How NASA came to be

How NASA came to be

NASA was preceded for 43 active years by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Before there was NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) there was 43 years of NACA (official history here), the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. It was created quickly as a response to the outbreak of World War I to coordinate academia, industry and projects related to the war. Similar bureaus in Europe were used as models.

Beginning business without the “National” part of its title, the Aeronautics and Space Administration commenced in December of 1912 when the National Aerodynamical Laboratory Commission was appointed by President William Howard Taft. However, organic legislation for that committee was rejected one month later.

But the effort continued and the cause was promptly adopted by the Smithsonian Institution’s secretary, Charles D. Walcott. He successfully got another bill before Congress, one “to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution, and to determine the problems which should be experimentally attacked and to discuss their solution and their application to practical questions.”

The actual legislation creating NACA (as well as its $5,000 annual budget) passed almost undetected, as a rider on a Naval Appropriation bill. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics into law on the last day of the 63rd Congress. None of the 12 members of the committee received compensation. See Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA].

During this very busy time in the United States the Panama Canal had opened and Robert Goddard began his ground-breaking rocketry experiments. Albert Einstein completed his general theory of relativity and William Sanger, the estranged husband of the author of a popular book on birth control, was jailed. Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call across the Atlantic Ocean and Henry Ford’s company produced its one millionth automobile.

Decades later, after much scientific inquiry, wars and depression, the predecessor of NASA, NACA, remained very active. Then came 1957, and the first artificial satellite to be launched from Earth, Sputnik 1 from the Soviet Union, was now in orbit. Having been beaten into space, Americans were fearful and President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the nation on television. He soon thereafter spoke openly of a civilian space effort.

A few weeks later, a Vanguard TV-3 rocket rose approximately three feet from a launch pad in Florida before dropping back to terra firma and exploding fantastically. Before a joint session of Congress four months later, Eisenhower called for a civilian aeronautics and space agency. In a day when bipartisanship actually had some teeth, Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Styles Bridges introduced enabling legislation for NASA to the U.S. Senate. It was in June 1957 that the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 passed Congress.

Five facilities were transferred to the new agency called NASA and the agency that came before it, NACA, went away on October 1, 1958. An executive order from President Eisenhower was issued, transferring space projects and appropriations to NASA from other programs. On its first day of business, NASA had a budget of $340 million and 8,240 employees.

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