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Johnson Space Center

Johnson Space Center

. A portion of Clear Lake can be seen at the top of the view.]] The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC), located in Clear Lake City, Texas, a suburb of Houston, is NASA's center for human spaceflight. It was built on land donated by nearby Rice University. JSC contains Mission Control, the NASA control center that coordinates and monitors all human spaceflight in the United States. NASA's astronaut training is also conducted at JSC.

History

NASA's center in Houston has its origins in legislation shepherded to enactment in 1958 by then-U.S. Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was from Texas. JSC, then called simply the "Manned Spacecraft Center," was opened in 1961 and subsequently renamed the "Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center" in 1973, the year Johnson died. By 1965, JSC was fully operational and has been responsible for coordinating and monitoring every crewed NASA mission since Gemini 4 in 1965. In addition to housing NASA's astronaut operations, JSC is also the site of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where the first astronauts returning from the moon were quarantined, and where samples of lunar soil and rock are stored.

See also


- Robert Gilruth
- John F. Kennedy Space Center

External links


- [http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/ Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center]
- [http://www.spacecenter.org/ Space Center Houston]
- [http://www.mybigadventure.com/index.php?action=Stats&stat=Sites&date=20041114&page=37 Space Center Houston Tour] - My Big Adventure (556 Images)
- [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940020111_1994020111.pdf Suddenly, tomorrow came... A history of the Johnson Space Center (PDF format) 1993] Category:Big Science Johnson Space Center

Clear Lake City, Texas

Clear Lake City is a master-planned community located in southeast Harris County, Texas. The majority of the community lies in the corporate limits of Houston, while a small eastern portion is in the city limits of Pasadena. The culture in this area is still separate from the general Houstonian culture. The community is near NASA's Johnson Space Center, as well as other major aerospace companies including Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. Clear Lake City is a very diverse area, and has one of the largest Asian American communities in the city of Houston. Clear Lake City and its neighbors have a high concentration of engineers due to both NASA and the local petro-chemical industries. Clear Lake City is named for a lake south of the Johnson Space Center that separates Harris County from Galveston County and connects Clear Creek to Galveston Bay. The West mansion is still located on NASA Parkway overlooking Clear Lake.

History

Clear Lake City was originally developed by the Friendswood Development Company on land sold to Humble Oil and Refining Company (later Exxon Company) by James Marion West in 1938. The portion of Clear Lake City that was Houston's extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) was annexed by the city of Houston in 1977 despite a grass-roots campaign by its residents to stop it. Their slogan was "Free The Clear Lake 25,000!" Lawsuits over the annexation resulted in the conversion of Houston city government from at-large city councilmen to the current-day nine district and five at-large council seats. Resulting was the fall of influence of the traditional developer-led power structure behind Houston government. Since 1980, part of Clear Lake City within the Houston City Limits is located in Council District E. Kathy Whitmire was elected Mayor of Houston, in large part because of voting support from Clear Lake City, an area she promised to disannex; she did not keep her promise. For several years after the annexation, Clear Lake residents were paying Houston taxes but receiving no services, such as fire and police protection. Later on, the eastern portion in Pasadena's extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) was annexed by the city of Pasadena. The community became the focus of worldwide attention in the summer of 2001 when Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in their home within the community.

Education

Pupils in Clear Lake City attend Clear Creek Independent School District. There are three high schools in the district: Clear Brook High School, Clear Creek High School, and Clear Lake High School. The neighborhood is served by the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch of the Harris County Public Library. This branch is administered by Harris County, but is funded in part by the Houston Public Library. The University of Houston-Clear Lake is also located within the community (the majority of the 400 acre (1.6 km²) UHCL campus lies in the corporate limits of Pasadena, while the part of campus south of the bayou lies in the city of Houston).

External links


- [http://www.photohome.com/clearlake Clear Lake Information Page]
- [http://www.uhcl.edu/ University of Houston-Clear Lake] Category:Houston neighborhoods

NASA

] The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which was established in 1958, is the agency responsible for the public space program of the United States of America. It is also responsible for long-term civilian and military aerospace research.

Vision and mission

NASA's vision is "to improve life here, extend life to there, and to find life beyond." Its mission is "to understand and protect our home planet; to explore the Universe and search for life; and to inspire the next generation of explorers."

History

Space Race

:For additional background, please see the Space Race article Space Race launch of Redstone rocket and NASA's Mercury 3 capsule Freedom 7 with Alan Shepard Jr. on the United States' first human flight into sub-orbital space. (Atlas rockets were used to launch Mercury's orbital missions.)]] Following the Soviet space program's launch of the world's first man-made satellite (Sputnik 1) on October 4, 1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. The U.S. Congress, alarmed by the perceived threat to U.S. security and technological leadership, urged immediate and swift action; President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his advisers counseled more deliberate measures. Several months of debate produced agreement that a new federal agency was needed to conduct all nonmilitary activity in space. On July 29, 1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA consisted mainly of the four laboratories and some 8,000 employees of the government's 46-year-old research agency for aeronautics, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), though the probably most important contribution actually had its roots in the German rocket program led by Wernher von Braun, who is today regarded as the father of the United States space program. NASA's early programs were research into human spaceflight, and were conducted under the pressure of the competition between the USA and the USSR (the Space Race) that existed during the Cold War. The Mercury program, initiated in 1958, started NASA down the path of human space exploration with missions designed to discover simply if man could survive in space. Representatives from the U.S. Army (M.L. Raines, LTC, USA), Navy (P.L. Havenstein, CDR, USN) and Air Force (K.G. Lindell, COL, USAF) were selected/requested to provide assistance to the NASA Space Task Group through coordination with the existing U.S. military research and defense contracting infrastructure, and technical assistance resulting from experimental aircraft (and the associated military test pilot pool) development in the 1950s. On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American in space when he piloted Freedom 7 on a 15-minute suborbital flight. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962 during the 5-hour flight of Friendship 7. Once the Mercury project proved that human spaceflight was possible, project Gemini was launched to conduct experiments and work out issues relating to a moon mission. The first Gemini flight with astronauts on board, Gemini III, was flown by Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John W. Young on March 23, 1965. Nine other missions followed, showing that long-duration human space flight was possible, proving that rendezvous and docking with another vehicle in space was possible, and gathering medical data on the effects of weightlessness on humans.

