CHAPTER 9

EXTERNAL RELATIONS

To provide an organization for handling relations within NASA was not enough. In a program that clearly would involve more people outside NASA than in, and in which numerous other agencies would have strong interests, NASA had to devise mechanisms for a variety of external relations. During Glennan’s 29 months as administrator a considerable amount of management time was devoted to such matters.¹ Some of the arrangements worked out concerned space science.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Congress had shown great concern over how to ensure proper coordination between the civilian and military space programs. Space science was one of the areas of mutual interest between NASA and the Defense Department. Sounding rocket research had been supported by the military services during the 1940s and 1950s, and the services had participated in the scientific satellite program of the International Geophysical Year. The potential military applications (p. 41) were adequate motivation for such activity, and there was no reason to suppose that the creation of a civilian space program would end military interest.

Most of the space scientists who came to NASA -in the fall of 1958 had been associated with the Army, Navy, or Air Force rocket or satellite research programs. Their long-standing personal associations with people in the Department of Defense made coordinating the two programs relatively easy. The Civilian-Military Liaison Committee was too far removed from the day-to-day action to be as effective as informal personal contacts were. These personal contacts gradually led to a more formal arrangement. On 4 May 1959 a meeting on the subject was held in the office of Herbert York, director of defense research and engineering. Attending, in addition to York, were Samuel Clements and John Macauley of Defense, and John Clark, N. Manos, and the author from NASA. The participants agreed to set up a 10-man group with 5 members from each organization and to meet monthly to exchange information. Named the NASA-DoD Space Science Committee, the coordinating group under the chairmanship of the author held its first meeting at NASA Headquarters on 11 August 1959.² A month later, when Defense and NASA established the Aeronautics and Astronautics Coordinating Board, the Space Science Committee was renamed the Unmanned Spacecraft Panel of AACB.³

The deliberations of the Unmanned Spacecraft Panel were anything but monotonous. The panel quickly developed a mechanism for routinely tabulating, updating, and exchanging a great deal of information on space projects in the civilian and military programs.⁴ Since it was unnecessary to devote the time of the panel meetings to routine coordination, attention could more easily be given to special problems. The problems varied widely in substance and seriousness. One of the first was the question of how much space science the military would do. Many NASA members felt that the military services should look to NASA for their space science needs and devote themselves to researches specifically related to military applications. With this position the services violently disagreed, insisting that they had to be working in science to make the most effective applications of the science results. The author agreed with this position and had to take a bit of flak from his own colleagues, because they feared that arguments over duplication of effort might compromise the NASA program. Dryden agreed that it was not reasonable to try to stand in the way of a Defense Department space science program, particularly because of the benefit to military applications. The dispute was eventually turned in the direction of ensuring, by careful coordination, that the military and civilian space science work did not bring-in the jargon of the day-"wasteful duplication.”

More serious were the disputes over questions of military classification. Such problems arose in connection with accurate observations of the earth’s surface and in geodesy. Earth observations were directly related to military interest in reconnaissance and surveillance, and intelligence agencies were sensitive about revealing either their interest or national capabilities in the field.⁵ Applications people ran into this problem first in connection with weather pictures of rather gross resolution that were obtained from the Tiros weather satellites. There was concern over possible international sensitivity to U.S. satellite photography of foreign territories-even at resolutions of no better than 400 to 800 meters.⁶ Some feared that international reaction might precipitate a confrontation that could compromise U.S. ability to pursue legitimate defense interests in earth observations. This controversy was heightened in the late 1960s when NASA and other agencies began to push earth-resource surveys of much finer resolution.⁷

The space scientists also had their bouts with classification problems. The most knotty had to do with geodesy, the science of measuring the earth. The accuracy with which the gravitational field could be measured and analyzed into its various components-or harmonics, as they are called-was important in determining the size and shape of the earth, the distribution of mass in the earth’s crust, and stresses within the mantle below the crust. But such data were also essential for accurate guidance of long-range missiles. To the scientists the precise location of different points on the earth’s surface relative to each other was vital for checking newly emerging theories about the movement of the earth’s crust. But to the military those data would determine the position of potential military targets relative to missile launching areas. The conflict was fundamental. The scientists needed such information for their research and during the International Geophysical Year had entered into worldwide, multi-national, cooperative programs for making geodetic measurements from observations of IGY satellites. The IGY program had naturally extended into the NASA program and along with it went the tacit assumption that the scientific data obtained would be available to all participants. Indeed, as with all the IGY programs, the results were to be published in the open literature.

