Dwayne A. Day

Dwayne Allen Day is an American space historian and policy analyst and served as an investigator for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

Day is a senior program officer for the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, where he has served as a study director on studies concerning NASA's aeronautics flight research capabilities, the planetary exploration program, the size of the astronaut corps, the threat of asteroids striking Earth, NASA workforce skills, radiation hazards to astronauts on long duration spaceflights, U.S. Air Force astrodynamics standards, and other projects. He previously served as a program officer on the Space Studies Board. He has also written extensively on the history of American satellite reconnaissance.

He received a doctorate degree in political science from The George Washington University where he specialized in space policy and management of the national security bureaucracy. His dissertation, "Mission Control," concerned how President Dwight D. Eisenhower created specialized bureaucracies to manage the ICBM, U-2 spyplane, and Corona spy satellite programs, thereby bypassing the cumbersome Air Force bureaucracy. From 2002-2003 he worked as the Congressional Budget Office Historian, where he wrote an unpublished history of the organization. In 2000, while under contract to the U.S. Air Force, he wrote a book on the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist's Office. The book, "Lightning Rod," detailed the creation, evolution, and influence of the senior scientific adviser to the uniformed leadership of the Air Force (the Air Staff).

Day has written many articles in space magazines including Spaceflight, Quest, Novosti Kosmonavtiki and other publications such as Space News. He is an associate editor of the German spaceflight magazine Raumfahrt Concret. Day published the book Eye in the sky about the CORONA spy satellite programme, and was investigator for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, where he focused on the policy, budgetary, managerial and institutional causes of the Columbia accident.

Day is regarded as one of a handful of experts on the history of the U.S. military space program, particularly American intelligence satellites. Among his contributions in this area is the first publication of a photograph of a satellite launched during a classified Space Shuttle launch, the first discussion of the evolution of the early American electronic intelligence satellite programs during the 1960s, and the first detailed discussion of the Satellite Data System communications relay satellites used by the National Reconnaissance Office. He has also written extensively on the intelligence analysis of the Soviet space program during the Cold War, such as the Soviet effort to place a man on the Moon in competition with Apollo.

Day is also known as the originator of the "Von Braun Paradigm" theory. The theory is that American space policy has for decades followed a pattern largely established by von Braun in a series of articles published in the 1950s in Collier's magazine. The simplified theory is that American space leaders have sought to develop space capabilities in a series of steps: develop a space shuttle to construct and service a space station which is then used to establish a lunar base, ultimately leading to a human mission to Mars. The theory has been discussed in books and papers by space historians Howard McCurdy, Roger Launius, and Michael Neufeld.

Currently he is a program officer at the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council in Washington, D.C. In that capacity he has served as a study director for several studies for NASA. These studies include "Space Radiation Hazards and the Vision for Space Exploration," "Building a Better NASA Workforce: Meeting the Workforce Needs for the National Vision for Space Exploration," "Grading NASA's Solar System Exploration Program: A Midterm Report," "Opening New Frontiers in Space: Choices for the Next New Frontiers Announcement of Opportunity," and "Science Opportunities Provided by NASA's Constellation System." He was recently the study director of a study to assess detection and mitigation strategies for near-Earth object hazards which produced the report "Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth-Object Survey and Hazard Mitigation Strategies," and co-study director of an analysis of radioisotope power systems for robotic spacecraft. He is currently assistant study director of the planetary science decadal survey. He is also currently study director of a study on the future of NASA's spaceflight crew office, and a study of NASA's flight research projects, both for the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. [1]

Day is a regular contributor to The Space Review, writing on subjects such the Blackstar spaceplane, and the Chinese space programme. He also quoted a 1974 memo from the CIA Director complaining about Skylab photography of Area 51:

“The issue arises from the fact that the recent Skylab mission inadvertently photographed” the airfield at Groom Lake. “There were specific instructions not to do this,” the memo stated, and Groom “was the only location which had such an instruction.” In other words, the CIA considered no other spot on Earth to be as sensitive as Groom Lake, and the astronauts had just taken a picture of it.

