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

4 First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
The von Braun paradigm—that humans were destined to physically
explore the solar system—which he so eloquently described
in Collier’s magazine in the early 1950’s was bold, but his vision was
highly constrained by the technology of his day. For von Braun,
humans were the most powerful and flexible exploration tool that
he could imagine. Today we have within our grasp technologies that
will fundamentally redefine the exploration paradigm. We have the
ability to put our minds where our feet can never go. We will soon
be able to take ourselves—in a virtual way—anywhere from the interior
of a molecule to the planets circling a nearby star—and there
exclaim, “Look honey, I shrunk the Universe!” 8
Most important, von Braun’s integrated approach to space exploration was
ensconced in the NASA long-range plan of 1959, and, with the exception of a
jump from human orbital flights to a lunar (Apollo) mission driven by political
concerns, the history of spaceflight has followed this paradigm consistently.
Following the Apollo missions, NASA returned to the building of winged reusable
spacecraft (the Space Shuttle), and a space station (Freedom/International
Space Station) and, in 2004, embarked on human lunar and Mars expeditions.
This adherence to the paradigm is either a testament to the amazing vision of
Wernher von Braun or to a lack of imagination by NASA leaders, but the best
guess suggests that it lies somewhere between the two.
The NACA and Spaceflight Research
During the latter part of World War II, leaders of the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor to NASA, had become
interested in the possibilities of high-speed guided missiles and the future of
spaceflight. It created the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD), under the
leadership of a young and promising engineer at the Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Virginia, Robert R. Gilruth. In early 1945, NACA asked Congress for
a supplemental appropriation to fund the activation of a unit to carry out this
research, and a short time later the NACA opened the Auxiliary Flight Research
Station (AFRS), which was later redesignated the name by which it gained fame,
PARD, with Gilruth as Director. 9
Established at Wallops Island as a test-launching facility of Langley on 4 July
1945, PARD launched its first test vehicle, a small two-stage, solid-fuel rocket to
8. John H. Gibbons, “The New Frontier: Space Science and Technology in the Next Millennium,”
Wernher von Braun Lecture, 22 March 1995, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC, available online at http://clinton4.nara.gov/textonly/WH/EOP/OSTP/
other/space.html, accessed 2 October 2008.
9. James M. Grimwood, Project Mercury: A Chronology (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4001, 1963),
Part 1A, p. 1; Joseph Adams Shortall, A New Dimension: Wallops Island Flight Test Range, the First Fifteen
Years (Washington, DC: NASA Reference Publication [RP]-1028, 1978). At first, only part of the land
on Wallops Island was purchased; the rest was leased. In 1949 NACA purchased the entire island.