How would the space program be different if any of those other options were taken instead of giving the space program to NACA? How would it affect the space race?
NASA wasn't created until mid-1958. The initial solution in the aftermath of Sputnik had been ARPA, which struggled from its birth to make headway against the ambitions of the Army and Air Force, both of whom were keenly interested in being the principal agency responsible for as much of space-related endeavors as possible. While there were a multitude of reasons why Ike wanted a civilian space program, that the services -- and the Air Force in particular -- had not covered themselves in glory in the immediate aftermath of Sputnik was one of them.
In many ways, the Space Race was ultimately a bureaucratic fight between a variety agencies in Washington over who would have primacy. The Navy had some ambitious ideas that never went anywhere (RIP HATV, magnificent mess that you were) and by 1958 was out of the running due to the Vanguard TV-3 debacle. But through NRL would remain a major player in the space sciences and satellites, with the Transit satellite navigation system being a testament to that. The Army was still dreaming about Moonbases. Or at the very least Werner von Braun and Redstone were, and that was formidable asset. And even when Redstone was transferred to NASA and became MSFC, the Army -- like the Navy -- continued to be active in satellite programs throughout the Sixties, especially regarding telecommunications satellites. As it was Army-related contracts that produced the Courier satellites. It also produced ADVENT, the less of which is said the better, given
just how large of a dumpster fire that ended up being. And then there was the USAF, that also wanted Moonbases -- and gave us the glorious OG SLS to get there -- as well as Dynasoar, Blue Gemini, and MOL. ...all of which ultimately fell by the wayside, but it was not preordained that would occur, even if MOL is kind of doomed from a practicality perspective. That didn't stop the USAF from continuing to want a piece of the space pie and why, while there was no official Blue Shuttle program, you absolute find the idea in the margins of a lot the USAF's participation in the Shuttle program. (Which is also why it turns up a fair bit in allohistorical Shuttle TLs.)
Given the size and scale of the bureaucratic struggles occurring in Washington, you can certainly affect the Space Race with different agencies attaining different levels of success. But the scale of those impacts depend a great deal upon your inputs, with the results being anything and everything imaginable depending upon just what you're tinkering with.
Would we be more advanced in space exploration today?
I doubt it would be more advanced. Different, certainly, but not clearly more sophisticated. A larger involvement by the services means you probably avoid many of the boom-and-bust funding issues that plagued NASA in the post-Apollo malaise. But it also probably becomes more difficult to get purely scientific programs funded, at least when they're competing with more service-oriented projects for resources.
2) Why in the world would the Atomic Energy Commity get the Space program? It has nothing to do with space nor does it have any of the skills needed to run a space program..
Because the Atomic Energy Commission represented the best known example of a civilian organization tasked with managing the duality of a mission that involved purely civilian scientific research and highly classified state secrets of immense national importance. As space, first and foremost, was important because of its role in strategic nuclear warfare: It is the medium, after all, that warheads from ballistic missiles passed through on their way to their targets. The AEC was already integral to the development and maintenance of the nation's nuclear inventory, as well as being involved in early space research through its participation in the various re-entry vehicle trials undertaken at Woomera and White Sands.
Hope everyone in that Florida gets free iodine pills.
Now, now. That's unfair. Simple physics ensure that won't be necessary, as a solid-core nuclear-thermal rocket in the Fifties or Sixties just doesn't have an attractive enough TWR to make it worth even trying to irradiate Great American Desert in the quest to turn it into a viable launch vehicle.
Yes, but this would be like giving the Nuclear bombers and or the ICBM subs (boomers) to the AEC.
Yes if it would, if for some reason you wanted a non-military organization to operate boomers. As the AEC was an agency which had established working relations with the military while not being part of it, which had a track record of managing the complex interplay between military necessity and the agency's fundamentally civilian nature.