In November 2007, Day published an article containing the photograph that the Skylab 4 astronauts took of Groom Lake, the first time this photo appeared in a public document.

Publications

Books

• Eye in the Sky: Story of the Corona Spy Satellites, ISBN 1-56098-830-4
• Lightning Rod: A History of the Air Force Chief Scientist's Office, ISBN 1-4102-2057-5

Editor, Exploration Spatiale et Coopération Internationale/Space Exploration and International Cooperation, produced by the Embassy of France, October 2004.

Assistant Editor, Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Vol. I, edited by John M. Logsdon, with Linda J. Lear, Jannelle Warren-Findley, Ray A. Williamson, and Dwayne A. Day, NASA SP-4407, Washington, DC, 1995.

Assistant Editor, Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Vol. II, edited by John M. Logsdon, with Dwayne A. Day and Roger Launius, NASA SP-4407, Washington, DC, 1996.

Editor, Military Space History: Programmes, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, June 1997.

Editor, Military Space History: Programmes, Part II, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, November December 1997.

Editor, Military Space History: Programmes, Part III, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, August 1998.

Editor, Military Space History: Programmes, Part IV, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, November-December 1999.

Editor, Cold War Military Space History: Programmes, Space Chronicle, May 2006.

Magazine and Journal Articles

A Review of Recent American Military Space Operations, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 46, 1993.

New Revelations About the American Satellite Programme Before Sputnik, Spaceflight, November 1994.

The Von Braun Paradigm, Space Times, November-December 1994.

Lifting a Veil on History: Early Satellite Imagery and National Security, Space Times, July-August 1995.

Capturing the High Ground: The U.S. Military in Space, 1987-1995, Part 1 Countdown, March/April 1995.

Capturing the High Ground: The U.S. Military in Space, 1987-1995, Part 2 Countdown, May/June 1995.

CORONA: America’s First Spy Satellite, Part 1, Quest, Summer 1995.

CORONA: America’s First Spy Satellite, Part 2, Quest, Fall 1995.

Lifting the Veil: US-Soviet Competition and Cooperation in Space Prior to Apollo, Spaceflight, August 1995.

Space Policy-Making in the White House: The Early Years of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, Organizing for the Use of Space: Historical Perspectives on a Persistent Issue, Roger D. Launius, Ed., American Astronautical Society History Series, Volume 18, 1995.

Mission Impossible: The Kidnapping of Lunik 5, Quest, Fall 1996.

Top Cover: The Origins and Evolution of the Defense Support Program, Part 1, Spaceflight, January 1996.

Top Cover: The Origins and Evolution of the Defense Support Program, Part 2, Spaceflight, February 1996.

Top Cover: The Origins and Evolution of the Defense Support Program, Part 3, Spaceflight, March 1996.

A Strategy for Space: Donald Quarles, the CIA, and the U.S. Scientific Satellite Programme, Spaceflight, September 1996.

The Greatest Story on Planet Mars, Quest, Winter 1996.

Those Magnificent Spooks and Their Spying Machines, Spaceflight, March 1997.

Spotting Skylab, Spaceflight, March 1997.

A failed phoenix: The KH-6 LANYARD Reconnaissance Satellite, Spaceflight, May 1997.

The State of Historical Research on Military Space, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 50, 1997.

Secret Shuttle Mission Revealed, Spaceflight, July 1998.

Mapping the Dark Side of the World: Part 1: The KH-5 ARGON Geodetic Satellite, Spaceflight, July 1998.

Mapping the Dark Side of the World: Part 2: Secret Geodetic Programmes After ARGON, Spaceflight, August 1998.

Falling Star, Spaceflight, November 1998.

Out of the Shadows: The Shuttle’s Secret Payloads, Spaceflight, February 1999.

Exhibiting the Space Race, Quest, Spring 1999.

Listening From Above: The First Signals Intelligence Satellite, Spaceflight, August 1999.

Recon for the Rising Sun, Spaceflight, October 1999.

Medium Metal: The NRO’s Smaller Satellites, Spaceflight, January 2000.

Relics of the Space Race: Space Archaeology at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Part 1, Spaceflight, February 2000.

