From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.
On Episode 286, former NASA chief historian discusses his new e-book that shares some of the most significant moments and programs from NASA’s entire history. This episode was recorded on March 16, 2023.
Transcript
Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast! Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 286, “The Entire History of NASA.” I’m Gary Jordan, I’ll be your host today. On this podcast we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, astronauts, usually to talk about human spaceflight but you know what, why limit ourselves, right? NASA has a rich and storied history. Its beginnings, people often forget, was in aviation: the NACA, or National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, laid the groundwork for how we think about a national space program. And it’s more than just humans flying in the air and in space. NASA has programs that extend from our home planet to the farthest reaches of the universe. It’s hard to capture everything that NASA has done since its formation, but there’s a new e-book that does a pretty good job. This e-book is published on NASA.gov right now, and it’s called “NACA to NASA to Now: The Frontiers of Air and Space in the American Century.” It came out very recently, and it captures some of the most significant moments and programs of NASA’s history and puts it into one concise volume. It’s a great read, full of narratives and layers that help to demonstrate how widespread NASA’s efforts are. Lucky for us, we were able to chat with the book’s author, Roger Launius, formerly NASA’s chief historian and the associate director for collections and curatorial affairs at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Roger talks about the inspiration for writing the book and walks us through some of the key moments. Very much looking forward to this conversation. Let’s get right into it. Enjoy.
[Music]
Host: Roger Launius, thank you so much for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast today.
Roger Launius: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here.
Host: All right. Wonderful book that you read. I, I got a chance to finish here earlier this week, and, it was, it, it, it did a really good job of capturing it. I’m so happy to have you on to help to, to kind of go through it. But, but I kind of wanted to start before we, before we really dive into the book, is just, you know, the story of you and how you got this idea and, and what the, the process of actually writing the book. Roger, I know, you know, prior to your current tenure at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, you spent some time as NASA’s chief historian. How’d you get that role?
Roger Launius: I did. So between 1990 and 2002, I was the NASA chief historian there at NASA Headquarters in D.C. The, I had been working as a historian for the U.S. Air Force at the time, after I finished my Ph.D. I took a job with the Air Force, and literally in those days I was in the personnel office at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, and I saw an advertisement for the chief historian for NASA on the bulletin board. So I grabbed that, applied for the job — pre-internet era, you know, sent them a resume through the mail — and lo and behold, I was, I, I was interviewed and selected for the position.
Host: Did you always have a love for history, or did it, is it something that you maybe fell into?
Roger Launius: No, no, no. History has always been my, my objective. I, I, I, you know, I changed my major two or three times in college, but ultimately, I did a Ph.D. in history at LSU (Louisiana State University), and that sort of set me on path.
Host: Was it always, did you always kind of lean towards the aeronautic history, or did you sort of dabble in, you know, maybe war or, or anything else? What, what, you know, what was your path that sort of led you to, you know, aeronautics and space?
Roger Launius: Yeah. Well, I, interestingly enough, I didn’t have a particular background in, in aerospace history at all. I studied the history of the American West.
Host: Oh.
Roger Launius: And so, it’s sort of a sideways turn in terms of my career. But when I finished my Ph.D., I went looking for a position and found one with the U.S. Air Force, which put me on a path to study aeronautics history. Didn’t take very long to realize, this is pretty interesting stuff. And the same is true, obviously, with NASA and its role.
Host: Yeah. How’d you enjoy it, that, your time as a NASA chief historian?
Roger Launius: Oh, I loved it. It, it, it was a great experience and I really enjoyed leading that history program, which it, which remains one of the best history programs in the, in the U.S. government. And while I was there I’d like to think we accomplished some useful things. But my successors in that, in that task since, since 2002 when I left, have continued to do a terrific job with the program.
Host: For sure. And yeah, 2002 was, was some time ago. So what have you been up to since?
Roger Launius: [Laughter] So, I, I, I, I moved from, from NASA Headquarters to the National Air and Space Museum…
Host: OK.
Roger Launius:…at the Smithsonian, just, you know, flew, my office moved a few blocks down the street.
Host: Sure.
Roger Launius: And I led the space history department there, which was a curatorial department. Ultimately I became the associate director for collections and curatorial affairs there. And I retired from federal service in 2017 out of the Smithsonian. And since that time I’ve been doing, you know, independent research, writing, consulting work, and so forth.
Host: OK. Yeah. So, you know, you, tell me some of the other things that you’ve written prior to, prior to this one.
Roger Launius: Well, OK. So I, I did, in 2019, a book on the Apollo program called “Apollo’s Legacy,” and it tries to make sense after 50 years of, of what was the, what was the Apollo program, why was it significant, why do we think about it today. I’ve written other books on the history of aerospace: at the time of the anniversary of the Centennial of Flight, the Wright Brother’s hundredth anniversary in 2003, I was involved in a couple of projects to document the history of flight. Some of those were big, oversized picture books. And, and some of them were scholarly analyses of what does it mean after a century of flying. So I, there, there’s a variety of things that I’ve done out there. I also have done other subjects, like the history of baseball, which is just one of my passions and I, I do because it’s fun.
Host: Wonderful. Yeah. Especially in this book, “NACA to NASA to Now.” Those, some of the things you’ve written about before, it sounds like the, you know, history of aviation after the Wright Brothers, the, the Apollo program, those were some of the meatiest, some of the densest part of, of this book. And I’m, I’m pretty sure it’s because of your extensive history in those subjects.
