Of all established American astronomers active in research in the 1940s and early 1950s, Fred Whipple stands out as the most visible public spokesman for spaceflight. Aside from what brought him to this mindset, tolerated but considered quirky among his peers at the time, what is interesting is what he managed to do with it during his career. Here we examine elements of the institution he built at Harvard, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, starting in 1955, that characterize the newly coined term "space science." Whipple drew in an assortment of people from engineering and science who had academic, industrial and military backgrounds to expand the scope of his observatory as a collection of crossdisciplinary teams in aeronomy, geodesy and the mineral sciences in addition to traditional specialties like stellar atmospheres. By the mid-1960s it was the largest astronomical institution (in terms of staff) on the planet. The project orientation of these teams, largely defined by the specific tools they acquired or required for their work, which was defined by contracts with government and military patrons, created a culture that was new to astronomy, and to Harvard. Here we explore the consequences.