History
Chartered in 1958 by the Secretary of Defense, DDMS was originally formed with the express purpose of providing much needed DoD support to the U.S. initial manned space flight effort ... putting people into space and returning them safely to Earth. Since those early days, the support office has continued to be the focal point for all DoD contingency support to Project Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Apollo/Soyuz Test Project and Space Shuttle. This support included astronaut and space capsule recovery, worldwide communications, tracking and data relay, public affairs, and medical support.
Read more about this topic: Department Of Defense Manned Space Flight Support Office
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)