Organizing for Space: Creating a Trinitarian American Space Program - A Historical Primer

The space age began on 4 October 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik. Within four years the United States built upon preexisting foundations and created three separate space programs designed to meet the two primary challenges which presidential-level decision makers believed existed in the space arena: gathering strategic-level intelligence information from space on the Soviet Union and its allies, and garnering prestige on the international stage vis- -vis the Soviet Union. But why did the US federal government operate and fund three separate and distinct space programs: a multifaceted and multifunctional military space program to fulfill a plethora of DOD requirements using a wide variety of orbital platforms, including some types of surveillance; a civilian and mostly scientific effort under the aegis of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) which has often focused on the prestige projects; and a hybrid civilian-military National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) undertaking imagery collection for intelligence purposes and operating at the highest levels of classification?