“What we have in mind for that agency,” McElroy told lawmakers, was an entity that would handle “all satellite and space research and development projects” but also have “a function that extends beyond the immediate foreseeable weapons systems of the current or near future.” McElroy was looking far ahead. America needed an agency that could visualize the nation’s needs before those needs yet existed, he said. An agency that could research and develop “the vast weapons systems of the future.”
