National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Peter W. Merlin

Donald L. Mallick

The Smell of Kerosene tells the dramatic story of a NASA research pilot who logged over 11,000 flight hours in more than 125 types of aircraft. Donald Mallick gives the reader fascinating firsthand descriptions of his early naval flight training, carrier operations, and his research flying career with NASA and its predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).

A Test Pilot's Odyssey

The Smell of Kerosene

James R. Hansen

The airplane ranks as one of history's most ingenious and phenomenal inventions. It has surely been one of the most world changing. How ideas about aerodynamics first came together and how the science and technology evolved to forge the airplane into the revolutionary machine that it became is the epic story told in this six-volume series, The Wind and Beyond: A Documentary Journey through the History of Aerodynamics in America. Following up on Volume I's account of the invention of the airplane and the creation of the original aeronautical research establishment in the United States, Volume II explores the airplane design revolution of the 1920s and 1930s and the quest for improved airfoils. Subsequent volumes cover the aerodynamics of airships, flying boats, rotary-wing aircraft, breaking the sound barrier, and more.

Reinventing the Airplane

The Wind and Beyond: A Documentary Journey Into the History of Aerodynamics in America, V. 2

This book puts the reader in the pilot's seat for a "day at the office" unlike any other. The Smell of Kerosene tells the dramatic story of a NASA research pilot who logged over 11,000 flight hours in more than 125 types of aircraft. Donald Mallick gives the reader fascinating first-hand description of his early naval flight training, carrier operations, and his research flying career with NASA. After transferring to the NASA Flight Research Center, Mallick became involved with projects that further pushed the boundaries of aerospace technology. These included the giant delta-winged XB-70 supersonic airplane, the wingless M2-F1 lifting body vehicle, and triple-sonic YF-12 Blackbird. Mallick also test flew the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle and helped develop techniques used in training astronauts to land on the Moon.

NASA 20TH CENTURY EXPLORER INTO THE SEA OF SPACE.

NASA Systems Engineering Handbook - Full COLOR Paperback

Naval Air Operation, Jet & High Desert Research, Super Crusader, XB70, M2-F1, Triple-Sonic YF-12 Blackbird & Lunar Landing Research Vehicle

The Smell of Kerosene: Pilot's "Day at the Office"

Deborah L. Harm

Tara M. Ruttley

The International Space Station (ISS) is an unprecedented achievement in global human endeavors to conceive, plan, build, operate, and utilize a research platform in space. As we near completion of the ISS on-orbit assembly, including all Partner laboratories and elements, we now turn to the real multifaceted purpose of the ISS. We will use the ISS as a human-tended laboratory in low-Earth orbit to conduct multidiscipline research and technology development and as an outpost to conduct human exploration. The ISS is uniquely capable of unraveling the mysteries of life on Earth; from biomedical research, to material sciences, to technology advancement, to research on the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body. The ISS is the first step in exploration, from research and discovery, to international cooperation, to commercial development, and to exploring beyond low-Earth orbit. We look forward to sharing this booklet outlining our ISS research capabilities and potential as we usher in this new phase of on-orbit research.

Facilities on the International Space Station

Research in Space

In this edition, NASA provides an overview of the ISS, describe its research facilities and accommodations, and provide key information to conduct your experiments on this unique orbiting laboratory.