Apollo program

Following the success of the Mercury and Gemini programs, the Apollo program was launched to try to do interesting work in space and possibly put men around (but not on) the Moon. The direction of the Apollo program was radically altered following President John F. Kennedy's announcement on May 25, 1961 that the United States should commit itself to "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by 1970. Thus Apollo became a program to land men on the Moon. The Gemini program was started shortly thereafter to provide an interim spacecraft to prove techniques needed for the now much more complicated Apollo missions. Gemini program.]] After eight years of preliminary missions, including NASA's first loss of astronauts with the Apollo 1 launch pad fire, and the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon (Apollo 8) at the end of 1968, the Apollo program achieved its goals with Apollo 11 which landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon's surface on July 20, 1969 and returned them to Earth safely on July 24. Armstrong's first words upon stepping out of the Eagle lander captured the momentousness of the occasion: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Twelve men would set foot on the Moon by the end of the Apollo program in December 1972. NASA had won the moon race, and in some senses this left it without direction, or at the very least without the public attention and interest that was necessary to guarantee large budgets from Congress. After President Lyndon Johnson left office, NASA lost its main political supporter, and rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was moved to a position lobbying in Washington. Plans for ambitious follow-on projects to construct a space station, establish a lunar base and launch a human mission to Mars by 1990 were proposed but with the end to procurement of Saturn and Apollo hardware, there was no capability to support these. The near-disaster of Apollo 13, where an oxygen tank explosion nearly doomed all three astronauts, helped to recapture national attention and concern. Although missions up to Apollo 20 were planned, Apollo 17 was the last mission to fly under the Apollo banner. The program ended because of budget cuts (in part due to the Vietnam War) and the desire to develop a reusable space vehicle.

Other early missions

Although the vast majority of NASA's budget has been spent on human spaceflight, there have been many robotic missions instigated by the space agency. In 1962 the Mariner 2 mission was launched and became the first spacecraft to make a flyby of another planet – in this case Venus. The Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter missions were essential to assessing lunar conditions before attempting Apollo landings with humans on board. Later, the two Viking probes landed on the surface of Mars and sent color images back to Earth, but perhaps more impressive were the Pioneer and particularly Voyager missions that visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune sending back scientific information and color images. Having lost the moon race, the Soviet Union had, along with the USA, changed its approach. On July 17, 1975 an Apollo craft (finding a new use after the cancelling of planned lunar flights) was docked to the Soviet Soyuz 19 spacecraft, in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Although the Cold War would last many more years, this was a critical point in NASA's history and much of the international co-operation in space exploration that exists today has its genesis with this mission. America's first space station, Skylab, occupied NASA from the end of Apollo until the late 1970s.

Shuttle era

Skylab 1981 ]] The space shuttle became the major focus of NASA in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Planned to be a frequently launchable and mostly reusable vehicle, four space shuttles were built by 1985. The first to launch, Columbia did so on April 12, 1981. The shuttle was not all good news for NASA – flights were much more expensive than initially projected, and even after the 1986 Challenger disaster highlighted the risks of space flight, the public again lost interest as missions appeared to become mundane. Work began on Space Station Freedom as a focus for the manned space programme but within NASA there was argument that these projects came at the expense of more inspiring unmanned missions such as the Voyager probes. The Challenger disaster aside the late 1980s marked a low point for NASA. Nonetheless, the shuttle has been used to launch milestone projects like the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The HST was created with a relatively small budget of $2 billion but has continued operation since 1990 and has delighted both scientists and the public. Some of the images it has returned have become near-legendary, such as the groundbreaking Hubble Deep Field images. The HST is a joint project between ESA and NASA, and its success has paved the way for greater collaboration between the agencies. In 1995 Russian-American interaction would again be achieved as the Shuttle-Mir missions began, and once more a Russian craft (this time a full-fledged space station) docked with an American vehicle. This cooperation continues to the present day, with Russia and America the two biggest partners in the largest space station ever built – the International Space Station (ISS). The strength of their cooperation on this project was even more evident when NASA began relying on Russian launch vehicles to service the ISS following the 2003 Columbia disaster, which grounded the shuttle fleet for well over two years. Costing over one hundred billion dollars, it has been difficult at times for NASA to justify the ISS. The population at large have historically been hard to impress with details of scientific experiments in space, preferring news of grand projects to exotic locations. Even now, the ISS cannot accommodate as many scientists as planned. During much of the 1990s, NASA was faced with shrinking annual budgets due to Congressional belt-tightening in Washington, DC. In response, NASA's ninth administrator, Daniel S. Goldin, pioneered the "faster, better, cheaper" approach that enabled NASA to cut costs while still delivering a wide variety of aerospace programs (Discovery Program). That method was criticized and re-evaluated following the twin losses of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander in 1999.

NASA's future

Mars Polar Lander and the planned crew and heavy lift launch vehicles]] NASA's most publicly-inspiring mission of recent years has probably been the Mars Pathfinder mission of 1997. Newspapers around the world carried images of the lander dispatching its own rover, Sojourner, to explore the surface of Mars in a way never done before at any extra-terrestrial location. Less publicly acclaimed but performing science from 1997 to date (2005) has been the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. Since 2001, the orbiting Mars Odyssey has been searching for evidence of past or present water and volcanic activity on the red planet. NASA expects to continue exploring the Red Planet with more spacecraft such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will reach Mars in 2006. The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, which killed the crew of six American and one Israeli astronaut, and caused a 29-month hiatus in space shuttle flights, triggered a serious re-examination of NASA's priorities. The U.S. government, various scientists, and the public all considered the future of the space program. On January 14, 2004, ten days after the landing of Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, President George W. Bush announced a new plan for NASA's future, dubbed the Vision for Space Exploration. According to this plan, humankind will return to the moon by 2020, and set up outposts as a testbed and potential resource for future missions. The space shuttle will be retired in 2010 and the Crew Exploration Vehicle will replace it by 2014, capable of both docking with the ISS and leaving the Earth's orbit. The future of the ISS is somewhat uncertain – construction will be completed, but beyond that is less clear. Although the plan initially met with skepticism from Congress, in late 2004 Congress agreed to provide start-up funds for the first year's worth of the new space vision. Hoping to spur innovation from the private sector, NASA established a series of Centennial Challenges, technology prizes for non-government teams, in 2004. The Challenges include tasks that will be useful for implementing the Vision for Space Exploration, such as building more efficient astronaut gloves.

Criticisms

Some commentators, such as Mark Wade, note that NASA has suffered from a 'stop-start' approach to its human spaceflight programs. The Apollo spacecraft and Saturn family of launch vehicles were abandoned in 1970 after billions of dollars had been spent on their development. In 2004 the U.S. Government proposed eventually replacing the Shuttle with a Crew Exploration Vehicle that would allow the agency to again send astronauts to the Moon. Despite the reduction of its budget following project Apollo, NASA has maintained a top-heavy bureaucracy resulting in inflated costs and compromised hardware. Crew Exploration Vehicle on October 31, 1998.]] Currently, the ISS relies on the Shuttle fleet for all major construction shipments. The Shuttle fleet has lost two spacecraft and fourteen astronauts in two disasters in 1986 and 2003. While the 1986 loss was made up with a Shuttle built from replacement parts, NASA does not plan to build another shuttle to replace the second loss. (But see also CEV.) The ISS, which was intended to have a crew of seven as of 2005, now has a skeleton crew of two, causing many intended research projects to be delayed. Other nations that have invested heavily in the space station's construction, such as the members of the European Space Agency, are fearful that the ISS's fate will soon match the fate of Skylab. As of 2005, however, all of the European and Japanese contributions to the ISS are years behind development schedule themselves.

