A History of the

National Aeronautics and

Space Administration

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 by Daniel Wolf, 1997
Ausarbeitung zum Spezialgebiet Englisch

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 CONTENTS

Chapter 1 - The origins of the NASA

Chapter 2 - The foundation of the NASA
Chapter 3 - The race for the Moon
Chapter 4 - The Shuttle Program
Chapter 5 -
Chapter 6 - Other Nations’ Space Programs

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Introduction
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the US government agency
responsible for the development of advanced aviation and space technology and for space
exploration. It is an independent civilian agency responsible directly to the president of the
United States.
NASA's roots go back to 1915, when a federal agency was needed to stimulate the growth of
American aeronautics, which was then lagging behind European developments.

Chapter 1 - The origins of NASA

The National Advisory Comitee for Aeronautics was founded in 1915. Although it
were the American Wright brothers, who made the first controlled flight in an airplane, the
United States soon lagged behind the Eurpoeans in aviation techniques. Because of World
War I, the Europeans forced the development of new aircrafts. As a consequence, scientists
within the United States demanded a national organization, which would help the States to
keep pace with the rapid developments in aeronautics - the NACA.
For fiscal 1915, the fledgling organization received a budget of $5000, an annual
appropriation that remained constant for the next five years. This was not much even by
standards of that time, but it must be remembered that this was an advisory committee only,
”to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view to their
practical solutions.”
Once the NACA isolated a problem, its study and solution was generally done by a
government agency or university laboratory. The main committee of 12 members met
semiannually in Washington. An Executive Committee of seven members, chosen from the
main committee living in the Washington area, supervised the NACA's activities and kept
track of aeronautical problems to be considered for action.
The first NACA research center was opened at Langley in Hampton, Virginia. In a wartime
environment, the NACA was soon busy. It evaluated aeronautical queries from the Army,
conducted experiments and ran engine tests. From the beginning the NACA was not a military
organization, however it’s research work while World War I focused on military affairs and
the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory was built on a US Army Base. Soon a small
airfield and a wind tunnel for aerodynamics testing were set up. Although after the war, the
Army transferred its research facilities to Dayton, Ohio, military influence at Langley
remained high. In 1920 the NACA owned a airfield, a wind tunnel, a small dynamometer lab,
a warehouse and a administration building. With a total staff of 11 people there was plenty
room to grow. The Universities over the country began to offer education in aeronautics
theory and engineering. Young engineers joined the NACA and the Langley’s staff went up to
100 in 1925. During the ‘20s and ‘30s, NACA research turned the art of aeronautics into a
disciplined engineering profession. Military and private airplane designs greatly benefited
from NACA’s research, which led to improved wing shapes and engines and retractable
landing gears. With more and more commercial airlines in business, the research also
concentrated on maximum passenger safety and comfort.
After a while, a new field of aeronautical research emerged: Rocketry. Inspired by Jules Verne
and others, scientists around the world became increasingly interested in Rocketry. NACA
conducted some rocket experiments, which not only led to the use of rockets by the United
States armed services in World War II, but later also led to the development of jet propulsion
engines, which replaced the older propeller engines. The NACA - born in response to