Reference Guide to the International Space Station

Tracy L. Thumm

Julie A. Robinson

Human spaceflight is entering a new era. The assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) will be completed in 2010.2 Supported by a full six-person crew for the first time, it is ready to put its full capabilities to work. While the ISS partners can be proud of having completed one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever conceived, the world at large also will judge the ISS by what is achieved in the utilization phase. In short, the full success of the ISS Program depends on the utilization achievements in the coming years. The people of countries participating in the ISS will expect no less. For more than 15 years, the ISS partnership mastered financial and technical challenges, and weathered changes in national policies and governments. This mastery proves that nations can persist and achieve ambitious long-term goals that are very difficult. The ISS partnership is a model of what will be needed if an ambitious program of exploration beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO) is to move forward. The present partnership can be enriched by collaboration as we prepare for human exploration beyond Earth's neighborhood, to develop supporting technology, and to explore possible relationships with emerging space agencies. Aside from the ISS itself, the international partnership represents an invaluable achievement. Extension of ISS operations to 2020 and beyond is crucial to maximize use of the ISS facilities. A longer operational phase provides opportunities for new participants who may never have thought of using the ISS. A commitment to extended operations enables programs with long-term objectives, and encourages institutions on Earth to support projects in space. Perhaps most importantly, extended utilization allows opportunities to explore the ISS as a research platform and to realize its full potential. Unique attributes of the ISS that enable research and development (R&D) never before achieved include: (1) continuous access to microgravitya and defined partial gravity, enabling experiments with gravity as a controlled experimental variable; (2) high vacuum and the conditions to create ultra-high vacuum, enabling experiments that would be otherwise compromised by trace molecular species; (3) continuous presence in the space environment, enabling long experiment runs and cumulative sets of experiments; (4) significant power and instrument support services at a low-altitude (310-410 km) vantage point over 90% of the populated surface of the Earth, enabling use of the ISS as a platform for observations of Earth, Earth's atmosphere, and space processes; (5) daily human support and transportation resources enabling testing, modification, and incremental development of R&D test beds, instruments, and research programs. The benefits of ISS can be viewed from many different perspectives. As for other unique laboratories, long lead times to discovery can be associated with the many different disciplines that use the ISS. As scientists representing this broad array of disciplines, the ISS partner nations, and future utilization by all scientists worldwide, we met to discuss R&D on the ISS as the utilization era begins. We have captured the major disciplines, key questions, advantages of the ISS platform, and implications of ISS utilization for advancement of knowledge. The products of the discussion are a vision for the “Era of International Space Station Utilization,” with supporting descriptions of the importance of the ISS to key R&D goals. We are certain that in the century to come, the full utilization of the ISS will be seen as having made transformative contributions to a number of scientific disciplines.

Perspectives on Strategy from International Research Leaders

The Era of International Space Station Utilization

Thor Hogan

On the 20th anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon, President George H.W. Bush stood atop the steps of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. and proposed a long-range human exploration plan that included the successful construction of an orbital space station, a permanent return to the Moon, and a mission to Mars. This enterprise became known as the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). The president charged the newly reestablished National Space Council with providing concrete alternatives for meeting these objectives. To provide overall focus for the new initiative, Bush later set a thirty-year goal for a crewed landing on Mars. Within a few short years after this Kennedyesque announcement, however, the initiative had faded into history the victim of a flawed policy process and a political war fought on several different fronts. The story of this failed initiative was a tale of organizational, cultural, and personal confrontation by key protagonists and critical battles. Some commentators have argued that SEI was doomed to fail, due primarily to the immense budgetary pressures facing the nation during the early 1990s. The central thesis of Mars Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Space Exploration Initiative suggests, however, that failure was not predetermined. Instead, it was the result of a deeply flawed decision-making process that failed to develop (or even consider) policy options that may have been politically acceptable given the existing political environment.

The Rise and Fall of the Space Exploration Initiative

Mars Wars

These essays in celebration of the Wright brothers' first flight 100 years ago grew out of presentations by a group of prominent scholars in 2003 at a conference sponsored by the NASA History Division and held at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The volume focuses on the careers of some of the many men and women who helped to realize the dream of flight both through the atmosphere and beyond. These accounts are original and compelling because they examine the history of flight through the lens of biography.

Realizing the Dream of Flight

Part of the International Space Station Program Science Office 15-book Researchers Guide Series by discipline. The purpose of the series is to educate potential users of the ISS platform on how their ground-based experiments can be translated to the space environment. Each guide is designed to start the conversation of how new researchers can find opportunities as well as assistance in the proposal development process.

