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Beyond the Atmosphere:
Early Years of Space Science
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- CHAPTER 15
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- MOON AND PLANETS
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- [262] From the
outset most assumed that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory would
concentrate on the investigation of the solar system. This was
much to the laboratory's liking, but the real interest was in the
planets, not in the moon. In this, JPL immediately came into
conflict with Administrator Glennan's desire to tackle the moon
first. just as the earth sciences had come before the moon and
planets in the orderly and moderately paced development of space
science, so in Glennan's view the moon should come before the
planets. The JPL managers were, however, convinced that the Soviet
Union, with the great lead it had already gained in space
exploits, would quickly move ahead in the investigation of the
moon also. America's only chance of recapturing the lead, they
felt, would be to proceed at once to the planets.
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- This and other differences of view came
out in a series of meetings of Abe Silverstein, the author, and
other NASA representatives with William Pickering and his
associates. The meetings at JPL in mid-January 1959 were devoted
to a discussion of plans and policies,9 the hope being to found a close working partnership
between NASA and the laboratory.
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- Pickering made it clear that JPL would
like to do nothing in 1959 that did not contribute to deep space
probes. In particular he urged the development [263] of a
spacecraft fully stabilized in three axes, which would be a most
effective vehicle for investigating deep space and the planets.
The laboratory would do the engineering itself, using outside
firms as subcontractors. The laboratory's past experience lay on
the experimental side, and JPL wished to continue being the doer,
keeping the supervision of other NASA programs to a
minimum.
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- In turn, Silverstein emphasized the rugged
job that lay ahead of NASA in monitoring the national space
program and the hope that JPL would consider itself a part of
NASA, not an outsider. As a member of the NASA family the
laboratory would have to bear its share of monitoring outside
contracts. Pickering responded that the laboratory would be glad
to participate in headquarters committees, analyses, planning, and
the like, but would refuse to undertake the detailed technical
supervision of contracts. In that reply can be seen the underlying
insistence on negotiating mutually acceptable work assignments
that would be a central issue for the next several years.
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- In spite of the differences, the
laboratory moved out on its assigned work and during the next two
years well into the development of the Ranger lunar spacecraft and
the planetary Mariner, largely in-house with assistance from
outside subcontractors. For its part, NASA supplied the resources
for expanding the laboratory's facilities and equipment and for
increasing the staffing. NASA also undertook to reestablish the
military channels previously open to JPL when it had worked for
the Army-for example, to the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in
Huntsville and to Cape Canaveral. In addition NASA continued to
press JPL to expand its productivity through outside contracting.
When work was begun on a Surveyor spacecraft to be soft-landed on
the moon, a contract was given to Hughes Aircraft to do the job
under the supervision of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
10
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- With JPL, as with the rest of NASA, the
first year produced both progress and wasted motion. It was a
period of learning. At the request of the JPL leaders, the Vega
upper stage intended for deep-space missions was assigned to the
laboratory in the first months, only to be canceled within the
year in favor of the Centaur stage.11
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- By the end of 1959, NASA management found
it necessary to restrain its centers from diversifying their
activities too broadly. Centers naturally tended toward
self-sufficiency. An interesting line of research was often
followed beyond the initial goal, even when this led a center into
an area in which some other center was already competent. NASA
management decided, therefore, that centers should be required to
specialize more than they appeared to be doing and to avoid gross
duplications. To this end Associate Administrator Richard Horner
sent out letters assigning roles and missions to each center. The
letter that went to William Pickering on 16 December 1959
confirmed that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory would
[264] have responsibility for lunar and planetary
missions. On 21 December Abe Silverstein wrote Pickering, giving
guidance on lunar and planetary missions for the immediate future.
A week later the author with several of his colleagues from
headquarters visited JPL to discuss the
guidelines.12
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- Pickering quickly pointed out that the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory had recommended emphasizing planetary
investigations, whereas Silverstein's guidance seemed to start
with a great deal of lunar work. Much to the displeasure of the
JPL people, the NASA representatives made clear that the agency
indeed was stressing the lunar work initially. In a lengthy
discussion of policy for the space science program, it was agreed
that NASA Headquarters would make tentative selections of
experiments and experimenters for JPL missions, with the
collaboration of the laboratory. The scientists would then develop
prototype models or experiment designs and deliver them to the
laboratory for evaluation. Final selection would be made on the
basis of the JPL evaluation. Although this procedure was followed
for awhile, actually it assigned to the laboratory more authority
in allocating space on NASA payloads than was eventually permitted
in NASA policy.