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European progress in aeronautics - benefited through the employment of Europeans, and
profited from a continuous interaction with the European community.
Hitler’s Germany stopped to share its research results in expectation of the second
World War. The ”Verein für Raumschiffahrt”, which employed the famous Wernher von
Braun, was very successful in developing rockets and jet propulsion and therefore the
Germans were the only nation, which used ground to ground rockets during the war (The V-2
rocket, Vengance-2). They also put the only WWII jetfighter plane in the skies, the
Messerschmitt Me-262 - in 1945, shortly before Germanys surrender and therefore too late to
play an active role in the european air war.
For the NACA, the war was a pretty good reason to let the government multiply their
resources and fundings. For example: the NACA counted 426 staff at Langley in 1938. After
the war, in 1945 total personnel at Langley exceeded 3000 people. In 1941 a second
Laboratory, the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in California, followed in 1942 by the Aircraft
Engine Research Laboratory in Ohio were established. NACA’s success in producing fast and
manoeuvrable planes gave the US Air Force the deciding edge in aerial combat during WWII.
In October 1942, America's first jet plane, took to the air over a remote area of the
California desert. There were no official NACA representatives present. The NACA, in fact,
did not even know the aircraft existed, and the engine was based entirely on a top secret
British design. After the war, the failure of the United States to develop jet engines and
supersonic designs was generally blamed on the NACA. Critics argued that the NACA, as
America's
premier aeronautical establishment (one which presumably led the world in successful
aviation technology) had somehow allowed leadership to slip to the British and the Germans
during the late 1930s and during World War II. The US secret service initiated the
”Operation Paperclip”, a high-level government plan to scoop up leading German scientists
and engineers during the closing months of World War II.
Following the war, the NACA, with German scientists know-how, increasingly focused on jet
propulsion and the attainment of even higher altitudes and speeds. In 1947 the NACA X-1
(eXperimental jet-1) was the first plane to brake the sound barrier and go supersonic (Mach 1
equals the speed of sound. The designation is named after the Austrian physicist, Ernst Mach).
Helicopters, introduced into limited combat service at the end of World War II, entered both
military and civilian service in the postwar era. The value of helicopters in medical evacuation
was demonstrated in Korea, and a variety of helicopter operations proliferated in the late
1950s. The NACA flight-tested new designs to help define handling qualities. Using wind
tunnel experience, researchers also developed a series of special helicopter airfoil    sections,
and a rotor test tower aided research in many other areas.
All of this postwar aeronautical activity received respectful and enthusiastic attention
from press and public. Although the phenomenon of flight continued to enjoy extensive press
coverage, events in the late 1950s suddenly caused aviation to share the limelight with space
flight.
Among the legacies of World War II was a glittering array of new technologies spawned by
the massive military effort. Atomic energy, radar, radio telemetry, the computer, the large
rocket, and the jet engine seemed destined to shape the world's destiny in the next three
decades and heavily influence the rest of the century. The world's political order had been
drastically altered by the war. Much of Europe and Asia were in ashes. On opposite sides of
the world stood the United States and the Soviet Union, newly made into superpowers. It soon
became apparent that they would test each other's mettle many times before a balance of
power stabilized. And each nation moved quickly to exploit the new technologies.
The atomic bomb was the most obvious and most immediately threatening technological
change from World War II. Both superpowers sought the best strategic systems that could

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deliver the bomb across the intercontinental distances that separated them. Jet-powered
bombers were an obvious extension of the wartime and both nations began putting them
into service. The intercontinental rocket held great theoretical promise, but seemed much
further down the technological road. Atomic bombs were bulky and heavy. A rocket to lift
such a payload would be enormous in size and expense. The Soviet Union doggedly went
ahead with attempts to build such rockets. The US Army imported Wernher von Braun and the
German engineers who had created the wartime V-2 rockets to help to develop the Atlas
intercontinental ballistic missile, a project that had been dormant for four years. Fiscal 1953
saw the Department of Defense for the first time spend more than $1 million on missile
research. By the mid-1950s NACA had modern research facilities that had cost a total of $300
million, and a staff totaling 7200.
Against the background of the ”Cold War” between the United States and the USSR and the
national priority given to military rocketry, the NACA’s sophisticated facilities inevitably
became involved. With each passing year it was enlarging its missile research in proportion to
the old mission of aerodynamic research.
As part of the US participation in the forthcoming International Geophysical Year, it was
proposed to launch a small satellite into orbit around the Earth. When USSR announced, that
they also would launch a satellite into orbit, the space race was extending beyond boosters
and payloads to issues of national prestige.
In 1957, when the ”beep, beep” signal from Sputnik 1 was heard around the world the Soviet
Union had orbited the world’s first manmade satellite.
When the US Army finally launched their Explorer 1 satellite, the payload weighed only 2
pounds against the 1100 pounds of Sputnik 2. An experiment aboard the satellite reported
mysterious saturation of its radiation counters at 594 miles altitude. Professor James A. van
Allen, the scientist who had built the experiment, thought this suggested the existence of a
dense belt of radiation around the Earth at that altitude - the van Allen radiation belts.
The US government sought for an agency, which would help the United States to catch up
with the fast advancing USSR space program. Either the Department of Defense or the NACA
should begin with the development of a national space program.
The NACA research team had come up with a solid, longterm, scientifically based proposal
for a blend of aeronautic and space research. Its concept for manned spaceflight, for example,
envisioned a ballistic spacecraft with a blunt reentry shape, backed by a world-encircling
tracking system, and equipped with dual automatic and manual controls that would enable the
astronaut gradually to take over more and more of the flying of his spacecraft. Also NACA
offered reassuring experience of long, close working relationships with the military services
in solving their research problems, while at the same time translating the research into civil
applications. But NACA’s greatest political asset was its peaceful, research-oriented image.
President Eisenhower and Senator Johnson and others in Congress were united in wanting
above all to avoid projecting cold war tensions into the new arena of outer space.