International Space Station Microbial Research

Researcher's Guide to

John E. Naugle

In the fall of 1957, with the launch of Sputnik I. scientists began to explore a new universe outside the Earth's atmosphere, a universe previously invisible to astronomers and beyond the reach of physicists. Scientists and the media promptly nicknamed this universe "space" and began to call the people who explored it "space scientists." In the spring of 1958, the United States created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and directed it to maintain US leadership in space science and technology. At the same time, the National Academy of Sciences created a Space Science Board to interest scientists in space research and to advise NASA and the other federal agencies the Academy expected to be engaged in space research. As scientists recognized the potential for major scientific discoveries in space, they began to fight for the limited opportunities to place their instruments on board NASA spacecraft. As a result of this intense competition, a quiet but equally intense struggle developed between NASA Headquarters and the Space Science Board. Each wanted to control the process to select space scientists. Inside NASA a similar struggle evolved between NASA Headquarters and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory It took NASA three hectic years to hammer out a selection process that was acceptable to the scientists, administrators, lawyers, procurement specialists, and the institutions involved. Three decades later, NASA continues to use that same basic process: the associate administrator for the NASA Office of Space Science and Applications selects the space scientists for all NASA's missions. It is not a trivial responsibility. A major space science mission, such as Viking or the Space Telescope, may involve 100 scientists, require twenty years to complete, and cost more than a billion dollars. The current associate administrator recently (1989) selected the space scientists for what may become one of the most complex and costly of all NASA's scientific missions. In January 1988, he issued an Announcement of Opportunity inviting scientists to propose investigations for an Earth Observing System (EOS) to be launched in the mid 1990s. NASA plans to operate two of these systems for the next two decades. A year later, in NASA Press Release 89-15, he announced his selections. The opening paragraph of the "fact sheet" that accompanied the press release illustrates the magnitude, complexity, and nature of the NASA process for selecting space scientists: NASA received 455 proposals in response to the Announcement of Opportunity. Each was evaluated by scientific peers including representatives from government, academia, industry and the international Earth observation community. NASA management then selected from the ones viewed as acceptable by the peer evaluators those needed to accomplish the EOS objectives. The selection breakdown is as follows: 24 instrument investigations: 6 research facility instrument investigation team leaders and 87 team members: and 28 interdisciplinary investigators (20 U.S. 8 foreign). The various teams selected comprise 551 different individuals from 168 different institutions, universities or laboratories in 32 different states and 13 different countries. Although not mentioned in the press release, it may cost over $30 billion to build and operate the two EOS platforms for two decades and to support the research of the 55 I EOS space scientists. Not only is the selection of space scientists for such a mission a formidable technical and management challenge but it commits a substantial amount of government funds to a scientific mission. In this book the author describes the origin and evolution of the NASA selection process. Where necessary, the author touches on the concurrent political and technical forces that helped shape the process.

The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments

First Among Equals

Karl D. Kryter

The adverse effects of noise, or unwanted sound, have been the subject of extensive research for many years in the fields of psychoacoustics and physiological acoustics. This research grew out of the desire for scientific understanding of these effects on people, especially because of social problems created by the steady increase in the intensity and prevalence of noise found in living and work environments since the start of the industrial revolution. This is the third manuscript prepared by the author on the subject of noise effects. The first, entitled "The Effects of Noise on Man," was a monograph for the Office of Naval Research in 1950 and was published by the American Speech and Hearing Association. The second, of the same title, was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research , the Surgeon General of the Army, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration , and was published by Academic Press as a book in 1970. The present volume, except for chapter 12, was prepared for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with support from the U.S. Department of Transportation and from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Chapter 12 was originally prepared for the City of Santa Monica, California. All these manuscripts were intended to be critical reviews and interpretations of the relevant original source literature for the measurement of noise in terms of its effect on people. Except for a relatively few papers, only English language publications were included. In addition to providing major findings of published research, an attempt is made in the present volume to integrate, where possible, the findings into some theoretical framework. In this process, using data from a number of sources, the author undertook analyses and modeling of certain topics. This was done particularly with respect to presbycusis, sociocusis, and nosocusis, damage to hearing, and reactions to community noise. Because of possible interest to researchers in fields beyond "noise effects," has been published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. There has been a particularly significant increase since 1970 in the store of knowledge about noise and its effects, and today many of the seeming conflicts among research findings of the past are found to be more apparent than real. However, the state of the art on certain topics remains best represented by findings published prior to 1970. Although a number of research questions remain, objective methods now exist for measuring noise environments that predict, with considerable accuracy, the effects of noise on people and communities. The first four chapters are concerned with some definitions of terms and research on the fundamentals of noise, hearing, and auditory perception. The last eight chapters are concerned with research on noise effects on more complex human behavior and the application of this research to the regulation of noise in work and living areas.

