When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957 American leaders panicked. If the Commies could launch a beeper the size of a basketball into orbit then thermonuclear weapons the size of a greyhound bus to the U.S. mainland could not be far behind. It seemed that American rockets of the day exploded upon launch or shortly thereafter. A "missile gap" was created overnight wherein the Soviets were vastly ahead of the United States and our annihilation would soon follow. NASA was created to address this issue and suck money from taxpayers exhausted by two decades of war and unwilling to give more money to the War Department, the Defense Department's honest name.