Chapter 2 - The foundation of the NASA

On 29 July 1958 President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of
1958. The act established a broad charter for civilian aeronautical and space research with
unique requirements for dissemination of information, absorbed the existing NACA into the
new organization as its nucleus, and empowered broad transfers from other government
programs. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration came into being on 1 October
1958. All this made for a very busy spring and summer for the people in the small NACA
Headquarters in Washington. Once the general outlines of the new organization were clear,

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both a space program and a new organization had to be charted. The NACA’s assistant
director for aerodynamic research, headed a committee to plan the new organization.
Talks with the Advanced Research Projects Agency identified the military space programs
that were space science-oriented and were obvious transfers to the new agency. Plans were
formulated for building a new center for space science research, satellite development, flight
operations, and tracking: The Goddard Space Flight Center was dedicated in March 1961. The
8000 people, three laboratories (now renamed research centers) and two stations, with a total
facilities value of $300 million and an annual budget of $100 million were transferred intact
to NASA. There followed an intense two-year period of organization, build up, fill in,
planning, and general catch up. Only one week after NASA was formed, Congress gave the
go ahead to Project Mercury, America's first manned spaceflight program. The Space Task
Group was established at Langley to get the job done. The new programs brought into the
organization were slowly integrated into the NACA nucleus. Many spaceminded specialists
were drawn into NASA, attracted by the exciting new vistas. Long-range planning was
accelerated. The first NASA 10-year plan was presented to Congress in February 1960. It
called for an expanding program on a broad front: manned spaceflight (first orbital, then
circumlunar), scientific satellites to measure radiation and other features of the near-space
environment, lunar probes to measure the lunar space environment and to photograph the
Moon, planetary probes to measure and to photograph Mars and Venus, weather satellites to
improve our knowledge of Earth’s broad weather patterns, continued aeronautical research,
and development of larger launch vehicles for lifting heavier payloads. The cost of the
program was expected to vary between $1 billion and $1.5 billion per year over the 10-year
period.
High speed airplane research continued and led to the NASA’s X-15, which attained a
speed of Mach 6,7 which is 7,270 km/hr, the fastest speed ever reached by a jet. The X-15
contributed heavily to research in spaceflight as well as to high-speed aircraft research. Using
the powerful X-15 engines, the first vertical takeoff and landing plane was developed.
A 4000-person Development Operations Division, headed by Wernher von Braun, was
transferred from the Army to NASA along with the big Saturn booster project.

Chapter 3 - The race for the Moon

Against the background of the ”Cold War”, US President J.F. Kennedy announced in 1961,
for the obvious reason of gaining prestige, that the United States would dedicate this decade
to bringing a man up to the moon and returning him to Earth. The job was handed over to
NASA, the United States’ civilian Agency for Space Exploration.
The NASAs conquest of the moon was divided in three programs: the Mercury Program and
the Gemini Program, whichs purpose it was to test the limits of NASAs space vehicles and to
train astronauts for the final Apollo Program.

 The Mercury Program

The Mercury program was the earliest NASA project to put an astronaut into space. It utilized
one-person, bell-shaped capsules that were boosted into orbits 161 to 283 km above the Earth.
The capsules reentered the atmosphere ballistically, and parachutes were deployed on the final
descent to ocean splashdown.    The capsules were then recovered by U.S. naval vessels and
helicopters. The project successfully flew two suborbital and four orbital manned missions.
The project cost slightly more than $400 million and involved the technical skills of more
than 2 million men and women in the research, development, and testing of the spacecraft, its
launch vehicles, and a worldwide tracking and communications network.

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Although manned spaceflight had been studied since the late 1940s, serious development of a
manned satellite was not considered by Congress until after the Soviet Union launched
Sputniks 1 and 2 in October and November 1957.    In March 1958, the NACE proposed a
wingless, manned satellite that could follow a ballistic path to reenter the atmosphere without
exposing the crew to excessively high temperatures or dangerous acceleration. The chief
points of this proposal were incorporated into the Mercury program.
The size and weight of the Mercury spacecraft were dictated by the lifting capability of the
intercontinental ballistic missiles of the US Army. The capsule was designed to weigh less
than 1,350 kg, because the lifting capacities of these missiles was limited.   
The astronaut reclined on a contour couch designed to provide protection from accelerations
of as much as 20 gravities.
The attitude, or position, of the capsule was controlled by an array of 18 hydrogen-peroxide
gas thrusters.    These could pitch the spacecraft up or down, yaw it left or right, or roll it. The
pilot could fire them by means of a hand controller or leave attitude control to an autopilot.
Following the launch, the most critical part of the flight was the firing of the braking rockets.
The pilot was required to put the capsule in a precise attitude for retrofire in order to land in
the sea near the recovery ships.
During 1960-61, the Mercury capsule was launched by a Redstone missile on a series
of suborbital flights that tested the integrity of its structure and the effectiveness of the launch
escape tower. The tower contained a powerful rocket that would pull the spacecraft away from
the launch vehicle in the event the launcher failed during liftoff. It was activated only once,
when the Redstone launcher failed in November 1960. The tower rocket pulled the spacecraft
high above the Atlantic Ocean so that it could parachute into the water.
One of the first Mercury flights took a 17-kg chimpanzee named Ham on a suborbital flight,
from which he was recovered unharmed.
During other manned suborbital flights the control systems of the spacecraft were tested.
Following a series of Mercury unmanned orbital test flights Lt. Col. John H. GLENN, Jr.,
flew a three-orbit (4 hr 55 min) mission (1962) in the spacecraft he named Friendship 7. As
the first American to fly in orbit, Glenn received a hero’s welcome on the same scale as that
accorded Charles A. Lindbergh after his New York-Paris flight in 1927.
Project Mercury ended with a 22-orbit (34 hr 20 min) flight in 1963.
Four years and 10 months after NASA was created, the first American manned space program
had been completed.

