Communications

To the editor:

Stephen Johnson reviewed Testing Aircraft, Exploring Space (Johns Hopkins, 2003) in the July 2004 issue of T&C. The book summarizes NACA/ NASA activities in aviation and space from 1915 to 2001.

Johnson apparently disagrees with the book's treatment of NASA and its astronautics programs in recent decades, although he did not find similar faults in the aviation sections of the book. I acknowledge his comments in regard to some technical editorial errors. For approximately half of the review, Johnson lists topics that he felt the book did not adequately address. However, the text was never meant to serve as a wide-ranging critique of NASA. Nor was it launched to probe those frontiers of historiography where other studies might have gone before.

My concern is that readers of T&C will not have had an opportunity to consider aspects of the text's targeted readership (nonspecialist and general as opposed to academic), or its rationale in terms of coverage, or some of the topics it addresses. As noted in the acknowledgements, the book was not "intended as a definitive or interpretive study." Also, the text's "brevity" and its "succinct coverage" are stressed. Consequently, the main text numbers only 195 pages; of these, 57 illustrations take up about 30, leaving some 165 pages for the narrative itself.

Within a taut synthetic framework, the narrative is focused on operational activities. In the case of selected, multiproject initiatives, only one or two NASA projects are summarized. International influences (especially European) are a recurrent theme. The agency's continuing gravitation to a more politicized stance is acknowledged. Administrator Daniel Goldin's decision to implement a major shift in NASA bureaucratic tradition—allocating day-to-day management of operations (including the shuttle) to contractors—is related. NASA's worldwide projects involving environmental issues are introduced. Accidents, mishaps, and subsequent investigations are reported. Discord about allocation of resources among aeronautics, manned space operations, and unmanned space hardware is disclosed. Increasing reliance on overseas entities for both funding and hardware is described. An irony is noted in that the NACA began operations early in the twentieth century in response to perceived European leadership in aeronautics; on the threshold of the twenty-first century, NASA was again under attack by aerospace press and professional organizations for lagging behind the Europeans. Additional subjects are treated; a smattering of lighthearted incidents is observed. There is a brief bibliographic essay. The preface (new for this edition) places NACA/NASA in a broad historical context of federal research and development. A chronology (also new for this edition) comprises five and one-half pages. A reworked index includes various multiple-page entries, such as: European (and international) influences; budgets; management; criticisms of NACA/NASA.

I firmly believe that a concise, readable, and accessible history for nonspecialists is a worthy tradition.