Unitary Wind Tunnel building on the west side of Langley Air Force Base to new quarters in an old NACA building on the east side. Early in January at NASA Headquarters a similar assessment team would gather to evaluate the competitors on their competence in management and cost accountability. MacDougall was to be the only Task Group representative on the "business evaluation" committee. Finally, a Source Selection Board, chaired by Silverstein at NASA Headquarters and including Zimmerman from STG, would review the grading, approve it, and make its final recommendation for the choice of the spacecraft contractor.³³

Although virtually everyone in the Task Group participated in the process of selecting the capsule builder, there were other equally pressing tasks to be accomplished as soon as possible.Procurement of booster rockets, the detailed design and development of a smaller, cheaper test booster, and the problem of finding the best volunteers to man the finished product - these were seen as the major problems requiring a head start in the fall of 1958.

Shopping for the Boosters

Booster procurement was perhaps the most critical, if not the highest priority task to be initiated. Once the Hobson's choice had been made to gear a manned satellite project to the unproven design capabilities of the Atlas ICBM, the corollary decision to use the most reliable of the older generation of ballistic missiles for testing purposes followed ineluctably. While the intercontinental-range Atlas was still being flight-tested, the medium-range Redstone was the only trustworthy booster rocket in the American arsenal. For suborbital tests, the intermediate-range Jupiter and Thor boosters were possible launch vehicles, but as yet they were neither capable of achieving orbital velocities nor operationally reliable.³⁴

Even while the Joint Manned Satellite Panel was briefing the administrators of ARPA and NASA during the first week in October, Purser, Faget, North, and Samuel Batdorf flew to Huntsville for a business conference with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency regarding procurement of launch vehicles. Wernher von Braun's people assured their NASA visitors that Redstone missiles could be made available on 12 to 14 months' notice and that the Army's Jupiters were far superior to the Thors of the Air Force. Although the Space Task Group had already consulted the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division, at Inglewood, California, and was considering the Thor for intermediate launchings, a careful reconsideration of the adaptability of each weapon system as a launch vehicle for a manned capsule was now evidently required. The so-called "old reliable" Redstones might have been ordered right away. But the question of the need for intermediate qualification and training flights along ballistic trajectories was not yet settled.³⁵ So more visitations to the Air Force and Army missile centers were arranged.

STG's wager on the Atlas was formalized by an order to the Air Force, placed on December 8, 1958, for first one, then nine of these Convair-made liquid-fueled rockets. The Air Force Ballistic Missile Division, heretofore the only customer for the Atlas, agreed to supply one Atlas, a C-model, within six months and the rest, all standard D-models, as needed over a period of several years. Faget was pleasantly surprised to know an Atlas-C could be furnished so soon. Having placed its first and primary order with the Air Force, the Space Task Group went on to decide a month later to buy eight Redstones and two Jupiter boosters from the Army Ordnance Missile Command. The decision to procure both medium- and intermediate-range boosters from the same source hinged largely on the fact that the Jupiter was basically an advanced Redstone. Both were Army-managed and developed and Chrysler-built. To adopt the Thor would have required another orientation and familiarization program for NASA engineers.³⁶

Informed that the Atlas prime movers would cost approximately $2.5 million each and that even the Redstone would cost about $1million per launching, the managers of the manned satellite project recognized from the start that the numerous early test flights would have to be accomplished by a far less expensive booster system. In fact, as early as January 1958 Faget and Purser had worked out in considerable detail on paper how to cluster four of the solid-fuel Sergeant rockets, in standard use by PARD at Wallops Island, to boost a manned nose cone above the stratosphere. Faget's short-lived "High Ride" proposal had suffered from comparisons with "Project Adam" at that time, but in August 1958 William Bland and Ronald Kolenkiewicz had returned to their preliminary designs for a cheap cluster of solid rockets to boost full-scale and full-weight model capsules above the atmosphere. As drop tests of boilerplate capsules provided new aerodynamic data on the dynamic stability of the configuration in free-fall, the need for comparable data quickly on the powered phase became apparent. So in October a team of Bland, Kolenkiewicz, Caldwell Johnson, Clarence T. Brown, and F. E. Mershon prepared new engineering layouts and estimates for the mechanical design of the booster structure and a suitable launcher.³⁷

As the blueprints for this cluster of four rockets began to emerge from their drawing boards, the designers' nickname for their project gradually was adopted. Since their first cross-section drawings showed four holes up, they called the project "Little Joe," from the crap-game throw of a double deuce on the dice. Although four smaller circles were added later to represent the addition of Recruit rocket motors, the original name stuck. The appearance on engineering drawings of the four large stabilizing fins protruding from its airframe also helped to perpetuate the name Little Joe had acquired.

