posted 08-22-2006 04:32 AM               

I'd just been reading Neil Hutchinson's oral histories, and specifically the very interesting account that he gives of all the politicking and controversy surrounding the retirement of Chris Kraft as Center Director and the consequent appointment of Gerry Griffin. (Go and read it for yourself if you haven't yet!). I thought to myself, "Hmm, I wonder what 'Suddenly Tomorrow Came' says about all this? I bet it's a bit of a whitewash."

So I went and looked, and lo and behold, the book doesn't say anything at all about Kraft's retirement and Griffin's appointment! Not until it mentions Griffin's retirement in 1986 and parethetically notes that he had "headed the center since 1982". Oh, really? Seems like a pretty big omission to me.

Max Faget, incidentally, had nothing but bad things to say about the book:

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Max Faget: At the very top levels, these days, they don’t know or care what happened. All they want to do is make sure that they’ve got their place in history. That’s all they worry about. I never saw anything so screwed up as the history of Johnson Space Center. After they wrote a couple of chapters, they said, “Max, we want you to review these chapters and make sure that they are right.” Well, I reviewed the first four, and then I said, “Don’t bother to send me any more.” There was no starting place. It was so wrong, it was so screwed up, that you can’t makeanything out of it. It was terrible—and it was supposed to be the history of JSC!

Robbie: Are you talking about the book Suddenly Tomorrow Came?

MF: I don’t know what the hell they called it. It was written by somebody under contract with headquarters.

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posted 08-22-2006 05:59 AM               

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Originally posted by Naraht:
I've never been all that fond of "Suddenly Tomorrow Came," the official NASA history of JSC. To tell the truth, I'd never looked at it all that carefully either, because it didn't seem that interesting. But I decided to take a closer look today, and I've come to the conclusion that another history really needs to be written.

I'd just been reading Neil Hutchinson's oral histories, and specifically the very interesting account that he gives of all the politicking and controversy surrounding the retirement of Chris Kraft as Center Director and the consequent appointment of Gerry Griffin. (Go and read it for yourself if you haven't yet!). I thought to myself, "Hmm, I wonder what 'Suddenly Tomorrow Came' says about all this? I bet it's a bit of a whitewash."

So I went and looked, and lo and behold, the book doesn't say anything at all about Kraft's retirement and Griffin's appointment! Not until it mentions Griffin's retirement in 1986 and parethetically notes that he had "headed the center since 1982". Oh, really? Seems like a pretty big omission to me.

Max Faget, incidentally, had nothing but bad things to say about the book:
On top of all this, the book was written in 1993, so it's a bit--just a bit!--out of date now. I would hope that when the time comes to update it, they would do some sort of overhaul and make the volume a bit more useful, and a bit more relevant.

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Former NASA Chief Historian, Roger Launius, once told me that, if memory doesn't fail me, that a new book costs $50k, so Naraht if you've got the money, you can help them because their budget is rather limited (hey, you know we've got to go back to the Moon, you know....)....
More seriously, 10 years may not be long enough period before publishing an updated version, not that they would want to but I don't think it's on their priority list- they have much older books to update (Origins of NASA Names is in the works)...

posted 08-22-2006 08:52 AM               

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Originally posted by cspg:
Former NASA Chief Historian, Roger Launius, once told me that, if memory doesn't fail me, that a new book costs $50k, so Naraht if you've got the money, you can help them because their budget is rather limited (hey, you know we've got to go back to the Moon, you know....)....

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posted 08-22-2006 09:44 AM               

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Originally posted by Naraht:
Hey, I'm a historian, I have my priorities.

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Chris.