Roger Launius: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Host: So what made you, what inspired you to say, to take a look at, you know, NACA, NASA, and say, I’m going to try to put everything, some of the most meaningful things into one volume? What, what, what sort of sparked that idea?
Roger Launius: Yeah. Well, I mean, it originated in the early 2010s, when we were, we were thinking about the hundredth anniversary of the NACA, and the NACA is the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which is NASA’s direct predecessor. And it was formed in, in 1915. So I, I was looking at that 1915 centennial and thinking, wouldn’t it be great to have a, a sort of an overview of the history of the agency? And that’s when I began working on it. NASA was supportive of the idea, although it, the, the book did not appear in, in, in 2015, took a little while longer to do it than, than maybe any of us anticipated, but nonetheless it, it turned out, I think, really quite well to cover that hundred years of, of aeronautics and space activities at the NACA and NASA.
Host: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, I can’t wait to go into it because it does, it does do a really good job of covering a lot of those things. And you said, you know, it takes, it took some time to put it together, but tell me about your process whenever you started kicking off the idea, started pitching the idea, and now you have to go out, you have to start doing some research, you have to start talking to some folks. What was that like?
Roger Launius: Yeah, well, I mean, obviously at some level this is a book that I’d been working on for many, many years. I got this long history associated with the history of aerospace and, and previous work has sort of been associated with pieces of this. So, so the idea was to put together a synthes, a synthesis of, of the agency and its evolution from origins to the present. And, and, and, and that sort of capsule discussion is difficult to do. You know, how do you, how do you do credit to all of the marvelous and broad things that NASA and the NACA previously has been involved in? You can’t, you can’t tell the story of everything. And, and what is the, what are the, the key issues that you want to highlight? And that’s, that was a major part of the process of coming to grips with what we were trying to accomplish in this book.
Host: Yeah. So you, when, when you started the book, I mean, well, if you start reading it, it, it, it takes it, for the most part chronologically, you know, you start off, sort of with a high level, and then you get into, I mean, we’re, we’re going into aviation and the formation of NACA after the Wright Brothers. And this idea of this world-class research and development program, and so to, to sort of lay the groundwork for what NASA is today, I mean, and, and, and personally, I haven’t really dove terribly deep into NACA so the, these first couple of, of, of chapters were very revealing to me in terms of not only, kind of understanding what NACA was but how it evolved over time to have it make sense to have it evolve into NASA.
Roger Launius: Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things that that happened was, you know, the Wright Brothers were the first to fly at Kitty Hawk in, in 1903, so, you know, Americans fundamentally invented the airplane. And, but it didn’t take ten years for that technology to basically be outstripped in America, and Europe is leading the world in terms of aviation technology. The Americans look at World War I, especially, and they see rapid advances in the technology of flight, and they realize that, you know, there’s nothing like that that exists here. And the only way to get there is to, is to really undertake research and development in this particular arena, and a way to do that — fundamental way to do it for the public good, for the, for the larger aspects of all the things that are associated with this military, civilian, whatever else there might be — the federal government should take this on. That led to the decision, and it took a while to get there and I sort of tell that story, there’s some, there’s some bobs and weaves and ins and outs of the process, but ultimately the NACA is the result of that in, in 1915. And, and its task is pretty simple: basically to investigate — and this is a term that’s, that’s, that was used in the, in the legislation — to investigate the problems of fight, flight with a view to their practical solution. So we got to figure out how we’re doing this, we’ve got to hire researchers, we’ve got to provide them with the tools they need to sort of further the technology. And the result of that is the NACA, which becomes this world-leading R&D organization. And, and it, it is remarkable to see how this happens. From the point that what is now the Langley Research Center is established toward the end of the 19-teens, through, you know, the history, the rest of the history of the NACA, up to 1958 when it becomes NASA, you’ve got this unparalleled development of really good engineers who are attracted to the NACA to come to work there because they’re going to solve the cutting-edge problems of flight, especially in aerodynamics. And, and the NACA put in their hands the tools that they needed to do this, the funding over long periods of time to, to answer these kinds of questions, and the freedom to pursue this. I mean, it, it is a remarkable story of success. And by the way, those fundamental tools were first and foremost a set of wind tunnels that were built beginning in the 1920s and some of which are still in operation today, not all of which, at, at NASA centers. And, and they really did change the nature of what we understood about flight in America.
Host: Yeah, because I, I, I think, you know, a lot of us, especially that are, that are into NASA, we take a look at, at NASA and its evolution over decades, and I think one of the more revealing things to me was, was just the length of time that the NACA was developing. You talked about the late 19-teens to 1958: that’s decades, that’s a long time.
Roger Launius: Right, right.
Host: And there’s a lot of progress that happens in there that you sort of navigate us through. You talk about the facilities, you talk about, I mean, just the planes in general. But, but I think one of the, you know, key themes, I’m trying to focus on some of the key themes without getting to, to into the weeds here, but I think interestingly enough, one of the motivators here was this, and, and you sort of alluded to it when you talked about Europe having, you know, you know, taking a lot of this idea of flight and the research and development and, and kind of running with it, that was kind of one of the motivators for the NACA, and that’s this idea of, of nationalism and competition…
Roger Launius: Right.
Host:…trying to be the best. And, and you talked about, you know, World War I, there’s, there’s this militaristic motivator, there’s this competitive motivator that’s, that’s very, that’s very a strong element in these decades through the NACA.
