USA Diary - Day 2 - A great day in 'the bubble'

Today was one of those research days that I wish happened far more often. I knew what I wanted; had some fantastic help in finding it - and picked up a few bonuses along the way too.

Still being largely on UK time, I was wide awake at 5am this morning. In fact, I hadn't really slept well at all last night. The room was really cold, infused with orange light from the street - and there were lights on in the house too, shining through the glass pane above my door. Anyway I was up and out by 6.40am and breakfasting in town by 7am. It all meant I arrived at NASA as soon as the doors opened, and was able to get through three thick public affairs files before lunch. As on my previous visits, Liz Suckow and Colin Fries were fantastic. They just know so much - and what they don't know, they know how to find - and quickly.

I spent lunch in the National Air and Space Museum - my irregular homage to the ballistic engineering and frontier technology that I still find so fascinating.

The afternoon was spent sifting through Bob Sherrod's files on the astronaut's Life magazine contract. Depending on which source you prefer, it was either the best or worst thing NASA did in the early days of the manned space programme. Even after eight hours of reading it up, down and sideways, I'm still not sure. I'll need to re-read and reflect to get my thoughts in order.

I had a final half hour in the library where the team had pulled a really helpful list of secondary source material for me including a couple of theses I'd never even heard of. I wish I had more time, but a bit of frantic photocopying definitely helped - and the new sources are a real bonus.

It has been a beautiful day here. Really cold, but wonderfully clear and blue. As is my wont, I walked everywhere, so even though it's just gone 7pm, I'm totally cream crackered now.

Anyway, National Archives in the morning, before the train journey to Connecticut.

Dear Diary - I'm back

So, I entirely failed to keep up my daily diary covering my later days in Abilene and the return to the UK....which all happened over a fortnight ago.

The main reason was, as has happened on previous research trips, the final couple of days assumed a new level of intensity. I had more specific information to find - and indeed found much of what I was looking for.

Suddenly seven hours in an archive wasn't enough, and my evenings were spent reading around my subject and trying to pull all my thoughts into order.

I headed home on a high - only to have my wings filled with flak at the Brunel Research Presentation event on my return.

My head was still filled with the connections from Bikini Atoll through the U2 and Corona to NASA - but I didn't articulate those linkages particularly well, and was rather forensically pulled apart by the great and good of my department.

I'm confident the hypothesis works and that I have the evidence to support it. The next few months will be a matter of unpicking all that evidence from the documents i collected and beginning to develop a coherent narrative.

Back in the ol' routine

Things I've learned today:

• Researching in a Presidential archive is better second time round - I really enjoyed my day's research today and got much more out of it than on my last visit to Abilene. This time round, rather than just grabbing anything related to 'space', I know what I'm after. I'm looking for links that draw the key 'helping hands' together in the Eisenhower/space policy story. And, after about five boxes of Bissell material, I've teased out quite a lot of stuff that will be useful in the thesis.
• It's impossible to look at research materials for eight hours straight. This kind of research demands breaks - a walk to the local cafe (great for overhearing gossip) at lunchtime; a walk to the local store to buy a drink. Otherwise, I stop seeing seeing what's in front of me when I'm reading documents late in the day.
• It's better to do fewer boxes thoroughly than try to cover everything in the library. Last time round I 'covered' 18 boxes one  day. Today I did five - and got far more out of them.
• Don't talk religion or politics around this town. The people are wonderfully warm and welcoming  here - but I don't think there are too many sharing my liberal views.