The first Get Away Special payload and how it grew

In October of 1976, NASA initiated its Get Away Special (GAS) Program to provide space flight experiment opportunities aboard the Space Shuttle for groups with limited means and little or no prior experience in the field. The author describes the project established at Utah State University (USU) in 1977 to develop and fly ten experiments in the first Get Away Special canister (G-001). That project has subsequently evolved into a multiinstitutional program, involving hundreds of university students together with dozens of aerospace and electronics companies and several government agencies