It is large enough.

Why The Missing Documentation Is Also Part Of The Story

There is a way of thinking about classified history that treats the classification as simply an obstacle — a wall between the researcher and the truth, to be circumvented or mourned.

There is another way of thinking about it that is more accurate and more interesting.

The classification of Mary Ross’s most advanced work is itself part of the history of American aerospace and American national security in the Cold War era.

It reflects the specific conditions under which the most consequential technical work of the period was done — the conditions of strategic competition, the culture of secrecy, the institutional structures that kept advanced projects compartmented and kept the people who worked on them from discussing what they had done.