This policy was painful to the military people, who felt that data of such vital military significance should be kept under wraps and potential enemies forced to expend similar efforts to obtain the information. A muddle of exchanges began between NASA and DoD on the subject. Geodetic scientists complained about footdragging. At the March 1960 meeting of the Space Science Board, George Woollard urged NASA to start at once on the preparation of a satellite specifically for geodesy. A little over half a year later, the Aeronautics and Astronautics Coordinating Board was still discussing how NASA might obtain geodetic data for the scientific community.⁸ On 14 November the Department of Defense announced that the Army, Navy, NASA, and Air Force were jointly building a geodetic satellite.⁹ In that same period Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden was seeking clarification from the Academy of Sciences as to exactly what international commitments regarding open publication of geodetic data the United States had entered into. In reply he received a pile of paper three centimeters thick showing that, internationally, there was a general understanding that the United States would publish data from its IGY satellites that could be used for geodetic studies, with the necessary information on the precise location of tracking stations.¹⁰

The joint satellite, which acquired the name Anna from the initials of the cooperating agencies, did not end the controversy over classification. The rumblings reached the ears of Congressman Joseph Karth, chairman of the Space Science and Applications Subcommittee of NASA’s authorizing committee in the House of Representatives. He plunged into a series of hearings on the subject. The Karth hearings, and pressure the president’s science adviser received from the scientific community, forced a decision very much like apartheid. It was finally agreed that the scientific geodetic program would continue, with open publication of results on the NASA side. Likewise, the DoD program would continue, and when appropriate the two agencies would cooperate, as with the Anna satellite. But DoD would decide unilaterally on the disposition of the data and results from its part of the program. Because of the knotty problems in this area, NASA, DoD, and the Department of Commerce-where the Coast and Geodetic Survey was located-set up a special Geodetic Satellite Policy Board for the difficult problem of coordination.¹¹

It would be unfair to leave the impression that all the struggles with questions of classification were caused by the military. Within NASA a pressure arose to classify launch schedules. Some of the pressure came from the use of military hardware and launching ranges, but much of the desire to classify stemmed from the poor showing that NASA had made in its early attempts and from an embarrassing tendency of schedules to slip because of technical problems. One could not properly use classification to avoid embarrassment to the agency, but the argument was put forth that it was important to protect the already damaged national reputation in space exploration from any further damage.

After a year’s experience Administrator Glennan felt it unwise to publish schedules with specific launch dates too far in advance. Past and imminent launches could be given by date, but Glennan suggested that launches over the next two years be announced only by quarter, and only by year thereafter.¹² In March 1960 the author wrote to Ira Abbott, chairman of a committee dealing with matters of security classification, citing numerous problems that would arise in the space science area if blanket classification were applied to NASA launch dates.¹³ It did not seem appropriate to classify sounding rocket firings in which many universities participated-and for which schedules had been unclassified for more than a decade of the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel program. For planetary shots the timing was specified by the celestial mechanics of the solar system and, if the existence of the mission was known, its date was more or less obvious. Even where nature did not reveal the date of a prospective mission, NASA had other problems to work out. A large part of the space science program was carried out by researchers in the universities, who did not ordinarily have security clearances. Also, the civilian, peaceful character of the national space program would appear to be compromised if an effort were made to operate under security restrictions. Baker-Nunn optical tracking stations, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, would not be welcome in countries like India and Japan, which opposed classified activities on their soil. It would be difficult or impossible to work with volunteer groups providing supporting observations of satellites if schedules could not be issued in advance. The same problem would arise with groups assisting in telemetering satellites and space probes-various universities and the Jodrell Bank Radio Astronomy Observatory in England, for example.

Concern about this aspect of classification continued through NASA’s first two years, but policy developed to meet the need. Those participating in a mission were furnished the necessary information for planning and meeting schedules; and, in space science missions, while experimenters generally did not have to wrestle with problems of security classification, they were expected to handle schedule information discreetly.

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Most important for space science were relations with the National Academy of Sciences and the Space Science Board. It was assumed without question that NASA would look to the Space Science Board for advice on scientific questions. Accordingly NASA joined the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense in providing funding for the board. In the fall of 1959, when time approached for the National Science Foundation to renew the annual contract with the board, Dryden sent to Alan Waterman, director of NSF, a work request that NASA would like to see incorporated in the new contract.¹⁴ The contents of the request, a copy of which was sent to the National Academy the same day it went to NSF, had been discussed in advance between the author and Hugh Odishaw, executive director of the Space Science Board. ¹⁵ NASA sought assistance from the board on (1) long-range planning, (2) specific planning for the separate scientific disciplines, (3) international programs, and (4) the handling of space science data and results. The first two were straightforward, but care was taken to emphasize planning, and NASA took this opportunity to turn back an incipient interest on the part of the board in getting into operational matters like the review and selection of experiments for space science missions.

