The Birth of NASA

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After World War II, the Army, Navy, and Air Force carried out separate missile programs for many years. This resulted in much of the research being done three times, and as a result this was very inefficient. The Navy wanted to develop missiles fired underwater from submarines, which could extend reach to intercontinental ranges. The Air Force concentrated more of its research on long range bombardment and JATO units. The Army meanwhile saw missiles as an extension of artillery and it argued that it should be given control of long range missile developments on this basis. Because these three different powers were trying to compete with each other, there was much time, money, and effort wasted in this. It was this counter-productive competition that led to the birth of NASA.

Operation paperclip was the code name for the Army's rocket program. For this, the Army hired von Braun and the other Peenmunde scientists to pick up their work where they left off in Germany. At first they worked on captured V-2 rockets, modifying them to collect data on the upper atmosphere, but soon they were developing their own rockets. Using these V-2's, they built on the technology and actually reached the edge of space. None of the rockets orbited Earth, however, they just passed through space. Altitudes of over two hundred miles, well outside the atmosphere, were reached when the V-2 rockets were made to carry smaller American "Wac-corpral" rockets, which fired when the V2 reached its peak altitude.

Each of the three branches of United States military all made some progress in rocketry, and all roughly paralleled each other. For the most part, rocket technology made steady increases in ability, size, range, altitude, and technology in the years between World War II and before NASA. Then, United States intelligence discovered that the Russians had developed a large program for ICBMs. Russia, who recently detonated their first atomic weapons, now had the means to deliver nuclear weapons to the United States. This, together with the fact that the Russian rocket program was probably further ahead than the American's, meant that America had to develop their missiles much more quickly.

The Army and Navy did work jointly for a time to develop a medium range ballistic missile. This program ultimately produced the Jupiter missiles, the largest American missiles at the time. These Jupiter missiles were developed as a modification of what was known as the "Redstone" rocket, developed by the Army's Redstone arsenal. The Jupiter rockets were theoretically able to place a satellite in orbit, and on its first flight it reached an altitude of almost seven hundred miles.

In an early effort to consolidate the rocket efforts, the United States transferred the Jupiter projects from the Army to the Air Force. As the Air Force worked on the Jupiter rockets, the used one to launch a payload of two monkeys (named table and Baker) seems read hundred miles up above the ground. They were one of the first biological payloads to reach space.

Although the Army had been stripped of its ability to research rockets, the Navy still did work on their own long range rocket, the Polaris. This rocket was designed to carry a small nuclear warhead a long distance and to be fired from a submarine.

While the Navy was developing the Polaris missile, America gave top priority to the Atlas missile program. This program was intended to, and succeeded in, develop America's first ICBMs. This Atlas program was headed by the Air Force, and completed its first successful test in 1958. on it first test, it reached a range of 2,500 miles. After this first successful Atlas, the Atlas A, America developed several more Atlases, from Atlas B to Atlas F. Other missiles developed during these years included Thor, Poseidon, Titan, and the Minuteman.

Despite these successes, America was still wasting valuable resources because several different organizations were independently developing rockets. The President's scientific advisory committee realized this and recommended that a central agency should be created to lead the scientific exploration of space, manned and unmanned. This agency would be 9 military, but still would develop Sciences and Technology for military purposes. President Eisenhower endorsed this recommendation and sent it to Congress on the second of April 1950 draw and the National Aeronautics and Space acts became law at the end of July. T. Keith, president of the Space Institute of Technology, was appointed to be the first administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA for short.

NASA slowly took over the nation's rocket research programs. First it took over the National Advisory Committee for aeronautics, a committee created before World War One to research aviation. This was the first of many organizations absorbed by NASA, and soon NASA took over the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from the Army. The next major addition to NASA came on 14 January 1960, when the presence transferred the Army's ballistic missile agency to NASA's control. This transfer included Werner von Braun, and the rocket research team from Peenmunde. Soon after this, NASA received a budget of almost one billion dollars, which was approved by President Eisenhower after he visited the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (of which von Braun was the director)

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