NASA Historical Data Book, Volume II, NASA SP-4012; Programs and Projects, 1958-1968

vii, [3], 643, [3] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. NASA Organization Charts. Index. Cover has slight wear and soiling. Minor edge soiling. Linda Neuman Ezell, from Fulton County, Illinois, was born in 1951. She graduated from Sangamon State University in 1974 and has also published in the field of military technology. 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. The first two volumes of this series provide a statistical summary of the first decade of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It was a pioneering decade, characterized by public and congressional support, growth, and adventure. While Volume I introduces the researcher to NASA finances, personnel, and installations, the second volume contains information on the agency's major programs and projects-the raison d'etre for the "dollars, people, and things" previously measured. 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. The intent of the series is to provide a comprehensive, factual data base on the tangible aspects of NASA and its programs. The procurement and development of launch vehicles was a critical first step for NASA. Chapter 1 discusses the military vehicles used by the agency in its early years and the stable of launchers designed and developed by NASA and its contractors. Saturn V, the largest and most powerful of these vehicles, was built for a specific purpose--manned expeditions to the moon. Chapter 2 outlines for the reader NASA's manned spaceflight program. Project Mercury proved that one man could safely orbit the earth and return. Pairs of astronauts in larger vehicles performed larger, more sophisticated missions during Project Gemini. But it was the ambitious Apollo program that captured the attention and the purse of the nation. In 1961 in answer to Yuri A. Gagarin's successful orbital flight, which preceded John H. Glenn, Jr.'s orbital mission by 10 months, President John F. Kennedy declared that before the end of the decade the U.S. would send a man to the moon. At the close of NASA's first decade, three Americans circled earth's natural satellite aboard Apollo 4; in July 1969 the first of six Apollo lunar landers touched down safely on the moon. Although it received less fiscal support, the space science and applications program brought the agency its first and steadiest supply of results. Chapter 3 explores the disciplines NASA's space scientists sought to study and describes the many vehicles they used-from small sounding rockets and the Explorer family of satellites to large orbiting-laboratory satellites. In addition to supporting "pure" scientific research, NASA specialists also developed satellites of a more "practicaL" nature that contributed to such fields as meteorology and communications. NASA also applied its expertise to aeronautical research, continuing a practice begun by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1915. Also included in the advanced research and technology program, d.…