A major point under (3) concerned U.S. representation on the international Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). At the invitation of Lloyd Berkner, who was then president of the International Council of Scientific Unions, the author had convened the organizing meeting of COSPAR in London 14 November 1958. Subsequently the question arose as to whether America’s permanent representative should come from NASA. The Academy thought not, and Dryden and the author agreed. It was traditional and appropriate that the country’s representation on international scientific, as opposed to political, bodies should fall under the aegis of the Academy of Sciences. NASA supported this view and further agreed to pay America’s annual subvention to the Committee on Space Research.

The final item in the work request on data and results was fuzzy, not at all clear at the time. Since the Academy had been involved during the International Geophysical Year with the operation of world data centers, which archived and distributed data and information derived from the IGY science program, it was thought that the Academy might continue this function for the national space program. After all, there had been a Data Center on Rockets and Satellites, so what could be more direct than to have that center expand its responsibilities? There were subtleties to the problem, one of which surfaced in a meeting 9 December 1959, held at Boulder, Colorado. Hugh Odishaw asked if NASA would support a center devoted to data from all upper-atmosphere and solar research, not just those obtained from rockets and satellites.¹⁶ NASA representatives equivocated and, after prolonged discussion with the Academy, established the Space Science Data Center at the Goddard Space Flight Center.¹⁷ Although the new organization did undertake to archive a great deal of data that were not obtained from space experiments, in general such data were selected because they would increase the value of the space data.

During the period that NASA was developing its working relations with the Space Science Board, the agency was also feeling its way toward some mechanism to provide broader and closer contacts with the scientific. community than could be expected from the Space Science Board alone. For the most part unaware of the extensive and skillful use NACA had made of committees to keep in touch with thinking outside the agency, NASA space scientists began to move in a similar direction. Internally a Space Sciences Steering Committee was established in April 1960, with responsibility for recommending space science programs and projects to the director of spaceflight programs, Abe Silverstein. The steering committee also recommended the selection of experiments and experimenters for space science missions.¹⁸ Subcommittees were formed for the scientific disciplines.¹⁹ Unlike the steering committee, however, which consisted solely of NASA employees, about half the members of the subcommittees were outside scientists. From this group of disciplinary subcommittees the NASA advisory structure in space science evolved over the years. Advisory committees became a major element in NASA’s relations with the scientific community and in planning and conducting the space science program. This subject will be discussed in detail in chapter 12.

PRESIDENT’s SCIENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE

In space science at least, NASA’s relations with the President’s Science Advisory Committee grew out of the central role it had played in the formation of the agency. From the start the Space Science Panel of PSAC took a close interest, frequently reviewing what was being done and offering advice. When astronomers could not agree on specifications for the orbiting astronomical observatory, and NASA found itself in the middle, the Space Science Panel and its chairman, Edward Purcell, pushed NASA to resolve the difficulties. Of NASA’s desire to be cooperative, Glennan years later would write: “…no major operating agency ever gave more consideration to the very much less than objective cries of the ‘scientists[.]’ Within the Administration -that is, NASA [-] we had solid and often brilliant scientists who were able to plan a truly ‘NATIONAL’ science program in Spite of the of the often controversial advice and complaints so freely given by the Scientific Community!"²⁰

By the spring of 1962 the space science group in NASA Headquarters had settled on policies to use in developing the program and in working with the scientific community. These policies were described to the Space Science Panel in April 1962 and appeared to have the panel’s blessing.²¹ The policies, together with the NASA management instruction on responsibilities of principal investigators in the flight program, provided the framework for the conduct of the space science program during the 1960s.²²

It is worth dwelling a bit on these policies, since they colored all of NASA’s relations with the scientists. The agency undertook, with the best advice it could get, to determine the most important areas of research-clearly a subjective matter, which the agency sought to handle as objectively as possible. Then NASA tried to support competent scientists working on what were thought to be the most important problems in each area. No attempt was made to saturate any area with researchers, in the belief that high quality could best be achieved by supporting only those investigations that seemed most fundamental and most likely to yield significant new information. When funds were ample, this policy could be followed without difficulty; but when money became tight, difficult choices would have to be made, and perhaps an entire area of research might have to be curtailed to afford adequate funding for the remaining areas. Such situations did arise later on. For example, in the budget squeezes of the late 1960s NASA chose to decrease ionospheric and magnetospheric research in order to maintain adequate support for solar system research and space astronomy. Although the Space Science Board endorsed this choice, the board had to face dissension in its ranks from the particles-and-fields workers who were hard hit by the cutbacks.

