Michael J. Neufeld

Space artifact or Nazi weapon? Displaying the Smithsonian's V-2 missile, 1976-2011.

Debates over how or how not to display intrinsically controversial subjects in a museum setting have been part of museum life for decades. And the Smithsonian Institution on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., has more often than not been a ‘flash point’ [1] for episodes ranging from the interwar controversy over the Langley Aerodrome and Wright Flyer, to the so-called ‘rerun of the Scopes trial’ in a 1978 suit brought against the Smithsonian, to the Enola Gay affair of 1994–1995. Stakeholders from every conceivable walk of life have, at one time or another, expressed annoyance with the way some part of human culture, or the natural world, is portrayed. Accordingly, the Smithsonian has gone through cycles where it becomes very cautious about what it displays, and how it displays, social, cultural and scientific artifacts, notably since Enola Gay [2–8]. To be sure, in behaving this way, the Smithsonian is no doubt a reflection of larger forces that have tried to shape what it is and does, forces that reflect behavioral norms and values in a nation’s constant search for identity. A case in point, for the purposes of setting the stage for this essay, is why the National Mall of the United States does not have an explicitly military museum, and how the Smithsonian has become, in effect, a surrogate agent in the process. Beyond a pervasive suspicion and antipathy toward showcasing the armed forces on the Mall, as Joanne London has argued, there were other forces, including ‘the Smithsonian’s exhibition traditions, personalities, bureaucratic obstacles, the military establishment’s ambivalence about the value of museums, the United States’ involvement in the Korean and Vietnam war and the general environment of the Cold War, and changes in museology. . .’ [9, p. 259]. London traces the historical pathways through which military interests attempted to establish a presence on the National Mall, and how, in 1961, Congress attempted to control or moderate this drive by creating a National Armed Forces Museum Advisory Board to the Institution that would authorize some form of coverage. This fostered a debate centered on the question of whether the Smithsonian’s newly established Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History) could better address the expressed desires of the military than could a wholly new museum bureau devoted to the subject. The Smithsonian resisted the idea of a new bureau, arguing in a position paper in about 1960 that it could better integrate ‘the military exhibits into a museum

The Discovery Program: Competition, Innovation, and Risk in Planetary Exploration

When the Office of Space Science at NASA created the Discovery program in 1993–1994, it was a milestone in lowering the cost of robotic space-science missions. The competitive selection of Principal Investigator–led spacecraft proposals inverted the relationship between NASA centers and mission scientists. The winning Principal Investigator would be completely responsible for delivering the science and the successful mission under a cost cap defined in the program, which was funded as a line in NASA’s budget, rather than one mission at a time. Innovative and risky management approaches were favored. Discovery was the marquee project of Administrator Daniel Goldin’s “faster, better, cheaper” approach. However, after the failures of two Mars spacecraft in 1999 (outside the program) and CONTOUR in 2001 (inside it), that risk-taking approach faltered in the face of political criticism. Overruns and technical crises in Discovery projects (notably MESSENGER, Dawn, and Kepler) further bolstered risk-averse tendencies at NASA, increasing bureaucracy, raising cost, and making flights less frequent. Yet the program has delivered many spectacular successes in solar system exploration on a lean budget (like Mars Pathfinder, Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, Stardust, and Deep Impact) and has inspired the reform or creation of other programs on the competitive model (like Explorer, New Frontiers, and Mars Scout). It demonstrates that competition can work to reduce cost and increase innovation at NASA. (Michael J. Neufeld)

Practicing for space underwater: inventing neutral buoyancy training, 1963–1968

Neutral buoyancys value was far from obvious when human spaceflight began in 1961. Starting in 1964, Environmental Research Associates, a tiny company in the suburbs of Baltimore, developed the key innovations in an obscure research project funded by NASAs Langley Research Center. The new Houston center dismissed it until a mid-1966 EVA crisis, after which it rapidly took over. In parallel, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center developed many of the same techniques, as did many large aerospace corporations, yet the long-run technological impact of corporate activity was near zero. Because ERA and Marshalls pioneering activities led to the two long-running NASA training centers at Houston and Huntsville, those two organizations deserve primary credit for the construction of the neutral buoyancy technological system.

The Nazi aerospace exodus: towards a global, transnational history

The exodus of Third Reich scientific and engineering personnel after World War II has traditionally been understood through its impact on the Cold War missile and space race. This article assesses the state of scholarship on this topic globally, particularly in aerospace professions, in the process drawing some conclusions on the total numbers, skill composition and Nazi backgrounds of the Germans, the stages of movement, and the technological impact of their movement. Such an assessment not only demonstrates the geographical weaknesses in existing knowledge, notably in the scholarship on Britain, France and much of the Third World, but it also points us towards a global, transnational history of the phenomenon, as cross-border flows of people, information, and technology grew beyond the bounds of the victorious powers’ national programs for exploiting German knowledge.

Wernher von Braun's ultimate weapon

German-American rocket engineer Wernher von Braun was the key participant in one of the most influential campaigns to promote spaceflight ever attempted, a series of articles in Colliers magazine. Subsequent literature on the history of spaceflight-much of it written by von Braun enthusiasts or influenced by their accounts-has depicted this campaign mostly as a forerunner to later programs for the peaceful and scientific exploration of space. 1 Von Braun was the leader of the team that designed the V-2 ballistic

Rolf engel vs. The German army: A Nazi career in rocketry and repression

Summary The history of German rocketry has been dominated by a master narrative emphasizing the Army Peenemūnde project. An examination of the career of Rolf Engel (1912–1993), an SS officer and veteran of Weimar rocket groups, undermines that narrative. After his arrest in 1933, Engel became a bitter opponent of the Army and joined the Nazi student movement and SD, ending his wartime career as an SS rocket expert. Engels life demonstrates that the traditional dichotomy between the rocket engineers and “the Nazis,” similar to one used by other German scientists and engineers after 1945, is false. His career also illuminates some of the lesser rocket projects of the Third Reich.