The primary purpose of this relatively small and simple booster system was to save money - by allowing numerous test flights to qualify various solutions to the myriad problems associated with the development of manned space flight, especially the problem of escaping from an explosion midway through takeoff. Capsule aerodynamics under actual reentry conditions was another primary concern. To gain this kind of experience as soon as possible, its designers had to keep the clustered booster simple in concept; it should use solid fuel and existing proven equipment whenever possible, and should be free of any electronic guidance and control systems.³⁸

The designers made the Little Joe booster assembly to approximate the same performance that the Army's Redstone booster would have with the capsule payload. But in addition to being flexible enough to perform a variety of missions, Little Joe could be made for about one-fifth the basic cost of the Redstone, would have much lower operating costs, and could be developed and delivered with much less time and effort. And, unlike the larger launch vehicles, Little Joe could be shot from the existing facilities at Wallops Island. It still might even be used to carry a man some day.

Twelve companies responded during November to the invitations for bids to construct the airframe of Little Joe. The technical evaluation of these proposals was carried on in much the same manner as for the spacecraft, except that Langley Research Center itself carried the bulk of the administrative load. H. H. Maxwell chaired the evaluation board, assisted by Roland D. English, Johnson, Mershon, and Bland of the Space Task Group. English later became Langley's Little Joe Project Engineer, Bland the STG Project Engineer, and Mershon the NASA representative at the airframe factory. The Missile Division of North American Aviation won the contract on December 29, 1958, and began work immediately at Downey, California, on its order for seven booster airframes and one mobile launcher.³⁹

The primary mission objectives for Little Joe as seen in late 1958 (in addition to studying the capsule dynamics at progressively higher altitudes) were to test the capsule escape system at maximum dynamic pressure, to qualify the parachute system, and to verify search and retrieval methods. But since each group of specialists at work on the project sought to acquire firm empirical data as soon as possible, more exact priorities had to be established. The first flights were to secure measurements of inflight and impact forces on the capsule; later flights were to measure critical parameters at the progressively higher altitudes of 20,000, 250,000, and 500,000 feet. The minimum aims of each Little Joe shot could be supplemented from time to time with studies of noise levels, heat and pressure loads, heatshield separation, and the behavior of animal riders, so long as the measurements could be accomplished with minimum telemetry. Since all the capsules boosted by the Little Joe rockets were expected to be recovered, onboard recording techniques would also contribute to the simplicity of the system.⁴⁰

Unique as the only booster system designed specifically and solely for manned capsule qualifications, Little Joe was also one of the pioneer operational launch vehicles using the rocket cluster principle. Since the four modified Sergeants (called either Castor or Pollux rockets, depending upon modification) and four supplemental Recruit rockets were arranged to fire in various sequences, the takeoff thrust varied greatly, but maximum design thrust was almost 230,000 pounds. Theoretically enough to lift a spacecraft of about 4,000 pounds on a ballistic path over 100 miles high, the push of these clustered main engines should simulate the takeoff profile in the environment that the manned Atlas would experience. Furthermore, the additional powerful explosive pull of the tractor-rocket escape system could be demonstrated under the most severe takeoff conditions imaginable. The engineers who mothered Little Joe to maturity knew it was not much to look at, but they fondly hoped that their ungainly bastard would prove the legitimacy of most of the ballistic capsule design concepts, thereby earning its own honor.

Although Little Joe was designed to match the altitude-reaching capability of the Redstone booster system, and thus to validate the concepts for suborbital ballistic flights, it could not begin to match the burnout speed at orbiting altitude given by the Atlas system. Valuable preliminary data on the especially critical accelerations from aborts at intermediate speeds could be duplicated, but Little Joe could lift the capsule only to 100 miles, not put it at that altitude with a velocity approaching 18,000 miles per hour. For this task, a great deal more, some sort of Big Joe was needed. A Jupiter booster might simulate fairly closely the worst reentry heating conditions but ultimately only the Atlas itself could suffice.

