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Rh The NACA Langley Aeronautical Laboratory Pilotless Aircraft Research Division started the development of multistage, hypersonic-speed, solid-fuel, rocket vehicles. These vehicles were used primarily in aerodynamic heating tests at first and were then directed toward a reentry physics research program.

Personnel of the NACA Langley and Ames Aeronautical Laboratories were engaged in research on aerodynamic characteristics of reentry configurations. Knowledge acquired from these efforts along with those of industry and the military services was used in Project Mercury, proved the ablation theory for the Army's Jupiter missile development program, and was used in the Air Force intercontinental ballistic missile nose cone reentry program.

Preliminary studies were completed by C. E. Brown, W. J. O'Sullivan, Jr., and C. H. Zimmerman at the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory relative to the study of the problems of manned space flight and a suggested test vehicle to investigate these problems. One of the possibilities considered from the outset of the effort in mid-1952 was modification of the X-2 airplane to attain greater speeds and altitudes of the order of 200,000 feet. It was believed that such a vehicle could not only resolve some of the aerodynamic heating problems, but also that the altitude objective would provide an environment with a minimum atmospheric density, representing many problems of outer space flight. However, there was already a feeling among many NACA scientists that the speed and altitude exploratory area should be raised. In fact, a resolution to this effect, presented as early as July 1952, stated that "…the NACA devote… effort to problems of unmanned and manned flights at altitudes from 50 miles to infinity and at speeds from mach 10 to the velocity of escape from the earth’s gravity." The Executive Committee of NACA actually adopted this resolution as an objective on July 14, 1952.

The first Redstone missile was test-fired by the Army at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Redstone, on which research and development had begun in