Piercing the Horizon. Sunny Tsiao
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PIERCING THE

       Purdue Studies in Aeronautics and Astronautics James R. Hansen, Series Editor

       PIERCING THE

      HORIZON

       The Story of Visionary NASA Chief Tom Paine

       BY SUNNY TSIAO

       Purdue University Press / West Lafayette, Indiana

      Copyright 2017 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.

      Printed in the United States of America.

      Cataloging-in-Publication Data available at the Library of Congress.

      Hardback ISBN: 978-1-55753-791-1

      ePub ISBN: 978-1-61249-512-5

      ePDF ISBN: 978-1-61249-511-8

      Cover photos courtesy of NASA.

      Jacket design by Lindsey Organ.

      In memory of my grandparents, Góng Góng and Pó Pó, and themen and women who courageously fought the AsianHolocaust in the Second World War.

      Man’s future in space is limitless. We have embarked on a new stage of evolution that will engage all future generations. … We must find the answers. We must move vigorously forward in space. The practical benefits alone justify this venture, but there are many other compelling human reasons. Progress in space should continue to spur us onward to find new solutions to our age-old problems here on Spaceship Earth. We must make the blue planet Earth a home base, worthy of men who will set forth one day on journeys to the stars.

       —Thomas Otten Paine

      CONTENTS

      Chronology

      Foreword

      Prologue: Man Will Conquer Space Soon

      1Navy Brat

      2I Never Got Over It

      3A Long Voyage Home

       5It’s a Presidential Appointment?

       6Gaining Some Respect

       7I’m Not a Politician

       8A Great Sense of Triumph

       9Going Global

       10What Now?

       11I Accept Your Resignation

       12A Little Better Footing

       13Pioneering the Space Frontier

       14Chief Martian Monster

       Epilogue: A Twinkle in His Eye

       Author’s Note

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       Thomas O. Paine

       1921–1992

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       FOREWORD

      With the publication of this book, Purdue University Press proudly inaugurates Purdue Studies in Aeronautics and Astronautics, a new family of scholarly books dedicated to the study of flight—both in the atmosphere and in space—in historical, social, technological, political, cultural, and economic contexts.

      As readers of the books in our series will learn, the study of aeronautics and astronautics concerns much more than just the nuts and bolts of airplanes and spacecraft. It involves much more than just the history of propellers and wings, more than the history of landing gear and jet engines, more than the ornithology of P-51s and Space Shuttles, or the genealogy of X-planes, rockets, and missiles. The study of aeronautics and astronautics is just as much a story of people and ideas as are studies dealing with any other topic related to society and culture. Without question, scholars who write about aeronautics and astronautics have a lot to say about the research, design, building, flying, maintaining, and utilizing of airplanes, aerospace vehicles, and spacecraft, but their studies are no less human, no less connected to social or political or aesthetic forces, because they deal with technical things. As our books in this new series will demonstrate, an advanced study of aeronautics and astronautics will tell us a great deal about our existence as a thinking, dreaming, planning, aspiring, and playful species.

      This first book in the new series is a biography of Thomas O. Paine (b. 1921–d. 1992), one of America’s greatest spaceflight visionaries. Not only was Dr. Paine the man who headed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during the period of the United States’ early manned lunar landings in 1969 and 1970, but he also was deeply involved in preparing plans for the post-Apollo era at NASA. We have many biographies and autobiographies of astronauts and many general, administrative, and technological histories of the US space program, but we have too few critical works on the principal managers and bureaucrats responsible for leading and directing the US space program. Fortunately, we now have a close look at the outstanding career of Thomas Paine. Sunny Tsiao offers a penetrating look into Paine’s significance as a major figure in the US space program, placing it into the broader context of space history, NASA history, the history of science and technology, American history, and the history of the Space Race.

      As with all the publications in our new series, this book should be of interest to a wide group of people, including aerospace scholars, space exploration enthusiasts, those interested in the history of the federal government and federal science and technology planning and management, and the many thousands of people in government, industry, and academe who today are exploring the ways and means of humankind’s future in air and space.

       JAMES R. HANSEN, PHD Series Editor Purdue Studies in Aeronautics and AstronauticsPurdue University Press

       PROLOGUE: MAN WILL CONQUER SPACE SOON

       Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas—2:15 p.m. Central Time, July 20, 1969

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