Therefore, paralleling the planning of the Little Joe project at Langley, a counterpart test program was inaugurated by the Space Task Group with special assistance from the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. Whereas Little Joe was a test booster conceived for many different demonstration flight tests, "Big Joe" was the name for a single test flight with a single overriding objective - to learn at the earliest practicable date what would happen when the "steel-balloon" rocket called Atlas powered a ballistic capsule on exit from Earth's atmosphere. Specifically, an experiment matching the velocity, angle of entry, time, and attitude at altitude for reentry from Earth orbit needed to be performed as soon and as exactly as possible by a powered ballistic test flight so that designs for thermal protection might be verified or modified. The Space Task Group was most anxious about this; the whole manned satellite program was balanced tenuously on the stable thrust of the Atlas and the certain protection of the heatshield.

Public concern over whether the Nation possessed an intercontinental missile was alleviated on November 28, 1958, when an Atlas first flew its designed range - more than 6,300 miles - down the Atlantic Missile Range toward Ascension Island. Three weeks later, on December 18, the Atlas scored again with a secretly prepared first launch into orbit of the entire Atlas vehicle (No. 10-B) as a communications relay satellite called "Project Score." Roy Johnson of ARPA claimed he was "sleeping more comfortably each night" after that.^4l In the midst of these demonstrations of the power of the prototype Atlas, NASA Headquarters and the Space Task Group planned to launch the first Atlas test for the space flight program in June or July 1959.

Gilruth appointed Aleck Bond, the former head of the Structural Dynamics Section at Langley, to take the reins as project engineer for Big Joe. Bond began to coordinate, with a real sense of urgency, the work of Langley and Lewis on the prototype capsule and of the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division and Convair/Astronautics on the Atlas propulsion system. Two Big Joe shots were arranged initially, but the second was to be merely insurance against the failure of the first. Although the Lewis laboratory traditionally had been most closely associated with propulsion problems and therefore was the logical center for NASA's first experience with large launch vehicles, neither Lewis direction nor Lewis propulsion experts were directly involved. NASA simply did not have time to learn the intricacies of launching the Atlas itself. Rather, Lewis contributed the expertise to design the electronic instrumentation and the automatic stabilization and control system for the boilerplate capsules being built jointly by the Lewis and Langley shops.

Bond recalled the initial rationale for Big Joe, alias the Atlas ablation test:

At the time that the Big Joe flight test program was conceived, only limited experimental flight test data existed on the behavior of materials and the dynamics of bodies reentering the earth's atmosphere at high speeds. These data, which evolved from the ballistic missile program, were useful; however, they were not directly applicable to the manned satellite reentry case because of the vast differences in the reentry environment encountered and in the length of time the vehicles were subjected to the environment. There was considerable concern regarding the nature of the motions of a blunt body as it gradually penetrated the earth's atmosphere and began to decelerate. Of similar concern was the lack of after-body heating measurements and knowledge of integrity of ablation materials when exposed to the relatively low level, long duration heat pulse which is characteristic of the reentry of bodies with low ballistic parameters … entering the earth's atmosphere at shallow entry angles.⁴²

Although for Big Joe the Task Group could center its attention on the capsule, whereas for Little Joe it had to develop the booster as well, the design and development problems for Big Joe still were sufficient to cause slippage in the scheduled launch date from early to late summer in 1959. To launch and recover the capsule safely would require very extensive familiarization with new procedures. Central among the primary objectives for Big Joe were the twin needs to determine the performance of the thermal protection materials and to learn the flight dynamics of the spacecraft during reentry. Many critical decisions for the project depended upon early, reliable data on the heatshield, the afterbody radiative shingling, and the dynamic stability of the "raindrop" configuration during the craft's trajectory back through the atmosphere.⁴³

Also necessary were evaluations of the aerodynamic and thermodynamic loads on the capsule all along its flight path and of the operation of its automatic attitude control system. But certainly nothing was more important in the fall of 1958 than the need to settle the technical controversy over the heat sink versus ablation principles for the heatshield. Whether to use absorbing or vaporizing materials to shield the astronaut from reentry heating was one of the few major problems remaining to be solved when the manned satellite project was established.

