Space Careers

In this chapter:

A brief history of space from the first science-fiction ideas, the first rocket launches landing on the Moon, to missions for the space industry of tomorrow. Only by understanding the past, can we understand the present and the future.

It is difficult to say what is impossible,
For the dream of yesterday is the hope of today
And the reality of tomorrow

—Robert H. Goddard
Father of American rocketry

To boldly go where no one has gone before…is a saying deeply rooted in the popular movie and television presentations of Star Trek.

But in truth, that premise of space exploration has been alive and well for centuries, from the earliest beginnings of science fiction writing to the theater screens of today. The use of imagination as propulsion can transport a person outward to the Moon or at warp speed to faraway stars and their companion planets.

Take, for instance, Cyrano de Bergerac, who in the early 1600s wrote a story making use of rocket propulsion to commute to the Moon. More than two hundred years later, writer Edward Everett Hale detailed in the Atlantic Monthly what is thought to be the first fictional account of a space station. In 1869 and 1870 issues of the magazine, Hale concocted a tale of a large brick satellite, housing 37 adventurers.

Cruising at a cosmic altitude high above Earth, Hale’s whimsical postulations had the crew of the brick satellite aiding navigating seaman below. To communicate with sailors, the brick moon’s residents jumped up and down on the exterior of the satellite in Morse code fashion: long bounds for dashes, short leaps for dots!

In similar manner, but based on more solid technical footing, were the writings of Jules Verne. In his classic 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon, he wrote of a bullet-shaped space ship resembling, in many ways, the launch vehicles of today. Verne painted a picture of space travel featuring conditions commonly encountered by 20th-century human explorers. His notion of rocket propulsion, however, was to utilize a huge cannon to fire a passenger-riding projectile to the Moon.

Following on the heels of Verne, was the H. G. Wells 1897 account that detailed a Martian invasion of Earth—the Independence Day movie of its time—The War of the Worlds. The fanciful tales of Verne and Wells were soon not so fanciful. The technology of flight, first by aircraft and then by rockets, jumped from fictional verbiage to high-velocity hardware.

It was science fiction that helped seed the imaginings of many a “real” rocketeer.

Like the harnessing of the atom, the erection of the Grand Coulee dam in Washington state or the construction of the Panama Canal, spaceflight symbolizes technological achievement in the 20th century. Russian scientist and father of astronautics Konstantin Tsiolkovsky; German scientist Hermann Oberth; America’s Robert Goddard; and consummate space visionary Wernher von Braun, to name but a few, shaped the foundation of thought on space. Each plotted out a master plan for utilizing space. Each developed a blueprint for opening the frontier of space, predicated not on fanciful fiction but on the mathematical and scientific knowledge of the day. These individuals were part of a vanguard of visionaries who turned dream machines into reality.

Called the father of American rocketry, Goddard was first inspired by Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, as well as the writings of H.G. Wells. He earned his science degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and, as a young engineer, received his first patent for a “rocket apparatus” in 1914. Shortly thereafter, as a part-time physics professor at Clark University, he crafted his first rockets. It was in this period that Goddard wrote his seminal paper submitted to the Smithsonian Institution and published in 1919: A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes.

It was Goddard, at a time when Oberth and Tsiolkovsky theorized space futures, who began putting metal into the sky by the late 1920s.

His inventions were modest in the beginning. The world’s first liftoff of a liquid-fueled rocket, in fact, took place from the snow-covered Massachusetts farm of Goddard’s Aunt Effie. That rocket flight on March 16, 1926, lasted a little more than two seconds, shooting to an altitude of 184 feet. A few years later, seeking a site with good weather for year-round testing and distant from populated areas, Goddard continued his pioneering work in Roswell, New Mexico, where he remained until 1941. From fuel pumps to guidance and control gyroscopes, Goddard pursued many innovations that would later become mainstay technology for all large rockets.

Robert Goddard’s impressive accomplishments, along with the growing body of work by Tsiolkovsky and Oberth, inspired many others around the globe. Among them was Wernher von Braun.

At the close of World War II, the U.S. Army seized the top engineers of Germany’s rocket effort, including von Braun. He and his engineering team (along with some captured V-2 rockets) were brought to the United States and stationed at the Army’s White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. It was from this talent base that America’s space program was formed.

To most Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s, space travel was relegated to the backs of cereal boxes and the latest installment of Flash Gordon in the Sunday newspaper. But von Braun sought to challenge people’s incredulity by detailing a scientifically accurate, step-by-step approach to space exploration in the pages of popular magazines.

