transferred. It was another year before the Army 

 gave up the Saturn booster and the part of ABMA 

 supporting it; this became the nucleus of what is 

 now the Marshal Space Flight Center in Hunts- 

 ville. Ala.^si 



Soon after the formation of NASA, Project 

 Mercury was initiated for the purpose of achiev- 

 ing manned space flight. However the Soviet 

 Union was also first in achieving this goal. 

 Responding to this additional shock. President 

 Kennedy proposed the Apollo Program, which 

 was intended to send a man to the moon and back 

 by 1970. NASA acquired the launch facility which 

 came to be called the Kennedy Space Center and 

 built the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in 

 Houston, Tex. It also embarked on an extensive 

 development program backed up by relevant basic 

 research. 



That basic research played an important role in 

 NASA's massive program is illustrated by the 

 changes in priorities and the increased spending 

 since 1952. NACA's basic research obligations in 

 fiscal year 1952 were reported as $17.7 million, all 

 for research in the physical sciences.-**- In con- 

 trast, NASA's reported obligations for basic re- 

 search in 1963 were $210.3 million, of which $7.2 

 million was spent for research in the biological 

 sciences, $0.9 million in psychology, $176.5 mil- 

 lion in the physical sciences, $1.6 million in math- 

 ematics, $23.9 million in engineering, and $0.1 

 million in social sciences. Of the total $210.3 mil- 

 lion, 18.7 percent was intramural; 57.9 percent 

 was for research performed by industry directly, 

 and 0.5 percent for research performed in centers 

 operated by industry; 9.6 percent was for re- 

 search performed in educational institutions and 

 11.4 percent in centers operated by educational 

 institutions; 1.5 percent was for research per- 

 formed by nonprofit organizations and 0.3 per- 

 cent by centers operated by nonprofits; and 0.1 

 percent was for research performed in foreign 

 countries.-**'' Estimated obligations for 1977 are 

 $319.7 million for basic research — $13.7 million in 

 life sciences, $0.8 million in psychology, $198.1 

 million in the physical sciences, $66.9 million in 

 the environmental sciences, $3.3 million in mathe- 

 matics, $36.7 million in engineering, $100,000 in 

 the social sciences, and $184,000 in other sci- 

 ences. The intramural portion has risen to 49 per- 

 cent; the industrial share has dropped to 26 per- 



-»l|bid..pp. 44-47. 71, 90. 



-*-Feder:il Funds. Vol. II, p. 3.'!. 



^^Federal Funds. Vol. XIII. NSF 65-13. Tables C-18 and C- 

 22, as revised. NASA obligations for basic and applied research 

 originally reported for 1963 and for 1966-74 inclusive have been 

 revised downward in accordance with OMB guidelines. Other 

 years in the I960's should be similarly revised but this has nev- 

 er been done 



cent; the universities' portion has increased to 

 about 21 percent (plus 2.6 percent at FFRDC's 

 operated by universities). Other nonprofit institu- 

 tions account for less than 1 percent and 

 FFRDC's operated by nonprofits account for an- 

 other quarter of that amount. A negligible amount 

 was performed by State and local governments 

 and by foreign countries. 284 



These figures reflect the changes that have oc- 

 curred. During the 1960's, the primary emphasis 

 of NASA was on the manned space-flight program. 

 Even this program made use of opportunities for 

 basic research; of the 52 experiments done for the 

 Gemini project, for example, 17 were scientific 

 and 8 were medical. 28-'' The Surveyor project in- 

 cluded a number of very interesting basic re- 

 search experiments. The Apollo project provided 

 further opportunity for numerous scientific experi- 

 ments both on the moon and in space. 



Concurrently with the manned space-flight pro- 

 gram, scientific unmanned satellites were also 

 being launched. The in-house component of this 

 satellite-based research, although small at first, 

 has grown large. The usual procedure has been to 

 invite proposals for experiments to accompany a 

 satellite planned for a specific mission, for exam- 

 ple, a solar observatory. The decision on which 

 experiments would be accepted for the mission is 

 usually made after considering the recommenda- 

 tions of an advisory committee. Weight, dimen- 

 sions, and power would be allocated to each ac- 

 cepted experiment. An advisory committee would 

 also recommend general features such as pointing 

 accuracy and mission lifetime. The experimenters 

 would deliver their instruments by a set date to the 

 payload integrator, an engineering group at a 

 NASA activity or at one of its contractors. This 

 group would test each package to insure its ability 

 to survive launch stresses and to perform in the 

 space environment. It then would integrate the 

 experimental packages with the NASA-provided 

 services such as the payload structure and the 

 power source. The whole payload then would be 

 tested and sent to another contractor to be mated 

 with the launch vehicle. After the launch, the data 

 collected usually would be transmitted to Goddard 

 for processing by Goddard personnel or by the 

 experimenter or by a combination of the two. 

 Since project management usually resides with one 

 of the engineering-oriented field groups, some 

 demand has arisen ior more influence by outside 

 scientific experimenters on mission priorities. For 

 example, there is current demand for a Space Tele- 

 scope Science Institute to be run by some organi- 



-^Federal Funds. Vol. XXVI, NSF 77-317, Tables C 30 and 

 C-34. 



•^-''Anderson, p. 54. 



356 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS AND HISTORICAL TRENDS 



