Space Organizations Part 1: NASA - Peaceful Versus Military Purposes

The new agency consolidated the resources of several government organizations, chiefly the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The NACA was originally named the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics when it was formed in 1915 to "supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight, with a view of their practical solution." At the time World War I was raging in Europe. German zeppelins had dropped bombs on Britain earlier that year, ushering in a new means of waging war.

Although the NACA's formation was driven by war, the agency also conducted aircraft research and set policy and regulations for commercial and civil aviation. In 1926 the Air Commerce Act was passed freeing the NACA of regulatory responsibilities. The agency turned its full attention to aeronautical research and development at its Langley Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia and later Ames Aeronautical Laboratory at Moffett Field, California and a testing facility at Wallops Island, Virginia. NACA research and development benefited both military and civilian aviation.

On October 14, 1947, Air Force Captain Charles (Chuck) Yeager made the first supersonic flight in a rocket-powered research plane developed by the Air Force and the NACA. The plane was named the X-1. NACA played an integral role in developing and testing an entire X-series of experimental aircraft. In 1952 the NACA began researching the challenges of space flight. Two years later the agency recommended that the U.S. Air Force develop a manned research vehicle to travel beyond earth's atmosphere.

In October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite. A few months later a private space organization called the American Rocket Society urged President Eisenhower to establish a new agency to assume responsibility for all U.S. nonmilitary space projects. The new agency was to pursue "broad cultural, scientific, and commercial objectives" and be independent of the Department of Defense. The director of the NACA provided a counter-recommendation that the new agency operate under joint control of the NACA, the Department of Defense, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Science Foundation in support of military and nonmilitary projects.

In January 1958 President Eisenhower wrote Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin and proposed that the two countries "agree that outer space should be used only for peaceful purposes." The Soviet Premier refused to agree to the proposal unless the U.S. ceased all nuclear weapons testing and disbanded all its military bases on foreign soil. These conditions were unacceptable to the United States.

In July 1958 President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 turning over all nonmilitary space projects to NASA. The new agency absorbed the personnel and facilities of the NACA, which ceased to exist.

NASA began with approximately 8,000 employees and an annual budget of $100 million. About half of these employees were civilian personnel working on space projects at the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. They included the rocketry team of Wernher Von Braun. Von Braun was a German rocket scientist who moved to the United States following World War II to build America's rocket program. He was to play a major role at NASA.

T. Keith Glennan served as the agency's first Administrator. Under his direction NASA took control of the DOD's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and parts of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. NASA also took over several satellite and lunar probe programs being operated by the Air Force and the DOD's Advanced Research Projects Agency. The military retained control over reconnaissance satellites, ballistic missiles, and a handful of other DOD space projects that were then in the research stage.

Historians say that President Eisenhower felt that NASA's space program should be "small in scale and limited in its objectives."