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...rapidly evolving private industry. In 1957, however, all that changed. That was the year the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik, the first Earth satellite - and in the process, scared the daylights out of the U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower acted quickly, dusting off NACA and renaming it NASA - for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. On October 1, 1958, the new agency officially went into business...
...lean and efficient operation for what had the potential to become a very big agency. But there was a very expensive exception to the business plan. Once NASA actually began flying human beings in space, it would need a place from which to run those missions. Cape Canaveral was the sensible site; no reason not to operate your missions from the same place you launch them. Vice President Lyndon Johnson, however, didn?t see things that way. If federal space goodies were going to be handed out, he wanted his native Texas to get its share. And as de facto...
...that reason, the Manned Spacecraft Center - better known to the public as Mission Control and now formally renamed the Johnson Space Center - was built in Houston. The port city quickly became a space city, bringing in lots of people, jobs and notoriety. Ultimately, Houstonians would live to see the name of their town become the first word in two of the most evocative quotes of the space age: "Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed," and "Houston, we've had a problem...
...their assignments. JPL handles most of the unmanned missions. Ames takes on what JPL can't, and often competitively bids against its downcoast colleagues. Huntsville focuses on rockets and propulsion systems. Canaveral still launches and Houston still takes over the moment the engine bells clear the tower. The Goddard Space Flight Center in Beltsville, Md., studies space science, investigating the chemistry and physics of the Earth, the solar system and the universe, most notably with the aid of the Hubble Space Telescope...
...last few years, NASA had seemed safe from significant budget cuts, as the agency is preparing to mothball its space shuttles and embark on a new program to put astronauts back on the moon and later Mars. But with the markets melting down and a new administration headed to Washington in January, nothing is certain. The cosmos was here long before us and will be here long after us. Whether we continue to explore it in the brief flash of time our species has is a choice we have yet to make...