Keen on technical accuracy, von Braun stressed that space travel did not require huge leaps in new technology. Wheel-shaped space stations, an expedition to the planet Mars, even the hauling into Earth orbit the necessary fuel and hardware via a “space ferry” were envisioned by von Braun and explained in matter-of-fact detail as eminently possible.

Part politician, part salesman, full-time rocketeer, von Braun began to captivate millions with his space blueprint.

In early October 1957, people found space travel on their front doorstep. Newspaper headlines screamed that the Soviet Union had hurled Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into space. The Space Age had arrived.

Sputnik 1’s launch on October 4, 1957, proved to be a propaganda coup for the Soviet Union. Even more striking was the orbiting of Sputnik 2 just four months later. It carried the first living organism—a dog named Laika—into space.

Following the Soviet Union’s one-two space punch came America’s response. Sitting atop its booster on December 6, 1957, at a Cape Canaveral, Florida, launch site, was the tiny Vanguard satellite. It was all over in one second. On live television, the satellite fell to the ground as part of flaming booster wreckage, later to be found still beeping amid the rubble.

“American Sputnik goes Kaputnik!” complained more than one newspaper headline after the failure. American pride and prestige went up in flames with the satellite.

Vanguard’s failure forced President Dwight Eisenhower to order a U.S. Army team to loft a satellite into orbit within 90 days. That team was headed by Wernher von Braun.

The U.S. Explorer 1 satellite rocketed into orbit on January 31, 1958. At just 30 pounds, the U.S. Explorer satellite weighed just 1/36th the weight of the more massive Sputnik 2. In those early, heady days of U.S. and Soviet one-upmanship, bigger meant better, never mind the scientific utility of a satellite.

For many Americans, those first Soviet satellite successes signaled something akin to a technological Pearl Harbor in space. With the lofting of America’s Explorer 1, a two-nation “space race” was on.

In early 1958, the U.S. Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, signed into law on July 29 by President Eisenhower. America’s commitment to space was born out of the government-industry partnerships the nation had made for aeronautical research. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was transformed into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). At the same time, a largely classified military space program began to grow in the Pentagon.

Almost one year to the day after Sputnik 1 began circling Earth, NASA officially started to orchestrate the nation’s civilian space agenda. By the end of 1960, NASA had some 19,000 employees in its ranks. As its partnerships with industry and academia grew, so too did plans for a stable of launch vehicles and various types of application satellites and scientific probes.

Experimental Earth remote sensing, weather, navigation, and communications satellites were in orbit by the early 1960s. In the communications arena, NASA’s leadership spawned the first operational telecommunications satellite of its type, Telstar 1, built by AT&T’s Bell Laboratories. Primitive compared to the communications satellites now in use, Telstar 1 relayed up to 60 telephone calls or a single television channel simultaneously. A few months after Telstar 1 was launched in July 1962, The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) began operating its Relay 1 communications satellite. Television networks, also in their infancy in many ways, boasted of programs that were “Live Via Satellite.”

From the vantage point of space, satellites afforded new ways to monitor crops; watch for dangerous weather conditions; transmit voice, data, and images around the globe; as well as maintain a vigil for trouble spots that might jeopardize national interests.
But early in the 1960s, it was the combination of politics and romance of the cosmos that supplied the U.S. space program with its most difficult challenges.

Standing before Congress on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy set America on a course to the Moon.

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.¹

That bold decision was made a month after the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin had become the first human to orbit the Earth. Moreover, Kennedy’s commitment came just 20 days after a U.S. astronaut had flown a 15-minute “suborbital” flight of a Mercury space capsule. That test shot, a quick, albeit highly televised mission, set in motion America’s human spaceflight program that remains active today.

Kennedy’s declaration about putting a man on the Moon had provided, in a very real way, a finish line for the “space race” between two superpowers.

There was no question that reaching for the Moon’s terra incognita would be daunting. Kennedy himself addressed that fact in September 1962, noting before a 40,000-person gathering at Rice University in Houston, Texas:

We shall send to the moon, more than 240,000 miles from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body.²

Apollo became a work in progress. To reach for the Moon demanded the harnessing of pilot skills and hardware through the Mercury and Gemini space missions. From single-seater flights of Mercury astronauts to the two-person Gemini spacecraft, these piloted space missions around the Earth would provide the nation the necessary wherewithal to reach outward a quarter-of-a-million miles.

But moving from rhetoric to real rocketry meant calling upon government, industry, and university skills. The Apollo effort would consist of more than 20,000 companies employing almost 400,000 people throughout the country.

