Abstract
As a civilian organization tasked with knowledge production, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was obligated to demonstrate scientific value in its human spaceflight program. Yet during its first decade, NASA’s experimental vehicles made poor laboratories, and astronauts—test pilots who valued engineering data obtained through precise flying—found extraneous experimentation a distraction. In planning Project Mercury missions, NASA walked a fine line between engineering and science: flights intended to prove out basic components and systems were simultaneously packed with hundreds of minute experiments and opportunities for observation. American scientists of the 1960s were deeply divided over the value of piloted spaceflight, with many decrying it as wasteful, and one scientist anticipating Project Mercury to be “the most expensive funeral man has ever had.”1
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Notes
Joseph D. Atkinson and Jay M. Shafritz, The Real Stuff: A History of NASA’s Astronaut Recruitment Program (New York: Praeger, 1985), 64–65, 82;
Robert Gilruth, “Transcript #4 (Martin Collins, David DeVorkin, Interviewers),” Oral History Transcripts (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, October 2, 1986), 30.
George M. Low, “Letter to Gordon Allett,” November 30, 1970, Folder 004154, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon: and, a Trip around It (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1950).
Occasionally joining the “real” crew were the professor’s comely female assistant, a monkey, a child, or an imbecile, to provide comic relief, dramatic tension, a romantic partner for the ship’s pilot, or a surrogate for the audience to whom plot points could be explained. Byron Haskin, “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (Paramount Pictures Corp., 1964); Kurt Neumann, “Rocketship X-M” (Lippert Pictures, 1950).
David A. Mindell, Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2008), 67.
Wernher Von Braun and Cornelius Ryan, Conquest of the Moon (New York: Viking Press, 1953), 36–38. “The captain of the ship, on being told by his navigator that the vehicle is off course, can make the desired change by inserting a previously prepared tape into the automatic pilot.” Von Braun and Ryan, Conquest of the Moon, 48.
Brian O’Leary, “Topics: Science or Stunts on the Moon?,” New York Times, April 25, 1970, 18;
Ralph E. Lapp, “Send Computers, Not Men, into Deep Space,” New York Times, February 2, 1969, 35–36.
Robert Gilruth, “Transcript #6,” Oral History Transcripts (David DeVorkin, John Mauer, Interviewers) (Washington, DC.: Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, March 2, 1987), 17.
See, for example, Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
Lyndon B. Johnson, “Evaluation of Space Program.” in Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, ed. John M. Logsdon (Washington, DC: NASA, 1995), 427–429.
Space Task Group, “The Post-Apollo Space Program: Directions for the Future,” in Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, ed. John M. Logsdon and Linda J. Lear (Washington, DC: NASA, 1995), 526–527.
Sylvia Doughty Fries, NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo (Washington, DC: NASA, 1992), 126, 130; Atkinson and Shafritz, The Real Stuff, 65.
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979).
Walter Cunningham, The All-American Boys (Revised Edition) (New York: ibooks, 2003), 285.
Generally, Allan A. Needell, Science, Cold War and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000).
David J. Shayler, NASA’s Scientist-Astronauts (New York: Springer, 2007), 19;
Donald K. Slayton and Michael Cassutt, Deke! U.S. Manned Space: From Mercury to the Shuttle (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
William Lee, “Memorandum to Joseph Shea, May 14, 1963,” in The Real Stuff: A History of NASA’s Astronaut Recruitment Program, ed. Joseph D. Atkinson and Jay M. Shafritz (New York: Praeger, 1985), 71.
Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys (New York: Farrar, 1974), 45; Shayler, NASA’s Scientist-Astronauts, 35.
David Sington, “In the Shadow of the Moon” (Discovery Films, 2007).
Buzz Aldrin, “Remarks Accompanying Screening of in The Shadow of the Moon” (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, September 7, 2007).
Eugene Cernan and Don Davis, The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America’s Race in Space (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 187.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “NASA Will Recruit 10 to 20 Scientist-Astronauts,” Manned Spacecraft Center Press Release, October 19, 1964.
Courtney G. Brooks, James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson, Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft (Washington, DC: NASA, 1979), 180.
Edward G. Gibson, “Oral History Transcript (Carol Butler, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, December 1, 2000), 4, 11.
David J. Shayler, Skylab: America’s Space Station (Chichester, UK: Praxis, 2001), 106–107.
Joseph P. Kerwin, “Oral Histor y Transcr ipt (Kevin M. Rusnak, Inter viewer),” NA SA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, May 12, 2000), 5.
Brian O’Leary, The Making of an Ex-Astronaut (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), 80.
“Crew Nomenclature,” March 14, 1967, Box 068–12, Apollo Series, Johnson Space Center History Collection, University of Houston–Clear Lake; Brooks, Grimwood, and Swenson, Chariots for Apollo, 261 at †; Robert L. Crippen, “Oral History Transcript (Rebecca Wright, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, May 26, 2006), 24–25.
Francis French and Colin Burgess, In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965–69 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 199.
M. Scott Carpenter and Kris Stoever, For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut (Orlando: Harcourt, 2002), 236.
Maura Phillips Mackowski, Testing the Limits: Aviation Medicine and the Origins of Manned Space Flight (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 212.
Popular culture reinforced this stereotype. A space program that would blast “mild-mannered assistant professor Myron Schwartz” to the Moon, was, to author Lois Philmus, “lunar lunacy.” Her 1966 mock-history A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon poked fun at bumbling pilots “Sky” Sawyer and “Wrong-Way” Conners, but saved the greatest sarcasm for the academ-ic—Myron—mistakenly chosen by NASA’s “Scientist-Astronaut Program” to “be a passenger on America’s first moon shot.” Lois C. Philmus, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon (New York: Spartan Books, 1966).
Joseph P. Kerwin, “Oral History Transcript (Kevin M. Rusnak, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, May 12, 2000), 6.
Gideon Kunda, Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a HighTech Corporation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992);
Robert Zussman, Mechanics of the Middle Class: Work and Politics among American Engineers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
Joseph P. Allen, “Oral History Transcript (Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, January 28, 2003), 2–5.
Patricia A. Santy, Choosing the Right Stuff: The Psychological Selection of Astronauts and Cosmonauts (Westport: Praeger, 1994), 34–35.
See, for example, Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist’s Role in Society: A Comparative Study (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971).
See, for example, Robert Kohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
Arthur Hill, “Scientist-Astronauts Facing Uncertain Future,” Houston Chronicle, May 23, 1971.
Robert Farquhar, Fifty Years on the Space Frontier: Halo Orbits, Comets, Asteroids, and More (Parker: Outskirts Press, 2011), 33–34.
For example, W. David Compton and Charles D. Benson, Living and Working in Space: A History of Skylab, (Washington, DC: NASA, 1983).
Joseph P. Allen, “Oral History Transcript #3 (Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Washington, DC, March 18, 2004), 1.
Crippen, “Oral History Transcript (Rebecca Wright, Interviewer),” 8; Karol J. Bobko, “Oral History Transcript (Summer Chick Bergen, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, February 12, 2002), 8.
Donald H. Peterson, “Oral History Transcript (Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, November 14, 2002), 77–78.
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© 2012 Matthew H. Hersch
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Hersch, M.H. (2012). Scientists in Space. In: Inventing the American Astronaut. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025296_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025296_4
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