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- In this discussion the ever recurring
issue of how to work with university and other outside scientists
came up. Here the problem was how to meet both the needs of the
project engineers who wanted to pin specifications down and fix
schedules as early as possible and those of the scientists who
wished to polish their experiments until the very last minute.
NASA people sensed an inflexibility in this matter on the part of
JPL engineers that boded trouble for the future.
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- Another topic that would recur many times
over the years was how to attract the scientific community into
the program. For the lunar and planetary areas JPL proposed to set
up a committee along lines Pickering had suggested in an earlier
letter to Silverstein,13 but the NASA representatives indicated that
headquarters would do this. After some debate it finally emerged
that the laboratory was afraid that NASA would use the committee
already established under Robert Jastrow for this purpose. The Jet
Propulsion Laboratory would find it anomalous and disturbing to
have a man from another center-the Goddard Space Flight
Center-chairing a committee in a field that had been assigned to
JPL. Once they appreciated what was disturbing the JPL members,
the NASA people agreed to find a headquarters person to chair the
committee.
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- That, however, was not the end of the
matter. On 22 March 1960 Pickering returned to the subject in a
letter opposing the idea of scientific discipline subcommittees to
the Space Science Steering Committee in
headquarters.14 Pickering recommended that NASA get its advice on
experiment proposals directly from the centers. JPL felt that the
centers could, through their contacts with the scientific
community, adequately represent [265] the
interests of that community. Pickering's proposal failed to
recognize that NASA centers would also be competitors with outside
scientists in seeking space on NASA spacecraft, and that there was
a need to shield the centers from charges of conflict of
interest-or even theft of ideas as was alleged on a few
occasions-by having headquarters groups ultimately responsible for
the selection of experiments and experimenters.
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- As work progressed, trouble continued to
brew. NASA managers came to feel that the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory's traditional matrix organization, which might have
been fine for general research and smaller projects, was totally
inadequate for large-scale projects with pressing deadlines. NASA
also found the laboratory's record keeping, contract
administration and supervision, and reporting inadequate. As a
result NASA began a campaign to get Pickering to tighten up the
organization and to improve the administrative side of the house.
Since Pickering spent a great deal of time on outside matters-for
example, with the American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, in whose establishment he had played a leading role,
and with the International Astronautical Federation and the
International Academy of Astronautics-headquarters at first urged
and later demanded that Pickering appoint a deputy to give
continuous attention to the internal running of the laboratory.
This last suggestion was especially disturbing to Pickering, who,
despite NASA management's doubts about the quality of his
leadership,15 felt keenly his role as defender of his people. The
question of a deputy for the laboratory remained a bone of
contention for a long time, and even when one was appointed NASA
felt that Pickering did not make proper use of the
position.
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- The laboratory had its own complaints. At
the NASA management meeting at the Langley Research Center in
October 1962, at which Harry Goett had lashed out at headquarters
for meddling too much in center affairs, Brian Sparks of JPL ran
through an almost identical list of charges, showing that
headquarters looked pretty much the same to the different centers.
Sparks said that the laboratory felt headquarters took on too much
project as opposed to program responsibility. For example: JPL did
not have any real say on the matter of launch vehicles to be used;
headquarters program chiefs dealt personally with individual
project personnel instead of going through the project manager;
the program office inserted itself into contracting matters and
even asked contractors to quote prices for additional units on
contracts managed by JPL; and headquarters insisted on approving
the use of assigned construction funds. Additional complaints were
that the Office of Space Sciences insisted on passing on the
acceptability of every project the laboratory undertook, including
study contracts, while the Office of Advanced Research and
Technology similarly insisted on approving all advanced research
before any funds could be released. JPL found it particularly
irritating that other centers had been [266] encouraged
to compete with JPL for planetary projects, especially when the
planetary area had long since been assigned to the laboratory.
Wernher von Braun echoed Sparks on behalf of the Marshall Space
Flight Center.16
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- In the debate that ensued headquarters
people undertook to rationalize their actions, but the important
point had been made that headquarters had to set its own house in
order even as it pressed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to make
improvements. Each side worked hard, and with sincerity, on these
problems. But accommodation was difficult since two different
philosophies were involved. The laboratory continued to insist on
its independence and fell back on the mutuality clause in the
contract with NASA to sustain its position. NASA insisted that JPL
was a member of the NASA team with the same responsibilities to
headquarters that other NASA centers had.
