CLMIM AND APOLLO 



185 



around the Earth, the Pegasus satellite. This was the eighth launch 

 of the Saturn rocket out of eight attempts, a truly outstanding scien- 

 tific and engineering accomplishment of the men of the National 

 Aeronautics and Space Administration and, of the many contractors 

 who worked so long and hard to make this event a success." Pegasus 

 was the meteoroid detection satellite, which stayed aloft until 1978. 

 On March 23, Gus Grissom and John Young completed their 

 successful three-orbital flight of Gemini. This set the stage for the 

 debate on the authorization bill on May 6, 1965, and a spirit of great 

 optimism prevailed. 



GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRACTS 



The authorization bill which was passed on May 6, 1965, included 

 an amendment which Representative J. Edward Roush (Democrat of 

 Indiana) had inserted in the committee markup of the bill: 



It is the sense of Congress that it is in the national interest that consideration be 

 given to geographical distribution of Federal research funds whenever feasible and 

 that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should explore ways and 

 means of distributing its research and development funds on a geographic basis 

 whenever feasible and use such other measures as may be practicable toward this end. 



The location of NASA installations and the geographic distribu- 

 tion of research contracts were issues which were intensely debated 

 within the committee from the start of the space program. Bobby 

 Baker, in his book Wheeling and Dealing alleges that he worked 

 through Senator Robert Kerr (Democrat of Oklahoma) and Vice 

 President Lyndon Johnson to persuade NASA Administrator Webb to 

 intervene on behalf of North American Aviation for the multibillion- 

 dollar Apollo-Saturn contracts, thus enabling Baker to install his 

 Serv-U automatic vending machines in North American plants. No 

 proof of this allegation has ever been forthcoming. But the awarding 

 of large contracts was frequently accompanied by intense argument 

 over whether certain sections of the country were being favored. 



Every member of the committee, with varying degrees of success, 

 vigorously represented his own district and State when it came to the 

 awarding of contracts or the funding of programs. Thus it was not 

 unusual to see Miller and Bell active on behalf of some California 

 projects, Mosher raising the flag for Lewis Research Center and Plum 

 Brook, Downing standing up for Langley Research Center, Teague and 

 the Texans plugging for Houston and Dallas, while Fuqua, Gurney, 

 and Frey w T ere interested in pushing everything which happened at 

 Cape Canaveral-Kennedy. 



Perhaps the most fascinating story about geography, Congress, 

 and the space program occurred with respect to the location of the 

 Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Keith Glennan, NASA's first 



