THE ADMINISTRATION: Battle for Brains

President Eisenhower’s first official act after he got back to Washington from his Georgia vacation last week was to sign an executive order ending an intramural battle for control of space-research laboratories and brains. The battlers: the Army and the two-month-old, civilian-bossed National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Against bitter Army opposition the fledgling NASA had been trying to wrest from the Army 1) the $55 million Laltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory in suburban Los Angeles, with its staff of 2,300, and 2) the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Huntsville, Ala., with its priceless space-scientist team headed by Rocketeer Wernher von Braun.

Under last week’s Ike-ordered compromise, NASA got the Caltech lab but the Army kept ABMA, though Von Braun & Co. will have to take on some NASA projects. Army spacemen could scarcely hide their grins of relief. NASA’s boss, Dr. T. Keith Glennan, sounded a little disappointed, but he emphatically announced that he had “no designs” on other military space-research facilities Said he resignedly: “I doubt that I can go through this again.”