Relics of the Space Race: Space Archaeology at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Part 2, Spaceflight, March 2000.

Heavens… Debunking is Indicated, The Washington Post, July 2, 2000.

Rashomon in Space: A Short Review of Official Spy Satellite Histories, Quest, Summer 2000.

Tinker, Tailor, Radar, Spy: Early American Ferret and Radar Satellites, Spaceflight, July 2001.

From Astropower to Everyman to Rich Man: The Changing Human Face of Spaceflight, Space Times, July-August 2001.

Dark Clouds: The Classified Origins of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, Spaceflight, September 2001.

Single Orbit Darts and Mercury Eyeballs: Early Unbuilt Strategic Reconnaissance Platforms, Spaceflight, November 2001.

The Army-Air Force Space Race, Spaceflight, July 2002.

Intelligence Space Program, Space Politics and Policy, An Evolutionary Perspective, Eligar Sadeh, Ed., Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.

Mercury Rising: Contractor Proposals for the Mercury Spacecraft, Part 1, Spaceflight, September 2002.

A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing: The Samos E-5 Recoverable Satellite, Part One, Spaceflight, October 2002.

Saturn’s Fury: Effects of a Saturn Launch Pad Explosion, Quest, Winter 2002.

A Square Peg in a Cone-Shaped Hole: The Samos E-5 Recoverable Satellite, Part Two, Spaceflight, February 2003.

Reconnaissance and Money: A Review of Spy Capitalism, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Spring 2003.

Those Hollywood Spooks and Their Spying Machines: Spy Satellites in Film and Reality, Quest, Spring 2003.

GIS Industry Developments, The Year in Defense, (January) 2003.

US Government Declassifies Reconnaissance Satellites Information, Spaceflight, March 2003.

From Cameras to Monkeys to Men: The Samos E-5 Recoverable Satellite, Part Three, Spaceflight, September 2003.

The Moon in the Crosshairs: CIA Intelligence on the Soviet Manned Lunar Programme, Part 1 – Launch Complex J, (with Asif Siddiqi), Spaceflight, November 2003.

Ferrets of the High Frontier: U.S. Air Force Ferret and Heavy Ferret Satellites of the Cold War, Spaceflight, February 2004.

The Moon in the Crosshairs: CIA Intelligence on the Soviet Manned Lunar Programme, Part 2 – The J Vehicle, (with Asif Siddiqi), Spaceflight, March 2004.

Lucky Number 13: The First Success of the CORONA Reconnaissance Satellite Programme, Spaceflight, April 2004.

The Secret of Complex J, Air Force, July 2004.

Pushing Iron, Spaceflight, July 2004.

First Light: The First Reconnaissance Satellite, Spaceflight, August 2004.

Blick durchs Schlüsselloch, (Through the Keyhole), Raumfahrt Concret, October 2004.

Ferrets Above: American Signals Intelligence Satellites During the 1960s, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, fall 2004.

The Last Lunar Outpost, Spaceflight, October 2004.

In the Shadows of the Moon Race, Spaceflight, November 2004.

Now it Can All Be Told, Again, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, winter 2004-2005.

Aiming for the High Frontier: A Brief History of the F-15 Anti-Satellite Weapon, Spaceflight, December 2004.

From the Shadows to the Stars: James Webb’s Use of Intelligence Data in the Race to the Moon, Air Power History, Winter 2004.

From Above the Iron Curtain to Around the Moon: Lunar Orbiter and the Samos Spy Satellite, Spaceflight, February 2005.

Jewel in the Sky: The US Military Satellite That Never Made It, Spaceflight, April 2005.

The Clouds Above, the Earth Below: The Secret Air Force Meteorological Satellite Programme, Part 1, Spaceflight, August 2005.

Military Dilemma Over Laser ASATs, Spaceflight, September 2005.

Gazing Into the Unknown: Astronomy’s Future After Hubble, Spaceflight, October 2005.

Robotic Ravens: Cold War American Ferret Satellite Operations, Spaceflight, November 2005.

Working on the Moon, Spaceflight, December 2005.

Atomic Fire and Electric Glow, Part 1, Spaceflight, March 2006.

