In a less urgent scenario, NASA personnel might have taken a more NACA-like approach to the problem of space by conducting a careful, measured investigation of all possible options for space travel and recommending the ones with the greatest long-term potential. There were those within NASA who believed, and would continue to believe for decades into the future, that the government’s decision to put all its chips on a short-term strategy to beat the Soviets came at the cost of the opportunity to turn humans into a truly spacefaring species.