Roger Launius: Right, right. No question about it. So the military component of this is significant. I, you know, and, back in those days, there was something called the War Department — it’s a, it’s now the Department of Defense — but they’re looking at the activities in World War I thinking, oh my goodness, we’ve got to figure out a way to do better. And, and everybody is doing the same sort of thing. And so, pushing technology and pushing the development of aircraft that can do military things is a, is an important part of this. But it’s not just that. It’s, it’s also the rise of commercial aviation and the fact that, that you’ve got the potential for, initially one of the early activities was air mail, and that was a big deal. Being able to move letters and packages from one place to another in the space of a few hours was, was something unheard of in, in American history previously. And, and, and so, so the postal service is one of the early adopters of aircraft technology, and they want the best aircraft that’s out there, too. There’s a whole variety of things, and some of those are, are, are federal activities, but obviously there’s the commercial world as well. So the, the, the potential to move passengers and cargo on a commercial basis is a big piece of this, and it pushes a lot of technology in the 1920s and ’30s. But the NACA is at the center of all of this technology development. It’s got capabilities and resources and, and expertise that is able to solve a bunch of problems that, that have application not to an individual airplane per se but to all kinds of aircraft that are out there in all settings.
Host: Yeah. And you, and you do a really good job in the book to, to, to highlight these different moments and sort of bring it back to the bigger picture of, you know, even with these motivators of, sometimes that were nationalism in, in nature, you have these elements, you know, that were purely research and development, the, the progress of humanity. And, and you, and you tell, and you make sure to highlight in these stories about how these sorts of things in the NACA and at NASA impacted everybody’s lives; how they ended up changing sort of the way that we, we live, and you, and commercial aviation is one of those big things. You talked about air mail being one of the early uses of, of air transportation, but, you know, eventually that evolved into people and a lot of the research done at, at the NACA changed the way that we transport, and we travel through the United States and the world today.
Roger Launius: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. You know, and, and this is a debate that historians have been having for a long time, but my argument would be that one of the defining technologies of the 20th century was the ability to fly. At no time in human history had we previously had that capability. So this really did change the nature of everything around us. Every aspect of our society is reordered through this particular capability, from our, you know, going to an airport and getting on an airplane and going to grandma’s house, you know, in the space of, of a few hours, as opposed to at least a day trip or perhaps even longer in previous eras, is a big change. And we don’t think anything about it today. It’s taken as a given, but it wasn’t in, you know, at the time that the NACA was established, those sorts of activities were not common yet, but they would become common within a very short period of time. And no small measure because of the development of technology, and that development of technology was, was fundamentally a part of what the NACA was doing to move, move society forward.
Host: Absolutely. And I think you, you do a good job of, of highlighting those technological advances. Also, in those decades of the NACA, I thought you did a really good job of sort of laying the groundwork for the skills that were required at the time for the NACA, but that would eventually transfer over to NASA. And you do so with, by highlighting jobs like the idea of a computer. And at the time, it was a, a computer was a person, and these computers, you know, were, were part of the NACA. But if you know NASA history and you know those early years of, of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, you know that human computers were essential to the skills required for human spaceflight, you also do so with people, and I know, you laid the groundwork with Robert Gilruth and his time in the NACA and, and as a, as a person, his influence in making NASA what it ultimately became.
Roger Launius: Yeah. So the human computers are a fascinating story. I mean, what we had at the NACA was researchers, engineers, doing research on various aspects of wing development or streamlining processes or compressibility factors, all kinds of issues that were out there that were problems to be solved in terms of flight. And they would, they would, and, and, you know, there are three legs to the stool associated with this research. One is theoretical studies. The NACA had some people who focused on theory, and, and, and then there is ground studies associated with empirical work. A lot of that was done in wind tunnels. And, and then of course, there’s flight research. You test this thing in a, in a, in a vehicle that can leave the ground and do things. And those, those three elements of this research project really changed the, the dynamics of what we understand about, about flight. And, and then the NACA made that knowledge available through the writing of technical reports and sending them out to everybody. I mean, it was remarkable, the distribution network that they put in place, and the rigor with which these reports were, were written and, and processed inside of the NACA. But all of the tabulations associated with that research was done by, you know, the engineers would provide data, then, then these computers who were, who were essentially math whizzes, would sit down and create tables of, of, of, of information about a particular thing. And that was a very involved process. And they weren’t engineers per se, but, but they were indivi, but they were individuals who had this, this math skill, and they could produce these, these reports through this process. And some of those individuals, especially beginning in World War II and since, were women who, whose capabilities were not necessarily appreciated in society in the way they probably should have been. But if you, you know, they went to college and, and with a math major, they could do a couple of things with that skillset: they could teach school — that’s OK, nothing wrong with that — but they could also make more money and do something that, that was really rewarding by becoming a computer. And there were several at the NACA centers during World War II. Some of those were African American women. And until the rise of electronic computers later on, they were the dominant means whereby the NACA and, and NASA in its early years produced data that was usable for other people.
Host: Yeah. I loved, I loved how you kind of, you, you know, you, you can look at history and just kind of look at the technology of the facilities, you can look at sort of the hard facts, but I thought just overall you did a pretty good job of weaving the, the, the personnel story and, and the, and the people that, that, that sort of helped to create NASA and, and eventually navigate it through its history, what it was, not, not to jump too far but, but to jump to later in the book where you talk about shuttle, you do a really good job in those chapters of spending some time talking about the people and exploring workplace diversity and those sorts of things. And I know, especially, you know, now, like the espe, we see some historical books, movies, you know, the one that jumps to mind is “Hidden Figures.”
