4 Expression “exploration’s nation” taken from William H. Goetzmann, “Exploration’s Nation,” pp. 11-36, in Daniel J. Boorstin, ed., American Civilization (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972).
5 Letter, W. H. Pickering to Dr. Thomas O. Paine, July 1, 1969, JPL Archives 214, no. 66.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid. A thorough survey of the uses of exploration as justification for the space program is available in Roger D. Launius, “The Historical Dimension of Space Exploration: Reflections and Possibilities,” Space Policy 16 (2000): 23-38.
8 Wernher von Braun, Frederick I. Ordway III, and Dave Dooling, Space Travel: A History, 4th ed., rev. (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 281.
9 Ibid.
CHAPTER 2. GRAND TOUR
10 There are many accounts of NASA’s origins; see Roger E. Bilstein, Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and NASA, 1915-1990. NASA SP-4406 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1989), and Homer E. Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science, NASA History Series, NASA SP-4211 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1980); exchanges between George Kistiakowsky (presidential science advisor) and Lloyd Berkner, p. 124. For an excellent political history of the space age, see McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth. For the perspective of JPL, see Clayton R. Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982).
11 Quote from Rocket and Satellite Research Panel in Appendix D, Newell, Beyond the Atmosphere, p. 427.
12 Craig B. Watt, “The Road to the Deep Space Network,” IEEE Spectrum (April 1993): 50. JPL quotes from Henry C. Dethloff and Ronald A. Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour: To the Outer Planets and Beyond (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003), pp. 10-12, and Koppes, JPL, pp. 90-95.
13 Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, pp. 14-16; Koppes, JPL, pp. 102-5.
14 Lack of interest explained in Oran W. Nicks, Far Travelers: The Exploring Machines, NASA SP-480 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 1985), p. 14.
15 On S-1, Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, p. 19; Nicks, Far Travelers , p. 101.
16 Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 17.
17 Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, pp. 21-22. G. W. Morgenthaler and R. G. Morra, eds., “Unmanned Exploration of the Solar System,” Advances in Astronomical Sciences 19 (1965); Maxwell W. Hunter II, “Unmanned Scientific Exploration Throughout the Solar System,” Space Science Reviews 6 (1975): 601-54.
18 For a concise account of Voyager Mars, see Nicks, Far Travelers, pp. 170-74.
19 An excellent digest of events is available in J. K. Davies, “A Brief History of the Voyager Project: The End of the Beginning,” Spaceflight 23, no. 5 (March 1981): 35-41, although the article’s value is compromised by sloppy citations.
20 See the 1963 summary, M. A. Minovitch, “The Determination and Characteristics of Ballistic Interplanetary Trajectories under the Influence of Multiple Planetary Attractions,” Technical Report No. 32-464, JPL, Oct. 31, 1963. For claims that others were also closely tracking the concepts, see M. W. Hunter II, “Unmanned Scientific Exploration Throughout the Solar System,” Space Science Reviews 6 (1967): 601-54.
21 Flandro has given several accounts of how he arrived at the Grand Tour scheme, and of the connection (or not) to Minovitch: Gary Flandro, in David W. Swift, Voyager Tales: Personal Views of the Grand Tour (Reston, Va.: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1997), pp. 62-70; Dr. Gary A. Flandro, “Discovery of the Grand Tour Voyager Mission Profile,” pp. 95-98, in Mark Littman, Planets Beyond: Discovering the Outer Solar System (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2004; rev. ed.). See also Tony Reichhardt, “Gravity’s Overdrive,” Air and Space/Smithsonian 8, no. 6 (1994): 77.
22 See Flandro in Littman, Planets Beyond, pp. 95-96.
23 Ibid., p. 97. G. A. Flandro, “Utilization of Energy Derived from the Gravitational Field of Jupiter for Reducing Flight Time to the Outer Solar System,” JPL NASA SPS IV (1965): 37-35. Published version: G. A. Flandro, “Fast Reconnaissance Missions to the Outer Solar System Utilizing Energy Derived from the Gravitational Field of Jupiter,” Astronautica Acta 12, no. 4 (1966): 329-37. See also Minovitch’s update, “Utilizing large planetary perturbations for the design of deep space, solar probe, and out-of-ecliptic trajectories,” Technical Report No. 32-849, JPL (December 15, 1965).