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- As time passed, technical problems-not
unexpectedly-arose in JPL projects, piling additional stress on
that caused by the philosophical differences. The successful
flight of Mariner 2 to Venus in 1962 was encouraging, but the momentary
elation was muted by a series of failures in the Ranger
project.17 JPL might take some consolation in that it was the
launch vehicle, not the JPL spacecraft, that was the culprit in
the first several Ranger failures, but could hardly evade overall
responsibility for the missions. Both launch vehicle and
spacecraft had to work to achieve a successful mission, and until
that happened both the laboratory and NASA were on the
spot.
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- To add to the difficulties JPL was also
getting a reputation among scientists of being intolerably
difficult to work with. A subtle issue was the construction of
flight equipment to go on JPL spacecraft. JPL usually insisted on
taking prototype instruments developed by the scientists and
having the flight hardware made itself.18 The logic of this procedure was obvious, but the
potential impact on the scientific experiments was serious, and
experimenters usually objected. Many of the instruments were new,
developed specifically for the experiments to be performed. Only
the experimenter and original designer of the instrument, who
thoroughly understood the principles and details of the
experiments to be performed, could sufficiently appreciate the
idiosyncrasies of the equipment to ensure suitable calibration. It
was essential, therefore, that experimenters participate in the
preparation not only of prototypes but of flight hardware as well.
Indeed, in recognition of these points NASA policy was that
experimenters be held responsible for the proper functioning of
their equipment. The JPL approach kept the experimenters at arm's
length and tended to frustrate their attempts to discharge their
responsibilities.
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- Illustrating the difficulty of working
with JPL as the scientists saw it were complaints that Herb Bridge
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Simpson of
the University of Chicago aired in the fall of [267]
1963.19 Both scientists had similar stories of extreme
difficulties in trying to work with JPL: no focal point for
getting timely decisions; too many people in the loop; delays at
JPL in meeting requirements of the scientists making the
laboratory for all practical purposes the selector of experiments
to go on a payload, rather than the Space Science Steering
Committee in NASA Headquarters; intolerable delays in getting
contracts out and money flowing to the experimenters so that they
could get their work done on time; correspondence unanswered; a
mixture of arrogance and rigidity, as, for example, when JPL
considered itself sufficiently competent to try new instruments
and techniques but would not allow the experimenters to do so. Van
Allen of the State University of Iowa told of the frustration of
having Iowa-built equipment pass all the tests that had been
prescribed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory only to have JPL
people open up the equipment and then reject it because the
construction techniques used were not those employed by JPL. If
the tests prescribed by the laboratory were valid, then equipment
that passed the tests, Van Allen insisted, should be accepted for
flight.
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- JPL difficulties with the university
community were of special concern to Administrator Webb. As
pointed out earlier, he expected the connection with the
California Institute of Technology to enable the laboratory to do
a superior job in dealing with the university scientists and thus
in making the opportunities to do space science more readily
available to academic institutions than might perhaps be possible
in the government centers. In fact, the administrator made much of
this expectation in justifying to Congress NASA's paying Cal Tech
more than $2 million a year to manage the JPL contract. Webb spent
a great deal of time with Cal Tech President Lee DuBridge trying
to get him to appreciate the importance of producing more for the
annual fee than the mere routine administration of a contract,
which NASA could have done for itself more cheaply.
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- As 1963 drew to a close, NASA stepped up
its efforts to get the management of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
to improve performance and to strengthen the organization for
managing big projects. Earl Hilburn, deputy to Associate
Administrator Robert Seamans, was assigned the task of working
with Cal Tech to resolve some of the fundamental differences.
Hilburn, a technical man himself and a hard- nosed businessman to
boot, insisted, with the weight of the Administrator's Office,
that the laboratory find a suitable general manager. On 24
December 1963, Pickering informed the author by phone that he was
in the process of setting up a new position of assistant
laboratory director for technical divisions. Brian Sparks would be
the new assistant director.20
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- This was progress, but in NASA's view fell
far short of what was needed. An assistant director would not be
the equivalent of a deputy director responsible for the internal
management of the laboratory and empowered [268] to make
decisions binding on the director. But for the moment this
appeared to be about as far as Pickering would budge. It took the
dramatic failure of Ranger 6
to break the logjam.
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