Roger Launius: Sure.
Host: But how, how the, these, how, how the reach of, of NASA, you know, which was just traditionally for, for Mercury, right, the Mercury 7, all, all white men, and you, and you take, take a, a personal, a social look at NASA’s history, and its evolution of workplace diversity.
Roger Launius: Right, right. Well, I, I mean, you know, NASA, like lots of organizations, has always faced the challenge of, of, of, of looking more like America than not, and, the engineering world and the science world was largely the province of white males for much of the history of, of the United States. And, and with efforts inside the federal government to, to diversify, to become more inclusive. NASA responded to that, and, and, and women and minorities were brought in to, to perform a lot of those functions to the extent today that we don’t think too much about it. But that wasn’t always the case. And there were notable instances in the NACA, in NASA’s history where, where individuals were marginalized for no good reason, through no fault of their own, and, and efforts were, had to be made to, to try to overcome that.
Host: Absolutely. Now, jumping back, just to sort of close this, this, the NAC conversation, NACA conversation is, you know, we talked about where we spent some time talking about the people, you talked about technologies. I think one of the key things that it helps to really help us kind of close the NACA portion of the book and sort of pave the way for when we start talking about the formation of NASA, and, and why these two organizations just made sense, you know, it made sense to evolve NACA into what NASA is. As you know, this research and development, one of the things was the X-planes, and you spend some time talking about those. Chuck Yeager’s very, you know, historic, breaking the sound barrier sort of thing, and you know, this idea of rocketry in aviation and sort of how we take this, this R&D aspect and when NASA was forming, you, you do a good job of, of kind of leading us very, very smoothly from the air, from the back end of NACA to what would eventually become NASA.
Roger Launius: Yeah, sure. So, one of the things that, that the NACA did during World War II was, was really — and appropriately so — move all-in in terms of military technology and work very closely with what would become the Air Force and the Navy on research development for aircraft that would be the most modern, sophisticated that existed in the world. And the X-plane series of, of aircraft, you know, the experimental aircraft after World War II, especially as a direct result of that, and the X-1, which is a, the famous story that everybody’s heard about, about Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier — not that it was actually a barrier per se — in 1947 is all, is, is, is well known. And, and, and Yeager, of course, was an, was an Air Force pilot, but the project was a, was a partnership between the military and, and NASA and Bell Aircraft, which was the manufacturer of the X-1. So, that set in, in train a whole series of, of successive programs, which still exists right up to the present. I mean, there’s other, there, there’s X-planes that are out there; over time that have done a variety of really important and significant things. Most famous of those is probably the X-15, which flew between the late 1950s into the late 1960s in the hypersonic realm. And it’s, it’s a set of, of data that is still being used by, by people today in terms of what we know about high-speed flight in the atmosphere and going to the edge of space. The, and, and those partnerships really, really sort of defined a lot of activities of the NACA in the World War II and since era, and have also been important in the context of NASA’s efforts since that time. The rise of guided missiles, also resulting from World War II — I mean, there, every nation who is a combatant in World War II built missiles of some type; sometimes they were as, as simple as a rocket-powered grenade that was used on the ground by infantry; the bazooka, if you will, for the American army — but everybody realized that the, that the future of, of long-range military flight was going to be ballistic missiles of some kind. And right at the end of World War II the NACA gets involved in that. Robert Gilruth, who would go on to become the center director at, at what is now the Johnson Space Center, and led the Space Task Group through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo eras, was the leader of that particular effort. He was based at Langley Research Center, he’d been there a number of years, he’d done all kinds of really significant work, but he recognized the necessity of moving in this direction, and he pursued this. They established a facility, which is now Wallops Flight Facility, and, and began launching missiles out of that, testing them for mostly atmospheric aerodynamics at the time and, and, and propulsion technologies, but, and, and didn’t get into space, they weren’t trying to do that necessarily, but they really laid the groundwork for what NASA would be doing when it became a reality in the 1950s.
Host: Yeah. And that’s, that’s sort of how you make that transition when you, when we lead out of NACA and into talking about some of the history of NASA. You know, the, the first things you tackle really are exactly that, you know, but, but this idea of when you kick off NASA, I think the central theme here is the first things that you, that you talk about in the, in the book when it comes to NASA’s early history is human spaceflight. And that seems to be one of the motivators. You know, you already laid the groundwork earlier in the book with the NACA for nationalism and competition as a motivator. Obviously, Sputnik was one of the key things, if not the key thing, that sparked the formation of NASA, and, and the competition with the Soviet Union at the time. But would, I think it’s, I think it’s fair to conclude that human spaceflight was one of the drivers on the formation and the early years of NASA.
Roger Launius: Absolutely. And, and it, it, it was a part of a longer discussion about potential for, for space activities. I mean, fundamentally it’s about going somewhere else and humans doing that. And, and, and that goes back probably earlier than even the 1940s, but certainly by then, there’s a, a significant aerospace community that’s sort of looking forward to that prospect. And as, as NASA is created, almost coincidental with the creation of NASA, it gets a human spaceflight mission. There was a long effort before that time inside the Department of Defense to pursue manned flights into space for military purposes. But those, those got through a lot of paper studies, but not to the point where they actually got to go ahead to proceed with it. And that mission by [President Dwight] Eisenhower was, was given to NASA as soon as it was stood up and operating beginning in the fall of 1958.
