Space Policy Edition: How NASA Came to Be

Happy 60th, NASA. In celebration of the space agency’s birthday, we do the audio equivalent of pulling out NASA’s baby book and explore its origin story. Though legislation creating the space agency developed in the wake of Sputnik, it was built upon a rapidly changing relationship of the government to fundamental research and development in the decade before. We follow the threads of what makes NASA NASA, as well as how, in its early years, NASA looked quite different than the agency we know today. We also discuss the current bill that partially funds the U.S. government and provides temporary funding for NASA and other agencies through December of 2018.

Related Reading and References:

• National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958
• How the U.S. Space Act Came to Be, Glen Wilson, staff for the Senate Special Committee on Space and Aeronautics in 1957, presented at the symposium, “The Legislative Origins of the U. S. Space Program," 1992.
• Here are the NASA programs that could suffer from a funding delay (planetary.org)
• Trump signs bill that averts government shutdown, sets up fight over border wall, Washington Post
• NASA: 60 years and counting (nasa.gov)
• NASA then & now (planetary.org)