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I was inclined to dismiss your question with a "go look it up,"
until I tried to find the answer on the NASA
website. What
a mess!
So here's the answer, taken from this NASA page:
NASA was founded in 1958 by the National
Aeronautics and Space Act (NASA) in response to two things:
- The Russians launched Sputnik, showing that they had the
technology to launch the heavy nuclear weapons of the time on rockets,
while humiliating the competing U.S. Army and Navy rocketry labs.
- The competition between Army and Navy, while in the
best tradition of
sports, was resulting in duplication of effort. Congress set up NASA to
oversee and coordinate American non-military space research.
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