Testing Aircraft, Exploring Space: An Illustrated History of NACA and NASA (review)

Testing Aircraft, Exploring Space is the fourth edition of a work that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) first published in 1965. Eugene Emme's work of that year was revised by Frank Anderson in 1976, and then by Roger Bilstein for the third edition in 1989. This edition is the first published commercially, but it maintains strong ties to its government-published predecessors and shares the strengths and weaknesses of prior editions. Its main purpose is to provide a short and concise summary of the history of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and its successor, NASA.

On that score the book succeeds well. Particularly informative are the early chapters on the role of the NACA, which provide surprisingly good insights into that organization and its relationship to the military and to the commercial aviation industry. In later chapters on NASA, Bilstein continues the solid review of aeronautical history, and does an excellent job reviewing the human flight program through Apollo. Bilstein deserves credit for also bringing in little-known aspects of NASA, such as its funding of graduate education programs. These help the reader understand the space agency's approach to broader political issues.

Unfortunately, the book's value is undermined by a variety of weaknesses. There have been decades in which to root out factual problems, and yet I was shocked to find a statement on page 72 that Hughes was the contractor for the Ranger program of the early 1960s. Hughes was the prime contractor for the Surveyor program, while the Jet Propulsion Laboratory built Ranger. Some errors are minor, if annoying: Vandenberg Air Force Base and the European Space Agency's launch site Kourou are misspelled, for example. Far more disturbing is the rosy spin given to the histories of the space shuttle and space station. We find no mention of how the shuttle's design was driven by military requirements, or of NASA's role in virtually shutting down other launch systems to create a monopoly for itself. Major issues such as international competition from Ariane, or military opposition to the shuttle, merit bare sentences, whereas descriptions of heroic astronauts garner pages. No mention is made of the Reagan administration's crucial role in commercializing space and giving these activities to the Departments of Transportation and Commerce instead of to NASA.

And there are other significant problems. For satellite communications, Bilstein completely ignores NASA's role in keeping American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) from extending its monopoly into space, or in creating alternatives. Management problems with the shuttle and space station, and programs to improve NASA's own management—such as Dan Goldin's "faster, better, cheaper" initiative—do not make it into this story. The scope of NASA's Great Observatories program and its predecessors is barely hinted at, leaving a distorted view that the Hubble telescope is all there is. The fact that astrobiology is now a subject of NASA's scientific attention is noted, but Bilstein never explains why this is so. Finally, declassification of military sources has shed light on a variety of NASA programs, but the new information is not reflected here. Examples include the Weather Bureau's rejection of NASA's Nimbus program in favor of a new variant of the military's Defense Meteorological Satellite, the use of spy satellite cameras on NASA's Lunar Orbiter, and the intelligence community's offer to provide such systems for Landsat.

When I began reading the book, I was impressed with its concise and informative nature. As the narrative moved into the NASA era, however, and particularly from the 1970s onward, I became progressively disturbed by the systemic problems, the adherence to the party line, and omission of many of NASA's political, organizational, and technical issues. The recent Columbia tragedy further highlights these flaws, as NASA faces significant challenges that this short history avoids. I reservedly recommend this book to...