NASA's First A: Aeronautics from 1958 to 2008. - NASA's History Office

302 Pages·2013·2.21 MB·English

NASA’s First A
Aeronautics from 1958 to 2008
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Office of Communications
Public Outreach Division
History Program Office
Washington, DC
2013
The NASA History Series
NASA SP-2012-4412
NASA’s First A
Aeronautics from 1958 to 2008
Robert G. Ferguson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ferguson, Robert G.
NASA’s first A : aeronautics from 1958 to 2008 / Robert G. Ferguson.
p. cm. -- (The NASA history series) (NASA SP ; 2012-4412) 1.
United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration--History. 2.
United States. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics--History. I.
Title.
TL521.312.F47 2012
629.130973--dc23
2011029949
This publication is available as a free download at
http://www.nasa.gov/ebooks.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Chapter 1: The First A: The Other NASA ..................................1
Chapter 2: NACA Research, 1945–58 ....................................25
Chapter 3: Creating NASA and the Space Race ........................57
Chapter 4: Renovation and Revolution ...................................93
Chapter 5: Cold War Revival and Ideological Muddle ............141
Chapter 6: The Icarus Decade ...............................................175
Chapter 7: Caught in Irons ...................................................203
Chapter 8: Conclusion ..........................................................229
Appendix: Aeronautics Budget 235
The NASA History Series 241
Index 259
v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Before naming individuals, I must express my gratitude to those who have
labored, and continue to do so, to preserve and share NASA’s history.
I came to this project after years of studying private industry, where sources
are rare and often inaccessible. By contrast, NASA’s History Program Office
and its peers at the laboratories have been toiling for five decades, archiving,
cataloging, interviewing, supporting research, and underwriting authors. For a
survey work such as this, the ability to quickly locate primary documents and
published historical accounts has been a necessity and a pleasure. I am deeply
indebted to countless individuals, some of whom I know, many of whom I do
not, who have quietly saved documents, patiently cared for photographs, and
generously shared these treasures.
I wish to thank the NASA scientists and engineers who eagerly told their sto-
ries—I hope that I have done their stories justice. I also wish to thank the many
researchers who took the time to cast their work within a historical context.
I need to make special mention of the historians who have gone before me
and illuminated many of the case histories upon which this book depends. This
undertaking would have been dramatically different, and probably impossible
in my lifetime, had it been necessary to investigate every significant research
program from scratch. While I share a general concern about the use of sec-
ondary sources, the authors upon whom I have relied have been exceedingly
thorough and skilled.
Many at NASA provided their expert assistance, including Jane Odom,
Colin Fries, John Hargenrader, Kathryn Goldberg, Anthony Springer,
G. Michael Green, Glenn Bugos, Gail Langevin, and Nadine Andreassen. I
also am indebted to Steve Garber, Glen Asner, Steve Dick, and Bill Barry for
their patience, counsel, and encouragement.
I also wish to thank my reviewers, who waded through a difficult manu-
script. For introducing me to this particular topic and assisting me at the
beginning of my research, I thank both Roger Launius and Erik Conway.
A number of talented professionals helped transform my manuscript into a
finished book. Kay Forrest carefully copyedited the manuscript. In the NASA
Headquarters Communications Support Services Center, Lisa Jirousek, George
vii
NASA’s First A: Aeronautics from 1958 to 2008
Gonzalez, and Kurt von Tish performed additional copyediting; Christopher
Yates designed and laid out the book; and Tun Hla oversaw the printing process.
I have gained much over the years from my network of colleagues in the
history of technology. Members of the Society for the History of Technology,
especially those aerospace historians known affectionately as “the Albatrosses,”
were extremely helpful in a variety of large and small ways.
Lastly, I wish to thank my wife and children and all those I have not
acknowledged for this opportunity to explore, reflect, and tell a story.
viii
Chapter 1:
The First A:
The Other NASA
That NASA is more than a space agency may come as a surprise to some.
