Breaking the Chains of Gravity Read online

  Not to be left out, the navy was also eager to eke out its place in space. Von Braun had invited the navy to be a part of both Project Man Very High and Project Adam for the simple reason that the navy was best equipped to recover a spacecraft after it splashed down in the ocean. But the navy wanted to be more involved, and in April 1958 its Bureau of Aeronautics presented a manned satellite program to ARPA. Called MER for Manned Earth Reconnaissance, the proposal called for launching a manned spacecraft shaped like a cylinder with spherical ends. Once in orbit, the ends of the cylinder would expand laterally along two telescoping beams turning the pod into a delta-wing inflated glider with a rigid nose. The whole system would be pilot controlled from launch to gliding landing on the water, satisfying the requirements of an early spaceflight program.

  These capsule-based military space proposals weren’t the only ideas circulating that spring. The air force and NACA were still pursuing a boost-glide vehicle as the next step after the X-15. Based on Eugen Sänger’s antipodal bomber system, the program was alternatively called BoMi for Bomber Missile, Brass Bell in its incarnation as a dedicated reconnaissance vehicle, and ROBO for Rocket Bomber. ROBO was the version ultimately investigated by industry partners Douglas, Convair, and North American Aviation. Still a futuristic technology, there was deemed no need to fast-track the program into development, and so the proposal called for an incremental development phase to bring the system to life. Called weapons system 464L, it was eventually nicknamed Dyna-Soar in reference to its dynamic soaring landing profile. It quickly became a case study of a developing program designed to create longevity behind America’s first steps into space, along with a weapons system that would shape America’s military arsenal, meeting military needs through to 1980.

  The first phase spacecraft, Dyna-Soar I, would be the conceptual test article and the first vehicle that would go beyond the X-15 with a pilot on board. Air launched from a mother ship, this first iteration would reach altitudes above 250,000 feet and return the first hard data on hypersonic flight as well as aerodynamic, structural, heating, and human data during its short flights that would ultimately feed into the later versions. The next vehicle would be Dyna-Soar II, essentially the same version that had previously been called Brass Bell. This was to be a reconnaissance weapons system that would use a rocket engine to reach a peak altitude of just 170,000 feet but fly at speeds up to 12,300 miles per hour, gathering intelligence in the name of national security. The next iteration, Dyna-Soar III, was similar to the earlier ROBO concept, a hypersonic, global, strategic bombardment and reconnaissance weapon that would double as a manned multistage rocket-powered glider aircraft, capable of circumnavigating the globe.

  The military space proposals were all pitched to the Department of Defense with the understanding that ARPA would be the governing body behind the nation’s spaceflight program. But in the beginning of May, the military on the whole lost the fight for control in space when President Eisenhower’s call for a civilian space agency was answered by Congress, who drew up the National Aeronautics and Space Act.

  The National Aeronautics and Space (NAS) Act outlined exactly what this new civilian agency would do, largely according to Killian’s stipulations. The act officially separated civilian and military sectors in space, solidifying policies in favor of the peaceful use of space. It also called for the absorption of the NACA as the core organization that would become the backbone of the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration, its expanse of laboratories and thousands of staff members included. There was some provision for NASA to absorb other pockets of space research in the country as well, including the Army Ballistic Missile Association, since their rockets would be integral to the future of launch vehicles. But even so, absorbing these military pockets, NASA, as Killian and Eisenhower had devised it, would remain a strictly civilian enterprise with very limited military participation. The president also recruited Senator Lyndon Johnson from Texas, a strong proponent of an American spaceflight program, to fight for the space agency’s creation. It turned out to be a shrewd move on Eisenhower’s part. Johnson created the Space Council that served to move the NAS Act through congressional challenges quickly, and just three months later, on July 29, the NAS Act was signed into law.

  The next question was over who should lead the new NASA. Hugh Dryden was an obvious choice. He would bring nearly a decade of experience at the helm of the NACA, a career marked by striking foresight into aeronautical technologies, and a reputation of having a clear knowledge of the intricacies involved in running a series of national research laboratories to the new agency. But congressional leaders thought Dryden’s style of directing the NACA quietly gave the impression that he was too laid-back, not an exuberant enough character to spearhead the nation’s exciting move into space. Convinced that space would invigorate the nation, Congress wanted a leader as charismatic as the future was bright. The conversation led to another possible candidate: Thomas Keith Glennan was president of the Case Institute of Technology and a familiar face to many within the NACA.

  With Eisenhower’s approval, Killian set about to court Glennan into accepting the appointment, and though space was the new frontier, it wasn’t an easy sell. The future of space and whether it would remain a viable industry after getting a man into orbit remained uncertain. Glennan had reservations and told Killian he needed to think over the offer. Days later, Glennan made his decision. He would accept the appointment as NASA’s administrator, he told Killian, on the condition that Dryden serve as his deputy. Killian agreed, and Dryden accepted the appointment. Both Glennan and Dryden were formally appointed on August 8 and were sworn in eleven days later as the first two leaders of NASA.

