Read complete books and articles on: NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration - (NASA), civilian agency of the U.S. federal government with the mission of conducting research and developing operational programs in the areas of space exploration, artificial satellites (see satellite, artificial), and rocketry. NASA came into existence on Oct. 1, 1958, superseding the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), an agency that had been oriented primarily toward laboratory research. The emphasis at NASA was to be on the implementation of operational programs. While the NACA budget never exceeded $5 million and its staff never exceeded 500, the NASA annual budget reached $14.2 billion in 1995, and its staff reached a maximum size of 34,000 in 1966 (21,000 in 1995), with 400,000 contract employees working directly on agency programs.

The creation of NASA was spurred by American unpreparedness at the time the Soviet Union launched (Oct. 4, 1957) the first artificial satellite (Sputnik). NASA took over the Langley, Ames, and Lewis research centers from NACA. Soon after its creation, NASA acquired from the U.S. army the Jet Propulsion Laboratory operated by the California Institute of Technology. Later, the Army Ballistic Missile Arsenal (now the Marshall Space Flight Center) at Huntsville, Ala., was placed under NASA control.

The best-known NASA facilities are the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center near Houston, Tex., where flights are coordinated, and the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where all space shuttle launches take place. Other facilities include the Dryden, Goddard, and Stennis centers and NASA headquarters, in Washington, D.C. Despite some highly publicized failures, NASA has in many cases successfully completed its missions within their projected budgets; the total cost of the Apollo project, for example, wound up very close to the original $20-billion estimate. Currently, NASA oversees all space science projects, operates the space shuttle, and launches approximately half of all military space missions.

See T. Crouch, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1989).

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Reinventing NASA: Human Spaceflight, Bureaucracy, and Politics » Read Now
by Roger Handberg. 278 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

From its beginnings, NASA was convinced that its real mission was to create the opportunity for a much different and better society on Earth, namely through human space flight. Pursuit of such a goal has led the agency to persist in certain activities even when they conflict with the wishes of...
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From its beginnings, NASA was convinced that its real mission was to create the opportunity for a much different and better society on Earth, namely through human space flight. Pursuit of such a goal has led the agency to persist in certain activities even when they conflict with the wishes of Congress and the President. Recent changes in the international environment, changes that began well before September 11, 2001, have brought the military back into the field of human space flight, a situation that holds certain hazards for NASA since the military is more powerful politically. Dramatic changes could be in store, changes that could severely damage NASA's capacity for continuing what it sees as its primary objective.
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2.

Politics and Space: Image Making by NASA » Read Now
by Mark E. Byrnes. 212 pgs.

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Government agencies have tended to attempt to project favorable public images of themselves as a method of building the public support they need to survive, all the more so in times of increasingly sophisticated communications and decreasingly available financial resources. This study analyzes...
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Government agencies have tended to attempt to project favorable public images of themselves as a method of building the public support they need to survive, all the more so in times of increasingly sophisticated communications and decreasingly available financial resources. This study analyzes NASA's efforts to build political support through its public image. Throughout its tumultuous history, the space agency has carefully tailored its use of basic images: nationalism (during the Mercury era), romanticism (during the Apollo era), and pragmatism (during the Shuttle era)--to fit its prevailing political circumstances. This in-depth study will be of keen interest to scholars in political science and political communication.
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3.

Space Enterprise: Beyond NASA » Read Now
by David P. Gump. 221 pgs.

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"This veteran analyst offers an appraisal of investment opportunities in a wide array of space-related activities. NASA will no longer be a major factor in the commercialization of space. . . . There are a few futuristic projections, such as mining asteroids by robots and collecting antimatter, but...
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"This veteran analyst offers an appraisal of investment opportunities in a wide array of space-related activities. NASA will no longer be a major factor in the commercialization of space. . . . There are a few futuristic projections, such as mining asteroids by robots and collecting antimatter, but the author is more concerned with the application of current or near-future high technology, i.e., products like ELVs (inexpensive expendable launch vehicles), and services with demonstrably large market potential, such as a remote sensing satellite network that could be subsribed to by every personal computer owner on earth." Choice
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4.

Can Democracies Fly in Space? The Challenge of Revitalizing the U.S. Space Program (Chap. 2 "In Search of the Magic Bullet: Critiques of U.S. Space Policy" and Chap. 3 "NASA: The Eye of the Storm") » Read Now
by W. D. Kay. 248 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Over the last two decades, the image of the U.S. space program has become seriously tarnished. Its problems have ranged from massive cost overruns to serious program delays to catastrophic mission failures. The space program, once the most prominent symbol of American scientific and technological...
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Over the last two decades, the image of the U.S. space program has become seriously tarnished. Its problems have ranged from massive cost overruns to serious program delays to catastrophic mission failures. The space program, once the most prominent symbol of American scientific and technological preeminence, now seems but one more example of government bumbling, extravagance, and waste. In this study, Kay examines the recent problems of the space program and finds that NASA's failures, like its earlier successes, are ultimately traceable to the way the American political system operates. Asking "can democracies fly in space?," the author suggests that the traditional workings of democratic politics actually exacerbates those very features of space projects--size, expense, and complexity--that make their development so difficult in the first place.
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5.