The Heat of a Burning Atom, Part 2, Spaceflight, April 2006.

Relay in the Sky: The Satellite Data System, Space Chronicle, May 2006.

Lost and Forgotten: The Non-ruins of Slick-5 Spaceflight, June 2006.

Monkey in a Blue Suit: The USAF’s Secret Space Monkey Program, with Colin Burgess, Spaceflight, July 2006.

Apocrypha Now, Space Stories that Just Aren’t True, Spaceflight, September 2006.

Thunder in a Bottle: The case of the missing, mighty F-1 engine, Spaceflight, October 2006.

Planning for a Return to the Moon by 2019, Spaceflight, February 2007.

Lonely Bird, Spaceflight, March 2007.

Outpost on a Desolate Land, Spaceflight, May 2007.

The Blue Gemini Blues, Spaceflight, June 2007.

A Wing and a Prayer: The Troubled Development of the Gemini Paraglider, Part 1, Spaceflight, August 2007.

Failures and Setbacks: The Troubled Development of the Gemini Paraglider, Part 2, Spaceflight, September 2007.

LSIL, Spaceflight, October 2007.

Grumman’s Ambitious Spider, with Glen Swanson, Spaceflight, November 2007.

Virus, Volkov, and Vandenberg, Spaceflight, February 2008.

Calling All Satellites, Spaceflight, June 2008.

Fire and Grace: The US Space and Rocket Center, Spaceflight, August 2008.

Raketen im Berlin, Spaceflight, September 2008.

Going Waaay Off Road, Spaceflight, October 2008.

Behind the Blue: The Unknown U.S. Air Force Manned Space Program, in Paul G. Gillespie and Grant T. Weller, Eds., Harnessing the Heavens: National Defense Through Space, Imprint Publications, Chicago, 2008.

From Project Gemini to the Final Frontier, Spaceflight, February 2009.

Blue Collar Art, Spaceflight, March 2009.

The Other A in NASA, Spaceflight, May 2009.

Birds on a Wire, Spaceflight, June 2009.

Atop the Highest Mast, The Development of American Ocean Surveillance Satellites, Part 1, POPPY, Spaceflight, November 2009.

Atop the Highest Mast, Development of US Ocean Surveillance Satellites, Part 2, PARCAE and White Cloud, Spaceflight, December 2009.

Tough Little Spinner, Spaceflight, February 2010.

Black Antennas, Spaceflight, March 2010

A Paler Shade of Black: The (non) Mystery of Shuttle Mission STS-51J, Spaceflight, May 2010.

Peering Into PANdora's Box, Spaceflight, August 2010.

Taste of Space in Windy City, Spaceflight, October 2010.

Journey to a Red Moon, Spaceflight, November 2010.

Splish, splash, roar!, Spaceflight, January 2011.

Landing by laser light (and Air-Crane), Spaceflight, March 2011.

Romancing the Stone, Spaceflight, April 2011.

NASA's Next Discovery Class Mission, Spaceflight, July 2011.

Where No Artist Had Gone Before, Star Trek Magazine, July/August 2011.

Franz Joseph's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Trek Magazine, July/August 2011.

Secret Programmes Declassified, November 2011.

Silenced Thunder: The Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, October 2011.

Russia Weighs Lunar Options, Spaceflight, November 2011.

US Space Commercialization, Spaceflight, February 2012.

The Global Comsat--Part 1, Intelsat III, Spaceflight, April 2012.

The Global Comsat--Part 2, Intelsat IV, Spaceflight, May 2012.

The Global Comsat--Part 3, Intelsat IVA, Spaceflight, June 2012.

Rare Birds Take Flight, Spaceflight, September 2012.

Corona and the Flattery of Theft, Spaceflight, December 2012.

The Once and Future Moon, Spaceflight, March 2013.

Red Planet Rising, Spaceflight, April 2013.

Athena Rising, Spaceflight, June 2013.

Burn Like Thunder!, Spaceflight, September 2013.

Saddam's Space Programme, Spaceflight, In Press.

Icarus Falling, Spaceflight, In Press.