NASA and the Decision to Build the Space Shuttle, 1969–72

T he technological prowess of the U nited S tates was symbolized by what became known as the space shuttle, which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began to work on in the late 1960s. With the shuttle program NASA planned to facilitate its aggressive space-exploration effort by providing low-cost, reusable transportation to and from Earth's orbit. NASA officials compared the space program's traditional use of expendable launch vehicles to throwing away a railroad locomotive after every train trip, whereas a reusable shuttle would offer cost-effective, routine access to space. Approval of the shuttle initiative required complex political maneuvering by NASA and its supporters between 1969 and 1972. The twists and turns in the approval process actually shaped the final direction that the shuttle program took, demonstrating the pitfalls of decision making by compromise and the challenges of managing large-scale technology programs within the federal government.¹     

High justice in fifteenth-century Normandy: the prosecution of Sandrin Bourel

By the fifteenth century the seigneurial exercise of high justice had become less common because of the growth of royal jurisdiction. The ancient and wealthy Benedictine nunnery of Montivilliers retained the right to high justice only during the octave of the Holy Cross. In 1493 Sandrin Bourel, a young man who had twice before been imprisoned for theft, was apprehended in the act of stealing from a bourgeois of Montivilliers. As the crime occurred during the octave of the Holy Cross the abbey claimed jurisdiction. A special tribunal was created to prosecute him. After having been tortured, Bourel was found guilty and hanged. The documents generated by this event provide the basis for a case study of the application of criminal procedure at the close of the middle ages. The condemned man's confession, rich in biographical detail, gives us a profile of a petty thief and vagabond on the margin of society. The financial account of the abbey's receiver-general documents in detail the total cost of the prosecution of a single medieval criminal.