Heat Sink Versus Ablation

Since the peak heating rates for this blunt-body, high-drag configuration were expected to be one whole order of magnitude less than those experienced by ballistic missiles, no one competent to judge the issue now considered the "thermal barrier" problem insoluble. Rather, it had been proven to be no more than a "thermal thicket." Since the mid-fifties, various civilian and military experimental teams had studied the reentry problems for ballistic missile warheads, but only part of this research data was applicable to the different case of the spacecraft. Army and Vitro Corporation reentry experiments using ablation materials (such as graphite, teflon, nylon, or lucite) had already demonstrated that Jupiter nose cones worked quite well as ablators. But NACA preferred to rely on the successful prior experience of the Air Force with heat-sink metals, particularly copper, for early Thor nose cones. The results of these thermodynamic studies in materials science were contradictory, or at least inconclusive. So the manned satellite project began life officially in October without a commitment to either method of heat shielding, but with a definite preference for Faget's prejudice.⁴⁴

Gilruth, Faget, and other members of the Space Task Group since March 1958 had been leaning toward the heat sink. A 600-pound metallic heat sponge might be a little heavier but it would be more reliable than a ceramic heat dissipator, for the simple reason that there was more industrial experience with fabricating refractory metals than with molding and bonding ablation materials. Some officials were convinced by the Navy's successful use of a lightweight beryllium heat sink on Polaris flight tests that beryllium was the answer. The heat sink method also was thought to have the considerable advantage over ablating materials of creating less of a "plasma sheath" - the envelope of ionized air generated by the friction of atmospheric braking. Telemetry and communications blackouts from this phenomenon might be troublesome. Pending further study, the Task Group and Silverstein decided to retain the original specification that a beryllium heatshield be provided by the capsule contractor. Requiring all the bidders to assume a beryllium shield should give a fairer evaluation of their proposals. Until Big Joe could test the ablation technique, no final decision would be made.⁴⁵

Ablation technology, imprecise by nature, was neither well understood nor very highly sophisticated as yet, whereas the metallography of heat sink materials was straightforward, and the thermodynamics of metals was deducible. Faget believed there would be no intrinsic weight penalty for using a metal shield; the difficulty of ditching a hot shield without danger had yet to be solved. There was no disposition to ignore ablation in favor of heat sink. Big Joe was conceived to resolve the problem. By late November, when Aleck Bond took charge of it, his presumption was that Big Joe would provide the definitive test of an ablation heatshield.

Rocketry was not the only means considered for accomplishing high-altitude qualification tests at the beginning of the program. On their own initiative in the summer of 1958, Jerome Hammack, John B. Lee, Joe W. Dodson, and other Langley engineers had begun a modest program of parachute and stability trials by dropping boilerplate capsule models from C-130 transports provided by the Air Force. Balloon flights, however, seemed to promise even more effective and economical means of qualifying by "space-soaking" the complete capsule and its associated systems. From the Montgolfier brothers in the 1780s to David G. Simons' Manhigh ascents in 1957 and the contemporary Strato-Lab project of the Navy, ballooning had always been an attractive way to pierce the vertical dimension.⁴⁶

Believing that the environmental conditions at extreme altitude could be experienced more easily than they could be simulated in vacuum chambers on Earth, the Space Task Group proceeded with plans to launch balloons carrying ballistic capsules as gondolas. Tests of instrumentation, retrorockets, drogue and main parachute systems, and recovery procedures, plus pilot orientation and training, might be done within a year's time by lighter-than-air ascents. Contracts were let to the Weather Bureau, the Office of Naval Research, and the Air Force Cambridge Research Center for planning this flight support program.⁴⁷

No sooner had these feasibility studies been started than the Space Task Group discovered how intricate, vast, and expensive had become stratospheric sounding technology in recent years. The popular craze over Unidentified Flying Objects during the fifties had been caused partly by atmospheric and cosmic-ray research with floating objects, enormous Mylar plastic gas bags drifting around at high altitudes. Preliminary balloon flights for the manned satellite project threatened to become much more expensive than had been originally anticipated.⁴⁸

Contract planning, booster procurement, and the need for specialized help from the military services were central concerns of NASA and the Space Task Group during their first three months of existence. The possibility of friction in management relations between NASA and the Defense Department was also recognized as a potential problem. To facilitate coordinated work and plans, STG needed in-house representatives in uniform. Efficient administration demanded liaison officers to serve as single points of contact between STG and each of the military services. So in December orders were cut for Lieutenant Colonel Keith G. Lindell of the Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Martin L. Raines of the Army, and Commander Paul L. Havenstein of the Navy to report to the Space Task Group for this function.

