that it be given a firmer, more independent status. NASA asked that JPL work on improving relations with experimenters. The following September the author repeated these requests to Lee DuBridge, president of Cal Tech and accordingly Pickering's boss.28

The continuing lack of response to NASA's requests led NASA management to give serious consideration to insisting that Cal Tech remove Pickering as director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But Pickering had too much to offer to make this a palatable move. Another option seriously considered was that of converting the laboratory to Civil Service as some congressmen had favored. But again the administrator considered this too drastic. Setting aside the question of whether the necessary personnel authorizations could be obtained from an administration that was trying to reduce the total number of government employees-and ignoring the dislocations that would be generated in adjusting to Civil Service salaries, retirement plans, and fringe benefits-there was still the question of how many of the employees would stay. The fierce pride that JPL people took in their heritage as part of the Cal Tech family left grave doubts as to whether the laboratory could be converted without seriously disrupting the ongoing program.

At any rate, none of these unsavory options was adopted. Instead the contract with the California Institute of Technology was revamped.29 The mutuality clause was removed, and JPL was required to be responsive to NASA direction. Specific organizational and management arrangements were required, including the strengthening of contract administration and provision for adequate accounting, record keeping, and reporting. On Webb's insistence the new contract called for NASA managers to evaluate semiannually the performance of Cal Tech and JPL, with the total fee to Cal Tech depending on the rating received in the evaluation. Of all the provisions in the new contract, the one requiring the institute and the laboratory to undergo periodic evaluation-an indignity that DuBridge pointed out was not imposed on other NASA centers-rankled the most. Sweetening the pill, however, NASA agreed to provide a small fund (a few hundred thousand dollars annually) for the director of the laboratory to use at his own discretion to support research he deemed especially important.

The new contract provided no magic solution. Much still had to be done to settle the dust of battle and to establish a smooth working pattern. That occupied an appreciable amount of management time during the next several years. But the road had been cleared and it was a matter of bending to the task. Moreover, with the Ranger hurdles behind, successes became the rule, failures the exceptions, on JPL missions. In the light of these successes the earlier troubles faded farther and farther into the background. On 28 July 1964 Ranger 7 took off from Cape Kennedy for the moon, matching Ranger 6 in the flawlessness of its flight. But this time the

television worked perfectly. The cameras returned superb pictures of a lunar mare-later designated Mare Cognitum, or "Known Sea," by the International Astronomical Union. Those pictures taken just before the spacecraft hit the moon were a thousandfold more detailed than any that could be obtained through ground-based telescopes. On 31 July, three days after the launching and immediately following the completion of the mission, Dr. Pickering and a beaming JPL team held a happy press conference in which some of the Ranger pictures were shown and their scientific value discussed. Then Pickering and the author flew to Washington to brief President Johnson, who expressed his great pleasure in the achievement. On 11 August Congressman Karth, who half a year earlier had dug so grimly into the Ranger troubles, inserted into the record of the House of Representatives a paper by the U.S. Information Agency describing the worldwide admiration that Ranger 7 had evoked.30

Ranger 8 (20 February 1965) and 9 (24 March 1965) were equally successful and more visible, since they were covered on live television. Then, after excruciatingly troubled years of development and testing, the very first Surveyor landed gently on the moon's surface on 2 June 1966 and began to send pictures and other lunar data back to earth.31 Not a vestige of doubt remained that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory could match technical performance with the best that the country had to offer.

Not that the laboratory itself or those in NASA's lunar and planetary office had ever doubted that they could do it. Oran Nicks and his people would frequently say that they were working with the most competent team in the space science program. In the end, results were eminently satisfying.

At the division level much effort had been invested in trying to understand each other's needs and aspirations. NASA representatives had spent a great deal of time at JPL keeping in touch with what was going on. In return JPL members had been invited to spend tours of duty at NASA Headquarters to become familiar with the problems on the Washington end. Without doubt this was helpful. On returning to JPL, Gregg Mamikunian wrote the author in May 1966 expressing appreciation for the opportunity to work at NASA Headquarters for a while. He expressed his "painful realization and awareness that decisions in regards to projects or missions at headquarters are not arbitrarily or whimsically arrived at (as is the... consensus at the centers and universities) but with . . . regard . . . to the objectives of the scientific community at large and of the nation.”’32

...

Webb's new contract requirement for a periodic evaluation of the laboratory was intended to generate at the upper management levels the kind of familiarity with each other's views that those at the working level had already achieved to some extent. In this the device was successful. A pattern developed in which, before the actual evaluation, NASA and the laboratory agreed on the items to be rated, on both the technical and

administrative sides. Then a preliminary written evaluation was drawn up from suggestions from the various NASA managers. Cal Tech and JPL were given an opportunity to review the preliminary evaluation and prepare for a face-to-face meeting with NASA, where JPL and Cal Tech could take exception to ratings they deemed unfair. Following the meeting the Office of Space Science and Applications revised ratings as appropriate and submitted the resulting evaluation to the administrator for approval.

