NASA's Hidden Power

NASA’S HIDDEN POWER: NACA/NASA PUBLIC RELATIONS AND THE COLD WAR, 1945-1967 Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this dissertation is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or classified information. ____________________________ Kristen Amanda Starr Certificate of Approval: ____________________________ ____________________________ Larry Gerber James R. Hansen, Chair Professor Professor History History ____________________________ ____________________________ Kristen Hoerl Joe B. Hanna Assistant Professor Professor Communication and Aviation and Journalism Supply Chain Management ____________________________ George T. Flowers Dean Graduate School NASA’S HIDDEN POWER: NACA/NASA PUBLIC RELATIONS AND THE COLD WAR, 1945-1967 Kristen Amanda Starr A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama December 19, 2008 NASA’S HIDDEN POWER: NACA/NASA PUBLIC RELATIONS AND THE COLD WAR, 1945-1967 Kristen Amanda Starr Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. Signature of Author______________________________ Date of Graduation_______________________________ iii VITA Kristen Amanda Starr, daughter of Paul and Susan Starr, was born on January 5th, 1976 in Opelika, Alabama. She grew up in Auburn, Alabama; Cairo, Egypt; and Port-au- Prince, Haiti. She graduated from Auburn High School in 1994 and then attended Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia, where she majored in English and History. Kristen graduated with honor from Agnes Scott with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1998 and started her PhD in History at Auburn University in August, 2000. While working towards her PhD, Kristen taught Technology and Civilization and the History of Space Travel in the Department of History at Auburn, and was a Research Historian for the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. iv DISSERTATION ABSTRACT NASA’S HIDDEN POWER: NACA/NASA PUBLIC RELATIONS AND THE COLD WAR, 1945-1967 Kristen Amanda Starr Doctor of Philosophy, December 19, 2008 (B.A., Agnes Scott College, 1998) 329 Typed Pages Directed by James R. Hansen During the 1960s, NASA’s human spaceflight program commanded national and international attention. The program created American images infused with heroic values. What were these images? How and why did the process of image creation occur? The answers to these questions lie in the way the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and NASA interpreted and articulated their aviation and space achievements to the public. Their Public Affairs Offices, or “Offices of Public Information,” purveyed information from the agencies to journalists, media outlets, and the American public. I use the term “saltation” to explain the dramatic qualitative and quantitative change in NASA public relations practices with the initiation of the human spaceflight program. Intially, NASA’s Public Information Office relied on the modest “NACA style” of operation, which included one public information head at Washington v Headquarters, two or three employees working with him, and a single public information representative at each “field center.” The NACA, due to its small size and modest means, could be successful with such a staff, and with a reactive rather than proactive public relations methodology. Yet NASA leaders realized that, due to the explosion of public interest in the human spaceflight program, its public relations effort would require more concerted analysis and planning, a larger and more organized staff, and stronger centralized control. As NACA and NASA Public Information provided its constituencies with information, it presented this information through particular narratives. NACA and NASA public relations borrowed the thematic refrain of the Cold War: the necessity of the triumph of “good” capitalist democracy over “evil” communist totalitarianism. The NACA, America’s aeronautical research agency, needed to legitimize its continued existence in the changing aerospace world. Its successor, NASA, needed to justify its much larger budget and the importance of civilian spaceflight, an essentially “symbolic” technology with few “practical” ramifications, for the waging of the Cold War. The NACA and NASA portrayed their technologies as imbued with democratic “American” meanings and as harbingers of infinite technological, social, and political progress. By January 1967 and the Apollo One Fire, NASA’s public relations operation had grown large and complex, with a high degree of centralized control. The Public Affairs Office handled the tragedy more effectively than it could have during its earlier years. Yet it still suffered from discord, both internal to the organization and external in terms of public support for NASA. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank her committee members and especially her advisor, Dr. James R. Hansen, for their teaching, inspiration, and unceasing encouragement over the years. She also thanks her parents, Paul and Susan Starr, and her sister, Meredith Ericksen, for providing her with the love and support that allowed her to complete this journey. vii Style manual used: The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Computer software used: Microsoft Word 2003. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 1. RESTRUCTURING AND RE-IMAGINING: THE NACA AND WORLD WAR II ....................................................................................................................................14 2. TOWARDS A VICARIOUS VICTORY: NACA PUBLIC RELATIONS ON THE COATTAILS OF THE COLD WAR, 1946-1958 ........................................60 3. THE WORK OF WALTER T. BONNEY, 1948-1957 ..............................................102 4. SELLING SYMBOL AND SCIENCE: SPUTNIK AND THE NASA OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION ...................................................................................139 5. COLD WAR, HOT WATER: THE U-2 CRISIS OF 1960 ........................................181 6. MERCURY RISING ..................................................................................................197 7. THE LIFE MAGAZINE CONTRACT ........................................................................250 8. PROJECT GEMINI AND HOUSTON’S MANNED SPACECRAFT CENTER .....................................................................................................................271 9. APOLLO ONE ............................................................................................................296 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................308 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................315 ix INTRODUCTION During the second half of the twentieth century, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) created American and international meanings of aviation and space technology. Throughout NACA and NASA history, the agencies’ programs, culminating in the July 1969 lunar landing, have commanded national and international attention. In many ways, the high-speed research airplane and human spaceflight programs of the 1950s and 1960s were the most powerful, dramatic, and glamorous aspects of America’s Cold War endeavor. Both at home and abroad, NACA and NASA programs created American images infused with heroic values. How did the NACA and NASA portray this dramatic technological change and development? With what meanings did the NACA and NASA endow its air and space technologies? How and why did the process of image creation occur? Vital answers to these questions emerge in the ways that the NACA and NASA interpreted and articulated their achievements to the public. Their Public Affairs Offices, or “Offices of Public Information,” purveyed information from the agencies to journalists, media outlets, and the American public. In so doing, NACA and NASA Public Affairs enshrined flight, and especially human spaceflight, in the American and international consciousness. 1 In order to answer these questions, which are crucial to an understanding of Cold War technology and culture, we must begin with a study of the origins of the NACA/NASA public affairs office itself. We must identify the political and institutional context of the office. What made the office necessary? The NACA and NASA were government agencies in a “democracy” that was fighting to spread its ideology; the agencies worked hard to justify their use of American tax dollars. World War II and the commencement of the Cold War caused a mushrooming of the federal budget and a new federal infrastructure devoted to high technology. The NACA, which had first gained its footing in the early days of aviation, had escalating concerns that a new, more modern agency might make its work obsolete. The agency’s new public relations office, or Office of Public Information, helped it address such concerns and helped the agency gain vital public support as the NACA worked to redefine its purpose in the “brave new world” of the

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