researchers. The success of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies suggested that a lunar institute might be set up as an arm of the Johnson Space Center. But the image that the center had acquired of not understanding the needs of science or being particularly interested in science made such an arrangement unattractive to many outside scientists-and also to the Office of Space Science and Applications in NASA Headquarters.

Instead of an institute managed by the center, Webb turned to the possibility that an institute might be managed by a university or a group of universities. Fred Seitz, president of the National Academy of Sciences, showed an interest. An existing consortium, University Research Associates, considered setting up and managing an institute for NASA. The possibility that Rice Institute might either by itself or as one of a number of universities provide the desired link between academia and the resources of the Johnson Space Center was also weighed. In the end a group of universities on 12 March 1969 formed a new consortium called the University Space Research Association and took over management of the Lunar Science Institute, which in its impatience NASA had already set up with the aid of the Academy of Sciences. 39 The new institute was housed in a mansion adjacent to the Johnson Space Center, provided by Rice Institute and refurbished by the government. At once the Lunar Science Institute began to hold scientific meetings, invite visitors to use its facilities, and foster lunar research.

The pattern of activities at the Lunar Science Institute was, at least on the face of things, similar to that that had proved so successful with the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. But the LSI at the end of the 1960s faced a number of vicissitudes that the Goddard Institute had not encountered. For example, after 10 years of working with NASA, some academic scientists had already managed to overcome the previously mentioned difficulties to establish personal ties with the Johnson Space Center and did not wish to see a new organization interposed. In contrast foreign scientists who did not have such close associations with the space center found the LSI a boon.

On its part, the Johnson Space Center was ambivalent about LSI. Such an institute could be useful in working with the scientific community, serving as a buffer when difficult issues had to be wrestled with. But when the institute's managers pressed for an independent research program plus rather free access to such resources as Apollo lunar samples and various lunar data, there was trouble, which occasional personality clashes enhanced.

Most fundamental, however, was the decline of NASA's budgets in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a number of times NASA's space science managers considered withdrawing financial support from the Lunar Science Institute. The Goddard Institute for Space Studies was also beset by

similar financial pressures, but its established position in the NASA family made it easier to weather these storms than it was for the Lunar Science Institute, which still had not had enough time to prove itself.

Thus, while the Lunar Science Institute could not be called a failure, its success in the severe climate in which it was launched, was an uneasy one. There could be little question that when time came to consider establishing an astronomy institute in support of an orbiting astronomical facility, or a planetary institute in support of more intensive exploration of the solar system, such propositions would receive long and searching scrutiny before being implemented.

A SLOWER PACE

Following the closeout of the facility grants program and the phasing down of the training grants, the sustaining university program became a low-key operation. It was used to stimulate advanced research in areas important to space applications and to provide seed grants to a large number of minority institutions. There was some experimenting-for example, with the development of new engineering curricula in the universities to meet modern needs-but the earlier flair was gone. Always the largest dollar component of the university program, the project grants of the technical program offices became the main thrust of NASA's university program. But the cutback on the sustaining university program had its impact on the project grants. In space science, for example, more money than before had to be devoted to support of the more advanced research to lay the groundwork for spaceflight experiments, much of which had come out of the graduate research projects of NASA space science trainees. The effect was not easy to measure, but there were tangible signs. Program managers found it more difficult to provide step funding than before, and earlier step funding was often allowed to lapse to gain a year's funding and thereby ease the current squeeze on the budget. Thus, although the total university program remained in the vicinity of $100 million per year, the more liberal flavor that had ensured a considerable continuity of support and had afforded the universities the ability to plan future staffing and research projects in a rational manner, was gone.

14

Programs, Projects, and Headaches

As with its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA's principal technical strength lay in the field centers. At the time of the metamorphosis into an aeronautics and space agency, NACA had three principal centers: the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory near Hampton, Virginia; the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory at Moffett Field, California; and the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland. In addition there was a High Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California and a small rocket test facility on the Virginia coast at Wallops Island. The first four of these became under NASA the Langley, Ames, Lewis, and Flight Research Centers, the research orientation of which Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden was so desirous of protecting. Wallops Station was assigned primarily to the space science program.

To the former NACA installations, NASA added six more: the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena; the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Merritt Island, Florida; the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama; the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (which for many years was known as the Manned Spacecraft Center) in Houston; and, briefly, an Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was transferred to the Department of Transportation.2 A sizable facility for testing large rocket engines was established in Mississippi not far from New Orleans and placed administratively under Marshall, which had prime responsibility for the Saturn launch vehicles used in the Apollo and Skylab programs.3 The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Marshall were transferred to NASA from the Army; the others were created by NASA. As its original name suggests, Johnson was in charge of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft and most of the research and development was related to those programs. Kennedy, originally the Launch Operations Directorate of Marshall, provided launch support services for both manned and unmanned programs, but the former required by far the greater capital investment and manpower. Both Goddard and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were prin

cipal centers for the space science program, the former for scientific satellites, the latter for planetary probes.