NASA tried to provide continuity of support to researchers. It was recognized that a single experiment usually was but a step in an investigation and that it was important to enable a scientist to complete the entire investigation. For example, a single sounding rocket flight could yield interesting data on ion densities in the ionosphere, say at White Sands at noon on a summer’s day. But to understand the processes in ionospheric behavior, geographic and temporal variation, and the relationship of solar activity to the ionosphere-an immeasurably broader and more significant objective than to know the state of the ionosphere at only one time and location-would take years of research and many experiments.

Continuity of support was a genuine worry to non-NASA scientists. In this regard they felt at a disadvantage with respect to scientists in the NASA centers who could count on being supported continuously by their agency. Moreover, the NASA scientists clearly had an inside track in placing their experiments on NASA spacecraft; many outsiders worried that NASA would take care of its own scientists first and assign the leftovers to outside experimenters. To allay such fears, the author informed the Space Science Board that NASA would pick experiments on the basis of merit and would assign most of the available payload space on NASA science missions to outside scientists.^* When, in November 1959, Lloyd Berkner, as chairman of the Space Science Board, sent a lengthy criticism of the space science programs to George Kistiakowsky, the president’s science adviser, Berkner found few things to praise. One was the stated policy of reserving no more than 20 to 25 percent of the payload on science missions for NASA personnel.²³

This policy did not have universal support within NASA, where there was much sympathy for the idea of taking care of one’s own. After all, it was argued, NASA people had undertaken to create and operate the necessary space tools for scientific research, to defend the program before the administration and the Congress, and to do a lot of the drudgery needed to keep a program going. For this they should be guaranteed first rights over those who chose to remain in the academic world with all its niceties and privileges. In sympathy with the NASA laboratories, Silverstein himself voiced such views, and the author at times found himself in the middle. Nevertheless, a genuine effort was made to adhere to the stated policy, and for a while the proportion of outside scientists finding berths on NASA spacecraft increased. But the limited amount of payload space available, along with the increasing numbers of applicants who wanted to take part, militated against reaching the ideal. Responding to renewed criticism, in March 1960 John Clark, in a NASA memorandum discussing relations between the agency and the Space Science Board, reiterated: “It is still the NASA objective that the larger part of the scientific work will be done outside of the NASA organization. . . . about 60 percent of the present space science work is being done outside NASA, compared to 40 percent in-house.”²⁴

During the 1960s, except on some individual flights, NASA never quite achieved the stated, admittedly arbitrary goal. While occasionally a cause for grumbling, the matter did not become serious again until the early 1970s when tight budgets once more seemed to put research groups in universities at a decided disadvantage relative to those in NASA centers.

NASA also recognized that it was not enough to pay only for flight experiments. A certain amount of related research had to be supported, particularly that required to lay the groundwork for experimenting in space. During its first year, however, NASA appeared to be neglecting this important aspect of space science in its concentration on getting spaceflight projects going. In his critical letter of November 1959 to Kistiakowsky, Berkner unleashed a lengthy critique of the program as he saw it at the end of its first year. Berkner dwelt on a number of concerns scientists repeatedly returned to throughout the years. Along with worries about relative amounts of money going into manned spaceflight-Mercury at the time-Berkner expressed the interest of scientists in having large numbers of small vehicles in the program in preference to a few larger ones. He also registered complaints about the domineering attitude of NASA project engineers toward experimenters and about the difficulty outside scientists had in competing with NASA scientists unless the necessary engineering facilities were provided to enable the outside scientists to compete. Berkner considered the question of support for long-term, space-related research a major issue, averring that NASA had to provide support, since the National Science Foundation was not likely to do so.²⁵ Responding to Berkner’s criticism, Administrator Glennan wrote to Kistiakowsky on 3 December 1959 agreeing among other things that NASA should support the long-range basic research important to space science.²⁶ In this vein, NASA’s university program office later devised a method of step-funding research projects so as to assure a university scientist of at least three years continuous support (chap. 13).²⁷

While recognizing its own responsibilities toward experimenters NASA also asked principal investigators to assume considerable responsibility on their part-specifically for the preparation, calibration, installation, and operation of their instruments. This policy, which was somewhat fuzzy at the start, grew in clarity as time passed, until it was articulated in April 1964 in a formal NASA issuance.²⁸ Basically, a principal investigator was given a place on a satellite or space probe for his instruments, was assigned the necessary electrical power, telemetering, and other support from the spacecraft, and was promised a certain period of time after the flight during which the data obtained would be reserved to him for analysis, interpretation, and publication. In return, the investigator was expected to work as a member of the project team, meet all relevant schedules, and ensure that his equipment was properly constructed, passed prescribed tests, and was available in operating condition for installation in the spacecraft at the appropriate time. In addition to using the data for his own research, the experimenter was expected to put them into a suitable form for archiving in the data center so that later researchers could use them for further studies..

