Wallops Station And The Creation Of An American Space Program

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

The course of the Space Age underwent a fundamental shift during the decade of the 1980's. The heady era of Sputnik, Apollo, and the Cold War-fueled space race shifted to an era of more methodical activities as space operations became popularly mundane. Similarly, seminal works pertaining to the history of conspicuous early space projects have been joined on the library shelf by words examining less glamorous, but still important topics. The big, visible space projects existed as much for reasons of politics and national prestige as for scientific research, and thus attracted the early attention of historians. The advancement of human knowledge and skill, however, owed at least as much and perhaps more to smaller projects and research conducted out of the spotlight. A facility devoted to such projects still operates on the East Coast of the lower Delmarva Peninsula. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Wallops Flight Facility has, since its establishment in 1945, launched over 14,000 rockets, making it one of the most prolific launch sites in the world as well as one of the least known. Currently a subsidiary of Goddard Space Flight Center, Wallops has always been among the smaller of America's aerospace research facilities. Despite, and possibly because of, the administrative and budgetary chaos that often characterized this nation's space effort, Wallops evolved from a highly specialized, test facility to a more generalized, multi-faceted research center. The history of the base reaches back to the early days of U.S. involvement in space research, and reflects most of the major controversies encountered therein. An historical examination of the base, therefore, has value not only because of the comparative lack of such attention, but also because it allows a unique vantage point from which to view what is, to paraphrase policy historian John Logsdon, "the great adventure of our lifetime." This thesis will focus on the political, administrative, and social history aspects of the base from 1957 to 1966. This period began with the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, continued through the creation of NASA, and culminated at the height of the Project Apollo escalation. A fast-paced era, it also includes the second of the three most important periods in Wallops history to date.

Excerpt from Wallops Station and the Creation of an American Space Program Chapter three provides a look at Wallops' involvement with the us. Piloted space flight effort. This involvement, heavy during Project Mercury, declined throughout the period until almost nil during Project Apollo. The staff's reaction to the novelty of press coverage and public interest in its operations, a side effect of the piloted programs, is also examined. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

These accounts tell how international goodwill and foreign cooperation were crucial to the operation of the network and why the space agency chose to build the STDN the way it did. More than anything else, the story of NASA's STDN is about the "unsung heroes of the space program."

"As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008, historians as well as scientists and engineers could look back on a record of accomplishment. Much has been written about the evolution of NASA's multifaceted programs and the people who carried them out. Yet much remains to be done, and we hope this publication will facilitate research in this important field."--Page 1