Host: Now, if you take a look at the book as a whole, and look at kind of where, where, what moments are the densest, for sure, at least in, in my experience in reading the book, you spend a lot of time in those early human spaceflight programs: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, particularly in Mercury and Apollo. But would you, would you say that it’s fair to conclude that those particular programs, in terms of making NASA what it is today, laying the foundation for other programs and the, and the history of the agency in general, they, they take the cake in terms of considering what programs through all of NASA may be the most formative, may be the most important? I know at the, at the very epilogue of, of the book, you say, you know, of all — I guess you get asked this question a lot — is, you know, what were, what, what was your, you know, the most important program, and I, I think, one of the things you pointed out was, was — or important mission — and you said Apollo 11 takes the cake for sure, but, but you, you mentioned all of these other, other things as well, but I think it’s fair to conclude that in terms of, you know, what makes NASA what it is today, that these early programs really were very powerful.
Roger Launius: Oh, no, no question about it. So, I, I sort of think of, of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo as siblings. And, and Mercury’s that first that, that, you know, the oldest child per se, and, and there’s all of these hopes and dreams that are sort of attached to that. And it’s very clear that that’s what happened with Mercury, and it was a stellar effort. No question about it. And, and obviously, you know, the third child in this is, is Apollo, which succeeds beyond expectations and, and, and accomplishes all of these astounding knowledge compilations that result from it. And then, and then the middle child, the Jan Brady, if you will, that middle child was Gemini, which sort of gets lost in the shuffle, but it also was incredibly significant. Mercury was a simple process. You put an astronaut up, can they survive in space? Nobody knew that when, when the, that program was conceived. And, and the six flights of the Mercury program demonstrated that they, that it, that you could be successful in, in Earth orbit, that you could be there for a long period of time. Apollo is that, is that effort that’s going to go to the Moon, and which astronauts are going to get out, they’re going to do things there, ultimately leading, hopefully, to a, a long-term exploration of space and a, and the beginning of, of a multi-planetary species, perhaps, at some point in the future. And, but to get there and do that successfully, Gemini had to, had to work. You had to be able to rendezvous and dock in space. They had to get out of the spacecraft and do what we now call EVA (extravehicular activities), spacewalks, to, to accomplish useful things. And that program worked beautifully as well. So those three efforts together over a, essentially a ten-year period, really did change the dynamic of things that allowed us to understand what we could do and not do in sort of the translunar and cislunar and Earth-orbital space. The, but, and this is where I think the shuttle and the station are so significant, is that those programs made, turned Earth-orbit into a normal sphere of human activity. It’s, it, it is no longer a frontier, it is no longer a mystery what we’re going to encounter when we go into Earth orbit, and the astronauts through years of experience with shuttle and station have, have mastered — and the technical people associated with that have mastered — understanding of this particular thing, enabling us to now use orbital space in ways that we never dreamt of previously. And that’s where we are today.
Host: Yeah. It’s a beautiful thing. You, you definitely navigate us through that, that history from early formation of NASA and a lot of the human spaceflight programs. I appreciate it, though, that, of course, what you’re trying to do here in the book is capture as much of, you know, NASA’s storied history, and you have to pull out some of the most significant missions, some of the most significant programs. And after you get through these, these dense chapters of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, you go back in time and you go back to 1960 and start talking about, hey, even though these things were happening, and they were absolutely the forefront of NASA, they were the most publicly visible things that were happening to, to what people were paying attention to — trying to land humans on the Moon, obviously, is going to capture most people’s attention — but in the background there are these, there are these exploration programs, and you talk about a lot of science efforts starting with, you know, these landers that are exploring the solar system, you talk about the appeal of Mars; we talk about these observatories that are looking at the expanses of the universe; you talk about Earth observations, and you, and you weave through some of the most important programs that I think define what captures maybe NASA science portfolio today and what we find most important, but, but you navigate and, and you, you navigate that by jumping back in time after, after Apollo and sort of taking us through the science programs.
Roger Launius: Oh, yeah. So the, I mean, very early on, in the 1950s, NASA’s involved in robotic exploration as well. And the, and the first target, of course was, was the, was the Moon. And that was directly tied to the, to the larger Mercury, Gemini, Apollo effort. And the Ranger and Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter programs are directly feeding into the, the Moon landing effort as well. But, so the Moon is a part of that discussion, but the planets are as well. And what else can we understand about this? Well, our two closest possible targets are Venus and Mars. Venus is actually a little bit closer than Mars. It’s also a, a, a near twin of Earth in terms of size, and there were a lot of mythology associated with what we might find once we get underneath the clouds there. And our first efforts, the Mariner program, sends, sends probes there in the early 1960s and we learn that it’s an inferno and not a, not a place that’s very inviting. But Mars always was thought to be, be, sort of a place where we might be able to go, where we might be able to settle, where we might be able to, you know, put colonies ultimately. And, and so it has become a target, and we also thought that we might well find some life there and there’s still that possibility. There’s a number of folks who are still suggesting that there may be microbial life underneath, underneath the planetary surface or, or somewhere else there. And, and that has driven a lot of activity. And what we have found there has been stupendously exciting over time, and there’s people who are jazzed about that, and of course, the rovers there and the, and the landers and the helicopter possibilities, and the airplane possibilities, and on and on and on, in terms of our robotic exploration of Mars and ultimately with the potential of putting boots on the ground there, has, has motivated a lot of activity in terms of Mars exploration. Beyond that, of course, there’s outer planetary exploration to the, to the, to the, to the, to the giants, the gas giants that are out there, and, and the outer edges of the solar system, and the potential to get above the atmosphere with observatories, with telescopes. Most famous of those, of course, although they are not the first is the Hubble Space Telescope, deployed by the shuttle in 1990, serviced several times and still operational today. The recently deployed James Webb Space Telescope, which has been stupendous in what it has offered us in just a, you know, a little more than a year of activity. So, we’re, we’re excited and jazzed by that, and that whole effort has prompted us to learn and understand more effectively about the cosmos than ever before. And there is, there is nobody that’s out there who, who is not energized by the knowledge gained through these processes.