24 Flandro, in Littman, Planets Beyond, p. 97. Homer Joe Stewart, “New Possibilities for Solar System Exploration,” Astronautics and Aeronautics 4 (Dec. 1966): 26-31; James Long, “To the Outer Planets,” Astronautics and Aeronautics 7 (June 1969): 32-48. Murray quoted in Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, pp. 44-45.
25 Long, “To the Outer Planets,” 7, quote on p. 47; William Pickering, “Grand Tour,” American Scientist 58, no. 2 (March-April 1970): 148-55; E. M. Repic, “Outer-Planet Exploration Missions” (Part B of NAS8-24975), Final Report, Vol. 1, Summary. Space Division, North American Rock-well, S.D., 70-32-1 (January 1970). Note, however, that the NAS Space Science Board, in its report “Planetary Exploration 1968-1975,” did not boost missions to the outer planets, clinging to Venus and Mars, with a flyby of Mercury (NAS-NRC, July 1968). Note: See JPL Archives, 122; item no. 2 is the basis for the popular article distilled by Long (1969). Some critical memos trace the very interesting thinking (and the complexity of choices among alternatives) that led to the Grand Tour. See, in particular, Fred H. Felberg to F. E. Goddard et al., Interoffice Memorandum OPP 68-102, May 23, 1968, Subject: Review of AST Candidates, JPL 230, no. 28; and Letter, W. H. Pickering to D. P. Hearth, March 2, 1970, JPL 214, no. 74.
26 See Long, “To the Outer Planets,” pp. 33-34. An excellent, balanced survey of the evolution of the Grand Tour is available in Andrew J. Butica, “Voyager: The Grand Tour of Big Science,” chapter 11, in Pamela E. Mack, ed., From Engineering Science to Big Science. NASA SP-4219 (Washington, D.C.: 1998). See also David Rubashkin, “Who Killed Grand Tour?” ms., NASA History Office, Historical Reference Collection.
27 Several sources for funding: Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour; J. K. Davies, “A Brief History of the Voyager Project,” Spaceflight 23, no. 3 (March 1981): 35-41; Bruce Murray, Journey into Space, pp. 138-42.
28 Schurmeier quoted in Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour,” p. 45.
29 A good account available in Butica, “Voyager: The Grand Tour of Big Science.” Quotes from Ellis D. Miner, Uranus: The Planet, Rings, and Satellites (New York: Ellis Horwood, 1990), pp. 101-2. See “The Grand Tour,” draft manuscript, 11-1-69, JPL Archives 214, no. 70, for a simplified version of the early conception, and Advanced Planetary Mission Study Team, “Grand Tour Definition Study, Vol. 1. Mission Analysis, March 15, 1971,” JPL Archives 122, no. 1, for the fuller, final draft.
30 National Academy of Sciences, “The Outer Solar System: A Program for Exploration,” report of a study by the Space Science Board, June 1969 (Washington, D.C.: NAS, 1969).
31 There are several published accounts of these events, but Butica, “Voyager: The Grand Tour of Big Science,” is a very handy synopsis.
32 I follow Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, pp. 52-57; quote on budget, p. 56.
33 Space Science Board, “The Outer Solar System: A Program for Exploration,” p. 5.
34 Fletcher quotes from Fred H. Felberg to Memorandum to Record, Interoffice Memorandum OPP 72-45, February 24, 1972, JPL Archives 230, no. 51.
35 Quotes from preface, which contains a good summary of preceding studies, NAS-NRC Space Science Board, “Priorities for Space Research, 1971-1980: Report of a Study on Space Science and Earth Observations Priorities” (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1971), pp. 17-18. “Satellite imaging” quote from NAS-NRC Space Science Board, “Outer Planets Exploration 1972-1985” (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1971).