NASA spaceflight missions

Human spaceflight


- Mercury program
- Gemini program
- Apollo program
- Skylab
- Space Shuttle
- International Space Station (working together with ESA, Rosviakosmos and JAXA)
- Project Constellation

Robotic space missions


- Earth Observing
  - Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite
  - TIMED (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics)
- Lunar missions
  - Ranger
  - Surveyor
  - Lunar Orbiter
  - Clementine
  - Lunar Prospector
- Mercury missions
  - Mariner 10
  - MESSENGER
- Venus missions
  - Mariner 2, 5 and 10
  - Pioneer Venus
  - Magellan
- Mars missions
  - Mariner 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9
  - Viking 1 and 2
  - Mars Observer
  - Mars Pathfinder
  - Mars Climate Orbiter
  - Mars Polar Lander
  - Mars Global Surveyor
  - 2001 Mars Odyssey
  - Mars Exploration Rovers
  - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
  - Phoenix Lander (Planned for 2007)
  - Mars Science Laboratory (Planned for 2009)
- Jupiter missions
  - Pioneer 10
  - Galileo
  - Juno
- Saturn missions
  - Cassini-Huygens together with ESA
- Multi-planet missions
  - Pioneer 11 – Jupiter and Saturn
  - Mariner 10 – Venus and Mercury
  - Voyager 1 – Jupiter and Saturn
  - Voyager 2 – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
  - New Horizons (Planned for 2006) – Jupiter, Pluto and Kuiper Belt
- Asteroidal/cometary missions
  - NEAR Shoemaker
  - Deep Space 1
  - Stardust
  - Deep Impact
  - Dawn (Planned for 2006)
- Proposed or canceled planetary-asteroid missions
  - JIMO (cancelled)
  - CRAF (cancelled)
  - NetLanders (cancelled)
  - Pluto Kuiper Express (cancelled; New Horizons is replacement)
  - Titan Explorer (proposed)
  - Neptune Orbiter (proposed)
- Sun observing missions
  - SOHO – ESA partnership
  - Ulysses – ESA partnership
- Great Observatories for Space Astrophysics
  - Hubble Space Telescope – ESA partnership
  - Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
  - Chandra X-ray Observatory
  - Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, SIRTF)
- Other observatories
  - COBE
  - FUSE
  - Infrared Astronomical Satellite
  - James Webb Space Telescope – ESA partnership
  - WMAP

List of NASA administrators

# T. Keith Glennan (1958–1961) # James E. Webb (1961–1968) # Thomas O. Paine (1969–1970) # James C. Fletcher (1971–1977) # Robert A. Frosch (1977–1981) # James M. Beggs (1981–1985) # James C. Fletcher (1986–1989) # Richard H. Truly (1989–1992) # Daniel S. Goldin (1992–2001) # Sean O'Keefe (2001–2005) # Michael Griffin (2005–)

Field installations

In addition to headquarters in Washington, D.C., NASA has field installations at:
- Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
- Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California
- John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, Cleveland, Ohio
- Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
  - Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York
  - Independent Verification and Validation Facility, Fairmont, West Virginia
  - Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, near Pasadena, California
  - Deep Space Network stations:
    - Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, Barstow, California
    - Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex, Madrid, Spain
    - Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
- Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
  - White Sands Test Facility, Las Cruces, New Mexico
- John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida
- Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia
- George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
  - Michoud Assembly Facility, New Orleans, Louisiana
- John C. Stennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

Awards and decorations

NASA presently bestows a number of medals and decorations to astronauts and other NASA personnel. Some awards are authorized for wear on active duty military uniforms. Current NASA awards are as follows:
- Congressional Space Medal of Honor
- NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal
- NASA Distinguished Service Medal
- NASA Equal Employment Opportunity Medal
- NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal
- NASA Exceptional Administrative Achievement Medal
- NASA Exceptional Bravery Medal
- NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal
- NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal
- NASA Exceptional Service Medal
- NASA Exceptional Technological Achievement Medal
- NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal
- NASA Public Service Medal
- NASA Space Flight Medal

Related legislation


- 1958 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration PL 85-568 (passed on July 29)
- 1961 – Apollo mission funding PL 87-98 A
- 1970 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Research and Development Act PL 91-119
- 1984 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act PL 98-361
- 1988 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act PL 100-685
- NASA Budget 1958–2005 in 1996 Constant Year Dollars

See also


- List of aerospace engineering topics
- Astronaut
- Small Aircraft Transportation System
- Space Shuttle
- Space exploration
- Space race
- Robert Gilruth, Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz (flight directors)
- KC-135 Reduced Gravity Aircraft
- Shirley Thomas
- Stewart Brand
- Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Vision for Space Exploration
- Asteroid 11365 NASA is named after the organization.

Other space agencies


- Canadian Space Agency
- CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales)
- China National Space Administration
- European Space Agency
- Italian Space Agency
- Indian Space Research Organisation
- Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
- National Space Agency of Ukraine
- Russian Federal Space Agency
- Soviet space program (historical)

External links

General


- [http://www.nasa.gov NASA Home Page]
- [http://www.nasawatch.com NASA Watch]
-

Further research


- [http://history.nasa.gov/series95.html NASA History Series Publications]
- [http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4012/cover.html NASA Historical Data Books (SP-4012)]
- [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/hhrhist.pdf Research in NASA History: A Guide to the NASA History Program (large PDF – over 1,012 kb)]
- [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/ NTRS: NASA Technical Reports Server]
- [http://www.eventscope.org Eventscope] Category:Independent Agencies of the United States Government ko:미국항공우주국 ja:アメリカ航空宇宙局 simple:NASA th:องค์การนาซา

Mission Control Center

Mission Control Center (MCC) is a unit that manages aerospace flights. MCC is often part of an aerospace agency. There are several such agencies in the world, the three biggest ones being:
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
- Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA)
- European Space Agency (ESA) The main task of MCC is to manage remote space objects from start till landing by sending and receiving data in a special format, called telemetry.

