The Herald Spectrum
Saturday, October 1, 1983

It was 25 years ago today that a unique new entity — with largely undetermined potential — came into being.

Celebrating its silver anniversary this year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operations at a time when it was felt that the United States was falling behind in its technological supremacy.

It was born out of the turmoil and panic generated a year earlier when among the familiar stars that adorn the crisp skies of autumn a stranger appeared.

This was a new star — a moving star — a manmade star. It was Sputnik.

Now the sky had been changed forever. Suddenly the distant and unreachable stars seemed a little closer to all of us.

Several months after the Russian light in the sky, the U.S. rallied to answer the challenge with its own Explorer 1.

The returns in scientific knowldege were immediate for this probe made the first major discovery of the space age — a belt of electromagnetic radiation that engulfs the Earth.

It was on Oct. 1, 1958, that NASA opened for business as a result of the National Aeronautics and Space Act. It was a mandate unlike any other in the nation's history. It was both an answer to the Soviet challenge of our technological superiority and a license for us to explore where no man had gone before. As an official arm of the government, NASA was effectively organized, adequately funded and given high priority.

Within a week, this fledgling new agency announced its first goal — to put a man into space and return him safely to the Earth.

That was Project Mercury and it was only the beginning.

In the meantime the Soviet Union was sending probes to the surface of the moon, photographing the far side of the lunar surface, boosting into orbit experimental colonies of mice, insects, house plants, and even a dog. Ten-ton space capsules were firing up missions to Venus, and Mars was not too far behind.

Meanwhile, NASA selected its first seven “star sailors.” Known as the original seven, each was chosen from among many astronaut candidates because they had the “right stuff” to meet the challenge.

The challenge was not long in coming for in April 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut, rode his Vostok spacecraft around the Earth to become the first man into space.

In quick response, Mercury dashed into action and Alan Shepherd flew his Freedom Seven spacecraft through a sub-orbital trajectory to a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was a time to cheer but NASA realized that we were behind. The Soviets had flown a hundred times further in a craft that was five times more massive.

NASA knew how to catch up. The way to win was to raise the stakes — to shoot for a manned landing on the moon. In this way both the U.S. and Russians would be back at the starting line designing and building whole new families of rockets and spacecraft.

Within weeks President John F. Kennedy set the goal for this nation to take the initiative as a leader in space achievements with these words:

“I believe that this nation should commit itselt — to achieve the goal — before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safaely to 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 expansive to accomplish.”

NASA had its work cut out for it. A lunar voyage would require technological advances without precedent in our history.

Along the way there were new worlds to explore and like the old sailing vessels of another age went the planet probes of man — plying through the uncharted sea of space.

The Mariners, Pioneers, Vikings and Voyagers — all complex, automated assemblages of instrument and camera. They are the robots of man and through their electronic senses we have seen the faces of worlds as never revealed to us before.

In early 1962, John Glenn road an Atlas rocket off the pad to fly his Friendship 7 craft three times around the Earth — the first American in orbit.

At the close of the Mercury program NASA began the Gemini project to see if a pair of astronauts could live and work in space for long periods of time.

Gemini showed the way, in 12 flights, that both men and machines could maneuver in the weightless vacumn of space.

A combination of unmanned probes to the moon and the early Apollo missions set the range for what came to be known as the “Big Shot.”

Out into the black sea of space, out to that silvery island in the night, rode three astronauts in the fiery white chariot of Apollo to go down and touch the face of the moon.

It was July 20, 1969. Television screens the world over showed the ghostly images of men on the moon.

We saw Neil Armstrong become the first Earth man to leave his footprints in the ancient lunar dust and proclaim “That's one small step for man — one giant leap for manking.”

Following the Apollo missions to the moon, three crews of men each boarded Skylab for a total of eight months in space.

It has been said that the end of all our travels will be to return home and know that place for the first time. Indeed Skylab showed us that the greatest discovery of the Space Age was the planet Earth.

From space our world has a new perspective. It's a small and beautiful oasis, it's self-contained, but it's also limited. To preserve it means to understand it, to study it, and where better than from the vantage of space.

In 1975 the last Apollo went into orbit to make the first link-up with a Russian Soyuz craft. Astronauts and cosmonauts joined hands over the Earth and the first age of man in space had come to an end.

The curtain now is rising on a new era as space travel is being reshaped, and it is in the shape of wings.

With the advent of the space shuttle, NASA has begun the second age of man in space.

Columbus and her sister ships — Challenger, Discovery and Atlantis — are the space fleet of the next half century.

The shuttles will allow people from all walks of life to spend weeks, months and even years in space.

The shuttles will put satellites in orbit and retrieve them for repair or cleaning, it will be a launching platform for inter-planetary space probes, serve in the national defense and as a transportation system to carry the raw material needed to build orbitaing space stations.

Such a station would mark the beginning of man's permanent presence in space.

“The dreamers of day are powerful… for they act on their dreams with open eyes — to make them possible,” wrote T.E. Lawrence.

The men and women of NASA are such dreamers. They have seen us through our first faltering steps into space — where we have reaped marvelous and unforeseen rewards for the benefit of all mankind.

And now they see a future limited only by the imagination. These include self-contained space cities, manned outposts on the moon and Mars, first-hand exploration of the outer planets and even the beginning of the search outside the solar system. And perhaps the human race isn't all that far from going to the stars.

How long will it take? That depends on our will to do it. But it will be done.

The door to space has been opened and like so many doors in the course of history, it cannot be shut.

It is a one-way trip and we have already crossed over the threshold.

How far we travel is unknown but as H.G. Wells wrote, “For man, there is no rest, and no ending. He must go on, conquest after conquest. And when he has mastered all the depths of space and time — still, he will be beginning.”