The policy was simple in concept, but problems arose from time to time. Not infrequently the scientists would feel that too much prominence was being given to engineering, as opposed to scientific, requirements, and that the project manager did not appreciate that the scientific experiments were the purpose of the project. On his part, the project manager often would feel that the scientists did not understand the difficulties in getting an operating spacecraft aloft, and the importance of meeting schedules and test requirements. Such conflicts often seemed in the nature of things, for the engineer was trained in disciplined teamwork, while the scientist’s stock in trade was highly individualistic questioning of authority. The engineer would find the scientist’s propensity for last minute changes to make an improvement in the experiment baffling, while the scientist would find the engineer’s insistence on prescribed routine frustrating. Yet the scientists and engineers could and did work out their differences, though sometimes at the expense of management time.

More subtle was the question of what was meant by the experimenter’s taking responsibility for his experiment. If the investigator interpreted that as giving him control over the project manager, the scientist-engineer clash was enhanced, and management had to make clear that the project manager was in charge. That the investigator should take responsibility for ensuring that all phases of his experiment were being properly taken care of did not mean that the scientist had to do them all himself, though sometimes there was confusion about this. The investigator was expected to work out with the project manager how the investigator would meet his responsibilities. Often a contractor would be engaged to construct the scientific equipment. Perhaps NASA would agree to do part of the work. Whatever arrangement was made, it was still the investigator’s responsibility to be aware of how things were going and when necessary, perhaps with the project manager’s help, to see that steps were taken to correct deficiencies.

Granting an investigator the exclusive use of data for a specified period was important to both NASA and the investigator.²⁹ To the scientist the opportunity to publish his results and earn the acclaim of colleagues for what he had accomplished was a substantial part of his reward for conceiving and carrying out an experiment. Were NASA unable to grant a scientist the necessary time to claim his reward, the best researchers would surely have sought other scientific fields to plough. Yet from time to time this policy came under attack by Congress. The argument was that the taxpayer was putting out enormous sums for space research and, therefore, had a right to the data as soon as acquired. Most often this argument flared up when the data were spectacular pictures of the moon or Mars. Then a clamor from the press to issue the pictures at once would be echoed by members of Congress, no doubt inspired to speak out by a few well placed phone calls from enterprising reporters. Little concern was expressed over release of ionospheric measurements or data on magnetic fields in space.

NASA held its ground on the basic policy. Setting aside the question of the scientists pay for contributing his original ideas and carrying out the experiment, NASA pointed out that only the scientist who had conceived the experiment and had personally struggled with the intricacies of calibrating the measuring instruments, could reduce the data properly to remove ambiguities and errors that would otherwise make the data useless to other researchers. In return for the exclusive use of data for a mutually agreed time, NASA required an experimenter to put his data in suitable form for archiving and use by other researchers. This was the taxpayer’s quid pro quo; without such an arrangement, the taxpayer would not be getting his money’s worth.

The time required to put data in order varied from case to case and was negotiated between the agency and the experimenter. For a simple experiment, perhaps a repetition of a previous one, a few months might suffice. A more complicated, more subtle experiment might take the investigator a year or more to work up the data and publish his first paper. As an illustration, NASA could point to the ionospheric experiment devised by J. Carl Seddon and colleagues at the Naval Research Laboratory for sounding rocket experiments at White Sands.³⁰ Simple in concept, the experiment ran into tremendous difficulties in practice. The idea was to measure the effect of the ionosphere on radio signals from a flying rocket and to use that effect to deduce the electron densities in the ionosphere. But the influence of the earth’s magnetic field, the splitting of the radio signal into separate components, and reflections of the signal from inhomogeneities in the ionosphere required many years to decipher. Until that was done, the data would have been useless to other researchers. But once the various physical processes were understood and could be unraveled, the analysis of data from a new set of measurements could be accomplished in a few months.

Pictures were a special case. That was where the greatest public interest lay, and NASA adopted a policy of releasing pictures as soon as they could be put in suitable form. Often this was virtually immediately, as with much lunar photography. But pictures of Mars received with low signal-power usually took a great deal of electronic processing to bring out all available detail and it could be many weeks or months before they were ready for release.

