Project Vanguard: The NASA History

by Constance McLaughlin Green, Milton Lomask, Paul Dickson (Introduction)

This is the inside story of one of the earliest successful U.S. satellites, a fascinating Cold War–era chronicle of the nation's earliest battles and triumphs in the Space Race. It recounts the origins, development, and results of Project Vanguard, a pioneering venture in the exploration of outer space. Primarily an analysis of the project's scientific and technical challenges, this volume documents onboard experiments, instrumentation, tracking systems, and test firings. It also portrays the drama of organizing an unprecedented project under the pressure of a strict time limit as well as the tempestuous climate of American opinion during the Soviet Union’s Sputnik launches. The history concludes with an evaluation of the satellite program's significant contributions to scientific knowledge. Numerous historic photographs highlight the text, which is written in accessible, nontechnical language. In addition to a historic foreword by Charles A. Lindbergh, this new edition features an informative introduction by Paul Dickson. Authoritative and inexpensive, it will appeal to students and teachers of history and science as well as aviation enthusiasts.

Genres: Space, Science

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Dr. Constance McLaughlin Winsor Green was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian. Green was born in 1897 in Ann Arbor, and was the daughter of American constitutional historian Andrew C. McLaughlin. She received a Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1937, before joining the Smith College history department as an instructor. During the Second World War, Green served as a historian at the Springfield Armory, and later was promoted to being the chief historian of the Army Ordinance Department in 1948.

In 1954, Green began research on her most well-known work, a two volume history of Washington, D.C. The first volume, Washington, Village and Capital: 1800-1878 was published in 1962, followed by the second volume, Washington, Capital City: 1879-1950, in 1963.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extensive and beautifully organized, this detailed history of Project Vanguard, our oft-maligned first satellite program, rightfully contextualizes the failures and successes of the program against the overwhelming volume of literature about Sputnik and the Von Braun Explorer I. Where the latter were oftentimes a hasty circus involving sexy rocket science culled from gratuitously-funded ballistic missile research and cheap political posturing, the Vanguard project was grueling foundation for the day-to-day operation of the Space Age: a milestone in procurement, cost-effectiveness, logistics, margins of error, scientific experiment and field testing. Vanguard is in many ways the peoples history of the space race, unblemished with Nazi scientists, dogs in space, or astronaut bravado. Instead, casting a 20" pipe adapter overnight becomes a earth-shattering victory, and choosing a second-stage engine becomes a Wagnerian opera. Everyone is moved by the story of Apollo 13 or a Shuttle Launch... but the story of Vanguard is drama by engineers and for engineers, and in many ways more illustrative of the zeitgeist of the era.