NASA Mission Control Center

European Space Agency mission]] Located at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the NASA MCC was first used in 1964 with the Gemini 4 mission, the first American EVA flight. Prior to Gemini 4, all Mercury-Redstone, Mercury-Atlas, and the unmanned Gemini 1, Gemini 2, and manned Gemini 3 missions were controlled by the MCC center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Between 1964 until its replacement with the new "MCC-2" in 1998, the NASA MCC has controlled virturally all Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and Space Shuttle flights. The NASA MCC room, known as the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR), consists of a four-tier auditorium, dominated by a large map screen, which for the exception of Apollo lunar flights, has a mercator projection of the Earth, with locations of the numerous tracking stations spread out all over the Earth, and a three-orbit track of the spacecraft in flight. Each MOCR tier were specialized in nature, and contained specific controllers, each handling a portion of the spacecraft or launch vehicle. The first row, known as "The Trench," consists of four controllers--BOOSTER, RETRO, FIDO, and GUIDO. The BOOSTER controller monitors the launch vehicle, and his or her job lasts no more than six hours. The RETRO, FIDO, and GUIDO controllers monitors the spacecraft trajectory, handles any course changes, and establishes launch and landing "windows." The second row, since Project Gemini, consists of the SURGEON, EECOM, and CAPCOM. The SURGEON is the flight surgeon, a NASA-employed civilian doctor who monitors the health of the astronauts, although since the first flight of the Space Shuttle, this has not been done directly, except for EVA activities. The EECOM monitors the electrical and environmental systems on the spacecraft, while the CAPCOM ("Capsule Communicator"), a rookie astronaut, serves as the "air-to-ground" communicator between the MCC and the space crew--no other controller can speak to the astronauts, except the SURGEON, if an emergency arises. On the other side of the "aisle" of the second row, are controllers who monitor specific parts of Apollo, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle. During the lunar flights, the TELMU and CONTROL controllers monitored the Apollo lunar module. During Skylab, the EGIL (pronounced "eagle") monitored the Skylab's solar panels, while the EXPERIMENTS controller monitored experiments and the telescopes in the Apollo Telescope Mount. Currently, the PAYLOAD and EXPERIMENTS controllers monitor Space Shuttle operations. Another controller, the INCO, monitors the communications and instrumentation on the spacecraft. The third row consists of the PAO (Public Affairs Officer), PROCEDURES (who coordinates with launch teams, writes the countdowns and "go-no go" conditions), FAO (flight activities officer, who coordinates with the flight schedule), AFD (assistant flight director), and FLIGHT--the Flight Director, the "boss" of the entire mission operations. FLIGHT was first filled by Dr. Christopher Kraft, and later by Eugene Kranz, Dr. Glynn Lunney, Gerald Griffin (NASA Flight Director), and others who followed. The fourth row has consoles for NASA management, including the Director of the Johnson Space Center, the Director of Flight Crew Operations (chief astronaut--first held by Donald K. "Deke" Slayton), and the Department of Defense officer, who coordinates with active duty and reserve components in any search and rescue or recovery operations in the case of an abort. The old MCC, now registered on the National List of Historic Places, and had two identical control rooms, was replaced in 1997 with a new MCC, which has two large rooms for Shuttle flights, and a smaller size auditorium for International Space Station operations. Both are identical in operations, except that the ISS MOCR has fewer controllers. Category:Spaceflight

Lyndon Baines Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the thirty-sixth President of the United States (1963–1969). After serving a long career in the US Congress, Johnson became the thirty-seventh Vice President, serving under John F. Kennedy (1961–1963) and later ascended to the presidency following Kennedy's assassination.

Early years

Johnson was born in Stonewall, Texas on August 27, 1908 in a small farmhouse in a poor area on the Pedernales River. His parents, Samuel Ealy Johnson and Rebekah Baines, had four more children: his sisters Rebekah (1910-1978), Josefa (1912-1961) and Lucia (1916-1997) and his brother Sam Houston (1914-1978). Johnson attended public schools and graduated from Johnson City High School in 1924. In 1927 Johnson enrolled in Southwest Texas State Teachers' College (now Texas State University-San Marcos). He worked his way through school, participated in debate and campus politics, edited the school newspaper, and graduated in the 1930's. Robert Caro devoted several chapters of the first volume of his LBJ biography series, The Path to Power, to detailing how Johnson's years at San Marcos cemented his skills in persuasion that he would use to great effect in his political life. This was complemented by his humbling experience of taking a year off from college, where he taught mostly Mexican immigrants at the Welhausen School in Cotulla, Texas. When he returned to Southwest State Teachers' College in 1965, after having signed Higher Education Act, Johnson looked back fondly on this experience: :"I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this Nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American." (Source: [http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/lbjforkids/edu_whca370-text.shtm Johnson Library])

Entering politics

Soon after he graduated from college, Johnson taught public speaking and debate in a Houston high school. However, he soon quit his job teaching and went into the field of politics. Johnson's father had served five terms in the Texas legislature and was a close friend to one of Texas's rising political figures, Congressman Sam Rayburn. In 1931 Johnson campaigned for Richard M. Kleberg and was later rewarded for his work in the campaign with an appointment to be the newly elected congressman's secretary. As secretary, Johnson became acquainted with people of influence, found out how they had reached their positions, and gained their respect for his abilities. Johnson's friends soon included some of the men who worked around President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as fellow Texans such as Vice President John Nance Garner. During his tenure as secretary, Johnson met Claudia Alta Taylor (generally known as Lady Bird), a young woman who was also from Texas. After only a short period of dating, the two were married on November 17, 1934, Johnson actually proposed to her within 24 hours of meeting her. The couple later had two daughters, Lynda Bird, born in 1944, and Luci, born in 1947. It should be noted that Johnson loved to give everything his own initials. His daughters' given names are examples, as was his dog later in life (Little Beagle Johnson). In 1935, Johnson became the head of the Texas National Youth Administration. His new post enabled him to use the powers of government to find educational and job opportunities for young people. The position in effect enabled him to build political pull with his constituents. He served as the head for two years, only resigning to run for Congress. Johnson was a notoriously tough boss with his employees throughout his career, often demanding long workdays and work on weekends; he worked as much as they did, if not more. National Youth Administration

Member of Congress

In 1937, Johnson ran for Congress in a special election for the 10th Congressional District of Texas to represent Austin, Texas and the surrounding Hill Country. He ran on a New Deal platform and was effectively aided by his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. President Roosevelt showed a personal interest in the young Texan from the time he entered Congress. Johnson was immediately appointed to the Naval Affairs Committee, a job that carried high importance for a freshman congressman. He also worked for rural electrification and other improvements for his district. In 1941, Johnson ran for the U.S. Senate in a special election against the sitting governor of Texas, radio personality W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel. Though Johnson was expected to win, he was defeated by controversial late returns in an election marked by massive fraud on the part of both campaigns. During his last campaign, he promised that he would serve in the military should war break out; in December 1941, the U.S. entered World War II.