 The Gemini Program

The Gemini program was a series of piloted spaceflights in the mid-1960s.    The series was
authorized by Congress in 1961 as an intermediate step, between the Mercury Program and
the Apollo Program, in the U.S. effort to land on the Moon. It was called Gemini, which
means "twins" in Latin, because each piloted flight carried two astronauts into orbit.
The earlier Mercury program had demonstrated that a trained astronaut could fly in orbit for
up to 34 hours.    The NASA next had to determine whether trained crew members could
endure the weightlessness of orbital freefall long enough to survive a journey to the Moon and
back. This was one important objective of the Gemini program. Others were to develop
rendezvous and docking techniques needed for the lunar mission and to train personnel in
their use.
A highly maneuverable spacecraft was required, with an elaborate life-support system that
could maintain a crew for up to 14 days.    A NASA team designed a two-person spacecraft,
that fulfilled all the needs it was created for. Within five years, the program had achieved all
of its objectives. Its total cost was $1,283,400,000, including $797,400,000 for the spacecraft,
$409,800,000 for launch vehicles, and $76,200,000 for support facilities. The flight series

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used the $79,900,000 global tracking and communications network established in Project
Mercury.
The first piloted Gemini mission, Gemini 3, was flown in March 1965. Five days
earlier, the Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov had spent ten minutes outside Vokshod 2 in the
first demonstration of extravehicular activity (EVA) during orbital flight. This feat was
duplicated in June on the four-day, 62-orbit flight of Gemini 4. The NASA astronaut
remained outside for 20 minutes in a 14-kg space suit designed for EVA.
The program also attempted to achieve rendezvous and docking with another vehicle in orbit.
The original plans called for a Gemini spacecraft to dock with an AGENA rocket.    The first
attempt was canceled in October 1965, when the Agena blew up after having been launched
by an Atlas missile. After an unsuccessful effort during which the launch rocket sputtered but
did not lift off, Gemini 6 was sent into orbit in December 1965.
Meanwhile, the Gemini 7 spacecraft had been launched and it was decided that Gemini 7
would serve as the vehicle with which Gemini 6 would rendezvous. Gemini 6 was piloted
within one foot of Gemini 7 on December 15. This was the first successful rendezvous in
space. The crew of Gemini 7 went on to set a new endurance record in space: they made a
controlled landing in the Atlantic on December 18, 1965, after 330 hours and 35 minutes in
orbit. Their mission proved that trained men could endure a round trip to the Moon. On its
220 orbits of the Earth, Gemini 7 had flown 20 times the distance to the Moon.
Rendezvous and docking with an Agena target rocket was achieved on March 16, 1966,
during the mission of Gemini 8, by NASA astronaut Neil A. Armstong. The mission was
abruptly terminated, however, when a malfunction in the Gemini ”Orbital Attitude and
Maneuvering System” thrusters forced the crew to undock and make an emergency landing in
the western Pacific Ocean.
Overheating and face-plate fogging, which had interfered with early EVA (extravehicular
activity) efforts, were overcome by Air Force Maj. Edwin E. ”Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., on the flight
of Gemini 12.    After he and Lovell docked with an Agena rocket, Aldrin succeeded in
performing 2 hours and 9 minutes of continuous work outside the spacecraft.    The
splashdown of Gemini 12 on Nov. 15, 1966, ended the program.