PUBLICATION OF RESULTS

Important to the scientific community was the question of where scientific results from the space program would be published. Publication in the open literature is, of course, a fundamental aspect of the scientific process. Both the outside scientists and those who had joined the agency were dedicated by training and habit to open publication. In this they ran head on into NACA tradition and practice of issuing research results in series such as NACA Reports, Technical Notes, and Technical Memoranda.³¹

NACA papers were highly respected in the field of aeronautics and aerodynamics. They were carefully critiqued and severely edited within the agency before being widely distributed to aeronautical centers, appropriate military offices in the United States and elsewhere, and industrial and academic libraries around the world. It was NACA’s position that the procedure ensured both high quality in its publications and provided for getting them to those who needed them in their work. Moreover, the existence of such series of NACA publications was the best possible advertising for the agency.

NACA was not alone in this practice. Both the Bureau of Standards and the Bell Laboratories put out journals of their own; and, during the Rocket and Satellite Panel days, the Naval Research Laboratory had issued much of its rocket-research results in NRL reports.³² In the space science field, the jet Propulsion Laboratory began putting out a Technical Report Series under the imprimatur of JPL and the California Institute of Technology.³³ In academic circles Gerard P. Kuiper, noted astronomer of unbounded energy and wide-ranging interests and head of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, put out a series entitled Communications of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, listing the University of Arizona as publisher.³⁴ In the Communications Kuiper and his colleagues published a great deal of excellent material, much of it from research supported by NASA. But Kuiper was severely criticized by his scientific colleagues for using this means of bringing his work to the community. Their reasons for criticizing were fundamental, deeply rooted in the scientific process. First, it was pointed out, the usual scientific journal accepted an article for publication only after it had been given a careful review by one or more impartial experts in the field addressed in the article, whereas a scientist publishing in what amounted to his own journal could hardly subject his own work to the same kind of review. Secondly, the limited distribution of a publication to a selected list of recipients was bound to miss persons who had not only a legitimate, but often a significant, interest in the material, for how could one individual or a small group hope to be aware of all such interests? This point was particularly pertinent in a rapidly growing field with imprecise and fluctuating boundaries. In contrast, regularly published journals, open by subscription to all who were interested, were widely known in the scientific community; a scientist from another discipline could quickly find his way to material of importance to his work. Although the NACA had had a very large organization to draw upon for reviewing papers before publication, the same sort of criticism had been leveled at the NACA publication policy.

For NASA’s first year, the question of publication remained in the background, with the NASA scientists assuming that the policy was to publish the results in the open literature, and former NACA people tending to expect a collection of NASA publications to evolve. Harry Goett, director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, precipitated a confrontation when in May of 1960 he proposed to issue NASA papers that had been given at a meeting of the international Committee on Space Research in a NASA series.³⁵ When the proposal reached Thomas Neill, an employee in the Office of Advanced Research and Technology who had carried over from the NACA the responsibility for overseeing the publication of in-house reports, Neill refused to permit the COSPAR papers to go out as NASA technical reports. Neill’s position was that the papers had already been published in the COSPAR sphere and to put them out now in a NASA series would be wasteful duplication. It was an understandable position, but it stood squarely in the way of those who wanted to build up NASA’s own fine “fourteen foot shelf" of space science literature, as Abe Silverstein described it.

There was a great deal of discussion of this issue during the spring and summer of 1960. The scientists, recognizing the intense desire of the NACA people to build up a library of NASA publications along the NACA lines, favored dual publication. A check with a number of scientific societies revealed they would be willing to accept papers for publication that had previously been put out under a NASA cover, since they did not regard the latter as genuine publication. This was the view of Lloyd Berkner, president of the American Geophysical Union, when the author called him on 19 May 1960. For AGU’s own publication, the Journal of Geophysical Research, Berkner was sure there would be no problem, and he thought there should not be any difficulty for the Physical Review -which was later confirmed by the editors.³⁶ Several other journals took the same position; of those queried only the American Chemical Society expressed disapproval. Taking smug satisfaction in the considerable evidence they had gathered that NACA or NASA reporting was not generally viewed as genuine publication, the NASA scientists persevered in urging a policy that space science results would be published in the open literature, but that where desired duplicate NASA publication would be permitted. Dryden approved the idea and asked that an appropriate paper be drawn up articulating the policy, which led to more discussions but no clear statement of policy that could be given formal approval.