In general, relations between NASA and the Department of Defense had proceeded quite amicably since the drafting of a "Memorandum of Understanding" in September by the Joint Manned Satellite Panel.⁴⁹ However, with so much initiative being taken by the Space Task Group, there was danger that the concurrent actions of NASA Headquarters and STG might cause some frustrations and confusions in the Pentagon and among military contractors. NASA was still too young for its STG to be known. At this stage most of the planning for budgeting, procurement, tracking, and recovery operations had to be done in Washington; NASA Headquarters was carefully guarding its prerogative of conducting interagency business.⁵⁰ Cooperation between Defense and NASA, and between STG and its own Headquarters, was good, if not idyllic, during the first 100 days. Nowhere was this more obvious than in astronaut selection.

Project Astronaut?

Preliminary procedures for pilot selection had been worked out by the aeromedical consultants attached to the Space Task Group at Langley during November. Their plan called for a meeting with representatives from industry and the services to nominate a pool of 150 men from which 36 candidates would be selected for physical and psychological testing. From this group 12 would be chosen to go through a nine-month training and qualification program, after which six finally would be expected to qualify.^5l

On the basis of this plan, Donlan from Langley, and North in Washington, together with Allen O. Gamble, a psychologist on leave from the National Science Foundation, drafted civil service job specifications for individuals who wished to apply for the position of "Research Astronaut-Candidate." One of the early plans outlined very well the original expectations of NASA and STG on the type of man thought necessary. NASA Project A, announcement No. 1, dated December 22, 1958, was a draft invitation to apply for the civil service position of research astronaut-candidate "with minimum starting salary range of $8,330 to $12,770 (GS-12 to GS-15) depending upon qualifications." This document called the manned ballistic satellite program "Project Astronaut," and the first section described the duties of the astronaut:

Although the entire satellite operation will be possible, in the early phases, without the presence of man, the astronaut will play an important role during the flight. He will contribute by monitoring the cabin environment and by making necessary adjustments. He will have continuous displays of his position and attitude and other instrument readings, and will have the capability of operating the reaction controls, and of initiating the descent from orbit. He will contribute to the operation of the communications system. In addition, the astronaut will make research observations that cannot be made by instruments; these include physiological, astronomical and meteorological observations.⁵²

Only males between 25 and 40 years of age, less than 5 feet 11 inches in height, and with at least bachelor's degrees were to be considered. Stringent professional experience or graduate study requirements specified five patterns of career histories most desirable. Candidates who had either three years of work in any of the physical, mathematical, biological, or psychological sciences, or who had three years of technical or engineering work in a research and development program or organization might apply. Or anyone with three years of operation of aircraft, balloons, or submarines, as commander, pilot, navigator,communications officer, engineer, or comparable technical position, would be eligible, as would persons who had completed all requirements for the Ph.D. degree in any appropriate field of science or engineering plus six months of professional work. In the case of medical doctors, six months of clinical or research work beyond the license and internship or residency would be required. Furthermore, the job qualifications required proof that applicants had demonstrated recently their "(a) willingness to accept hazards comparable to those encountered in modern research airplane flight; (b) capacity to tolerate rigorous and severe environmental conditions; and (c) ability to react adequately under conditions of stress or emergency." The announcement added:

These three characteristics may have been demonstrated in connection with certain professional occupations such as test pilot, crew member of experimental submarine or arctic or antarctic explorer. Or they may have been demonstrated during wartime combat or military training. Parachute jumping or mountain climbing or deep sea diving (including SCUBA) whether as occupation or sport, may have provided opportunities for demonstrating these characteristics, depending upon heights or depths obtained, frequency and duration, temperature and other environment conditions, and emergency episodes encountered. Or they may have been demonstrated by experience as an observer-under-test for extremes of environmental conditions such as acceleration, high or low atmospheric pressure, variation in carbon dioxide and oxygen concentration, high and low ambient temperatures, etc. Many other examples could be given. It is possible that the different characteristics may have been demonstrated by separate types of experience.