 The Apollo Program

The Apollo program was the successful conclusion of the NASAs effort to achieve, within the
decade, the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.    It
followed the Gemini manned-flight program conducted in 1966-67 to develop the necessary
techniques of orbiting, docking, and extravehicular activity (EVA).    The main elements of the
Apollo project were the three-man Apollo spacecraft;    the two-man Lunar Excursion Module
or Lunar Module and the Saturn family of rockets. These units made up the first manned,
interplanetary transportation system. Using this system, astronauts landed on the Moon, where
they explored and collected samples at six sites on the near side between July 1969 and the
end of December 1972. The total cost of developing and operating the Apollo-Saturn
transportation system in the lunar program was $25 billion.
Between October 1968, when the Apollo-Saturn transportation system underwent its first full
space test, and July 1975, when it was used for the last time, the NASA launched 15 manned
Apollo-Saturn flights. During the testing period three fatalities occurred on the launchpad at
the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, but none in actual flight.
Launched July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 made the first manned lunar landing on July 20. As Lt.
Col. Michael Collins orbited the Moon in the mother ship Columbia, Neil Armstrong and Col.
Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., touched down in a region called ”Sea of Tranquility”, in the Lunar
Module Eagle with the historic report: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has
landed.” Armstrong was the first out. Dropping the last meter from the ladder, he said: “That's

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one small step for {a} man, one giant leap for mankind” (NASA later reported that the word
”a” had been lost in transmission).
On the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin erected the American flag and set up scientific
instruments, including a laser beam reflector, a seismometer that later transmitted evidence of
a moonquake, and a sheet of aluminum foil to trap Solar Wind particles. The astronauts took
soil and rock photographs and collected 24.4 kg of rock and dirt samples. Armstrong, the first
out and the last back into the Lunar Module, spent 2 hours and 13 minutes outside. After
Armstrong and Aldrin returned to Columbia in the ascent stage of the Eagle, Collins fired the
Apollo main engine and lifted the vessel out of lunar orbit for the return to Earth. The ascent
stage of the Eagle was left in lunar orbit. The crew landed in the Pacific Ocean on July 24,
1969, reaching the NASAs goal of visiting the moon within the 60’s.
After the successful moon landing of Apollo 12, where 33.9kg of rocks were picked up and
returned to Earth, the Apollo 13 mission failed.
Two days after Apollo 13 was launched in 1970, an oxygen tank exploded in the Service
Module and crippled the vessel's power and life-support systems so badly that a planned
landing in the Fra Mauro formation of the Moon was canceled. The crew used the descent
engine of the Lunar Module Aquarius to accelerate the crippled spacecraft around the Moon
and back to Earth.    Using Aquarius as a lifeboat, they returned to the vicinity of Earth,
entered the Command Module, and landed it safely on April 17. Investigation showed that a
thermostatically controlled switch had failed and allowed the oxygen tank to overheat.
The Apollo Program, which started during a time of intense competition between the United
States and the USSR, ended in a demonstration of detente in space:    a joint orbital flight of
the Apollo and Soyuz spaceships, known as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Technically, the
joint mission in low Earth orbit demonstrated intership crew transfer and space rescue. The
total cost to NASA of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was $250 million.
The vessels docked over a spot in the Atlantic Ocean some 1,030 km west of Portugal on July
17, 1972. During the next two days, the crews made four transfers between the two ships and
completed five planned experiments. The nine-day mission was the last one of the Apollo
program.
Eleven missions of the Apollo Program were missions in the lunar landing program, including
two test flights in low Earth orbit, two test flights in lunar orbit, six landings, and one
circumlunar flight, during which the planned landing was aborted (Apollo 13).
The question, why the U.S. put a man on the moon before the USSR did, is easy to
answer: The USSR had powerful boosters at their disposal and therefore didn’t need to
minimize the weight of their spacecrafts. The NASA benefited from the low weight of their
spacecrafts, which made it possible to build the Lunar Module, which could land and then
take off from the Moon’s surface.

Chapter 4 - The Shuttle Program

The NASAs Space Shuttle is a reusable spacecraft designed to be launched into orbit by
rockets and then to return to the Earth’s surface by gliding down and landing on a runway.
The Shuttle was selected in the early 1970s as the principal space launcher and carrier vehicle
to be developed by the NASA.    It was planned as a replacement for the expensive,
expendable booster rockets used since the late 1950s for launching major commercial and
governmental satellites. Together with launch facilities, mission control and supporting
centers, and a tracking and data-relay satellite system, it would complete NASA’s new Space
Transportation System.

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After various delays, the program got under way in the early 1980s. Despite a number of
problems, the craft demonstrated its versatility in a series of missions until, in January 1986, a
fatal Shuttle disaster during launch forced a long delay until the program was resumed late in
1988.

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