Instead the policy was established by practice. Space science rests were published in the open literature, and management issuances pertaining to the program presumed such a policy. In international, cooperative space science projects, implementing agreements called for publication of results in the open literature.³⁷ Simultaneously in-house publications toot a variety of forms. The jet Propulsion Laboratory report series has beer mentioned. From time to time the Goddard Space Flight Center issued bound collections of reprints of published papers by Goddard authors.³⁸ In September 1959 Abe Silverstein was considering establishing a NASA journal, much like that of the Bureau of Standards which as cited as an example.³⁹ But such a NASA journal did not materialize. Instead there evolved the NASA Special Publications, an a periodic series, generally book length, devoted to the whole spectrum of NASA’s activities. The Special Publications were an excellent means of publishing under the NASA imprimatur integrated reviews of a topic or field, but were not usually suitable as an outlet for original scientific research. They were in fact accorded the same sort of mild disdain the academic community reserves, not always with justification, for most government publications.

UNIVERSITIES

NACA had had a rather small involvement with the universities.⁴⁰ What university research NACA did pay for usually was tied into research projects going on at the NACA laboratories. For NASA, however, relations with universities would be more extensive and different. This was especially true in space science, where the number of disciplines encompassed in the program dictated that a great deal of the work would have to be done outside and largely in the universities. Much of this would be an extension of a university’s own research, with the addition of new tools-rockets and spacecraft. NASA would accordingly be funding university research as a major part of a broad space science program rather than as specific support to in-house projects. By undertaking to carry out a substantial part of the national space science program, the universities became allies of NASA.

But when NASA also decided to create space science groups at the Goddard Space Flight Center, the jet Propulsion Laboratory, and other centers, the universities found themselves in the role of rivals to NASA. For, the in-house groups would inevitably be in competition with those outside for funding of their research and for accommodation on scientific flights, as mentioned earlier. A number of the mechanisms that NASA devised for working with the scientific community were influenced by the need to moderate the tensions that soon appeared. For this reason the responsibility for selecting space science experiments and experimenters was kept in headquarters even during periods when there was a general attempt to decentralize authority by transferring to the field many functions previously handled by headquarters.

Work with the universities was sufficiently important to the space program-particularly to the space science program-that NASA established an organizational unit specifically for handling university relations.⁴¹ The university office guided NASA’s work with the academic community, not hesitating to experiment with new ideas on government university relations. More attention is given to the NASA university program, particularly as it bore on space science, in chapter 13.

SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

In seeking to bring the scientific community into the space science program and in insisting on publication of results in the open literature, NASA could hardly escape a close association with the scientific societies. The societies afforded the most common meeting ground of the scientists, and their journals formed much of the open literature.

A number of scientific societies soon became involved. The American Astronomical Society’s interest was at first tentative, although a number of its leading members were fully committed to space astronomy-like Richard Tousey of the Naval Research. Laboratory, Leo Goldberg of the University of Michigan, Gerard Kuiper of Yerkes Observatory, and Lyman Spitzer of Princeton. Spitzer had been among the first, in the mid-1940s, to write about and advocate the use of satellites for astronomical research. In the sounding rocket program of the 1940s and 1950s, Tousey had been one of the pioneers in rocket astronomy. And no sooner had NASA opened its doors than Leo Goldberg was urging support of a solar astronomical satellite project which the McDonnell Aircraft Company had designed with advice from University of Michigan astronomers. Under the pressure of such widespread interest, the American Astronomical Society’s participation grew steadily throughout the 1960s. Papers appeared in its journal and at its meetings, and the society began to promote important aspects of space astronomy. The spectacular results of planetary missions, particularly in 1969 and early 1970s, helped dispel the disdain and lack of interest with which astronomers had regarded the planetary field for decades.

Among the first learned societies to show strong interest were the American Physical Society and the American Geophysical Union. In April 1959-six months into NASA’s first full year-the Physical Society sponsored, along with NASA and the National Academy of Sciences, a symposium on space physics, which was well attended.⁴² Anticipating the importance of space science for extending geophysics to other planets, the Geophysical Union went even further. In November 1959, AGU officers considered the question of providing a home for space science. Encouraged by the show of interest, NASA’s Robert Jastrow and Gordon J. F. MacDonald, a brilliant young geophysicist, on 10 December 1959 wrote to President Lloyd Berkner recommending that the union create a section on planetary physics.⁴³ After consulting with AGU officers, Berkner responded by inviting the author to become chairman of a Planning Committee on Planetary Science, with members Jastrow (secretary), Leroy Alldredge, Joseph W. Chamberlain, Thomas Gold, MacDonald, Hugh Odishaw, Alan Shapley, Harry Vestine, Harry Wexler, Charles Whitten, and Philip Abelson (and later Walter Orr Roberts), all of whom had had important roles in the International Geophysical Year program. For the next two years the committee organized sessions on space science for the union meetings, and promoted the interests of space science within the union. For the summer of 1960 committee members prepared a series of papers reporting on progress in the planetary and interplanetary sciences for publication in the Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. The President’s Page in the Transactions for September 1960 carried a note from the author pointing out the importance of space science to geophysics and calling attention to the existence of the Planning Committee on Planetary Sciences.⁴⁴

