RACING FOR THE MOON 



73 



surgeon in the Air Force, and later went on to become Chief of Medical 

 Operations at the Manned Spacecraft Center, and the personal physi- 

 cian of the astronauts. 



PROJECT MERCURY 



The major groundwork for Project Mercury, the first manned 

 space flights, was laid by the Eisenhower administration. To the 

 dismay of the Air Force, and to some extent the Army, Mercury was 

 transferred out of the military and assigned to NASA upon the es- 

 tablishment of that agency in October 1958. President Eisenhower, 

 while insisting that the program be administered under civilian super- 

 vision, nevertheless directed that the original Mercury astronauts be 

 drawn from test pilots serving in the Armed Forces. 



Even though the committee did not materially shape policy with 

 respect to Project Mercury, the committee members were intensely 

 interested in both the funding and progress of the program and the 

 astronauts themselves. From the day the first seven Mercury astronauts 

 appeared on May 28, 1959, in executive session before the committee, 

 the members developed a close and personalized relationship with the 

 first men in space. 



"Do you feel you are being prepared for this flight with as much 

 precaution as the Wright brothers took when they jumped off in their 

 first plane?" asked Representative Gordon McDonough (Republican 

 of California). 



John Glenn, in answering affirmatively, also added a rare look into 

 his own future as he replied: "Perhaps the dangers in your profession 

 are more than they are in this." 



On numerous occasions prior to the first Mercury suborbital flight 

 of Alan Shepard in 1961, the committee met with the astronauts during 

 their preflight training at Cape Canaveral, Fla. There, the committee 

 had rare opportunities to talk with the astronauts about their training, 

 the safety measures being designed for their protection, the configura- 

 tion and status of the equipment being developed for their flights, and 

 their own personal suggestions concerning the dramatic experience 

 they faced. 



In its first interim report on Project Mercury, the committee on 

 January 27, I960, underlined the high priority which was placed on the 

 flights. But the committee in its report raised the question of "whether 

 the national interest is best served by a single approach to this prob- 

 lem * * *. If there is an element of criticism in this report, it is not 

 of what is being done or of the people involved, but rather that we are 

 not doing more with other programs dedicated to the broader end of 

 attaining a useful man-in-space capability." 



