The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964 Page: 370
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
greatest advance, though, came in the academic year 1963-1964
when it established a department of space science, the first univer-
sity in the nation to do so. This department came about largely
through the efforts of Rice President Kenneth S. Pitzer, who as
a chemist and former research director of the Atomic Energy
Commission had powerful convictions about the role of the uni-
versity in the nation's scientific progress. In the department's
initial semester it offered qualified students basic courses in sev-
eral space fields that ranged from the dynamic characteristics of
the interplanetary medium to the Van Allen radiation belts that
circle the earth. The department also worked closely with the
Manned Spacecraft Center, bringing in several of its experts to
lecture on the most recent advances in spacecraft engineering.
Meanwhile, Rice's other technical and mathematics departments,
working with three huge computers and one of the fastest elec-
tronic "brains" in the world, with two Van de Graff atom smash-
ers and vast lab facilities, had expanded their own programs to
cover many of the fringe areas of space technology. Even with
that, Rice had come nowhere near realizing its full potential.2
And, with continuing cooperation from the Manned Spacecraft
Center, the university could look ahead toward brilliant new
dimensions in education and scholarship.
As the space center had utilized Houston's education and
research facilities, so it likewise drew heavily on the city's economy
for those things which it could not itself provide. As a result, by
August, 1963, the center was spending over $1 million a month
in contracts with some five hundred local firms for services of all
kinds, for supplies and equipment parts (such as typewriters,
instruments, valves), for thermochemicals, electronics and com-
puter research, for communications, utilities, and skilled and un-
skilled labor. At that date, MSC had already spent $5,342, 11 in
Houston, which was more than two thirds of the sum it had spent
in Texas at large-$8,2o2,545. In addition, the center had com-
mitted over eighty million more dollars in current or active con-
tracts with firms in the Houston area, and with some in San An-
tonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, and El Paso. In terms of MSC's national
expenditures-$11,737,977 already spent and over $ 1.1 billion
"Pitzer to Grimwood, January 4, 1963; Houston Magazine (February, 1963), 3o.370
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964, periodical, 1964; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101197/m1/432/?q=%221777%22: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Texas State Historical Association.