Autonomy, Interdependence, and Social Control: NASA and the Space Shuttle Challenger, in Administrative Science Quarterly » Read Now
by Diane Vaughan. 33 pgs.

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...Autonomy, interdependence, and social control: NASA and the space shuttle Challenger...Autonomy, Interdependence, and Social Control: NASA and the Space Shuttle Challenger...
6.

Mission Control: Politics, Not Size, Is the Real Threat to Megaprojects at NASA, in Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy » Read Now
by W. D. Kay. 5 pgs.

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...is the real threat to megaprojects at NASA. by W.D. Kay From its earliest...National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been considered by many to be the...as...
7.

Space Policy Alternatives (Chap. 4 "The NASA Budget: For Whom, for What, and How Big?" and Chap. 5 "NASA and the Budget Process") » Read Now
by Radford Byerly Jr. 296 pgs.

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...PART Two: CONTEXT 51 4 The NASA Budget: For Whom, For What, and How Big? Molly K. Macauley 53 5 NASA and the Budget Process Michael L. Telson...Association. Maxitne A...
8.

Organizational Crime in NASA and among Its Contractors: Using a Newspaper as a Data Source, in Social Justice » Read Now
by Jurg Gerber, Eric Fritch. 14 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Organizational crime in NASA and among its contractors: using a newspaper...Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which has the ability to award large...corporations...
9.

Reaching for the High Frontier: The American Pro-space Movement, 1972-84 » Read Now
by Michael A. G. Michaud. 468 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...REACHING FOR THE HIGH FRONTIER Figure 0.1--NASA Appropriations and Space Interest Group...unpublished paper. Material provided by NASA and Trudy E. Bell. REACHING FOR THE...
10.

Space, the Dormant Frontier: Changing the Paradigm for the 21st Century » Read Now
by Joan Johnson-Freese, Roger Handberg. 280 pgs.

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Rather than examining only the civil or military side of the US space program, as have many books in the past, Space, the Dormant Frontier takes a unique look at the space program as a whole. Part of the book's treatise is that the two communities must stop ignoring each other if the US space...
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Rather than examining only the civil or military side of the US space program, as have many books in the past, Space, the Dormant Frontier takes a unique look at the space program as a whole. Part of the book's treatise is that the two communities must stop ignoring each other if the US space program is to move forward beyond being a science project, jobs program, or political football. How the program got into its current, semi-desperate state is also examined, as history has given space a legacy once glorious, now an albatross. The authors include information and analysis on the military and civil space programs, challenge the perspective of the Washington Beltway analyst with vested interests in the status quo, and make policy recommendations based on realism, rather than idealism.
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11.

After Columbia: NASA Ought to Have Clear and Sensible Purposes, in National Review » Read Now
by John Derbyshire. 2 pgs.

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...After Columbia: NASA Ought to Have Clear and Sensible Purposes...generation behind us. In all likelihood, NASA prefers things this way. The nations manned...went to the...
12.

Columbia's Last Flight: The Inside Story of the Investigation-And the Catastrophe It Laid Bare, in The Atlantic Monthly » Read Now
by William Langewiesche. 26 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...people--a few engineers deep inside of NASA--worried that the vehicle and its seven...low-priority "science" flight forced onto NASA by Congress and postponed for two...
13.

It Is Now Emerging That the Columbia Space Shuttle Had Serious Problems on 20 of Its 28 Flights, and That a Near-Disaster in 1999 Was Hushed Up, in New Statesman » Read Now
by Andrew Stephen. 1 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...once again the secretive, macho culture of Nasa, which is rather like that of the CIA or...wing and led to the break-up. But why? Nasa now admits that three particles of...
14.

The End of the Space Age, in New Statesman » Read Now
by Marina Benjamin. 2 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...space age died, because over the years Nasa -- chief purveyor of the worlds space aspirations...changes in the body, consistent with what Nasa euphemistically terms "space...
15.

NASA and the Decision to Build the Space Shuttle, 1969-72, in The Historian » Read Now
by Roger D. Launius. 18 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...NASA and the decision to build the space shuttle, 1969-72. by Roger D. Launius...became known as the space shuttle, which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration...
16.

A Historical Guide to the U.S. Government ("National Aeronautics and Space Administration" begins on p. 392) » Read Now
by George Thomas Kurian. 768 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Beginning with George Washington's presidential staff of three, the executive branch of the U.S. federal government has undergone a tremendous transformation. Today it is the largest institution of its kind in the world, employing over 3.1 million people, with an annual budget of over $1.5 trillion...
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Beginning with George Washington's presidential staff of three, the executive branch of the U.S. federal government has undergone a tremendous transformation. Today it is the largest institution of its kind in the world, employing over 3.1 million people, with an annual budget of over $1.5 trillion. A Historical Guide to the U.S. Government chronicles its growth from its modest beginnings to its present state. Focusing on the federal executive branch and its constituent departments, agencies, commissions, and committees, the guide offers 180 historical accounts for each of these organizational entities. It addresses Congress and the Judiciary where they interact with the executive branch--for example, reviewing congressional oversight functions, examining the control wielded by the Supreme Court on government structure, and profiling the agencies under the administrative control of Congress. It examines the social, cultural, and intellectual movements that have influenced the way America is governed, and looks closely at American bureaucracy--what it is, how it is controlled, and how new technologies have influenced it.
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