72 HI- TORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



Braun's work on the Saturn project. Without that support, confusion 

 and uncertainty would have resulted. The transfer did occur, and the 

 committee helped smooth the way to insure the successful operation 

 of the von Braun team working under new leadership. On Julv 1, 

 the Marshall Space Flight Center was officially designated by NASA, 

 with von Braun as its first Director. 



LIFE SCIENCES 



In preparation for eventual Moon flights, as well as the preliminary 

 Mercury and Gemini flights, NASA was prodded by the House Com- 

 mittee on Science and Astronautics to focus on life support systems a? 

 well as the more striking priorities such as propulsion. In the early 

 years of the committee, despite the multiplicity of subjects dealt with 

 in hearings and reports, press and popular interest centered on the 

 space race with the Russians and who would get to the Moon first. 

 Members of the committee devoted a great amount of their efforts to 

 educating the public to think more in terms of the need for American 

 preeminence in space, for which the race to the Moon was only one 

 symbol. 



During his freshman year in Congress and at the beginning of his 

 service on the committee, a Connecticut lawyer named Emilio Q. 

 "Mim" Daddario gained early renown by developing as a specialist 

 in the life sciences. Some 17 years after leaving NASA, Dr. T. Keith 

 Glennan still vividly recalls Daddario's I960 questions on life sciences 

 during House hearings. Daddario boned up on everything that was 

 being done by the Army, Navy, Air Force, Federal Aviation Agency, 

 and other Federal agencies on the stress effects of space flight on the 

 human organism. He then performed a very useful function in sending 

 NASA officials scurrying to get themselves briefed on the most up-to- 

 date information available in other agencies on the human factors 

 in space flight. 



Every agency and every bureau possesses a prideful desire to save 

 the world in its own way. At a time when there was fierce competition 

 among the military services, and between the military and NASA, for 

 who should control space projects having both civilian and military 

 significance, there was a tendency to build and control duplicating 

 tasks. One of Daddario's early contributions was to point out force- 

 fully the importance of coordination in the life sciences. The results 

 were salutary. Not only did NASA avoid the expense of building 

 competing installations, but also recruited knowledgeable military 

 personnel who ha<l gained their expertise in life sciences — outstand- 

 ing people like Dr. Charles Berry. Dr. Berry was trained as a flight 



