Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geodynamics Series, Volume 24. There are times in the history of a science when the evolving technology has been combined with a singleness of purpose to make possible the next great step. For space geodesy the decade of the 1980s was one of those times. Initiated in the early 1980s, the NASA Crustal Dynamics Project (CDP), a global venture of unprecedented proportions, exploited new technologies to confirm and refine tectonic theories and to advance geodynamics. The highlights of the efforts of scientists and engineers from some 30 countries are contained in the 54 papers collected in three volumes which are dedicated to the memory of Edward A. (Ted) Flinn, the former Chief Scientist of the NASA Geodynamics Program.