The Birth of NASA—The Diary of T. Keith Glennan tells the story of the critical formative months of the new agency. The Introduction describes the background of T. Keith Glennan, the first NASA Administrator. After the Introduction, the book continues with Glennan’s recollections of NASA from his appointment until the end of 1959. The 13 chapters are written in a diary format covering month-by-months his activities until he left the position in 1961. A Postscript, written in 1963, gives his views on the space program after he left office. A Biographical Appendix gives short sketches of about 400 individuals active in the space program during this period. Throughout the diary numerous explanatory footnotes by the editor clarify events an provide references for further details. Although Glennan’s stay at NASA was short, his contributions are most significant, as he built the organization that would men to the moon and serve the nation to the present time.

The Birth of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan (NASA History)

Biographies & Memoirs

Glennan, T. Keith

Professionals & Academics

US National Aeronautics and Space Admin

NASA SP-2005-4537. Monographs in Aerospace History Series No. 37.  Presents the history of the manned space program from September 1, 1960 to January 5, 1968. Outlines chronologically and in detail the steps taken from the early Mercury days through the operation tests conducted with Gemini, to the qualification of Apollo. Describes the key technical, operational, and management milestones and how key issues in each phase of the space program were resolved

Project Apollo: The Tough Decisions (Monographs in Aerospace History)

History

Seamans, Robert C.

Americas

NASA Systems Engineering Handbook

Science & Math

Astronomy & Space Science

Science in Flux traces the history of one of the most powerful nuclear test reactors in the United States and the only nuclear facility ever built by NASA. In the late 1950s NASA constructed Plum Brook Station on a vast tract of undeveloped land near Sandusky, Ohio. Once fully operational in 1963, it supported basic research for NASA’s nuclear rocket program (NERVA).    Plum Brook represents a significant, if largely forgotten, story of nuclear research, political change, and the professional culture of the scientists and engineers who devoted their lives to construct and operate the facility. In 1973, after only a decade of research, the government shut Plum Brook down before many of its experiments could be completed. Even the valiant attempt to redefine the reactor as an environmental analysis tool failed, and the facility went silent. The reactors lay in costly, but quiet standby for nearly a quarter-century before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided to decommission the reactors and clean up the site.   The history of Plum Brook reveals the perils and potentials of that nuclear technology. As NASA, Congress, and space enthusiasts all begin looking once again at the nuclear option for sending humans to Mars, the echoes of Plum Brook’s past will resonate with current policy and space initiatives.

Science in Flux: NASA's Nuclear Program at Plum Brook Station 1955-2005 (NASA History)

Business & Money

Bowles, Mark D.

Education & Reference

  An engrossing read, Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight is a volume consisting of scholarship on the current state of the discipline of space history presented in a joint NASA and NASM conference in 2005. The essays presented in the book question such issues as the motivations of spaceflight, and the necessity, if any, of manned space exploration. Though a highly informative and scholarly volume, Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight is thoroughly enjoyable for readers off all different backgrounds who share an interest in human spaceflight.  

Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight

  When Galileo lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on 18 October 1989, it began an interplanetary voyage that took it to Venus, two asteroids, back to Earth, and finally on to Jupiter. The craft’s instruments studied Jupiter’s enormous magnetosphere and its belts of intense radiation. The spacecraft also sent off a planetary probe that accomplished the most difficult atmospheric entry ever attempted. After this, the craft spent years visiting Jupiter’s moons and delving into their structures and properties.   This book attempts to convey the creativity, leadership, and vision that were necessary for the mission’s success.   It is a book about dedicated people and their scientific and engineering achievements.   The Galileo mission faced many significant problems. Some of the most brilliant accomplishments and “work-arounds” (such as problems with the high-gain antenna) of the Galileo staff occurred precisely when these challenges arose. Throughout the mission, engineers and scientists found ways to keep the spacecraft operational, from a distance of nearly half a billion miles, enabling one of the most impressive voyages of scientific discovery.  

Mission to Jupiter: A History of the Galileo Project

Meltzer, Michael

This colorful book provides concise explanations and descriptions—easily read and readily understood—of what is now known of the chain of events and processes that connect the Sun to the Earth, with special emphasis on space weather and sun-climate. Meant as a non-technical introduction for those with an interest in knowing more about the totally different and highly hazardous environment that lies just outside near-Earth space. Aimed at educators, students engineers managers, and administrators with responsibilities in activities related to exploration and utilization of near-Earth space.