36 As always, the details are more complicated than the inherited explanations imply. Fletcher spoke to JPL in February 1972 and offered his own thoughts. The Grand Tour, as originally concei
ved, did not have support from either OMB or the White House, but a stripped-down version to Jupiter and Saturn for 1977 did, and would likely be considered in the next budgetary round. He also listed two “lessons” from his time as NASA administrator: that any specific decision makes enemies but few friends, and that there was, in reality, little occasion to trade dollars from one NASA program to another; each had to be justified on its own. Source: Fred H. Felberg to Memorandum to Record, Interoffice Memorandum OPP 72-45, February 24, 1972, JPL Archives 230, no. 51.
37 The Mariner study commenced immediately after the SSB report; see F. H. Felberg, Interoffice Memorandum OPP 71-117, “Mariner Outer Planets Missions Study,” JPL Archives 230, no. 47. For a good chronology of the revival, see Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, pp. 60-64.
38 Pickering quote: F. H. Felberg to R. J. Parks, Interoffice Memorandum OPP 71-124, September 16, 1971, JPL Archives 230, no. 47.
39 See Harris M. Schurmeier to MJS Review Board, November 6, 1974, JPL Archives, Flight Collections, Folio 54.
40 Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, p. 88, for Final Spacecraft; Casani quote, p. 106.
41 On the reconstituted design, see Roger D. Bourke et al., “Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977: The Mission Frame,” Astronautics and Aeronautics (Nov. 1972), pp. 42-49. For a detailed internal review of final trajectory trade-offs, see Letter, J. R. Casani to R. A. Mills, “MJS77 Flight Trajectory Selection and Rationale,” June 22, 1976, JPL Archives 36, no. 60.
42 Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, pp. 106-7. An excellent summary of the Voyager preparations as viewed by an insider is Miner, Uranus, chapter 6; quotes from p. 105.
43 Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, p. 105.
44 The story of naming preserved in oral interviews, the results of two published as: Charles Kohlhase, in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 85, and Dethloff and Schorn, Voyager’s Grand Tour, pp. 105-7. See also Nicks, Far Travelers, pp. 170-73, which is better on the antecedent history. On final choice and NASA approval, see J. R. Casani, Interoffice Memo, MJS77-JRC- 77-63, Subject: Project Name, March 4, 1977, NASA History Office, Historical File 005566.
45 Malyn Newitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400-1668 (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 58.
CHAPTER 3. GREAT AGES OF DISCOVERY
46 This analysis of three ages of discovery is an adaptation of “Seeking Newer Worlds: An Historical Context for Space Exploration,” pp. 8-35, in Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius, eds., Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, NASA SP-2006-4702 (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 2006). As the common title suggests, this entire book before you is an attempt to extend and elaborate the arguments of that essay, and by focusing on the Voyager mission to find a more focused mode of expression for the ideas within it. I note here, as in the afterword, that the idea of a Second Age of Discovery belongs to William H. Goetzmann, who developed it most fully in New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery (New York: Viking, 1986).
47 I have relied on that doyen of the founding age of discovery, J. H. Parry. Among his many works are three that serve especially as syntheses: The Establishment of the European Hegemony, 1415-1715, 3rd ed., rev. (New York: Harper and Row, 1966); The Discovery of the Sea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); and The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration and Settlement, 1450-1650 (New York: Praeger, 1969).
48 Parry, The Discovery of the Sea, op cit.
49 Harry Wolf, The Transits of Venus: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Science (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 83.
50 See William H. Goetzmann, “Exploration’s Nation: The Role of Discovery in American History,” in Daniel J. Boorstin, ed., American Civilization: A Portrait from the Twentieth Century (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972).
51 As a useful way to summarize this explosion, see the flawed but indispensable, J. N. L. Baker, A History of Geographical Discovery and Exploration (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1967).
52 J. Tuzo Wilson, I.G.Y: The Year of the New Moons (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1961), p. 324. Chapman characterized IGY’s mission as learning “more about the fluid envelope of our planet—the atmosphere and oceans—over all the earth and at all heights and depths.” But this was academic abstraction. Wilson came closer to the mark when he observed that it was the yet-unvisited places that mattered, that IGY proposed a planetary inventory as conceived by geophysicists. The founding geophysicists fretted most over the outer boundary of Earth, which is where they most wanted IGY to go. Chapman, in IGY Annals 1 ( Jan. 28, 1957): 3.
