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Special Message to the Congress Recommending Amendments to the National Aeronautics and Space Act

January 14, 1960

To the Congress of the United States:

I recommend that the Congress enact certain amendments to the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 to clarify management responsibilities and to streamline organizational arrangements concerning the national program of space exploration.

Prior to establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Defense had been responsible for all of the nation's space activities, including those of a nonmilitary nature such as the Vanguard satellite project designed for United States participation in the scientific activities of the International Geophysical Year. When the new agency came into existence, with the duty of carrying out a program of space exploration, it became necessary to transfer the nonmilitary projects, with their supporting facilities and personnel, to the new agency from the Department of Defense. The Act empowered the President to make such transfers. I exercised this authority on October 1, 1958, when I transferred to NASA responsibility for Project Vanguard and certain other space-related projects previously under the direction of the Department of Defense. I exercised it for the second time on December 3, 1958, when I directed the transfer to NASA of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, California. And today I am transmitting a report advising the Congress of my intention to transfer to NASA the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. The authority granted to the President has thus been used to center in NASA direction of all of the nation's nonmilitary space activities, and to provide NASA with the facilities and personnel needed to carry out this task.

The Act, however, contains a number of provisions which tend to obscure the responsibility of NASA for planning and directing a national program of space exploration and peaceful space activity. For example, there is inherent in it the concept--which I believe to be incorrect--of a single "comprehensive program" of space activities embracing both civilian and military activities, and it implies that a multiplicity of unnamed agencies might have responsibility for portions of such a program.

In an effort to deal with these problems, the Act established a scheme of organization of considerable complexity. First, Section 201 (e) of the Act imposes upon the President an unusual degree of personal responsibility for developing this "comprehensive" space program and of surveying its operations in detail. Second, the Act established the National Aeronautics and Space Council and gave it the sole function of advising the President with respect to the performance of his statutory duties. Third, it made provision for a Civilian-Military Liaison Committee, which was given no other duty than providing a channel of advice and consultation between NASA and the Department of Defense.

I have become convinced by the experience of the fifteen months since NASA was established that the Act needs to be amended so as to place responsibility directly and unequivocally in one agency, NASA, for planning and managing a national program of nonmilitary space activities. This requires, first of all, elimination of those provisions which reflect the concept of a single program embracing military as well as nonmilitary space activities. In actual practice, a single civil-military program does not exist and is in fact unattainable; and the statutory concept of such a program has caused confusion. The military utilization of space, and the research and development effort directed toward that end, are integral parts of the total defense program of the United States. Space projects in the Department of Defense are undertaken only to meet military requirements. The Department of Defense has ample authority outside the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 to conduct research and development work on space-related weapons systems and to utilize space for defense purposes; and nothing in the Act should derogate from that authority.

I am also convinced that it is no longer desirable to retain in the Act those provisions which impose duties of planning and detailed surveying upon the President. We have come to the end of a transitional period during which responsibilities for a broad range of activities were being shifted to NASA from the Department of Defense and NASA's capabilities for discharging those responsibilities were being developed. From now on it should be made clear that NASA, like the Department of Defense in the military field, is responsible in the first instance for the formulation and execution of its own program, subject, of course, to the authority and direction of the President.

With the repeal of the statutory enumeration of Presidential duties, the National Aeronautics and Space Council should be abolished, since its only function is to advise the President in the performance of those duties. The repeal would not, however, affect another provision of the Act which provides that the Administrator of NASA and the Secretary of Defense may refer to the President for decision those matters concerning their respective areas of responsibility on which they are unable to reach agreement. This provision should be retained in the law.

The Civilian-Military Liaison Committee should also be eliminated. The statute should go no further than requiring that NASA and the Department of Defense advise, consult, and keep each other fully informed with respect to space activities within their respective jurisdictions; it should not prescribe the specific means of doing so.

Finally, the Act should contain safeguards against undesirable duplication by NASA and the Department of Defense in developing the major tools of space exploration. Although a civilian space exploration program is clearly distinguishable from the military utilization of space for defense purposes, both NASA and the Department of Defense may have similar or identical requirements for launch vehicles used to propel and guide spacecraft into orbit about the earth or toward other celestial bodies. I propose that the Act be amended to provide that the President shall sign responsibility for the development of each new launch vehicle, regardless of its intended use, to either NASA or the Department of Defense. Responsibility for development of the new vehicle should in no way determine responsibility for its use in space activities.

Amended as I have recommended, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 would become the organic act of an independent civilian agency having a well defined statutory responsibility for which it is answerable to both the President and to Congress.

I have requested the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to transmit to the Congress draft legislation incorporating the foregoing recommendations, and I urge that they be enacted by the Congress at the earliest possible date.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Special Message to the Congress Recommending Amendments to the National Aeronautics and Space Act Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/234146

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