On July 20, 1969, Earth’s collective heartbeat sped up, then the world experienced a heart-stopping moment. A strange shadow fell across the Moon’s cratered, grayish landscape. Gliding above a stark vista, billions of years old, an oddly shaped craft hovered in mid-vacuum, its landing legs outstretched. Apollo 11’s lunar lander, the Eagle, settled down in a place called the Sea of Tranquility. The goal set by President Kennedy, fewer than nine years earlier, had been met.

U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human visitors to another world, as fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins orbited the Moon in an Apollo command module.

As the two moonwalkers explored the lunar surface, history was written in a place Aldrin tagged as “magnificent desolation.”

Starting in July 1969 and continuing until December 1972, six expeditionary crews visited the Moon, allowing 12 men from Earth, and a nation, to reach beyond their grasp.

While placing humans on a distant world was the vision of generations, the dream was short-lived. The efforts of 400,000 government workers and hundreds of aerospace contractors and suppliers were left in the lunar dust when Apollo 17 astronauts departed the Moon in December 1972.

Financial belt tightening by the government led to the cancellation of Apollos 18, 19, and 20. Within a decade, the space agency’s budget fell from more than $20 billion in 1964 to $6 billion. With the decline in NASA’s funding, visionary schemes of large space stations, bases on the Moon, and sending human expeditions to Mars faltered. Layoffs swept through the industry as the Apollo lunar landing program ended.

During the budget problems of the 1970s, NASA continued its mission by focusing on robotic planetary explorers and using leftover Apollo space hardware.

Among the many automated missions that NASA pursued during this time were Pioneer, Voyager, and the Viking mission to Mars, each of which proved a major success by relaying to Earth valuable data on our solar system and our planetary neighbors.

NASA also initiated two other major programs in this period. Skylab, America’s first space station, was crafted by modifying a huge Saturn V upper-stage left over from the Apollo program, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which led to the first docking in space between a Russian and U.S. spacecraft.

The Skylab space station was lofted into orbit in May 1973. Once in space, Apollo spacecraft were launched to the Earth-circling complex. From May 1973 into November of that year, three separate Apollo spacecraft, each carrying a three-person crew, were lobbed to the Skylab outpost. Years later, abandoned, it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was also designed from ex-Apollo hardware and it signaled the end of the “space race” between the Soviet Union and the United States. High above Earth, a two-person cosmonaut crew linked their Soyuz spacecraft with the three-seater Apollo on July 17, 1975. The docking in orbit was enabled by specially designed hardware, a forerunner of the equipment now in use to couple spacecraft to the International Space Station. For the Apollo-Soyuz linkup in Earth orbit, it was handshakes in space and performing joint scientific experiments— all part of the high-altitude détente that took place during two days. That cooperation lapsed for two decades before renewal.

From 1975 until 1981, the United States astronaut corps was essentially grounded. Technical snags, budgetary squeezes, and a largely disinterested Congress combined to stretch out the development of the U.S. Space Shuttle.

The $10 billion investment in the Space Shuttle program resulted in an initial fleet of orbiters: Enterprise (used for air drop tests only), Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour, and Challenger.

As billed in the 1970s, the Space Shuttle program would be used to ferry materials to and from a space station; resupply, repair, recover, and deploy satellites; as well as act as a winged laboratory in space. The first flight in 1981 proved successful, but the program proved far costlier than NASA and other experts predicted.

Then, 25 Shuttle flights later, the Challenger orbiter and its seven crew members were lost en route to orbit. On January 28, 1986, just 73 seconds into flight, a leak in the joint of one of the two solid rocket propellant motors led to the destruction of Challenger and the astronauts. Following more than two years of remaking the Shuttle program, Discovery winged its way into space on September 29, 1988. The mission paved the way for the dozens of Shuttle launches that followed.

One outcome from the Challenger disaster was the rebirth of a private expendable rocket fleet. With the Space Shuttle launching commercial and government payloads, the production and launch of Delta, Atlas, Titan and other expendable launch vehicles diminished in the early 1980s. With the Shuttle fleet grounded for those two years, payloads stacked up on Earth. This helped the commercial launch vehicle industry to establish itself as the primary means for placing payloads into space.

Sadly, during the Space Shuttle program that operated from 1981 into 2011, the loss of Challenger was followed in 2003 by the catastrophic destruction of the Columbia Space Shuttle orbiter and its seven-person crew. After a 15-day mission in early 2003, that space plane faced fierce heat due to damage of its leading edge reentry tile system as it plowed through Earth’s atmosphere. Columbia broke apart and fell across eastern Texas and the western Louisiana landscape, with all lives onboard lost.

In 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush announced that the Space Shuttles would be retired. The final Space Shuttle launch was that of Atlantis on July 8, 2011, bringing the Space Shuttle program to a close when that orbiter touched down at Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 2011. In total, 135 Space Shuttle flights were attained.

