Reply to post: Re: What an achievement

They've only gone and bloody done it! NASA, SpaceX send two fellas off to the International Space Station

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: What an achievement

> Nazi projects

Well, to be fair, the Nazis never had the intention to go to space. It's von Braun who wanted to go to space, and opportunistically invented the ballistic missile to get the huge funding he needed to perfect his rocket engines from "works occasionally" to "almost reliable".

So the continuation of the actual Nazi project was the Army Ballistic Missile Agency's ICBMs, not NACA/NASA's space rockets. NACA was initially created during WWI as an agency supposed to do aeronautical research (improve planes). When space became an issue in the 50ies, it seemed logical to give that task to NACA, which was renamed NASA.

Politically motivated changes from national priority to annoying afterthought explain why its efficiency has varied a lot since its creation... Yet, many of NASA's critics don't know (or chose to forget) the amount of stuff NASA has helped inventing or perfecting (obviously in the domain of aeronautics, but not only). There is a Wikipedia page listing some of that.

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