98 Research and National Purpose 



up the best systems plan at the very beginning of a program. 

 Let us review a few bases of major facilities 

 Missile Systems for the national security in which these aspects 

 and Science of scientific resources are displayed. Obvi- 



Systems ously the design and development and imple- 



mentation of intercontinental ballistic mis- 

 siles, both land and sea launched, represent one such vital pro- 

 gram. Our national technical strategy in this endeavor, begin- 

 ning with the original report of the von Neumann Committee 

 and the Nobska Study, and extending virtually to the present 

 refinements of the Poseidon and Minuteman missiles, is a fas- 

 cinating reflection of hybridization among science, technology 

 and engineering, to produce successive and dramatically new 

 generations of defense capabilities. Many essential elements 

 of the systems, including particularly command and control, 

 involving launching, guidance and management of the war- 

 head; the materials of the structure and especially of the 

 nose cone and engine nozzles; and the propulsion, fuel and 

 combustion features were evolved at the fringes of scientific 

 understanding. Other features, such as the plasmas created 

 on re-entry, various hostile environments in which the rockets 

 and their re-entry bodies might have to operate, and many 

 related things were beyond even fairly rudimentary scientific 

 insights. Here, an extraordinary pluralistic strategy, in which 

 many elements of the national scientific and engineering com- 

 munity were brought together early, was begun. Several Na- 

 tional Academy of Sciences-National Research Council com- 

 mittees were newly tasked, or those such as the Materials 

 Advisory Board were strongly re-oriented, toward probing the 

 various essential elements of missile systems. This was all 

 without the strict assignment of functional or administrative 

 responsibilities, which resulted internally of course in the fas- 

 cinating, well-known, confusions of the Army program, the 

 Navy program and the Air Force program, along with an addi- 

 tional cluster of soon-to-be-activated NASA rocket programs. 

 (We should also not miss incidental AEC items such as a 



