One hundred years of flight is quite a historical achievement. We
have progressed from a 57-second flight over the dunes of Kitty
Hawk to the over 25-year journeys of Voyager 1 and 2 beyond Pluto's
orbit. During that time span, in perhaps the most awe-inspiring
aerospace accomplishment after Wilbur and Orville Wright's historic
flight, the first humans, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael
Collins, flew to the Moon. Sixty-six years after the flight at
Kitty Hawk, people all across our home planet Earth paused to watch
on television as American astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped out of
the Lunar Lander onto the surface of the Moon. As we pause to
celebrate the centennial of flight from our perspective in the
early part of the twenty-first century, we can look back over the
countless contributions of many individuals to flight. The first
person who looked to the sky, observed birds in flight, and dreamed
of humans soaring through the air is lost in history. Recounted in
these pages are the stories of a few aviation pioneers and the
contributions of the men and women of Langley Research Center. We
celebrate not only their accomplishments, but also their
perseverance and dedication. A Congressional mandate issued in 1915
formed the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). In
1958, Congress mandated the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) from the NACA. Both the NACA and NASA were
created in response to the need for the United States to catch up
to existing technological advances. Although the United States was
the birthplace of controlled, powered flight, by World War I, we
were technologically far behind Germany, France, and Great Britain.
The NACA was created to study the problems of flight "with a view
to their practical solution." In 1958 when the former Soviet Union
launched the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, the
United States again found itself behind technologically, Congress
passed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Act of
1958 "to provide for research into problems of flight within and
outside the Earth's atmosphere." Today through partnerships with
industry, universities and colleges, and other government agencies,
NASA continues to conduct scientific research and exploration and
to develop cutting-edge technologies to advance national leadership
in aeronautics and space activities. Through painstaking diligent
research, careful examination of data, and thoughtful formulation
of theories, NASA employees are pushing the extent of our knowledge
of aeronautics and astronautics, and many other branches of science
as well. Building on an extraordinary record of accomplishment, the
people of NASA continue to develop revolutionary technologies that
contribute significantly to the safety, reliability, efficiency,
and speed of air transportation and advance the knowledge and
understanding of our home planet, Earth.
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