  With an administrator and his deputy in place, the NACA’s transition to NASA began. The pace was rapid and the change not without its challenges. Turning a research community with a host of small programs into one multimillion-dollar organization running its own cutting-edge programs was a daunting task. NASA also prepared to absorb some of the military programs underway to place them firmly in the civilian space sphere. The air force and the Department of Defense space programs were poised to transfer to the new NASA, as were a handful of centers around the country, including the NACA Lewis, Langley, and Ames laboratories as well as the High Speed Flight Station. Talks began about moving von Braun and the Army Ballistic Missile Association, as well as Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, under NASA’s umbrella as well. Any center with any ties to space would fall under the civilian agency before long. It was in the nation’s best interests for NASA to develop its own spaceflight program with the country’s best minds and technologies readily on hand.

  Toward the end of August, NACA employees around the country watched a video message from their leader. Dryden appeared on the screen, but instead of identifying himself as the NACA’s director, he introduced himself to the eight thousand people under his employ as the deputy administrator of NASA. He then introduced Glennan, the man who would soon be their new leader.

  We have come to a new day, Glennan began, before addressing the reality that the era of the NACA was fast coming to a close. Rather than feeling loss, he urged his future employees to take great pride in the coming change. Of all the agencies nationwide, he said, the NACA has been selected to have the honor of ushering in the new era of exploration on behalf of the country. It was the achievements of each and every NACA employee that gave this historic agency the reputation that left it as the emissary in space. “The NASA,” he went on, would certainly be different than its predecessor owing to its different mission, but it would surely thrive under the same model of forward-thinking technical development that had served the NACA so well in its nearly half century of operation.

  The NACA would never cease to exist, Glennan promised his staff. The transition was a positive one, a metamorphosis that would draw together the best the nation had to offer toward this exciting new goal. And that metamorphosis would be complete by the end of the workday on
September 30.

  Glennan was true to his word. On October 1, 1958, a Tuesday morning, thousands of NACA employees around the country went to work as they always did, only they weren’t working strictly in aeronautics anymore. They were working for NASA, and the change in their agency’s name was palpable. Working for the nation’s space agency, the sky was no longer their limit.

  Epilogue: America Finds Its Footing in Space

  On October 7, 1958, with his agency one week old, NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan considered proposals for a manned spaceflight program. One was for a ballistic capsule, the kind pioneered by Max Faget from the Langley Research Laboratory. It was shaped like a truncated cone with a rounded bottom over which was strapped a packet of retrofire rockets designed to begin the capsule’s fall from orbit. The upper portion of the capsule was an elongated neck, housing the parachute that would slow its final descent toward splashdown. In the name of catching up to the Russians in space, speed trumped sophistication; this was the fastest way to get a man in space first. Glennan gave the program his glib endorsement, saying simply, “let’s get on with it.” It became NASA’s singular goal to get an American astronaut in space before the Soviet Union launched a cosmonaut.

  The next day, the thirty-five-member Space Task Group was informally established at Langley Field in Virginia to bring the manned spaceflight program to fruition. In the weeks that followed, these men and women traveled around the country determining which existing programs would be absorbed by NASA to achieve the manned spaceflight goal. Some visited the air force’s Wright Air Development Center in Ohio to learn about human factors in near space. Others studied different ablation materials for reentry heat shields alongside representatives from the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division. Engineers at Langley started working on the parachute that would slow this capsule during its final descent. Some Langley personnel met with Wernher von Braun’s team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency to discuss using the Redstone missile to launch suborbital missions. Others visited the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division to discuss using the Atlas missile to launch orbital flights.

  The prospect of using spaceplanes to send pilots into orbit was all but forgotten when the doors of a large hangar opened on a sunny Wednesday morning on October 15 at North American Aviation’s plant in Los Angeles. A small yellow tractor drove out from a hangar into the sunshine trailing a sleek black aircraft behind it flanked by two white-coated engineers. The first production X-15 made its way slowly through the parted crowd of gathered dignitaries and military personnel before coming to a stop in front of Vice President Richard Nixon who stood on a small stage set up in the shade. Nixon toured the sophisticated aircraft, designed to take men to the fringes of space that was now overshadowed by a simplistic capsule. By the end of October, specifications for NASA’s ballistic spacecraft were firm enough for the agency to release a call for proposals. Industry partners were free to pitch their own versions of the vehicle, outlining the program and suggesting methods of analysis and construction.

  NASA pressed on, as did its partner agencies. The air force’s Atlas program reached a milestone distance flight of over six thousand miles, bringing the rocket one step closer to launching an astronaut. Test vehicles were developed for reentry assessments. Contractors submitted their proposals to the space agency, and small-scale rockets were developed with the intention of testing the spacecraft’s abort system. During a December 17 policy speech, Glennan referred to the manned spaceflight effort for the first time by name, Project Mercury, solidifying the program in the minds of the American public.

