Yes, NACA’s research and development function was rolled into NASA, but it served a different purpose. NACA continued the basic research the Wright brothers did in developing the aircraft in a way that avoided the costly and counterproductive fight over patent rights.
Constitutionally, that may be a bit more dubious, as much of that research could have been carried out by airplane manufacturers themselves. However, in the grand scheme of things NACA and NASA are constitutional misdemeanors, not worth quibbling over when you have the wholesale prostitution of the general welfare and commerce clauses used to create constitutional abominations like the EPA, Education, HUD and Agriculture.
NACA was not and NASA is not a regulatory agency creating unconstitutional laws. Both could easily be funded as defense department efforts, and keeping the management separate is(was) in the national interest even if not strictly authorized by the constitution, unlike most of the rest of the alphabet soup agencies whose creation was and remains a direct attack on the nature of our government as defined by the constitution.
My Dad worked on interesting stuff early on. Like the Snark missile which didn’t come out until tje fifties. He translated German documents that our spies got hold of. But ask him about Ufos? Total silence!