Physiological, Psychological, and Social Effects of Noise

M. L. Cosmo

E. C. Lorenzini

Space tethers are long cables which can be used for propulsion, momentum exchange, stabilization and altitude control, or maintaining the relative positions of the components of a large dispersed satellite/spacecraft sensor system. Depending on the mission objectives and altitude, spaceflight using this form of spacecraft propulsion may be significantly less expensive than spaceflight using rocket engines. A number of space tethers have been deployed in space missions. Tether satellites can be used for various purposes including research into tether propulsion, tidal stabilisation and orbital plasma dynamics.

Tethers in Space Handbook

In richness of scientific return, the Apollo 15 voyage to the plains at Hadley compares with voyages of Darwin's H.M.S. Beagle, and those of the Endeavour and Resolution. Just as those epic ocean voyages set the stage for a revolution in the biological sciences and exploration generally, so also the flight of Falcon and Endeavor did the same in planetary and Earth sciences and will guide the course of future explorations. The boundary achievements of Apollo 15 cannot now be established. As an author of a following paper points out, the mission was not finished at splashdown in the Pacific, nor later with painstaking analysis in scores of laboratories of the samples and cores brought back, nor with careful study of the photographic imagery and instrument traces returned home. For the distinctive fact is that the mission is not yet over. Data still flow in daily from the isotope-powered station emplaced on the plain at Hadley, and from the Moon-encircling scientific satellite left in orbit. This data flow is of exceptional value because it now affords, for the first time, a triangulation of lunar events perceived by the three physically separated scientific stations that man has left on the Moon. This volume is the first, though assuredly not the final, effort to assemble a comprehensive accounting of the scientific knowledge so far acquired through this remarkable mission. The Apollo 15 mission was the first of the Apollo missions to utilize the full capability of a complex set of spacecraft and launch vehicles, the design, development, and construction of which have occupied the major efforts of the U.S. space program for the last decade. The reliability and capability of the Apollo spacecraft, launch vehicles, and ancillary equipment such as space suits were extensively tested and demonstrated in the preceding Apollo missions. These missions also provided the necessary experience in orbital maneuvering and extravehicular activity that enabled the Apollo 15 crew and Mission Control Center personnel to undertake a mission that was defined almost entirely in terms of its exploratory and scientific objectives. The scope of the Apollo 15 mission differed from that of previous missions in three distinct ways: (1) the command-service module carried a diverse set of experiments aimed at the study of the lunar surface from orbit, (2) the lunar module carried to the surface an electrically powered vehicle that extended the exploration range on the lunar surface by more than a factor of 5 over that of previous missions, and (3) the stay time on the lunar surface was extended to twice that of previous landings. The full utilization of this enhanced capability provided results that furnish many new insights into lunar history and structure. Perhaps most important of all, this mission provided results that give a meaningful overall picture of the Moon. The scientific endeavors of the Apollo 15 mission can be divided into three distinct kinds of activities: (1) the orbital experiments, (2) the package of lunar-surface experiments, and (3) the surface sampling and observation.

Preliminary Science Report

Apollo 15

This beautiful, full-color commemorative reproduction of the original Apollo 11 Flight Plan will delight the historian or space travel enthusiast.

Full-Color Edition

Apollo 11 Flight Plan

This document communicates NASA’s strategy and progress to learn about the Red Planet, to inform us more about our Earth’s past and future, and may help answer whether life exists beyond our home planet. Together with NASA’s partners in academia and commercial enterprises, NASA’s vision is to pioneer Mars and answer some of humanity’s fundamental questions: • Was Mars home to microbial life? Is it today? • Could it be a safe home for humans one day? • What can it teach us about life elsewhere in the cosmos or how life began on Earth? • What can it teach us about Earth’s past, present, and future?

NASA's Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration

B. Bowman

Oregon State University, Educational Opportunities Program

Symposium, Corvallis, Apr. 1977, Final Report by B. Bowman

Mother Earth, Father Sky

Douglas A. Vakoch

This book explores some of the contributions of psychology to yesterday's great space race, today's orbiter and International Space Station missions, and tomorrow's journeys beyond Erath's orbit. It provides an analysis of the challenges facing future space explorers while at the same time presenting new empirical research on topics ranging from simulation studies of commercial spaceflights to the psychological benefits of viewing Earth from space.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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