The Sun, the Earth, and Near-Earth Space: A Guide to the Sun-Earth System

NASA SP-2011-4411. NASA History Series. Edited by Douglas A. Vakoch. Through essays on topics including survival in extreme environments and the multicultural dimensions of exploration, readers will gain an understanding of the psychological challenges that have faced the space program since its earliest days. An engaging read for those interested in space, history, and psychology alike, this is a highly relevant read as we stand poised on the edge of a new era of spaceflight. Each essay also explicitly addresses the history of the psychology of space exploration.

Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Douglas A. Vakoch

Psychology & Counseling

Book by Rademakers, Lisa, Coleman, Daniel

Spinoff: NASA Technologies Benefit Society

Coleman, Daniel

Rademakers, Lisa

NOTE; NO FURTHER DISCOUNT ON THIS PRINT PRODUCT-- OVERSTOCK SALE -- Signficantly reduced list price This study represents a means of highlighting the myriad of technological developments that made possible the safe reentry and return from space and the landing on Earth. This story extends back at least to the work of Walter Hohmann and Eugen Sänger in Germany in the 1920s and involved numerous aerospace engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)/NASA Langley and the Lewis (now the John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field) and Ames Research Centers. For example, researchers such as H. Julian Allen and Alfred J. Eggers, Jr., at Ames pioneered blunt-body reentry techniques and ablative thermal protection systems in the 1950s, while Francis M. Rogallo at Langley developed creative parasail concepts that informed the development of the recovery systems of numerous reentry vehicles.The chapters that follow relate in a chronological manner the way in which NASA has approached the challenge of reentering the atmosphere after a space mission and the technologies associated with safely dealing with the friction of this encounter and the methods used for landing safely on Earth.
The first chapter explores the conceptual efforts to understand the nature of flight to and from space and the major developments in the technologies of reentry and landing that took place before the beginning of the space age in 1957.
Chapter 2 also investigates the methods of landing once a spacecraft reaches subsonic speeds. Once the orbital energy is converted and the heat of reentry dissipated, the spacecraft must still be landed gently in the ocean or on land. Virtually all of the early concepts for human space flight involve spaceplanes that flew on wings to a runway landing; Sänger’s antipodal bomber of the 1940s did so as did von Braun’s popular concepts. However, these proved impractical for launch vehicles available during the 1950s, and capsule concepts that returned to Earth via parachute proliferated largely because they represented the “art of the possible” at the time.
Chapter 3 tells the story of reentry from space and landing on Earth from the beginning of the space age through the end of the Apollo program. During that period, NASA and other agencies concerned with the subject developed capsules with blunt-body ablative heat shields and recovery systems that relied on parachutes. The Department of Defense (DOD) tested this reentry concept publicly with Project SCORE (Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay Equipment) in 1958 and employed it throughout the CORONA satellite reconnaissance program of the 1960s, snatching in midair return capsules containing unprocessed surveillance footage dangling beneath parachutes. With the Mercury program, astronauts rode a blunt-body capsule with an ablative heat shield to a water landing, where the Navy rescued them. Project Gemini eventually used a similar approach, but NASA engineers experimented with a Rogallo wing and a proposed landing at the Flight Research Center (now Dryden Flight Research Center) on skids similar to those employed on the X-15. When the Rogallo wing failed to make the rapid progress required, NASA returned to the parachute concept used in Mercury and essentially used the same approach in Apollo, although with greatly improved ablative heat shields.
 At the same time, the DOD pursued a spaceplane concept with the X-20 Dyna-Soar orbital vehicle that would have replaced the ablative heat shield with
a reusable metallic heat shield and a lifting reentry that allowed the pilot to fly the vehicle to a runway landing. This is also the general approach pursued by the
DOD with its Aerothermodynamic Elastic Structural Systems Environmental Tests (ASSET) and Martin X-23A Precision Reentry Including Maneuvering
reEntry (PRIME) vehicles. NASA and DOD also experimented with lifting body concepts. Engineers were able to make both of those approaches to reentry and landing work, making tradeoffs on various other capabilities in the process. The eventual direction of these programs was influenced more by technological choices than by obvious decisions.