War record

Most capsule biographies of American Presidents of the latter half of the twentieth century include a single line about their respective service during World War II. Many of those about LBJ reflect the line given for the year 1942 in [http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/biographys.hom/lbj_bio.asp Johnson Library online biography]: "Johnson received the Silver Star from General Douglas MacArthur for gallantry in action during an aerial combat mission over hostile positions in New Guinea on June 9." This is technically accurate, but often builds up an image in the mind of a student of American History that Johnson's service was as broad or deep as that of other decorated soldiers. In actuality, he did not see any combat beyond that mission, where he was not a combatant but merely an observer. Some background is necessary for understanding just how this experience helped form Johnson's political ascent. On June 20th, 1940, the Burke-Wadsworth bill was introduced to Congress to institute the first peacetime draft. The very next day Congressman Johnson received his appointment in the Naval Reserve, which would exempt him from the draft-- signed into law in September as the Selective service and training act of 1940, initiated in November. After America entered the war a year later, Johnson asked Undersecretary of the Navy James Forrestal for a noncomabat assignment-- and was sent to inspect the shipyard facilities in Texas and on the West Coast. By the spring, Johsnon's constituents in Texas were eager to hear about their Congressman's activities on the war front. In addition, he was looking to fulfill his 1940 campaign pledge to "fight in the trenches" should America enter the war, so he again pressed his contacts in the Administration to find a new assignment-- this time, closer to a combat zone. From a suggestion by Forrestal, President Roosevelt assigned Johnson to a three-man survey team of the Southewest Pacific. Johnson left for Melbourne and reported to General Douglas MacArthur. The observers were sent to Garbutt Field in Queensland, home of the 22nd Bomb Group. The bombers' missions targered the Japanese air base at Lae on the conquered part of the island of New Guinea. The military commanders felt that there had no need for an observer from the Navy, but Johnson insisted. The B-26 he flew on was attacked by Japanese Zeroes during the mission, and Johnson stayed cool during the battle. Upon returning to Melbourne and reporting back to MacArthur, the General awarded the Congressman and the other surviving observer the Silver Star, the military's third-highest medal. In Washington, LBJ set to work burnishing this story into legend, staging medal-pinning ceremonies, placing stories, using it in campaign stories. Biographer Robert Caro sums up Johnson's war experience in his 1990 book Means of Ascent this way (p. 46): Nevertheless, althought Lyndon Johnson had avoided being at the scene of battle as long as he could, once he was at it, his conduct was bold and courageous, nonchalant in the face of danger. If he had gone to the Southwest Pacific only so that he could later claim to have been in the war--and if he hand been in that war for only one day--still for that day had been not a politician but a warrior. Ambition may have governed his war services as it governed his entire life, but, as had always been the case, in the service of that ambition he had done whatever he had to do. A month after this incident, President Roosevelt ordered members of Congress serving in the military to return to their offices. Of eight members then serving, four agreed to resign from the armed forces; four resigned from Congress. Johnson returned to Washington, and continued to serve in the House of Representatives through 1949.

Senate years

In 1948, Johnson again ran for the Senate and this time won. This election was highly controversial: a three-way Democratic Party primary left Johnson in a run-off with former governor Coke Stevenson. Johnson campaigned very hard and won by only 87 votes out of a million cast. Stevenson contested the vote count. There were allegations that Johnson's campaign manager, John Connally, was connected with 202 ballots in Jim Wells County that had curiously been cast in alphabetical order. [http://thoughtcrimes.org/bbv/bbv_chapter-4.pdf][http://www.eiu.edu/~historia/1999/texas99.htm]). In Robert A. Caro's 1989 book Means of Ascent, he argued that Johnson had rigged the election not only there, but at least 10,000 ballots in Bexar County alone. In the federal court case arising from the election, Johnson hired Abe Fortas to represent him. Fortas persuaded U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black to dissolve the federal injunction nullifying Johnson's runoff victory. Johnson went on to win the general election, but the Texas media sardonically nicknamed him "Landslide Lyndon" in reference to his bout with Stevenson. Once in the Senate, Johnson immediately began to work toward his ultimate goal: the presidency. Johnson was known among his colleagues for his highly successful "courtships" of older Senators, especially Senator Richard Russell, patrician leader of the Southern bloc and arguably the most powerful man in the Senate. Johnson, always at his best when working one-on-one, proceeded to gain Russell's favor in the same way as he had "courted" Speaker Sam Rayburn and gained his crucial support in the House. Johnson was appointed to the Armed Services Committee, and later in 1950, he helped create the Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee. With Russell's support, Johnson eventually was able to become its chairman and conducted a number of investigations of defense costs and efficiency. These investigations—couched in headline-grabbing phraseology but largely devoid of substance—tended to recycle old investigations and demand actions that were already being taken by the Truman administration. However, Johnson's brilliant strategic leaks, his overall manipulation of the press, the incredible speed at which his committee issued new reports (less incredible considering the recycled content), and the fact that he ensured every report was endorsed unanimously by the committee all got him headlines and national attention.

Senate Democratic leader

After only a few years in the Senate, Johnson was moving up in leadership power. In 1953, he was chosen by his fellow Democrats to be the minority leader. Thus, he became the youngest man ever named to the post by either major political party. One of his first actions was to eliminate the seniority system in committee selection. In 1954, Johnson was re-elected to the Senate and since the Democrats won the majority in the Senate, Johnson became majority leader. His duties were to schedule legislation and help pass measures favored by the Democrats.

Vice Presidency

Johnson's success in the Senate led to his name being widely mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate. He was Texas' "favorite son" candidate at the party's national convention in 1956. In 1960, Johnson received 409 votes on the first and only ballot at the Democratic convention which nominated John F. Kennedy. During the convention, Kennedy designated Johnson as his choice for vice president. Some later reports (such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) say that Kennedy offered the position to Johnson as a courtesy, and did not expect him to accept. Others (such as W. Marvin Watson) say that the Kennedy campaign was desperate to get Johnson on the ticket to help carry Southern voters. In the November 1960 election the Kennedy/Johnson duo beat Richard M. Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. by a narrow margin. There were serious accusations of voter fraud, especially in Illinois (home of the political machine run by Richard J. Daley) and Johnson's home state of Texas. However, there were no criminal convictions. The only state to have its results changed was Hawaii-which was ruled to have gone to Kennedy not Nixon. Upon swearing in, Kennedy appointed Johnson to head the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities, which led him to work with blacks and other minorities. During his tenure as Vice President, Johnson also took on some international missions, which gave him limited insights into foreign problems. He also sat on Cabinet and National Security meetings, giving him an insight into the presidency. Kennedy gave Johnson control over all presidential appointments involving Texans. Johnson was crucially made chairman of the President's Ad Hoc Committee for Science. When in April 1961 the U.S.S.R. beat the U.S. with the first manned spaceflight Kennedy tasked Johnson with coming up with a 'scientific bonanza' that would prove world leadership. Johnson knew that Project Apollo and an enlarged NASA would benefit Texas and southern states most directly so steered the recommendation towards a crash program for a manned lunar landing.