Host: Yeah. And I think, I think that’s probably one of the most telling things, by the time you finish this chapter, is just how much of an impact these programs made on humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos. Absolutely revealing, and especially, you know, kind of bringing it back to human spaceflight, you’ve mentioned this already, but, but the, the, as we were exploring it became more and more interesting, this, this idea of traveling to Mars and the secrets that it can unlock, that is today a key motivator for why we want to put boots on that particular planet out of all of them.
Roger Launius: Right, right. You bet. Mars is a special case. I mean, so I, I can recall in the mid-1960s when I was in grammar school, our science books, which were a little outdated, but they said in no uncertain terms that they, that, that they believed that there was life on, on the planet Mars. And their reason for believing this was that they saw changes to the planetary surface from telescopes here on Earth. This was before the first probes had been sent there. And, and that probably there was algae growing or lichens of some kind growing there, and they, they would change with the seasons. And I personally was excited by that when I was a kid. Lots of other people were. But as it turns out, and, and NASA showed us through a succession of efforts, that has not been the case. What they saw were dust storms and a variety of other things; nobody was making this up, they just, you know, the data was not sufficiently advanced to, to really tell the full story at that point in time. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not some really significant things to learn there, and it also doesn’t mean there’s not life that exists there. And I’m not suggesting “little green men” or anything like that, but, but, you know, perhaps the potential for microbial life of some kind. And, and that still energizes a lot of people, myself included. I mean, in my mind a fundamental science question of this is, are we alone in the universe? And I don’t believe we are; I think, I think there’s other entities out there. I also don’t believe they’re visiting Earth, so don’t get, don’t, don’t ever, don’t anybody think that I’m a believer in UFOs and things of that nature that are coming here from other planets. But, but that, I think, is a fundamental question. I’d love to know the answer to that. I’d like to think in our lifetimes where we’ll definitively learn the answer to that question.
Host: Yeah. And it’s becoming kind of more and more realistic, right? A lot of these programs, I think the one that, an observatory is the one that comes to mind is Kepler, just, you know, they keep adding new planets all the time of…
Roger Launius: Right.
Host:…these planets that they’re finding, and it’s becoming more clear that there are so many planets. We didn’t know that for a while, that, that there were so many stars that had so many planets orbiting them, and that there would be a lot in this category of “habitable.” And so, yeah, exactly that. Yeah, is there, is there life out there? It’s becoming increasingly, I think, positive. I think there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of optimistic scientists out there that are saying that it’s very possible, but, you know, like they’re really, really far away. So…
Roger Launius: Yeah.
Host:…yeah, exactly that, not, not exactly little green men, but I thought you did a really good job in, in, in those couple of chapters. You know, you talked shuttle next, but I wanted to jump to aeronautics because we talked so much about it in the beginning of the, of our podcast today about the NACA. You sort of bring it, bring it back that says, you know, there, there’s that first “A” in NASA, the, the aeronautics, and, and we never sort of let go of that, even though we were exploring space we were still making these advancement in human aviation.
Roger Launius: Right. Well, I mean, and we can’t minimize that. And, and it sort of gets lost, lost in the shuffle for most people.
Host: Exactly.
Roger Launius: You know, the NACA becomes NASA and, and, and sort of the aeronautics part of this research and development effort falls by the wayside for most people, but it’s still there and it’s still doing really significant things, right up to the present. And if you look at any piece of, of, of, of technology associated with flight, and you’re going to find NASA’s fingerprints over the R&D on this. It, it is, it is pretty much everywhere. And I’m fascinated by, by obviously things like the X programs, which still exist and were, have been operated in the context of, you know, the NASA environment, as well. But, but there’s, you know, much smaller things that you don’t necessarily think about. And, and, and I love the use of things like the research plane that Langley had for many years that was basically doing things like wind shear research and how to, how to create warning systems so that pilots know if there’s going to be a, a dramatic wind shear as they’re coming in for a landing. And, and, and, and the, the so-called glass cockpit, the, the, the digital instruments that are now ubiquitous in aircraft that, that were pioneered by lots of people but NASA was at the center of a lot of that research as well. The, the modern and futuristic possibilities for air traffic control, and, and I could go on and on. And these are not things that grab a lot of headlines, at least in the, you know, it’s not like astronauts watching, walking on the Moon but it is incredibly significant, and it has made flight one of the safest forms of transportation that exists, and, and ubiquitous worldwide.
