NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER 1917-2017
THE RACE TO SPACE: Langley Research Center and Project Mercury By Craig Collins
In the years following World War II, the scientific and technological superiority of the United States research complex seemed unquestionable – until Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1, the world’s first satellite, made an abrupt announcement: the race to space had officially begun, and the United States was a distant second. Like all Americans, researchers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) were surprised – shocked, even – by the launch, but they hadn’t exactly been caught flat-flooted; many had already drifted into space exploration in their high-speed aeronautics experiments and in the effort to help the military develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). This work necessarily involved rocketry. Researchers in Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory’s Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD), for example, had explored the limits of aircraft speed and altitude both in Langley’s high-speed tunnels and in rocket tests launched from nearby Wallops Island. The PARD had launched its first test vehicle, a small two-stage solid-fuel rocket, in July 1945. In the postwar years, at the request of the Pentagon, Langley and the NACA’s other laboratories – Lewis and Ames – had performed theoretical
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studies of ballistic missiles, rocket fuels, and automatic controls for supersonic missiles and aircraft. The National Security Council had approved a plan, Project Vanguard, to place a satellite in orbit, and by 1957 the X-15, a rocket-propelled piloted aircraft, was on the drawing board at Langley. Many military and NACA engineers were already debating how to put a person in an Earth-orbiting spacecraft. For years, Robert Gilruth, assistant director of PARD, had been urging his superiors to pursue a program to launch satellites into space, but they declined both for budgetary reasons and on the grounds that the NACA, and Langley, were research organizations. They didn’t develop things and lead projects; they ran tests and supplied research data to those who did. But U.S. researchers were seized by a renewed sense of urgency when, a month after the launch of Sputnik 1, the Soviets launched Sputnik 2, which
