NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was established in 1915. With a budget of $5,000 per year, its charter was "to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight." It evolved over 43 years, stimulated by the engineering challenges of two World Wars.

NACA emerged at a time of increased global technological development. The First World War was escalating in Europe and biplanes were being used frequently for reconnaissance missions over enemy lines. In 1915 Henry Ford produced his millionth car and Alexander Graham Bell made the first transcontinental call from New York to San Francisco.

Construction of NACA’s first facility, the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, began in 1917 and by 1922 Langley's Variable Density Tunnel (VDT), began operating. Models of wings and varieties of prototype aircraft were sealed in the airtight chamber and air was compressed "to the same extent as the model being tested." The Variable Density Tunnel experiments at Langley provided valuable data for the theory of aerofoils and the subsequent shaping of wings. Away from the laboratory, NACA also ran a program of full-scale flight tests. One early project used wind tunnel data for a model of the Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" and compared it with information derived during a series of flight tests to investigate lift and drag.

The early "Jenny" flights also identified the need for specially-trained test pilots and Langley pioneered the concept of training fliers as test pilot engineers.

When British engineer Frank Whittle successfully designed the jet engine in 1942, NACA was blamed for America’s failure to achieve the goal, along with swept wing and supersonic aircraft designs.

America’s first supersonic plane, the Bell X-1, surged over the California desert in a streak of orange in 1949. Captain Chuck Yeager piloted the bullet shaped plane having nicknamed it "Glamorous Glennis" after his wife. The X-1’s mission was to investigate speed just below and above the speed of sound. Yeager reached a speed of about 700 miles per hour (Mach 1.06) at an altitude of 43,000 feet, proving that humans could fly safely beyond the speed of sound.

The 1930s and 40s saw a growth in new technologies inspired by the enormous military expansion prior to and during World War II. Much of NACA's work at this time was directly related to military aviation and with the end of the war came new divisions in the global political landscape. The threat posed by the new enemy, Soviet Communism, was defined by nuclear capabilities and intercontinental rockets.

The foundations of these rocket technologies were built upon German science. At the end of the Second World War, America captured rocket genius Wernher von Braun and many of his colleagues, and moved them to the US as part of Project Paper Clip. Dr. von Braun masterminded the terrifying wartime V-2 rockets. Making use of von Braun’s knowledge, NACA devoted more and more of its facilities, budget, and expertise to missile research in the mid- and late 1950s.

In 1957, the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit. This single event galvanised America into action.

By the end of its 43 years in aviation research, NACA had 8000 staff, three research centres and two stations with an annual budget of $100 million. This entire collective was combined with Project Vanguard from the Naval Research Laboratory, the Army’s lunar probe and rocketry programs and the Air Force’s F-1 rocket motor programme. With additional funding of over $100 million, these separate research facilities all joined to became NASA.