Management at headquarters guided the space program, directed the overall planning, developed and defended the budget for the agency, and fostered the kinds of external relations and general support that the space program needed. In a very real sense headquarters people labored at the center of action where the political decisions were made that permitted the space program to proceed. Yet the story of headquarters activity is mostly one of context, of background-essential, indispensable, but background nevertheless-against which the actual space program was conducted. Research, the essence of the space science program, was done by scientists at NASA centers, in universities, and at private and industrial laboratories.

It follows that the mainstream of space science must be traced through the activities of these institutions. The important role of the universities was the subject of the preceding chapter. With occasional exceptions, like the upper atmospheric research of the Geophysical Research Corporation of America and the pioneering work of American Science and Engineering in x-ray astronomy, the contribution of industry was more to the development and flight of space hardware than to conducting scientific research. It remains, then, to take a look at the part played by the NASA centers.

The principal space science centers were the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL being operated by California Institute of Technology under contract to NASA). Wallops Island, which for a time was placed administratively under Goddard, provided essential support to the sounding rocket and Scout launch vehicle programs. But not all NASA space science was done at these centers. The Ames Research Center managed the Pioneer interplanetary probes and took the lead in space biology and exobiology—a term coined to denote the search for and investigation of extraterrestrial life or life-related processes. Langley had responsibility for the Lunar Orbiter and later the Viking Mars probe. Most notable was the lunar research fostered by Johnson in the early 1970s with the samples of the moon and other Apollo lunar data, which for a time made Houston a veritable Mecca for lunar scientists.8 But Apollo lunar science was an exception generated by the special nature of the manned lunar exploration program; and, generally, Dryden's policy stood in the way of more than a limited participation of the research centers in space projects.

Over the years the NASA centers built up an enviable reputation of success on all fronts, in manned spaceflight, space applications, and space science. In the last mentioned, by 1970 Goddard had flown more than 1000 sounding rockets, more than 40 Explorer satellites, 6 solar observatories, 6 geophysical observatories, and 3 astronomical observatories, most of them successfully. In applications Goddard enjoyed comparable or better success rates with weather and communications satellites. The experience of the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory was similar. By the end of the 1960s JPL had sent 3 Rangers and 5 Surveyors on successful missions to the moon and dispatched 5 Mariners to Mars and Venus.9 These achievements are bound to be recounted repeatedly and will rightfully be judged as success stories. Success, however, was not bought without a price of some mistakes, temporary failures, and occasionally severe personal conflict, which form an instructive part of the total history. In reviewing the struggles and problems that preceded the achievements, a proper sense of perspective is important, for troubles often tend to magnify themselves in the eye of the beholder. The difficulties were, after all, overcome in the ultimate successes that were achieved. Still, as part of the total story, perhaps as illustrating the natural and usual course of human undertakings, those difficulties are important to the historian. They should also be instructive to later managers. Thus, without at all deprecating their splendid achievements, it is appropriate to delve briefly in this and the next chapter into some of the trials endured by the Goddard Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

THE CHARACTER OF THE FIELD CENTERS

The different centers in NASA had distinctive personalities that one could sense in dealing with them. As might be expected the former NACA laboratories kept as NASA centers many of the characteristics they had acquired in their previous incarnation. One trait was the fierce organizational loyalty that had been displayed as part of NACA. Thus, while officials at those centers were convinced that the real power of the agency lay in the centers and felt very strongly that they should have some voice in formulating orders, and also that once given an assignment they should be left alone to carry it out, they also recognized that the ultimate authority lay in headquarters. Given marching orders they would march much as ordered.

The new centers in NASA had their difficulties in this regard, to varying degrees. The Marshall center reflected the background and personality of its leader, Wernher von Braun, and his team of German rocket experts. Bold, with a bulldog determination, undaunted by the sheer magnitude of a project like Saturn, they could hardly be deterred by request or by command from their plotted course. The effort to superimpose the Juno space science launchings and the Centaur launch vehicle development on the Marshall team, when Saturn represented its real aspiration, simply did not work out. The Juno launchings had to be canceled after a string of dismal failures, which space science managers at headquarters felt were caused by lack of sufficient attention on the part of the center. 10 Centaur, in the midst of congressional investigation into poor progress, was reassigned to the Lewis Research Center." The Manned Spacecraft Center developed an