Within the union there was a steady movement toward the creation of a new section on the planetary sciences. But space science was itself but an extension of the traditional disciplines, and there was opposition to the proposed action. The argument was that the existing sections of AGU could provide the desired home for the new activities in space. The section on meteorology, for example, could accommodate satellite meteorology. Any section dealing with an aspect of the earth sciences could house that same aspect of the planetary sciences. In fact, some feared that a separate section on the planetary sciences would become another little union within the overall union. Even members thoroughly involved in the space sciences-like John Simpson, experimenter on Pioneer and Explorer satellites, theoretical physicist Alexander Dessler, and Harry Wexler, director of research for the U.S. Weather Bureau-were opposed. Nevertheless, the strong coherence in the space sciences, generated by the peculiarities and demands of the space tools, sparked the push for a new section. The spring of 1961 saw a great deal of discussion of the matter, and at its 22 April 1961 meeting the council of the union approved in principle the formation of a new section-by a margin of one vote! The council asked that the entire organizational structure, activity, and nomenclature of the union be reviewed as a precaution against intolerable dislocations within the society from addition of the new section. The review concluded that no other changes were required, and on 25 April 1962 the council gave final approval for the formation of a section on planetary sciences (which later in the decade divided into several groups). The author became the first president of the section, and Jastrow its first secretary, thus symbolizing the close relations that NASA had developed with the American Geophysical Union.

The examples given here are only illustrative. The breadth of the space sciences generated an important association with many scientific and technical societies and institutes. The interest of the American Rocket Society and the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences-which soon merged into the new American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics-was an obvious one, as was that of the American Astronautical Society and the International Astronautical Federation, although their concern tended more toward the engineering and technology side of the picture. More directly concerned with space science were the Optical Society of America, the International Astronomical Union the American Meteorological Society, the Geological Society of America, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and a long list of others. For some of these, interest in space science flared up at the very start, while for others the interest gradually emerged as the program unfolded.

Inheriting so much from the International Geophysical Year, NASA had an international program from the outset.⁴⁵ There were two main arenas, that of the international scientific circles such as the International Council of Scientific Unions and its newly formed Committee on Space Research, and that of a political nature, falling generally in the sphere of the United Nations. There were numerous political considerations relative to space, and NASA was immediately drawn into United Nations deliberations on space matters.

But the natural arena for space science was the international scientific community, and from the start NASA gave strong support to the Committee on Space Research. Among the unions of the council represented on COSPAR were the International Union of Scientific Radio and the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, which had first recommended the use of scientific satellites during the International Geophysical Year. Following the organizing meeting convened by the author in London in November of 1958, COSPAR held its first full-scale business session in The Hague, 12-14 March 1959.⁴⁶ At that meeting Richard Porter of the Space Science Board, U.S. representative to COSPAR, asked the author whether the United States might offer to launch space science experiments for COSPAR members. In a phone call to Washington, the author obtained Hugh Dryden’s approval to inform the meeting that NASA would be willing to do so. Porter then wrote to President H. C. van de Hulst, saying that the United States would accept single experiments as part of larger payloads, or would launch complete payloads prepared by other countries.⁴⁷ The response to the U.S. invitation was immediate, and before the year was out a number of cooperative projects had begun. With the Soviet Union, genuine cooperation proved to be difficult during the 1960s, less difficult in the 1970s climate of detente. These subjects are discussed at length in chapter 18.

As the leaders of NASA worked to reshape the NACA into an aeronautics and space organization, they also laid the foundation for the many relationships with other government agencies, industry, and the scientific community that played an essential role in planning and conducting the program. But none of this would have been of any avail without the principal tools, the rockets and spacecraft essential to the investigation and exploration of space. A first order of business as to provide for these tools. That NASA set about to do, striving to overcome as soon as possible the visible gap that lay between the United States and the Soviet Union in propulsion capabilities and launchable spacecraft weights. Because of the central importance of launch vehicles and their payloads, the next chapter is devoted entirely to them.