This New Ocean; A History of Project Mercury. NASA SP-4201
Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Technology Utilization, Scientific and Technical Information Division, 1966. Presumed First Edition, First printing in softcover. Wraps. xv, [1], 681, [3] pages. Illustrations. Fold-out charts. Footnotes, Note on Sources and Selected Bibliography. Appendices. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. Some fore-edge damp staining. Loyd Sylvan Swenson, Jr., Ph.D. 1932-2016 was Professor Emeritus, University of Houston, History Dept., author and NASA historian. A third generation Texan he served as Lt. in the US Navy, and attained his Masters and Ph.D. from Claremont College. He taught his entire career at University of Houston, with an interim year at Harvard Project Physics, Boston. He co-authored the history of the Mercury and Apollo space programs and was considered an authority on the work of Albert Einstein and was a major contributor to the field of history of science and technology. James Maurice Grimwood was born on October 26, 1922 in Lincoln, AL. During WWII he served in the South Pacific with the US Navy. He was Chief Historian at NASA from 1962 until his retirement in 1979. His books include This New Ocean (A History of Project Mercury), On the Shoulders of Titans (A History of Project Gemini), and Chariots for Apollo (A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft). His final work was a memoir called What I Remember that will be treasured for generations to come. This book describes the origins, preparation, and nature of America's first achievements in manned space flight. This narrative spans the basic events in the managerial and technological history of Project Mercury. Writing only a few years after the events described, the authors acknowledge having a short perspective. They have tried to make this narrative as comprehensive and accurate as possible in one volume. Already Project Mercury has come to be regarded as a single episode in the history of flight and of the United States. Rather, it was many episodes, many people, many days of inspiration, frustration, and elation. . Thousands of engineers, scientists, technicians, and administrators, as well as the seven astronauts, cooperated to fulfill Mercury's goals, and this program history tries to blend and balance the personal, social, and technical facets of the project as it progressed. The authors have sought to answer unanswered questions, to answer some questions that had not been asked, and even perhaps to pose some questions that cannot be answered yet. This study is, in the legal sense of the Space Act of 1958, an "official" history of Project Mercury. But NASA and its Historical Advisory Committee have wisely recognized that history should be written, taught, and finally judged by historians, and that the ultimate responsibility for historical generalizations and interpretations should rest with the authors. Accordingly the authors have been encouraged to arrive at historical judgments independently. The organization and division of labor imposed on the narrative conforms to its chronology, to three genres of historical literature, and to the thesis that Project Mercury, from its inception in the fall of 1958, was preeminently an engineering, rather than a scientific, enterprise. Part One, entitled "Research," could be called "origins" or "antecedents." This section on the long and complex "prehistory" of Project Mercury follows a topical organization and might be seen as part of the external history of applied science. Part One recounts primarily progress in rocketry and research in space medicine, aerodynamics, and thermodynamics from the end of the Second World War to the inception of the first United States manned satellite project. The focus is on the evolutionary roles of the military services and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, organizational nucleus of NASA. Part Two, "Development," assumes that all of the basic and most of the applied research necessary for undertaking a manned ballistic satellite project had been completed by October 1958. Thus the so-called research and development, or "R and D," phase of Mercury is mostly, if not entirely, "D" and corresponds to the history of technology. Part Two is a study of corporate technology in the crowded period during which the concurrent teamwork of previously diverse organizations drove toward placing a man in orbit around Earth. For most people directly involved in Mercury, the dramatic "space race" aspect of the project was secondary to the accomplishment of an almost incredibly complex managerial and technological endeavor. The NASA Space Task Group, primarily responsible for the development of Mercury, had an exciting life of its own as it evolved into the Manned Spacecraft Center. The Mercury team was much larger than the Space Task Group, or even than NASA, but the focus in Part Two on the field managers of the project should be meaningful for anyone wishing insight into the enormity and intricacy of modern government- managed technological programs. Part Three, entitled "Operations," describes the fulfillment of Project Mercury and the only part of the program witnessed by most contemporary observers. This section begins with the successful suborbital flight of Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., in May 1961; proceeds through the completion of the orbital qualification of the Mercury spacecraft and the Atlas rocket; and ends with the four manned orbital missions, stretching from three to 22 circuits of Earth, in 1962 and 1963. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Project Mercury, Astronauts, NASA, Engineering, Space Medicine, Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Space Technology, Aerospace, Atlas Rocket, Missiles, Boosters, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Maxime Faget, Hugh Dryden, John Glenn, Robert Gilruth, Keith Glen
[Book #74064]
Price: $100.00