Category THE RACE

At some point during his tour of NASA’s installations, President Kennedy asked NASA administrator James Webb whether it was possible to get to the Moon earlier than the late 1967 target date that NASA was using in its planning. This question was most likely prompted by Kennedy’s conversa­tion with manned space flight head Brainerd Holmes, whom Kennedy met for the first time during the Huntsville stop on the tour. Holmes had come to NASA in October 1961, and a year later was becoming impatient with the pace of the Apollo program and James Webb’s resistance to Holmes’s sugges­tion that it might be accelerated.

Seamans, Holmes’s immediate supervisor, describes Holmes as having “blinders on. . . All he was going to do was just move to the best of his abil­ity on manned flight, but the devil take the hindmost on anything else.” Holmes also did not operate on the same wavelength as the verbose Webb; Holmes told Seamans, “I don’t understand what the hell the boss is talk­ing about a lot of the time on these general [management approach] things, and I could care less.” Holmes also “was a very exciting person for the news people. . . He had a way of expressing himself that made news because it was a little bit controversial.” Time magazine featured Holmes on the cover of its August 10, 1962, issue; in the issue’s six-page story “Reaching for the Moon,” Holmes was frequently mentioned, Webb not at all. Seamans also suggests that “among others who were sort of captivated. . . by Brainerd was the President.” After Holmes was introduced to Kennedy as they watched the firing of the Saturn 1 first stage at Huntsville, the press asked Holmes whether this was indeed the first time the two had met, suggesting “this is shocking that a man of your great responsibility should only be meeting the President for the first time right now.” According to Seamans, “this hit Brainerd sort of in a sensitive area. He was a somewhat egotistical guy.”16

The controversy between Holmes and NASA’s top management sim­mered in the two months following President Kennedy’s September trip as NASA’s budget request for Fiscal Year 1964 was under review at the White House. On October 29, Webb wrote to Kennedy, responding to the presi­dent’s question of what it would take to move the target date for the first lunar landing to 1966. Webb told the president that NASA’s current target date of late 1967 “is based on a vigorous and driving program but does not represent a crash program,” while “a late 1966 target date would require a crash, high-risk effort.” By this time, NASA had sent BOB a request for a $6.2 billion budget for FY1964; this represented a 68 percent increase over the agency’s FY1963 budget. NASA also estimated that the first lunar land­ing might be targeted six months earlier if there was an immediate $427 million supplement to the FY1963 NASA budget. To target the first landing in late 1966, a year earlier than then planned, NASA planning would have to be drastically revised and a supplementary $900 million would have to be provided in FY1963; in addition, the NASA budget for FY1964 would have to increase to $7.0 billion. Webb told President Kennedy that the budget and program projections were “preliminary” and not based on “detailed pro­grammatic plans,” but “we are prepared to place the manned lunar landing program on an all-out crash basis aimed at the late 1966 target date if you should decide this is in the national interest.”17

Holmes at some point in this period had formally asked Seamans to approve a $440 million FY1963 budget supplement, saying that such an increase would allow the first lunar landing attempt to come in late 1966. Seamans “couldn’t believe” Holmes’s claim that the program could be accel­erated by twelve months with such a relatively modest budget increase. He denied Holmes’s request; Holmes then asked for a meeting with Webb and Dryden; both also gave him a negative response. Holmes then turned to his friends at Time magazine, telling them that there was “an upheaval at NASA,” with Holmes and Webb “locked in deadly combat” and that “one of them might have to go, and it wasn’t necessarily Brainerd.”18

The possibility of a story about this internal dispute appearing in Time caught President Kennedy’s attention, and he asked science adviser Wiesner to meet with Hugh Sidey and Lansing Lamont, the Time/Life reporters pre­paring a story on “the lagging manned lunar program.” Wiesner did so on November 16; only Lamont was able to make the meeting because Sidey’s plane was grounded. Lamont reported that Time was being told “by NASA staff [undoubtedly Brainerd Holmes] and contractors that the lunar pro­gram is slipping for lack of funds,” that “$400 million is needed now to prevent a loss of six months,” and that “Mr. Webb discounts the lunar effort and is not backing your [Kennedy’s] commitment.” Wiesner contradicted Lamont’s conclusions, telling the reporter that “we have a hard driving pro­gram,” that “we had long since passed the point where money would make a major impact on the schedule,” and what was needed now was “good plan­ning and management.” Wiesner told the president that he did not think he “changed his [Lamont’s] views much, though I really tried.” After meeting with Lamont, Wiesner called Seamans, who told Wiesner that he also had met with the reporter and delivered the same message as had Wiesner.19

