NASA Historical Data Book, Volume I; NASA Resources 1958-1968

ix, [1], 631, [1] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Index. Short section on the authors. Cover has slight wear and soiling. Ms. Van Nimmen had been a writer-editor at the Library of Congress Science and Technology Division. Mr. Bruno had been a writer-editor at the Library of Congress Science and Technology Division. Dr. Rosholt was the author of An Administrative History of NASA, 1958-1963 and was Department Chairman at Bloomsburg State College in Pennsylvania at the time this work was published. The content of this volume address NASA facilities, personnel, finances, procurement, installations, selected Aerospace Awards and also includes Major NASA Organization Charts. In 1974, NASA published the first volume of the NASA Historical Data Book, a hefty tome containing mostly tabular data on the resources of the space agency between 1958 and 1968. There, broken into detailed tables, were the facts and figures associated with the budget, facilities, procurement, installations, and personnel of NASA during that formative decade. In 1988, NASA reissued that first volume of the data book and added two additional volumes on the agency's programs and projects, one each for 1958-1968 and 1969-1978. NASA began its operations as the nation's civilian space agency in 1958 following the passage of the National Aeronautics and Space Act. It succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new organization was charged with preserving the role of the United States "as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology" and in its application, with expanding our knowledge of the Earth's atmosphere and space, and with exploring flight both within and outside the atmosphere. By the 1980s, NASA had established itself as an agency with considerable achievements on record. A decade in the life of an organization as dynamic and multifaceted as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration offers a large enough canvas to discern clearly the patterns and trends of the organization s life. For NASA, the decade which closed on October 1, 1968, was its first. That decade has been-and will continue to be-studied by many people and from many perspectives. It is with the hope of stimulating such studies that NASA is offering the NASA Historical Data Book, 1958-1968, of which this volume, NASA Resources, is the first. The intent of the series is to provide a comprehensive, factual data base on the tangible aspects of NASA and its programs. The first volume covers organization and management; the second will cover the individual space and aeronautics programs. This volume deals primarily with the resources which the Nation made available to NASA in that decade and traces the allocation of those resources. The perceptive eye will find much of NASA history and management philosophy, as well as many decisions, reflected in these columns of numbers. In the 1958-1961 period, there is evidence of the piecing together of a new agency to continue research in aeronautics while undertaking the leadership of the Nation s civilian space program. This involved the assimilating of organization, facilities, program, and people from a number of Government agencies and creating out of them a new organization and program. From 1961 to 1966, one can trace the national commitment to an expanded space program, expressed in the doubling and redoubling of resources and the growing momentum. In the 1967-1968 period, the lower costs mark the shift in the Apollo program from development and procurement into its operational phase. This was the decade in which the United States made its commitment to space exploration and demonstrated its capacity to achieve large and difficult goals in a sustained, orderly, and open program. From a historical point of view, in the short period of a decade, the exploration of the space frontier was generating a new Copernican Revolution in our perception of ourselves and our earth. The achievements in space sciences were.…