National Aeronautics and Space Administration is created

(WHTM) — In the beginning, there was NACA.

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was founded on March 3, 1915. It was a United States federal agency devoted to aeronautical research.

For over forty years it engaged in research and development, testing the latest air design ideas in wind tunnels, and constantly refining and improving its understanding of aerodynamics. The staff was allowed, and indeed encouraged, to pursue unauthorized “bootleg” projects, as long as they weren’t too far out in left field.

During World War II, their breakthroughs in airfoil design, and engine superchargers that allowed high-altitude flying, made them “the force behind our air supremacy.”

As is often the case with advanced engineering, their ideas sometimes had unexpected uses, such as an aviation air intake duct that is still used today in automobiles.

Following the war, NACA took the lead in jet and rocket research. With the Army Air Force (soon to be the Air Force) they ran the X-1 rocket plane program in which Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.

They also developed the high-energy propellants for rockets and were preparing for the challenge of Project Vanguard, the launching of an artificial satellite for the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958).

Then the Soviets beat the United States to the punch. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, the first successful artificial satellite. This triggered great concern and alarm that the US was slipping behind technologically, threatening national security. (This was dubbed the “Sputnik Crisis”, which eventually developed into the “space race” of the 1960s. But that’s a story for another time.)

The situation was not helped on December 6. 1957, when an American Vanguard Rocket carrying America’s first satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral, traveled less than four feet and blew up. (The satellite survived, landed in some bushes and started transmitting. It’s now in the care of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum).

The US Congress demanded swift and immediate and swift action. But as he proved in World War II, President Dwight Eisenhower was not one to panic over a temporary setback. He had to balance the interests of scientists pursuing basic research, businesses looking for new opportunities, and the military, tasked with matching Soviet progress. There was also John Q. Public to consider; people had suddenly become intensely interested in space exploration, but many were concerned the Final Frontier might become “militarized”, with orbiting satellites armed with nuclear weapons ready to rain atomic death on Earth.

Ultimately it was decided put military space tech in the hands of the newly created Advanced Research Projects Agency-ARPA. Among other things, ARPA created the ARPAnet, which later became the Internet. You may have heard of it.

As for non-military space exploration, it was decided a new agency was needed. On July 29, 1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The entirety of NACA was folded into this new agency, including its employees, facilities, and budget. NASA officially began operations on October 1, 1958, and has managed to keep itself busy ever since.