Even as Apollo was reaching fruition in the late 1960s, NASA made the decision to abandon blunt-body capsules with ablative heat shields and recovery systems that relied on parachutes for its human space flight program. Instead, as shown in chapters 4 and 5, it chose to build the Space Shuttle, a winged reusable vehicle that still had a blunt-body configuration but used a new ceramic tile and reinforced carbon-carbon for its thermal protection system. Parachutes were also jettisoned in favor of a delta-wing aerodynamic concept that allowed runway landings. Despite many challenges and the loss of one vehicle and its crew due to a failure with the thermal protection system, this approach has worked relatively effectively since first flown in 1981. Although NASA engineers debated the necessity of including jet engines on the Shuttle, it employed the unpowered landing concept demonstrated by the X-15 and lifting body programs at the Flight Research Center during the 1960s. These chapters lay out that effort and what it has meant for returning from space and landing on Earth.
The concluding chapter explores efforts to develop new reentry and landing concepts in the 1990s and beyond. During this period, a series of ideas
emerged on reentry and landing concepts, including the return of a metallic heat shield for the National Aero-Space Plane and the X-33, the Roton rotary
rocket, the DC-X powered landing concept, and the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) of the Constellation program between 2005 and 2009. In every case,
these projects proved too technologically difficult and the funding was too sparse for success. Even the CEV, a program that returns to a capsule concept
with a blunt-body ablative heat shield and parachutes (or perhaps a Rogallo wing) to return to Earth (or, perhaps, the ocean), proved a challenge for engineers. The recovery of scientific sample return missions to Earth, both with the loss of Genesis and the successful return of Stardust, suggests that these issues are not exclusive to the human space flight community. As this work is completed, NASA has embarked on the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program in which four firms are competing for funding to complete work on their vehicles:
• Blue Origin, Kent, WA—a biconic capsule that could be launched on an Atlas rocket.
• Sierra Nevada Corporation, Louisville, CO—Dream Chaser lifting body, which could be deployed from the Virgin Galactic
• White Knight Two carrier aircraft for flight tests.
• Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Hawthorne, CA—
• Dragon capsule spacecraft; also a partial lifting body concept to be launched on the Falcon 9 heavy lifter.
• The Boeing Company, Houston, TX—a 7-person spacecraft, including both personnel and cargo configurations designed to be launched by several different rockets, and to be reusable up to 10 times.
These new ideas and a broad set of actions stimulated through the CCDev program suggest that reentry and recovery from space remains an unsettled issue in space flight. This book’s concluding chapter suggests that our understanding of the longstanding complexities associated with returning to Earth safely has benefited from changes in technology and deeper knowledge of the process; however, these issues are still hotly debated and disagreement remains about how best to accomplish these challenging tasks. Engineers have had success with several different approaches to resolving the challenges of reentry and landing.
Discovering the optimal, most elegant solutions requires diligence and creativity. This history seeks to tell this complex story in a compelling, sophisticated, and technically sound manner for an audience that understands little about the evolution of flight technology. Bits and pieces of this history exist in other publications, but often overlooked is the critical role these concepts played in making a safe return to Earth possible. Moreover, the challenges, mysteries, and outcomes that these programs’ members wrestled with offer object lessons in how earlier generations of engineers sought optimal solutions and made tradeoffs.
With the CCDev program—a multiphase program intended to stimulate the development of privately operated crew vehicles to low-Earth orbit currently underway—NASA is returning to a capsule concept for space flight. This may prove a significant development, and this history could help enlighten the NASA team about past efforts and the lessons learned from those efforts. 
Other related products:
NASA Historical Data Book, V. 7: NASA Launch Systems, Space Transportation/Human Spaceflight, and Space Science can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/033-000-01309-4
Revolutionary Atmosphere: The Story of the Altitude Wind Tunnel and the Space Power Chambers can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/033-000-01342-6
Spinoff: Innovative Partnerships Program 2009 can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/033-000-01331-1
Spinoff 2010: NASA Technologies Benefit Society can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/033-000-01343-4
Spinoff 2015: Technology Transfer Program can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/033-000-01372-8
Aerospace, Astronomy &amp; Space Exploration resources collection can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/science-technology/aerospace-astronomy...
Other products produced by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/550

Coming Home: Reentry and Recovery from Space (NASA/Sp)

Launius, Roger D.

Jenkins, Dennis R.

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