Fortunately, by the time of the first evaluation in June 1965 the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had a number of items on which it could be given a rating of outstanding, including recent Ranger successes.33 But it was quite a while before many outstanding ratings could be handed out for the administrative side. Nevertheless, as time went on the ratings improved. 34 The process forced a continuing attention to the many administrative problems that had dissatisfied NASA in the past, and the ratings provided JPL and Cal Tech with a measure of how well they were meeting the NASA requirements. Thus, as the 1960s drew to a close and JPL was preparing for the spectacularly successful flights of Mariner to Mars in 1969, administrative relations between the center and headquarters were on an even keel. Not that all problems were solved, but the most significant matters were now the technical ones, as one would want.

In retrospect, given the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's former style of in-house engineering and distaste for much that was required in contracting with industry for projects, given also the laboratory's priority over the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in rocket research, and considering the strong personalities involved, an intense struggle between JPL and its new bosses was predictable. No doubt, in time some sort of accommodation would have been worked out by degrees. But the Ranger 6 failure did not permit the gradual course. To preserve the arrangement that Administrator Webb wished to exploit in the university community, NASA had to tighten up management and insist on a visible improvement in performance. A revamped contract provided the basis for working out a solution. Strong efforts by men of good will on both sides made it work.

16

Life Sciences: No Place in the Sun

Throughout the 1960s the life sciences were something of an enigma to the highest levels of NASA management. Partially this was because no individual near the top of the hierarchy had training in any of the life science disciplines. But there was more to it than that. One could sense an ambivalence in the life science community concerning the space program, a fascination with its novelty and challenge mixed with skepticism on the part of most that space had much to offer for their disciplines.

Not that NASA wasn't concerned with life sciences in a variety of ways. The list of NASA interests was a long one: medical support to manned spaceflight, environmental control and life-support systems for manned spacecraft, spacesuits and other protective systems, nutrition, aviation medicine, man-machine relationships, space biology (the study of terrestrial life forms exposed to conditions in space), exobiology (the search for and study of extraterrestrial life and life processes), plus occupational medicine and employee health programs. But much of this interest was incidental to other, primary objectives of the agency. Aviation medicine and man-machine relationships supported the development of aeronautical instrumentation and techniques. Although an extensive amount of work was required, nevertheless spaceflight medicine, environmental control, life support systems, spacesuits, etc., were narrowly constrained to the minimum needed to ensure the attainment of the Gemini, Apollo, and other manned spaceflight objectives. Only space biology and exobiology could be regarded as pure science, and these fell into the space science program.

NASA's philosophy concerning the life sciences was simple: where science was the objective, make the most of space techniques to advance the disciplines; in other areas do only what was essential to meet the need. A natural outcome of this philosophy was to disperse the different life science activities throughout the agency, placing each in the organizational entity it served. Thus, except for the brief period from March 1960 to November 1961 when the agency had an Office of Life Sciences Programs in head

quarters,' space biology and exobiology were placed with the other space science groups; aviation medicine and related activities were in the Office of Advanced Research and Technology, which had responsibility for NASA's aeronautical program; and space medicine was placed under the direction of the Office of Manned Space Flight. The single life sciences office had not worked, doubtless for a variety of reasons; but one reason that suggested itself was the separation of the life sciences activities from the other activities with which they were most naturally associated in the NASA program. The Office of Space Sciences, for example, already had a group producing and launching sounding rockets and unmanned spacecraft for space research. Rather than duplicate such a group in another office it seemed to make sense to place space biology and exobiology close to their tools in the Office of Space Sciences.

While the dispersion of the life sciences throughout the organization made sense to NASA managers, and the arrangement appeared to function more effectively than had the temporarily integrated one, the setup was not to the liking of the outside life sciences community. Dissatisfaction with the way NASA handled its life sciences program endured throughout the 1960s. Since it was principally the researchers who were most vocal in expressing their displeasure, NASA space science managers came in for a great deal of the flak directed at the agency.

Although space medicine, which in the NASA setup formed a part of the manned spaceflight organization, achieved extensive results, space biology and exobiology produced only modest returns during the 1960s.2 Even though some interested experimenters had used sounding rockets in the pre-NASA period to expose seeds, mice, and other biological specimens to the rigors of rocket flight and high-altitude radiations, nevertheless when NASA came on the scene the life scientists were not ready to keep pace with the astronomers and physicists in the space science program. Whereas the latter could bring space instrumentation directly to bear upon fundamental problems already engaging their attention-earth and planetary atmospheres, solar activity and sun-earth relationships, stellar spectra, cosmic rays, and cosmology, to mention some-the same was not true for the life scientists. During the 1950s and 1960s a revolution was in progress in the life sciences for which the center of action was the ground-based laboratory. There researches in areas like molecular biology, the genetic code, immunology, and information storage and transfer in biological systems held the attention of the best investigators. It was not clear in what way space research could make more fundamental contributions than these ground-based studies.

A number of experimenters however, wanted to try their hand at space research. Catering to this interest, a small but determined group within NASA worked hard to promote the field of space life sciences.