Finally, as a last check on ruling out the "lunatics" who might send in crank applications, this proposed plan for astronaut selection required that each applicant have the sponsorship of a responsible organization. A nomination form appended to this announcement would have required 17 multi-point evaluations of the nominee by some official of the sponsoring institution.

Clearly this astronaut selection plan was sober enough and stringent enough to ensure an exceptionally high quality applicant, but the plan itself was not approved and had to be abandoned. President Eisenhower during the 1958 Christmas holidays decided that the pool of military test pilots already in existence was quite sufficient a source from which to draw. Since certain classified aspects would inevitably be involved, military test pilots could most conveniently satisfy security considerations.⁵³

Although some in NASA regretted the incongruity of allowing volunteers for the civilian manned space program to be drawn only from the military, the decision that the services would provide the candidates greatly simplified pilot selection procedures. A meeting held at NASA Headquarters during the first week of January brought together W. Randolph Lovelace II, Brigadier General Don D. Flickinger, Low, North, Gilruth, and several other members of the Space Task Group. There the elaborate civil service criteria for selection were boiled down to a seven-item formula:

1. Age - less than 40.
2. Height - less than 5 feet, 11 inches.
3. Excellent physical condition.
4. Bachelor's degree or equivalent.
5. Graduate of test pilot school.
6. 1,500 hours total flying time.
7. Qualified jet pilot.

When these criteria were given to the Pentagon, service record checks revealed more than 100 men on active duty who appeared to be qualified. The military services were pleased to cooperate in further screening. NASA was relieved not to have to issue an open invitation, and STG was pleased to have Headquarters' aid in the selection.⁵⁴

Contrary to the feeling expressed in some quarters, even among experimental test pilots, that the ballistic capsule pilot would be little more than "spam in a can," most members of STG believed from the beginning that their pilots would have to do some piloting. As George Low explained their views to Administrator Glennan, "These criteria were established because of the strong feeling that the success of the mission may well depend upon the actions of the pilot; either in his performance of primary functions or backup functions. A qualified jet test pilot appeared to be best suited for this task."⁵⁵ Exactly how much "piloting," in the traditional sense, man could do in orbit was precisely the point in issue.

The least technical task facing NASA and its Space Task Group in the fall of 1958 was choosing a name or short title for the manned satellite project. Customarily project names for aircraft and missiles were an administrative convenience best chosen early so as to guarantee general usage by contractors, press, and public. Langley had earlier suggested to Headquarters three possible emblems or seals for the use of NASA as a whole: one would have had Phaeton pulling Apollo across the sky; another would have used the Great Seal of the United States encompassed by three orbital tracks; and a third proposed a map of the globe circled by three orbits. These proposals, as well as the name suggested by Space Task Group for the manned satellite project, lost out to symbols considered more appropriate in Washington. "Project Astronaut," preferred at first by Gilruth to emphasize the man in the satellite, was overruled largely because it might lead to overemphasis on the personality of the man.⁵⁶

Silverstein advocated a systemic name with allegorical overtones and neutral underpinnings: The Olympian messenger Mercury, denatured by chemistry, advertising, an automobile, and Christianity, was the most familiar of the gods in the Greek pantheon to Americans. Mercury, alias Hermes, the son of Zeus and grandson of Atlas, with his winged sandals and helmet and caduceus, was too rich in symbolic associations to be denied. The esteemed Theodore von Kármán had chosen to speak of Mercury, as had Lucian of Samosata, in terms of the "reentry" problem and the safe return of man to Earth.⁵⁷

Had a mythologist been consulted, perhaps the additional associations of Mercury with masterful thievery, the patronage of traders, and the divinity of commerce would have proven too humorous. But "Mercury," Glennan and Dryden agreed on November 26, 1958, was the name most appropriate for the manned satellite enterprise.⁵⁸

Greeks might worry about whether Mercury would function in his capacity as divine herald or as usher to the dead, but Americans, like the Romans, could be trusted not to worry. On Wright Brothers' Day, December 17, 1958, 55 years after the famous flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Glennan announced publicly in Washington that the manned satellite program would be called "Project Mercury."⁵⁹