Impatient with their chimera’s failures, Eisenhower and Congress sought to establish a single space agency. Several organizations, namely JPL, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) lobbied to become that agency.At the time, NACA had three labs and 8,000 employees, but space science was only 35 percent of their work. The committee’s director, Hugh Dryden, asked its young scientists if they thought it was worth the gamble to metamorphose NACA into a space agency. With their resounding yes, Dryden drafted a conservative proposal:NACA would double its staff, create a new space research lab, and accelerate its flight program. It would coordinate projects between the Department of Defense, National Science Foundation (NSF) and academic institutions.However, after Dryden dismissed the importance of manned space flight and of racing the Soviets, Congress converted NACA into NASA — a singular, managing space agency, headed not by Dryden (who’d stay on as Deputy Administrator), but T. Keith Glennan.As this was all unfolding, Dryden was also working with Hugh Odishaw of the National Academy of Science. Odishaw was worried that the new NASA might be guided too much by military or administrative priorities, rather than what the scientific community deemed important. So, together, the formed the Space Science Board to advise NASA.On July 4, Berkner sent a telegram “to hundreds and hundreds of scientists asking ‘What would you do with access to space?’” says DeVorkin. Twelve committees screened the flood of proposals.One such committee, the Physics of Fields and Particles in Space Committee, was headed by John Simpson. And on October 24, in a report on proposed “Long-Range Plans” for NASA, NASA, Simpson’s committee recommended the first solar probe:“Among longer range probes, it is of first preference that a probe carrying radiation measuring and magnetometer equipment be directed toward the Sun, penetrating inside the orbit of Mercury, if possible.”But with Dryden gone, the board had lost its seat on NASA’s shoulder. So, it petitioned Abe Silverstein, who served both on The Board and as NASA’s Space Flight Director, to lend a liaison. Silverstein sent Homer Newell, his head of Space Science.Through the IGY, Newell had history with Space Science Board brass like Odishaw, James Van Allen and Russell Porter. However, when Newell discovered the board had already screened over 200 mission proposals for NASA, it kicked off a love-hate relationship that would shape the space agency, and see many proposals benched.NASA was already dealing with a culture clash between conservative NACA engineers and the bright-eyed scientists brought in from the Naval Research Lab and Goddard Space Flight Center, Agency officials also weren’t happy with the science advisory board, which they found presumptuous.The idea of a solar probe to touch the Sun’s corona was lost in the fracas.