video for embedding at http://scitech.quickfound.net/astro/nasa_news.html
National Aeronautics and Space Administration history film commemorating the 25th anniversary of the space agency, with commentary by science writer Isaac Asimov.
part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHphgZV0Tls
from "Orders of Magnitude: NACA & NASA History 1915-1990"
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19890017434_1989017434.pdf
"On I October 1958, the 170 people in Headquarters gathered in the courtyard of their building, the Dolley Madison House, to hear Glennan proclaim the end of the 43-year-old NACA and the beginning of NASA. 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. On the same day, by executive order the President transferred to NASA: Project Vanguard and its 150-person staff and remaining budget from the Naval Research Laboratory; lunar probes from the Army; lunar probes and rocket engine programs, including the F-I, from the Air Force; and a total of over $100 million of unexpended funds. NASA immediately delegated operational control of these projects back to the DoD agencies while it put its own house in order.
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, Glennan gave the go ahead to Project Mercury, America's first manned spaceflight program. The Space Task Group, headed by Robert R. Gilruth, was established at Langley to get the job done. The new programs brought into the organization were slowly integrated into the NACA nucleus. Many space-minded 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 flight (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 satellities 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...
To conduct its space program, NASA obviously needec_ capabilities it did not have. To that end Glennan sought to acquire the successlul Army team that had launched America's first satellite, the ABMA at Hunts_,ille, Alabama, and its contractor, the JPL in Pasadena, California. The Army balked at losing the Huntsville group, claiming it was indispensable to the Army's military rocket program, Glennan for the time being had to compromise: ABMA would work on NASA programs as requested.
The Army grudgingly gave up IPL On 3 December 1958, an executive order transferred, effective 31 December, the g_vernment-owned plant of JPL and the Army contract with the California Institute of Technology, under which IPL was staffed and operated.
Glennan renewed his bid for ABMA in 1959; protracted Army resistance was finally overcome and on 1 March 1960 ABMA's 4000-person Development Operations Division, headed by Wernher von Braun, was transferred to NASA along with the big Saturn booster project.
As the 10-year plan took shape and the capability grew there were many other gaps to be filled NASA was going to be markedly different from NACA in two important ways First, it was going to be operational as well as do research. So, it would not only design and build launch vehicles and sateliites but it would launch them, operate them, track them, acquire data from them and interpret the data Second, it would do the greater part of its work by contract rather than in-house as NACA had done The first of these required tracking sites in many countries around the world, as well as construction of facilities: antennae, telemetry equipment, computers, radio and landline communications networks, and so on The second required the development of a larger and more sophisticated contracting operation than NACA had needed. In the first years, NASA leaned heavily on the DoD procurement system."
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, space agency, Isaac Asimov, space program, NASA, history, NASA history, space history, space exploration, spaceflight, spacecraft, orbit, astronaut, Apollo, Mercury, Gemini, Skylab, Space Shuttle, NACA,
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NASA History: Small Steps Giant Strides pt2-2 1983 commentary by Isaac Asimov 14minby webdev1783 views
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