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

Exploring the Unknown 79
H. Flights with the system shall be conducted jointly by the NACA, the Air
Force, and the prime contractor, with the program being directed by the
NACA and the Air Force. The NACA shall have final responsibility for
instrumentation and the planning of the flights.
I. The Director, NACA, acting with the advice and assistance of the Deputy
Chief of Staff, Development, USAF, shall be responsible for making periodic
progress reports, calling conferences, and disseminating technical
information and results of the project by other appropriate means subject
to the applicable laws and executive orders for the safeguarding of
classified information.
General Thomas D. White
Chief of Staff, USAF
Hugh L. Dryden
Director, NACA
Document I-8
July 18, 1958
MEMORANDUM for Dr. James R. Killian, Jr.
Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology
SUBJECT: Manned Satellite Program.
1. The current objective for a manned satellite program is the determination
of man’s basic capability in a space environment as a prelude to the human
exploration of space and to possible military applications of manned satellites.
Although it is clear that both the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
and the Department of Defense should cooperate in the conduct of the program,
I feel that the responsibility for and the direction of the program should rest with
NASA. Such an assignment would emphasize before the world the policy statement
in Sec. 102(a) of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 that “it is
the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful
purposes for the benefit of all mankind.”
2. The NASA through the older NACA has the technical back ground, competence,
and continuing within-government technical back-up to assume this responsibility
with the cooperation and participation of the Department of Defense. For
a number of years, the NACA has had groups doing research on such items as stabilization
of ultra-high-speed vehicles, provision of suitable controls, high-temperature
structural design, and all the problems of reentry. More recently, the NACA
research groups have been working on these problems with direct application to
manned satellites. The human-factors problems of this program are not far different
from those for the X-15 which the NACA has been studying in cooperation
with the Navy and Air Force. Thus, the NACA has enlisted the cooperation of the
military services and marshaled the required technical competence. Included in
this competence are large, actively-working, staffs in NACA laboratories providing
additional technical back-up for the manned-satellite program.