  In January 1959, NASA determined the physical characteristics of the men who would fly as part of the Mercury program. Hopeful astronauts had to be under forty years of age, shorter than five feet eleven inches, and weigh less than 180 pounds, physical constraints dictated by the size of the capsule and power of the Redstone and Atlas rockets. Candidates also had to be graduates of a test pilot school and have fifteen hundred hours’ flying time in jet aircraft. Of the 508 men who met these basic requirements for NASA’s astronaut program, 110 applied and began a rigorous screening process and series of extensive medical examinations. Meanwhile, further technical pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Abort systems and ablative materials were tested, instruments were designed and honed, and test trajectories were calculated. The U.S. Navy was the final military partner to join the program, signing on to support NASA in recovering the astronauts after splashdown.

  Six months and nine days after the space agency formally opened its doors, NASA held a press conference at its new headquarters in Washington, D.C. Seated behind a long table between two American flags were seven men, all wearing dress shirts, dark jackets, and ties, two of which were bow ties. Behind them hung NASA’s insignia, a blue circle representing a planet with the agency’s acronym in white letters. Stars in the sphere’s body were meant to signify space, a red chevron crossing the sphere denoting a wing as a callback to the new agency’s ties to aeronautics, and a thin white ellipse showed an orbiting spacecraft. On the floor in front of the table were two models, one of an Atlas rocket with a Mercury capsule on top and the other a larger version of the spacecraft.

  Glennan introduced the men at the table: Malcolm S. Carpenter, Leroy G. Cooper, John H. Glenn, Virgil I. Grissom, Walter M. Schirra, Alan B. Shepard, and Donald K. Slayton. “These, ladies and gentleman,” he finished as the room broke into applause, “are the nation’s Mercury astronauts.” NASA and military officials spoke before the press was able to address the astronauts directly, asking after their family lives and selection process. Some of the pilots seemed somewhat uncomfortable in the spotlight, but soon won the room over.

  A picture of the Mercury astronauts was featured the next day on the front page of the New York Times, and small articles with biographies of the men appeared in other newspapers and magazines throughout the country in the days that followed. The Mercury astronauts weren’t headline news like Sputnik had been, but without having done anything except speak during a press conference they quickly became national heroes. The fear that had gripped the nation over uncertainty in space was replaced by optimism personified. The Soviet threat still loomed, but now with NASA, America had its answer.

  Glossary of People

  Neil Armstrong: August 5, 1930–August 25, 2012. Pilot engineer who joined the NACA in 1955 as a test pilot at the High Speed Flight Station. He flew some of the first missions with reaction controls mounted on an X-1B.

  Magnus von Braun: May 10, 1919–June 21, 2003. Wernher von Braun’s younger brother who found and surrendered the German rocket team to American soldiers at the end of the Second World War.

  Wernher von Braun: March 23, 1912–June 16, 1977. One of the lead designers of the German A-4/V-2 program imported to the United States after the Second World War then moved to the U.S. Army to develop the Redstone family of rockets.

  Albert Scott Crossfield: October 2, 1921–April 19, 2006. Pilot engineer who joined the NACA in 1950. He was the first man to reach Mach 2 and helped bring the X-15 rocket-powered aircraft to life at North American Aviation.

  Walter Dornberger: September 6, 1895–June 27, 1980. Leader of the German Army’s rocketry program that developed the A-4/V-2. After emigrating to the United States, Dornberger consulted for the U.S. Air Force before taking a job with Bell Aircraft where he pitched the concept of hypersonic ultra planes.

  Hugh Dryden: July 2, 1898–December 2, 1965. Aerodynamicist with the National Bureau of Standards, member of the Army Air Force Science Advisory Group and the peacetime Science Advisory Board, and director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower: October 14, 1890–March 28, 1969. American army general, president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. Eisenhower was instrumental in establishing NASA as a civilian agency rather than folding the space program within a military branch.

  Theodore von Kármán: May 11, 1881–May 6, 1963. Hungarian mathematician, ae
rospace engineer and physicist, head of the Army Air Force Science Advisory Group and professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is now a NASA center.

  Hermann Oberth: June 25, 1894–December 29, 1989. A father of rocketry whose Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Planetary Space) inspired other pioneers in rocketry including von Braun and Valier.

  David Simons: June 7, 1922–April 5, 2010. U.S. Air Force flight surgeon who launched early biological payloads on V-2 variants called Blossom rockets and piloted the Manhigh II balloon flight.

  John Paul Stapp: July 11, 1910–November 13, 1999. U.S. Air Force flight surgeon known for his human deceleration tests, of which he was a frequent test subject, and pioneer investigating human tolerances in extreme environments.

  Max Valier: February 9, 1895–May 17, 1930. Popularizer of rocketry in Germany known for attaching rockets to cars, sleds, and sailplanes. Founding member of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel).

  Glossary of Places and Organizations

  Army Air Force: The flying branch of America’s military service until 1947 when it was separated to become the standalone United States Air Force.

  ARPA: The Advanced Research Projects Agency, created by Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy in 1958 to manage advanced programs such as spaceflight programs. In 1972, DARPA was established as a separate defense agency, then renamed ARPA in 1993, then changed back to DARPA in 1996.

  High Speed Flight Station: The NACA’s center at Edwards Air Force Base. The center was renamed the High Speed Flight Station in 1954, the Dryden Flight Research Center in 1976, and the Armstrong Flight Research Center in 2014.