Presidency

NASA NASA Johnson was sworn-in as President on Air Force One in Dallas at Love Field Airport after the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. He was sworn in by federal judge Sarah T. Hughes, a very close friend of his family, making him the first president sworn in by a woman. In his first year, Johnson faced conflicts with everyone from Senators to speechwriters who wanted to honor Kennedy's legacy, but were reluctant to support new propositions by Johnson. Johnson used his famous charm and strong-arm tactics to push through his new policies. In 1964, upon Johnson's request, Congress passed a tax-reduction law and the Economic Opportunity Act, which was in association with the War on Poverty. Johnson also hired Jerri Whittington, the first African-American White House secretary, and appointed Jack Valenti as his "special assistant." An example of his strong arm tactics was 'The Treatment'; this was where he saw people alone in a small adjoining room where he would pull his chair close to the guests and lean forward until his nose was inches away from the visitor's face. Members of Congress from whom Johnson wanted a vote looked visibly shaken after their meeting with the President. In 1964, Johnson won the Presidency in his own right with 61 percent of the vote and the widest popular margin in American history—more than 15,000,000 votes. However, 1964 was also the year that Johnson supported the racist Democratic delegates from Mississippi and denied the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party seats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. To appease the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) chaired by Dr. Aaron Henry with the intent of seating a passionate and charismatic leader of the Mississippi Freedom Movement, Fannie Lou Hamer, the Democrats at the convention offered the MFDP an unsatisfactory compromise and the MFDP rejected it rather than appear concilatory in the eyes of their "comrades". In the same year, Johnson lost the popular vote to Republican challenger Barry Goldwater in the Deep South states of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina, a region that had voted for Democrats since the Reconstruction era. The election, though a success for the Democratic Party, marked the beginning of the long transformation of the Democrats' Solid South to a Republican bastion. Solid South are on far right]] The Great Society program became Johnson's agenda for Congress in January 1965: aid to education, attack on disease, Medicare, urban renewal, beautification, conservation, development of depressed regions, a wide-scale fight against poverty, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, and removal of obstacles to the right to vote. Congress, at times augmenting or amending, rapidly enacted Johnson's recommendations. Millions of elderly people found succor through the 1965 Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act. In 1964 a longtime employee and camapign fundrasier for Johnson named Walter Wilson Jenkins was forced to resign after the Washington Star reported that Jenkins was arrested for having sex with a retired male solider. While Johnson tried to persaude the newspaper not to print the story, noting that Wilson was a married man with children, the scandel that erupted forced Jenkins to resign. Under Johnson, the country made spectacular explorations of space in a program he had championed since its start. When three astronauts successfully orbited the moon in December 1968, Johnson congratulated them: "You've taken … all of us, all over the world, into a new era…." Nevertheless, two overriding crises had been gaining momentum since 1965. Despite the beginning of new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination programs, unrest and rioting in black ghettos troubled the nation. President Johnson steadily exerted his influence against segregation and on behalf of law and order, but there was no early solution. The other crisis arose from Vietnam. Despite Johnson's efforts to end Communist insurgency and achieve a settlement, fighting continued. Controversy over the war had become acute by the end of March 1968, when he limited the bombing of North Vietnam in order to begin negotiations. At the same time, he startled the world by withdrawing as a candidate for re-election (which candidacy was being seriously challenged by other Democrats). He said he was withdrawing as a candidate so he could devote his full efforts, unimpeded by politics, to the quest for peace.

Vietnam War

While still Vice President, President Johnson ordered the execution of the president of South Vietnam in 1963, which he discusses in a White House recording made in 1966. ([http://whitehousetapes.org/clips/1966_0201_lbj_mccarthy_vietnam.html Audio file and transcript]) Kennedy reacted with somber shock to the assassination of a fellow president in ([http://whitehousetapes.org/clips/1963_1104_jfk_vietnam_memoir.html this white house recording]). Kennedy was assassinated less than three weeks later, and Johnson became president. President Johnson had a dislike for the American war effort in Vietnam, which he had inherited from Kennedy, but expanded considerably following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident (less than 3 weeks after the Republican Convention of 1964 which had nominated Barry Goldwater for president). Though he would often privately curse the war, referring to it as his "bitch mistress," at the same time Johnson believed that America could not afford to look weak in the eyes of the world, and so he escalated the war effort continuously from 1964 to 1968, which resulted in thousands of American deaths. In one speech, he said of the Vietnam conflict "If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco" - alluding to Eisenhower's 'Domino Theory'. At the same time, Johnson was afraid that too much focus on Vietnam would distract attention from his Great Society programs, so the levels of military escalation, while significant, were never enough to make any real headway in the war. Against his wishes, Johnson's presidency was soon dominated by the Vietnam War. As more and more American soldiers and civilians were killed in Vietnam, Johnson's popularity declined, particularly in the face of student protests. During these protests students would often chant the line, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids will you kill today?" In what was termed an October surprise, Johnson announced to the nation on March 31, 1968 that he ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1 citing progress with the Paris peace talks. And at the end of his speech he shocked the country by telling them he would not run for re-election, by saying: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president." ([http://millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/diglibrary/prezspeeches/johnson/lbj_1968_0331.html Text and audio of speech])

Appointments

Cabinet appointments

All of the cabinet members when Lyndon B. Johnson became president in 1963 had been serving under John F. Kennedy previously.

Supreme Court appointments

Johnson appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
- Abe Fortas - 1965
- Thurgood Marshall - 1967
  - Marshall was the first African-American to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

