Chapter 2: The early days
Theme: October to December 1958. Describes formation of Space Task Group, and the contest with the Air Force during the preceding year for assignment of the man in space project. Principal characters: Gilruth, Faget, Donlan, Hammack, Purser, Mathews.
October 1958, the month which marked the official beginning of NASA, found the Project Mercury team just getting organized. Less than three dozen professionals occupied a few small offices on the second floor of the unitary wind tunnel building at Langley Field, Virginia, Robert R. Gilruth, smiling, benevolent, head of the Space Task Group, a former director of the Pilotless Research Division; Charles Donlan, a driving bull terrier of a man, associate director; brilliant Max Faget, the spacecraft’s designer; and the other principal members of the team were attempting to lay the groundwork for the program. These were exciting days. Each morning presented a new problem. Every conference surprised with a new discovery. Here, while the great majority of the world looked upon manned space flight as a comic book dream, were three dozen men who were proceeding almost as if manned flight were a fact. To them it had been accomplished, in their laboratories and wind tunnels, during the previous year. What remained was technical implementation. It was not a matter of could it be done, but exactly how and when it would be done. This last year had seen a contest between the Air Force and the NACA for the assignment to put the first man in space. And these men felt under pressure to show that Congress had not erred in assigning the job to them.
Finally, there was the ever-present pressure of Russian competition. Our President had said we were not in a race, and yet the project people knew that we should not be second. Could we be first? What risks should be taken in an effort to be first? What would be the effect of losing an astronaut in an early flight? Would the program be cancelled? Along with the technical problems of building and operating a spacecraft, these policy questions had to be wrestled with and the basic decisions made, which were to guide the effort throughout the Mercury program.