Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

Exploring the Unknown 547
5. Many people believe that the space program may severely tax
our supply of technical manpower for in-house and contractor needs. It is also
important that competent leadership be available, and adequate salary scales are
a continuing problem.
6. NASA must support a broad program of basic research related to
the space effort in the universities. The impact on the universities and upon the
educational requirements must also be considered.
7. There are still major problems in the NASA-DOD relationship
related to booster development and supporting technology.
8. The total being requested of the next Congress is about 50% greater
than was predicted for FY ‘63 last May. Extrapolation to future years of the funding
trend does not lend itself to any optimism as to a leveling-off in the next year or two.
9 - 13. The major item in here which should be singled out at this time
is the Nuclear Rocket Program (Rover). The total NASA-AEC request for FY ‘63
is about $200 million. Is this level of funding realistic for a program which will
probably not produce an operational vehicle until 1970 or later?
[signed]
Jerome B. Wiesner
Document II-20
Document Title: NASA, “Project Apollo Source Evaluation Board Report: Apollo
Spacecraft,” NASA RFP 9-150, 24 November 1961.
Source: Folder 18675, NASA Historical Reference Collection, History Division,
NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
The first element of the system to carry astronauts to the Moon was the Apollo spacecraft.
Even before President Kennedy set a lunar landing by the end of the decade as a national
goal, NASA had been planning a three-person spacecraft for Earth orbital and circumlunar
missions. After Kennedy’s 25 May 1961 speech announcing the decision to send Americans
to the Moon, the spacecraft requirements were modified to support a lunar landing mission,
even though the approach to be taken in carrying out the mission had not yet been chosen.
The Source Evaluation Board ranked the proposal by The Martin Company first among the
five companies that submitted a bid, with North American Aviation a “desirable alternative.”
NASA Administrator James E. Webb, Deputy Administrator Hugh Dryden, and Associate
Administrator Robert Seamans reversed this ranking, and the contract to build the Apollo
spacecraft was awarded to North American Aviation on 28 November 1961.