Retirement, death, and honors

Under the 22nd Amendment, Johnson was still eligible for a second full term, having served less than two years of Kennedy's term. However, on March 31, 1968, after the Tet Offensive, a narrow victory over Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, the entry of Robert Kennedy into the presidential race, and new lows in the opinion polls, he announced, in an address to the nation, that he would no longer seek renomination for the presidency. He cited the growing division within the country over the war as his reason. The Democratic nomination eventually went to Johnson's Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was later defeated in the 1968 election by Richard M. Nixon. After leaving the presidency in 1969, Johnson went home to his ranch in Johnson City, Texas. In 1971, he published his memoirs, The Vantage Point. That year, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, which is the most visited presidential library in the nation—over a quarter million visitors per year—opened on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. He donated his Texas ranch in his will to the public to form the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park, with the proviso that the ranch "remain a working ranch and not become a sterile relic of the past" [http://www2.nature.nps.gov/parksci/vol19/vol19(2)/08-1harris.htm]. Johnson died at 4:33 PM on January 22, 1973 from a third heart attack at his ranch, at the age of 64. His health ruined by years of heavy smoking and stress, the former President had severe heart disease. He was found in his bed, reaching for his phone. Johnson was honored with a state funeral in which Texas Congressman J.J. Pickle and former Secretary of State Dean Rusk eulogized at the Capitol. The final services took place on January 25. The funeral was held at the National City Christian Church (in Washington, D.C.), where he worshipped often when president. The service, which foreign dignitaries, led by former Japanese prime minister Eisaku Sato, attended, was the first presidential funeral to feature a eulogy. They came from former White House Chief of Staff, and Postmaster General W. Marvin Watson, and the church's rector, Rev. Dr. George Davis, a very close friend of the Johnsons who officiated the services in Washington. Though he attended the service, Nixon did not speak, as customary for presidents during presidential funerals, but both eulogists turned to him as they spoke and lauded him for his tributes to the former president, as Rusk had the day before. Johnson was buried that afternoon at his ranch in Texas. The burial service was the first presidential burial to feature a eulogy, and the eulogies were delivered by former Texas Democratic governor John Connally, an LBJ protege and fellow Texan, who was wounded in the assassination that made Johnson president, and by the minister who officiated the services, Rev. Billy Graham. Anita Bryant closed the services by singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," paying tribute to her friendship with the former president, at his own request. The state funeral was part of a busy week for the Military District of Washington, which began with Nixon's second inauguration. Later in 1973, President Nixon signed Congressional legislation renaming the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Also, the Texas State Legislature created a legal state holiday to be observed on August 27 to mark LBJ's birthday. It is known as Lyndon Baines Johnson Day. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1980.

Miscellaneous information


- Lyndon Johnson was 6 ft 3 1/2 in (192 cm) tall and weighed about 215 pounds, the second tallest president after Abraham Lincoln at 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) and 180 pounds (82 kg).
- He was baptized in the Pedernales River as a member of the Disciples of Christ in 1923. [http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/FAQs/Religion/religion_hm.asp]
- Johnson was famously frugal. Even as President, White House tapes recorded him asking a photographer to take his family portraits for free, saying he was a very poor man living on a weekly paycheck and had a very great deal of financial debt. In fact Johnson was a multimillionaire, but he still received the photographic portraits without having to pay a cent. The White House press corps would make jokes at his expense regarding his habit of turning off all lights in the White House when the rooms were not in use. Johnson's secretary revealed years later that he would wash and reuse styrofoam cups.
- Johnson seemed to crave personal approval. After delivering a major speech on civil rights, he called 32 people, all of whom he knew would greatly approve of his speech, to ask what they thought. All of these people, recorded for posterity in White House tapes, were overwhelmingly complimentary.
- At his ranch in Texas, he was fond of taking visitors in the car while driving 90 miles an hour down country roads, drinking scotch from a paper cup.
- His favorite soft drink was Fresca, which he drank constantly. He had a soda tap installed in the Oval Office.
- Johnson, while using the White House bathroom, was known to insist that others accompany him and continue to discuss official matters, take dictation, or another convenient pretense. This was one of Johnson's many tactics for asserting psychological power over others.
- All other American presidents born in the 20th century were born after LBJ.
- The only American president to have ever visited Malaysia.
- The first American president to visit Turkey

Further information

See also


- U.S. presidential election, 1960
- U.S. presidential election, 1964
- U.S. presidential election, 1968
- History of the United States (1945–1964)
- History of the United States (1964–1980)
- Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas

Further reading


- Barrett, David Marshall. Advice and Dissent: An Organizational Analysis of the Evolution of Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam Advisory System, 1965-1968. (University of Notre Dame, 1990)
- Casey, Francis Michael. The Vietnam Policy of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in Response to the Theory of the Protracted Conflict as Applied in the Politics of Indochina: A Case Study of Threat Perception and Assessment in the Crisis Management Process of a Pluralistic Society. (Claremont Graduate School, 1976)
- Cherwitz, Richard Arnold. The Rhetoric of the Gulf of Tonkin: A Study of the Crisis Speaking of President Lyndon B. Johnson. (University of Iowa, 1978)
- Goodnight, Lisa Jo. The Conservative Voice of a Liberal President: An Analysis of Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam Rhetoric. (Purdue University, 1993)
- Kearns Goodwin, Doris. Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream. (1977)
- Logevall, Fredrik Bengt Johan. Fear to Negotiate: Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, 1963-1965. (Yale University, 1993)
- Turner, Kathleen Jane. The Effect of Presidential-Press Interaction on Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam War Rhetoric. (Purdue University, 1978)
- Winter-Berger, Robert N. The Washington pay-off: a lobbyist's own story of corruption in government. (Secaucus, New Jersey : L. Stuart 1972)

Johnson career documentary

Johnson is the subject of an extensive multi-volume biography: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro. So far three volumes have appeared: :# The Path to Power (1982), :# Means of Ascent (1990), :# Master of the Senate (2002).

References and external links


- [http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/ Lyndon B. Johnson Library]
- [http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/lj36.html White House biography]
- [http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/JJ/fjo19.html Handbook of Texas entry]
- [http://www.whitehousetapes.org/pages/tapes_lbj.htm LBJ's secret White House recordings @ University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs]
- [http://educatetheusa.com/LBJ36.html Lyndon B. Johnson], article on educatetheusa.com.
- [http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/nbk/bios/36pjohn.html Johnson, Lyndon Baines], article in the New Book of Knowledge.
- Robert A. Caro Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (2002)
- [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/johnson.htm Inaugural Address]
- [http://vvl.lib.msu.edu/showfindingaid.cfm?findaidid=JohnsonLB Audio recordings of Johnson's speeches]
- [http://www.libraryreference.org/johnson.html Lyndon Johnson Biography]
- [http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1507155 White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on LBJ, NPR Weekend Edition audio archives]
- [http://www.b-26marauderarchive.org/MS/MS1709/MS1709.htm LBJ's silver star]
- [http://home.nyc.rr.com/alweisel/outwalterjenkins.htm Walter Jenkins Scandal]
-

Footnote


- Elsen, William A., "Ceremonial Group Had Busy 5 Weeks." The Washington Post, January 25, 1973. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. ja:リンドン・B・ジョンソン

1973

1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday.