53 Wilson, I.G.Y, pp. 275, 320, 324, 219-25 passim.
CHAPTER 4. VOYAGER
54 The best summary is Raymond L. Heacock, “The Voyager Spacecraft,” Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Proceedings 1980, 194, no. 28 (1980). Digests are available in most books on Voyager; for example, Ellis D. Miner, Uranus: The Planet, Rings and Satellites (New York: Ellis Horwood, 1990), pp. 119-32. See also Nicks, Far Travelers, pp. 15-17.
55 Mark Wolverton, The Depths of Space: The Story of the Pioneer Planetary Probes (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2004), pp. 58-61.
56 S. E. Morison says “c. 55 feet” in The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 385. A more detailed study by Eugene Lyon recommends sixty-seven feet; “Niña: Ship of Discovery,” in Jerald T. Milanich and Susan Milbrath, eds., First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492- 1570 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1989).
57 Gilbert data: Arvid M. Johnson and David D. Pollard, transcribers, “Part of the Field Notes of Grove Karl Gilbert for the period 20 June 1875 to 24 November 1876 taken during his study of the Henry Mountains and Areas to the West,” School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University (1977), pp. 87-88, for list of items carried. On HMS Challenger, see the published deck plans (available online at www.19thcenturyscience.org/HMSC/HMSC-INDEX/Deck-Plans.html; accessed October 13, 2008).
58 Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 71. On dimensions, see Heacock, “Voyager Spacecraft.”
59 Nicks, Far Travelers, pp. 80-82.
60 A good digest of robotic needs is found in Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy, Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), pp. 140-45.
61 Casani, in Swift, Voyager Tales, pp. 118-19. Statistics: Voyager Mission Planning Office Staff, The Voyager Uranus Travel Guide JPL D-2580 (August 15, 1985), p. 107.
62 Casani, in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 119.
63 Raymond Heacock, in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 152; Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 80.
64 Raymond Heacock, in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 152.
65 Quote from Morison, The Great Explorers, p. 563.
66 Quote from William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and Scientist in the Winning of the American West (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), p. 58.
67 Casani, in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 120.
68 Good summary of early history in James E. Tomayko, Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience. NASA Contractor Report 182505 (March 1988). But an excellent distillation is available in Raymond L. Heacock, “The Voyager Spacecraft,” The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Proceedings 1980 194, no. 28 (1980): 221-22.
69 Tomayko, Computers in Spaceflight, chapter 6; Miner, Uranus, p. 118.
70 Quotes from Ben Evans, with David M. Harland, NASA’s Voyager Missions: Exploring the Outer Solar System and Beyond (Chichester, UK: Springer Praxis, 2004), p. 67.
71 Nicks, Far Travelers, p. 253.
72 Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation , trans. and ed., R. A. Skelton (New York: Dover Publications, 1994), p. 57.
73 See J. A. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
CHAPTER 5. LAUNCH
74 Murray quoted in Swift, Voyager Tales, p. 215.
75 Acco
unt of ship technology from the inestimable J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, chapter 3, and The Discovery of the Sea, chapter 1.
76 Rocket history from Wernher von Braun and Frederick I. Ordway III, Rocket’s Red Glare (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1976), and Wernher von Braun, Frederick I. Ordway III, and Dave Dooling, Space Travel: A History (New York: Harper and Row, 1985; 4th ed).
77 On pinnaces and longboats, see Morison, The Great Explorers, p. 16.
78 Cape Canaveral information from NASA, “Kennedy Space Center Story,” www.na sa .gov/centers/kennedy/about/histor y/stor y/ch1_prt.htm ; accessed August 30, 2007.
79 On Franklin’s dove, see Owen Beattie and John Geiger, Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition (Toronto: Greystone Books, 1987), p. 16. On the storms around Voyager, see Bruce Murray, Journey into Space: The First Thirty Years in Space (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), p. 143.
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