During that time, NASA’s fleet of Space Shuttle orbiters traveled to Earth orbit, deployed and repaired satellites, carried out invaluable experiments in microgravity, and successfully delivered key components and crews needed to build and maintain the International Space Station.

The three remaining orbiters from the program—Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour, and the prototype shuttle, Enterprise— are now housed in various museums throughout the country.

With the Space Shuttle effort now retired, NASA has turned its attention to the next phase of human space exploration—designing and building the spacecraft needed to send humans deeper into the solar system, working toward a goal of putting people on Mars. The space agency is now focused on the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and the Space Launch System, an advanced heavy-lift booster designed for human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit.

In addition, NASA partnered with private companies, such as Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (or SpaceX) and Orbital Sciences, to provide cargo flights to the International Space Station. More recently, NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing to supply human-carrying spacecraft that would propel crews to the ISS.

Throughout it all, from the years before the launch of Sputnik to the current day, while NASA and civil space activities have provided a public focus on space, the U.S. military and intelligence communications have relied on satellites for communications, monitoring for missile launches, rocket development, sensor development, etc.

Without doubt, many important innovations have come from these efforts—many of them classified.

For its part, the United States Air Force provides air, space, and cyber capabilities for use by the combatant commanders. Under its leadership, the U.S. Air Force provides “Spacelift” operations at east coast and west coast launch bases, provides services, facilities and range safety control for the conduct of DoD, NASA, and commercial launches.

Through the command and control of all DoD satellites, satellite operators provide “force-multiplying effects” —that is, continuous global coverage, low vulnerability, and autonomous operations. Satellites provide essential secure communications, weather and navigational data for ground, air and fleet operations, and threat warning.

For example, the U.S. military space operators involve Space-Based Infrared System and Defense Support Program satellites that monitor ballistic missile launches around the world to guard against a surprise missile attack on North America. Additionally, space surveillance radars provide vital information on the location of satellites and space debris.

In recent years, the threat of cyberspace attacks has drawn added attention. The Air Force carries out its core missions through air, space, and cyberspace. Through cyberspace operations, the Air Force is dedicated to finding and using the best tools, skills, and capabilities to ensure the ability to fly, fight, and win in air, space, and cyberspace.

Additionally, the eyes and ears of the United States in critical places where no human can reach—be it over the most rugged terrain or through the most hostile territory—is an essential role of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The NRO is the U.S. government agency in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America’s intelligence satellites. NRO creates cutting-edge innovations in satellite technology, contracts with the most cost-efficient industrial suppliers, carries out rigorous launch campaigns, and provides the high-quality products to its customers.

From NRO’s inception in 1961 to its declassification to the public in 1992, this organization has worked to provide reconnaissance support to the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. NRO’s vision tells the story, albeit secret: Vigilance from Above.

The seeds for commercial space endeavors were planted in the 1960s. But it is only in the past two decades that many of the early applications have emerged to become economically significant, generating billions in revenues.

The 1960s saw satellite communications essentially begin as an intergovernmental activity; but it wasn’t until the 1990s and the emergence of the Internet and the digital era that a privatized satcom services market began to expand significantly. Today this market generates more than $100 billion annually providing information, communications, and entertainment services around the globe. Likewise, commercial services providing imagery from space, Earth monitoring, and global positioning and navigation— all play an increasing role in commerce. Space is emerging as a place for business and commerce, not just exploration. That said, private exploration initiatives are on the rise as well, and many find the opportunities truly exciting.

History reminds us that the quest to push back frontiers on Earth begins with exploration and discovery, followed by settlement and economic development.

Recall the epic journey of Lewis and Clark, sparked by the acquisition of new land through the Louisiana Purchase. Remember the investment made a generation later for what was then termed the “frozen wasteland” called Alaska. Since the earliest times, expansion into new regions is almost always met by skepticism. The risk of a return on investment is high, with patience and fortitude required to win a payoff.

Today, space is paying off. New goods and services for individuals and businesses on Earth result from space commerce. Tapping the unique vantage point of space has led to a wide array of telecommunications services, to prospecting for new energy sources, and to better management of agricultural resources. The vacuum and microgravity conditions found in Earth orbit might lead to improved manufacturing processes or techniques to produce superior electronic components and life-saving drugs.

The use of space for economic expansion is not only being explored by U.S. interests but also by countries around the world. More than 30 nations are actively pursuing space-related opportunities. Japan, France, Germany, Russia, China, Canada, Brazil, Israel, Australia, for example, have recognized the tremendous market potential for commercial space operations. Today, space is no longer just the province of superpowers—it’s a key component of the global marketplace.