Events

January


- January 1 - United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark enter the European Economic Community, now known as the European Union.
- January 3 - Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) sells the New York Yankees for $10 million to a 12-person syndicate led by George Steinbrenner.
- January 15 - Vietnam War: Citing progress in peace negotiations, President of the United States Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.
- January 17 - Ferdinand Marcos becomes President for Life of the Philippines.
- January 22 - Supreme Court of the United States rules on Roe v. Wade.
- January 22 - George Foreman breaks Joe Frazier's professional career undefeated heavyweight world boxing champion status.
- January 22 - Nigerian Airlines passenger plane from Mecca crashes in Kano, Nigeria - 176 dead.
- January 23 - The eruption of Eldfell on the Icelandic island of Heimaey begins.
- January 23 - President Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam.
- January 25 - Derren Nesbitt convicted of assaulting Anne Aubrey
- January 27 - U.S. involvement in Vietnam War ends with the signing of peace pacts. See Paris Peace Accords.

February


- February 11 - Vietnam War: First release of American prisoners of war from Vietnam takes place.
- February 12 - Ohio becomes the first U.S. state to post distance in metric on signs. (See: Metric system in the United States)
- February 21 - Over the Sinai Desert, Israeli fighter aircraft shoot down a Libyan Arab Airlines jet killing 100.
- February 22 - Sino-American relations: Following President Richard Nixon's visit to mainland China, the United States and the People's Republic of China agree to establish liaison offices.
- February 27 - The American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

March


- March 1 - The New York Joffrey Ballet's Deuce Coupe Ballet opens. The ballet is set entirely around music by The Beach Boys.
- March 7 - Comet Kohoutek is discovered.
- March 8 - IRA bombs explode in the Whitehall and the Old Bailey.
- March 16 - Queen Elizabeth II opens the New London Bridge.
- March 29 - The last United States soldiers leave Vietnam.
- March 31 - Paramount's Carowinds opens for the first time.

April


- April 2 - Launch of LexisNexis computerized legal research service.
- April 4 - World Trade Center officially opens in New York with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
- April 6 - Launch of Pioneer 11 spacecraft.
- April 17 -German GSG-9 group formed officially

May


- May 5 - Shambu Tamang becomes the youngest person to climb to the summit of Mount Everest.
- May 8 - A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement who were occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ends with the surrender of the militants.
- May 10 - Polisario formed.
- May 14 - Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.
- May 17 - Watergate scandal: Hearings begin in the United States Senate and are televised.
- May 27 - By the virtue of non-retroactiveness of the copyright laws of the USSR, all works published before this date are public domain. This applies worldwide.

June


- June 1 - Greek military junta abolishes the monarchy and proclaims a republic.
- June 3 - Tupolev Tu-144 crashes at the Paris air show - 15 dead.
- June 4 - patent for the ATM granted to Don Wetzel, Tom Barnes and George Chastain.
- June 9 - Secretariat wins the Belmont Stakes becoming the first Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing winner since 1948.
- June 10 - Grandson of J. Paul Getty is kidnapped in Rome.
- June 22 - William Mark Felt retires from the FBI.
- June 25 - Erskine Hamilton Childers is elected the fourth President of Ireland.
- June 26 - On Plesetsk Cosmodrome 9 persons were killed at an explosion of a Cosmos 3-M rocket.
- June 30 - Very long total solar eclipse. During the entire Second Millennium, only seven total solar eclipses exceeded seven minutes of totality.

July


- July 1 - US Drug Enforcement Agency founded.
- July 5 - Isle of Man begins to issue its own postage stamps
- July 10 - The Bahamas gain full independence within the British Commonwealth.
- July 12 - A major fire destroys the entire 6th floor of the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The disaster comes to be known as the 1973 National Archives Fire.
- July 16 - Watergate Scandal: Former White House aide Alexander Butterfield informs the United States Senate committee investigating the scandal that President Richard Nixon had secretly recorded potentially incriminating conversations.
- July 20 - France resumes nuclear bomb tests in Mururoa Atoll over protestations of Australia and New Zealand.
- July 25 - Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched.
- July 28 - Watkins Glen Summer Jam, a massive rock festival featuring The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band and The Band attracts over 600,000 music fans.
- July 30 - An 11-year legal action for the victims of Thalidomide ends.
- July 31 - Militant protesters of Ian Paisley disrupt the first sitting of the Northern Ireland Assembly

August


- August 2 - Flash fire kills 51 at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.
- August 5 - Black September members open fire at Athens airport - 3 dead, 55 injured.
- August 8 - 1973 Kidnapping of Kim Dae-Jung
- August 13 - The film of Jesus Christ Superstar is released.
- August 15 - The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ends, marking the official halt to 12 years of combat activity in Southeast Asia.
- September 22 - Henry Kissinger, United States National Security Advisor, starts his term as Secretary of State.

September


- September 11 - Chile's democratically-elected government is overthrown in a military coup after serious instability. President Salvador Allende dies, and General Augusto Pinochet heads a military junta that will govern Chile for the next 16 years.
- September 15 - Sweden's king Gustav VI Adolf dies. Carl XVI Gustav becomes king.
- September 18 - The two German Republics, the BRD and the DDR, are admitted to the United Nations.
- September 20 - Billed as The Battle of the Sexes, Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs 6-4, 6-4, 6-3.
- September 28 - ITT was bombed in New York City as a protest of their involvement with the Coup in Chile.

October


- October 6 - Yom Kippur War - Fourth and largest Arab-Israeli conflict begins as Egyptian and Syrian forces attack Israel as Jews mark Yom Kippur.
- October 10 - Spiro T. Agnew resigns as vice president of the United States and then, in federal court in Baltimore, pleads no contest to charges of evasion of income taxes on $29,500 he received in 1967 while he was governor of Maryland. He is fined $10,000 and put on three years' probation.
- October 17 - Arab Oil Embargo against several countries which gave support to Israel, triggerring the 1973 energy crisis.
- October 20 - The Saturday Night Massacre.
- October 20 - Sydney Opera House is opened by Elizabeth II.
- October 26 - Yom Kippur War ends.
- October 27 - The Canyon City meteorite, a 1.4 kg chondrite type meteorite struck earth in Fremont County, Colorado.

November


- November 1: Watergate scandal, acting Attorney General Robert Bork appointed Leon Jaworski as the new Watergate Special Prosecutor.
- November 3 - Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury (on March 29, 1974 it became the first space probe to reach that planet).
- November 7 - The U.S. Congress overrides President Richard M. Nixon's veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.
- November 11 - Egypt and Israel sign a United States-sponsored cease-fire accord.
- November 14 - In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne marries a commoner, Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey (they divorced in 1992).
- November 16 - Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission.
- November 16 - US President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.
- November 17 - Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, US President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors "I am not a crook."
- November 17 - Student uprising against the military regime in Athens, Greece.
- November 21 - President Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Bushardt, revealed the existence of an 18-and-a-half-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate.
- November 25 - Greek Dictator George Papadopoulos is ousted in military coup led by Lieutenant General Phaidon Gizikis.
- November 27 - The United States Senate votes 92 to 3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States (on