Aeronautics, the first A of the NASA acronym, has always been a part of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but against the headline exploits
of rocket launches, Moon landings, Space Shuttle missions, and Mars rovers,
aeronautics is easily lost in the shadows of NASA’s marquee space programs. This
relative obscurity belies what has been a remarkably creative, productive, and
highly effective group of researchers who, at one time, even helped bring about the
Space Age and invent a space agency. The list of accomplishments for NASA’s first
A is long, and this book goes a modest way toward sketching these developments.
Aeronautics really might be called the “other NASA,” distinct in its charge,
methodologies, and scale. Aeronautics research is not mission-oriented in the
same way that going to the Moon or Mars is. It is interested in learning about
physical phenomena, such as turbulence, and how to do something, such as
quieting the noise of helicopter blades. Aeronautics’ mission is not about going
somewhere specific or building one particular thing; it is about supporting the
country’s commercial and military needs with respect to aviation. The con-
trast with the space program is telling: where NASA has gone to considerable
lengths to justify the space program and explain how space innovations feed
into the country’s more terrestrial needs, aeronautics research has had a direct
and undeniable impact on commercial and military technology development.
Its positive economic effects are generally accepted.1
1. A summary of studies on NASA’s economic impact may be found in U.S. Congress,
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “Reinventing NASA,” March 1994, pp. 2–4. Relating
specifically to the question of government-funded aeronautical research, see David C. Mowery
and Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), pp. 169–202; and George Eberstadt, “Government Support of the
Large Commercial Aircraft Industries of Japan, Europe, and the United States,” chap. 8 in
Competing Economies: America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, OTA-ITE-498, by U.S. Congress,
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NASA’s First A: Aeronautics from 1958 to 2008
Being research-oriented, aeronautics naturally has a different methodologi-
cal bent. Its activities revolve almost entirely around experimentation, made
up of a combination of cutting-edge basic research and more routine assistance
to its patrons in the military and industry. It has encompassed the use of wind
tunnels,2 the flight testing of revolutionary prototypes, and the creation of new
methodologies, such as computational fluid dynamics. Finally, aeronautics
research typically has been conducted on a small scale and on, relatively speak-
ing, limited budgets. It has not been characterized by extremely large projects
on the order of the Apollo or Space Shuttle programs. This is not for lack of
desire within the aeronautical research community; rather, the political will to
do in aeronautics what was done for the space program has not been similar.
Ultimately, the bulk of aeronautics work has been performed on a fraction of
NASA’s overall budget. Even so, NASA’s aeronautics has had an outsize impact.
The nature of this impact deserves special attention because it locates
NASA’s work within larger technical and historical narratives. The risk of
detailing NASA’s technical achievements is to ascribe a kind of primacy and
distinctiveness that is characteristic only some of the time. NASA researchers
were not working in ivory towers, and they were not always the first link in a
chain of innovation stretching from laboratory to industry. It is important to
appreciate the ebb and flow of scientific and technological knowledge into and
out of the various communities represented by NASA’s first A. NASA was not
alone in pursuing aeronautical research: the U.S. military had its own facilities
and programs, as did industry, academia, and foreign governments. Published
papers, conferences, technical committee meetings, and joint projects created
a shifting area of known and unknown, possible and impossible, across all of
these actors. Researchers picked up where others left off, often taking ideas in
new directions and, in a spirit of collegiality, hoping to best the others. This
competition extended to the various communities within NASA as well.
That said, NASA has occupied a unique place within the research land-
scape. It has been a pooled national investment, providing a cadre of talented
Office of Technology Assessment (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office [GPO],
October 1991).
2. Wind tunnels, to be brief, are laboratory devices for measuring the flow of air, especially as it
moves around solid shapes. They may be used to simulate the performance of aircraft and parts
of aircraft in a highly controlled environment, thus reducing the need for risky and potentially
costly flight testing. There are plenty of aeronautical investigations that do not need or make
use of wind tunnels. It is but one experimental device available, and it finds its greatest utility in
such areas as aerodynamics (e.g., lift and drag), aeroelasticity, thermodynamics, control, noise,
propulsion, and icing.
2