Host: You know, I find it, you know, when we, when we started this conversation about the, the idea of, of writing the book and, and the, one of the kind of sparks of inspiration for starting it at this time, originally in the 2010s, was coming up on the centennial of, of NACA, you know, 1915, 2015. I think what’s, what’s interesting is, I was, I was kind of curious as I was getting towards the end of the book on how this is going to go, because what was interesting is just how much progress has been made in these past couple of years. You know, I, I think back to 2015 and where we are in 2023: a lot has happened in the world of commercial space. And I, I find it interesting that, you know, one of the ways that you sort of end the book is this idea of, of commercialization. You, you start with some of the early efforts of commercialization and then, and then take it through, you know, Demo, Demo-2. So I think maybe, maybe I, and I’m, I’m curious to hear about your process because when you started writing this, right, and then how you had to maybe make some adjustments along the way that says, oh, you know, we keep adding to the, to the story here of, of, there’s this, there’s this, there’s this rapid progress in commercialization, and I wonder how you navigated that progress in terms of writing the book and trying to figure out a way on how and when to close it?
Roger Launius: Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s always the challenge when you’re trying to come up to as close to the present as possible…
Host: Right.
Roger Launius:…when you’re writing something like this, and you know, it, it’s obvious that the 21st century sort of a, a dramatic shift has been not NASA contracting with an outside prime contractor for some spacecraft or whatever it happens to be, but, but a possibility of vendors that are in a variety of places with a variety of capabilities, and you can pick and choose and, and, and, and contract for a ride on a vehicle as opposed to the vehicle itself. And that’s been a shift, no question about it. And there were people at NASA when I was there in the 1990s who were championing this particular prospect for the future that, and, and there were, there were individuals in the private sector who were trying to make it a reality, often without a lot of success, unfortunately. The, the, the difficulty has been the, you know, the way I usually frame it is, you know, in the, in the 1990s the landscape was, was littered with failed launch vehicle companies. They’d be formed, they would get venture capital, they would try to, try to achieve their, their agenda in terms of building a new launch vehicle that could be used for a variety of purposes, including supplying what became the International Space Station when it was placed in orbit, and, and most of them failed. And, and there were a couple that were successful and I always like to point back to Orbital Sciences in the 1980s, which, which built the, a, a launcher that was actually launched off of an [Lockheed] L-1011, it was an air-launched vehicle that could put payloads into orbit, and done, you know, without, you know, it was not done as a, as a government contract. These guys did it on their own. And they created a company that ultimately became a part of Northrop Grumman and is now launching the Cygnus Antares launcher for, for all kinds of purposes, including supplying the space station. The, and, and then of course SpaceX and Elon Musk’s effort to develop another launch capability that’s also been critical in this process as well, but those come, but that one comes a little bit later on. And in the 1990s when I was in NASA not everybody was sure this was going to work, and there were a lot of people who were questioning whether or not this is the right way to go. And, and, and the rationale was not just sort of pigheadedness or, you know, living in the past or any of that kind of stuff; it was, it was concern about whether or not private sector had the capabilities to pull this off, they had the resources necessarily, necessary to, to make it a reality, and whether or not they might cut a few corners in terms of safety. And one of the things that has panned out here has been this transition to, to commercial services that NASA can now buy, rather than buying a space shuttle and all the components for that they can now buy a ride on, on a couple of different vehicles that are private sector owned and operated.
Host: Yeah. And, and it’ll be, it’ll be very telling to see what happens over the next couple of years, over the next decade or so. I know NASA’s current efforts right now is expanding upon that, that idea, as you mentioned, you know, not a lot, lot of folks thought it could work a while ago, but I think industry has proven that this capability is, is very possible, and not only possible but seems to be the, the, the way forward for particularly low-Earth, low-Earth orbit. You know that there’s talks now about the station is not going to last forever, so what comes next? And the idea is these commercial orbiting space stations that is exactly like you, you’re, you were talking about with, you know, purchasing a, purchasing a service as a either transportation provider, cargo provider, the idea is, you know, you, it’s almost like a kind of hotel visit. You’re, you’re purchasing space on a, on a space station. So it sort of leads the, the book sort of ends with this idea of, you know, this, this, this commercialization. And I, I sort of wanted to kind of get your grasp on, on, you know, with, with figuring out how to end this book and, and figuring out kind of where this is going. I think what’s interesting is so much has been, has changed in the past decade. And, you know, one of the things I’m sure the idea of, of writing and finishing and publishing a book, you know, you, you, you write it and, and you get, get it ready to go, and then, you know, know you have things like Artemis, right, Artemis I that lifts off and it’s, it’s this beginning of a new chapter, and I know you address it in the epilogue and you, and this, you talk about the benefits of the Moon. I, I kind of want to hear your perspective on that, just given, given your deep research and writing into NASA’s storied history, the, the idea that you, you end the book with this commercialization thing, but it’s almost like we’re, we’re about to start this new chapter of, of human space exploration, particularly with Artemis. And I wanted to kind of gauge your thoughts on, on that program and, and those efforts.
