Fifty years after the founding of NASA, from 28 to 29 October 2008,
the NASA History Division convened a conference whose purpose was a
scholarly analysis of NASA's first 50 years. Over two days at NASA
Headquarters, historians and policy analysts discussed NASA's role
in aeronautics, human spaceflight, exploration, space science, life
science, and Earth science, as well as crosscutting themes ranging
from space access to international relations in space and NASA's
interaction with the public. The speakers were asked to keep in
mind the following questions: What are the lessons learned from the
first 50 years? What is NASA's role in American culture and in the
history of exploration and discovery? What if there had never been
a NASA? Based on the past, does NASA have a future? The results of
those papers, elaborated and fully referenced, are found in this
50th anniversary volume. The reader will find here, instantiated in
the complex institution that is NASA, echoes of perennial themes
elaborated in an earlier volume, Critical Issues in the History of
Spaceflight. The conference culminated a year of celebrations,
beginning with an October 2007 conference celebrating the 50th
anniversary of the Space Age and including a lecture series, future
forums, publications, a large presence at the Smithsonian Folklife
Festival, and numerous activities at NASA's 10 Centers and venues
around the country. It took place as the Apollo 40th anniversaries
began, ironically still the most famous of NASA's achievements,
even in the era of the Space Shuttle, International Space Station
(ISS), and spacecraft like the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) and
the Hubble Space Telescope. And it took place as NASA found itself
at a major crossroads, for the first time in three decades
transitioning, under Administrator Michael Griffin, from the Space
Shuttle to a new Ares launch vehicle and Orion crew vehicle capable
of returning humans to the Moon and proceeding to Mars in a program
known as Constellation. The Space Shuttle, NASA's launch system
since 1981, was scheduled to wind down in 2010, freeing up funds
for the new Ares launch vehicle. But the latter, even if it moved
forward at all deliberate speed, would not be ready until 2015,
leaving the unsettling possibility that for at least five years the
United States would be forced to use the Russian Soyuz launch
vehicle and spacecraft as the sole access to the ISS in which the
United States was the major partner. The presidential elections a
week after the conference presaged an imminent presidential
transition, from the Republican administration of George W. Bush to
(as it turned out) the Democratic presidency of Barack Obama, with
all the uncertainties that such transitions imply for government
programs. The uncertainties for NASA were even greater, as Michael
Griffin departed with the outgoing administration and as the world
found itself in an unprecedented global economic downturn, with the
benefits of national space programs questioned more than ever
before. There was no doubt that 50 years of the Space Age had
altered humanity in numerous ways ranging from applications
satellites to philosophical world views. Throughout its 50 years,
NASA has been fortunate to have a strong sense of history and a
robust, independent, and objective history program to document its
achievements and analyze its activities. Among its flagship
publications are Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the
History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, of which seven of eight
projected volumes were completed at the time of the 50th
anniversary. The reader can do no better than to turn to these
volumes for an introduction to NASA history as seen through its
primary documents. The list of NASA publications at the end of this
volume is also a testimony to the tremendous amount of historical
research that the NASA History Division has sponsored over the last
50 years, of which this is the latest volume.
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