Shoots Federal Spending into Orbit. After meeting with a group of top scientists on 15 October, Eisenhower appointed Dr. James Killian, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as the first presidential science adviser and created the President's Science Advisory Committee. Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) to encourage a new generation of Americans to study science in college. Under increasing pressure spending on aerospace soared. The cost of military R&D stood at $822 million in 1950, but a decade later it topped $2,196 billion. Total federal R&D in aerospace rose from $934 million in 1950 to $2.4 billion in 1960.

The Space Race.

In December 1957 an attempt to put a satellite into orbit with the navy's Vangard rocket failed when the rocket exploded. On 31 January 1958, the United States finally launched a satellite, Explorer I, on a modified Jupiter-C rocket. The launch, however, turned out to be something of...