Roger Launius: Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that, that, that, that’s happening, and I, I do see this as a reality and a very positive development, is that NASA is able to move from Earth orbital activities, it can turn that over to, to private sector firms and whatever activities that are necessary that NASA needs to engage in an Earth orbit they can buy those services from someone else. So servicing the space station, ferrying astronauts to and from that, or follow on, you know, habitat in space or whatever our research facility in space or whatever comes beyond this, and NASA can buy those services from, from someone else, but that frees the agency up to pursue the exploration agenda in trans- and, and, cislunar space. And I really think, I mean, and that’s where Artemis is headed. You know, the ability to go back to the Moon and, and, and to do some things there and, and perhaps establish a, I, I think the first step is a research station on the Moon. And, and that research station, probably not going to be flashy, probably not going to be, you know, a glass-domed facility or anything like that — for one thing cosmic rays would be a problem — but, but it would look probably a lot like Antarctica. There would be a, a community of researchers, scientists, engineers, whoever other types might need to be there for, for a purpose for some period of time, and, and they would be taken in and out on a regular schedule. And that’s the, that’s our first step to move off this planet, to be perfectly honest, on a, on a sustained basis. And we’ll, I think we’re going to see that. I’d like to think in my lifetime. The, and certainly in the 21st century, I think we’ll see that. You know, from there, you know, maybe we can make, we can incorporate the Moon into a normal realm of human activity. We’re not close to that yet, but I’d like to think that that will happen. And ultimately then move on to Mars and other places beyond.
Host: Yeah. It’s, it, it, it’s a very interesting time. I’m, I’m, it’ll be interesting to see the, you know, “NACA to NASA to Now: Volume-2” after, after all this is said and done. I, I, I kind of wanted to end with, well, sort of, sort of begin wrapping up here with, you know, you, you published this as a NASA e-book, and I’m curious as to, as to why you made that decision. I know, I know you have history with NASA. You could have gone other places, but this, this, this wonderful book is freely available on NASA.gov. And I wonder why you made that decision.
Roger Launius: Well, I, I mean, one of the things that, so I’m, my initial conception of this was something we would do for NASA. And, and NASA has had a one-volume history in the past. There’s a volume that was published in the 1980s called “Orders of Magnitude” that was sort of a synopsis of the, of the agency’s history. Roger Bilstein, a very fine historian, was the author of that. And, but, but that book, by the time we started talking about that, was, you know, 25 years old and a lot had happened during that period of time, and we gained a lot of understanding beyond, you know, even areas that he talked about. So, it, it seemed logical to produce a one-volume history, and, and my audience for this, fundamentally, is NASA: the people who are there today, who are certainly acquainted with some aspects of NASA’s history and are very much there because they want to be engaged in these kinds of activities. NASA’s an unusual federal agency. You know, there’s, there’s obviously people of all skillsets who are associated with this. There are scientists, engineers, astronauts, technicians, but there’s also, you know, bookkeepers and accountants and contract people, and you, you name it. But they all are motivated by this, by this larger agenda of, of, of doing really interesting cutting-edge things pointed toward the future in terms of air and space. And, and that is, there’s a comaraderie around that, a, a sense of cohesion to the mission that, that permeates the agency. It did from the very origins of, of the NACA right up to the present; that’s maybe not quite the same in, in lots of other institutions where you don’t necessarily have an identity with the, with the mission of the organization that the NASA folks have. And I find that remarkable and being able to tell that story of things that have been done in the past, both those that are positive and well as some that are negative, and, you know, the, the successes and the failures, I think is, is, is really an important thing to do and that everybody should have an understanding of.
Host: Well, we certainly appreciate it. I mean, as, as part of the NASA workforce myself, I, I very much enjoyed it. I learned a lot, absolutely. And I’ll tell you, just, just getting the chance to talk to you and kind of hear more that goes even deeper into sort of the background and your thoughts, your overall thoughts of, of NASA and its story, you can tell you’re, you’re very passionate about this, and so, I feel very lucky to have had the chance to talk with you today, Roger. It’s, it’s been an absolute pleasure. And I, and I thank you for, get, hopping on the phone today to, and, and chatting with us to, to give us more perspective on this. I hope folks that are listening are inspired to go and check this book out.
Roger Launius: Yeah. I hope they, I hope they really like it. Obviously, you can download it, but there are hard copies available as well, by contacting the NASA history office.
Host: Wonderful, wonderful. Roger Launius, thank you so much. Appreciate your time.
Roger Launius: Thank you. Take care.
Host: All right.
[Music]
Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. Hope you learned something today. Fantastic to chat with Roger about his book. He went into great detail, but of course I very much encourage you to go to NASA.gov/e-books and check out this book, read it through its entirety. We really just skimmed the surface today and just sort of introduced you to a lot of those key concepts and themes. But really, if you want the meaty stuff, highly recommend you go and check out that book. He mentioned, sort of at the very end, you can read it as a, as a e-book, you can download the pdf, there’s, the access to it is free. It’s actually one of the reasons that we’re able to talk to Roger today. I don’t really get a chance to promote other books, but because this is on NASA.gov, because it’s free, it is, is there for your enjoyment, and I had a great time being able to chat with, with him today. Of course, if you wanted to check out more podcasts, we’re not the only one at NASA, you can go to NASA.gov/podcasts, it’s in the same dropdown menu that you can find the e-books. You can find us there and you can listen to any of our episodes in no particular order. You can also check out some of the other shows that we have across the agency. We also monitor social media from time to time and check to see if there’s any questions or if anyone has any episode suggestions. We’re on the NASA Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and you can use the hashtag #AskNASA to submit those if you would like. This episode was recorded on March 16, 2023. Thanks to Will Flato, Pat Ryan, Heidi Lavelle, Belinda Pulido, and Jaden Jennings. And of course, thanks again to Roger Launius for taking the time to come on the show. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on and tell us what you think of our podcast. We’ll be back next week.