Blasts from the Past: A look at stories from the pages of National Defense as NDIA and the magazine approach their 100th anniversary.

National Defense no longer covers civilian space programs including agencies such as NASA, but that was not the case in the 1960s when it was known as Ordnance Magazine. The American Ordnance Association and its members were closely involved in the space race and hardly an issue was published during the decade where NASA's launch vehicles and spacecraft weren't mentioned.

There were monthly columns of news briefs devoted to the space program, and plenty of ads touting participation in it from the likes of U.S. Steel, LTV Aerospace Corp., American Electronics, Eagle-Picher Industries, Bell Aerosystems Co., and Dorsey Trailers, which advertised "trailers for the space age."

The legendary Wernher von Braun, the father of U.S. rocket technology and space science, contributed a...