In 1958, the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik triggered a rapid overhaul of American science policy. Congress converted the existing National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) into NASA, created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (later DARPA), and passed the National Defense Education Act, which poured federal funding into STEM education across the country.
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The agency now known as DARPA originally launched as ARPA, with 'Defense' added to the name later at the military's request.
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1:45:37Huge, huge deal. 2000 Nobel Prize in physics >> basis for so many things that we now take for granted today. a 1958. This is one I always love. The Sputnik crisis and the mobilization of American science through NASA, DARPA, and DEA. This is again coming back to these political and legal foundations. People might be confused about why they're included in this list, but a lot of these things would not be possible without these mechanisms of the bureaucracy around it actually enabling it to exist. >> Exactly. and Sputnik was a wake-up call for that bureaucracy. Okay. Now, the
1:46:17Russians had an artificial moon around the earth that was going over continental US, right? We talk you talk a lot about airspace sovereignty. Well, space sovereignty is no longer a thing because of 1958 and the Sputnik launch. And um Congress and the American public were like, "Yo, we need to get back on board." So um Congress establishes the national advisory committee. So the national advisory committee on aeronautics the NASA that we and Naka that we were talking about earlier that becomes now NASA. It also establishes advanced research projects agency DARPA and it establishes the national defense
1:46:58education act and it pours an unprecedented it pours a lot of funding into just educating the American students about STEM. STEM becomes a focus of the American education system all thanks to the Russians launching Sputnik. >> Thank you. Thank you for that. Uh what Privette? Not Privette. Uh uh is that Swedish? That might be Swedish. But I also just want to know I think you know it started as ARPA the advanced research project agency before they put the D in front of it because the military was like we like this defense defense. Let's just >> Are we going to call it WARPA now? Because it's the Department of War. So it's no longer defense. >> Oh my god.
1:47:39>> So when are they going to change it to WARPA? Um so I think actually we should