The White House attempt at managing the Time story failed. In its issue dated November 23 (which was on newsstands on November 19), the maga­zine reported that “the U. S. man-to-the-moon program was in earthly trou­ble” due to the “clashing personalities and ideas of the project’s two top officials.” Holmes was described in the article as a “brilliant, aggressive elec­trical engineer with a hard-bitten talent for ramming through tough proj­ects,” while Webb was characterized as having “a cautious eye where money is concerned.” Time reported that Holmes believed that the lunar landing pro­gram “is already four to six months behind schedule—and the reason is that Webb is dragging his feet.” Webb was reported as saying, “the moon program is important, but it’s not the only important part of the space program,” while Holmes argued that Apollo was “the top priority program within NASA.” The article concluded that “such are the differences between Webb and Holmes that the whole program is in danger of bogging down.”20

John Kennedy was not the type of person, or president, to ignore this public reporting of a dispute with respect to one of his high priority initia­tives. He quickly called a cabinet room meeting to find out for himself what was going on.

There was no immediate response to the president’s proposal from Nikita Khrushchev or any other official Soviet source. The newspaper Za Rubezhom on September 28 suggested that Kennedy’s proposal was “propaganda” and “distracts attention from joint earthly exploits directed at attaining peace and reduction of world tension.” Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, on October 2 reprinted without comment a column by Walter Lippman, who was widely respected in both the United States and the Soviet Union; the column had appeared in the American press on September 24. In the column, Lippman had suggested that “the main merit of the proposal” was “the opportunity it offered for the US to escape its commitment to the moon goal.”39

As the White House waited for a Soviet reply, a report from a new source appeared that seemed to counter the idea that the Soviet Union had aban­doned or postponed its lunar landing program. The Washington Post on October 8 reported that Leonid Sedov, characterized as the “father of the Sputnik,” had said that it would be two or three years “at least” before an initial Soviet lunar landing attempt. The headline for the story read “Red Expects Moon Shot in 3 Years.” Wiesner reported to the president that there was nothing in the story that “really supports the headline that was attached to it.”40 When cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space) visited the UN General Assembly in October, they made no direct mention of Kennedy’s proposal.

In response to an October 25 question posed to Nikita Khrushchev about whether the Soviet Union had a lunar landing program planned for the not too distant future, the Soviet leader said: “It would be very interesting to take a trip to the moon. But I cannot at present say when this will be done. We are not at the present planning flight by cosmonauts to the moon. . . I have a report to the effect that the Americans want to land a man on the moon by 1970. Well, let’s wish them success. . . We do not want to compete with the sending of men to the moon without careful preparation. It is clear that no benefits would be derived from such a competition.”41

There were a number of interpretations of Khrushchev’s remarks within the U. S. intelligence community. A “current intelligence memorandum” prepared by the CIA suggested that “Khrushchev’s statement on a manned lunar landing suggests that at least one program bearing on defense may already have fallen victim to his new economic priorities,” interpreting the Soviet premier’s remarks as acknowledging the cancellation of an ongoing lunar landing program. This memorandum noted that “Khrushchev’s actual remarks hardly warrant the dramatic US news agency treatment that the Soviet premier has ‘withdrawn’ from the moon race.” A different office in the CIA on October 29 advised McGeorge Bundy that “the primary intent of Khrushchev’s statement was to change the focus of the space race.” This analysis noted that Khrushchev’s remarks were similar to statements he had made to visiting journalists in 1961 and 1962 and to views “deliberately given to Western scientists by Soviet scientific officials earlier this year.” (This presumably referred to the Soviet contacts with Bernard Lovell.) Thus, the analysis suggested, Khrushchev’s statements should not be interpreted as indicating “that the Soviet leaders have taken some major decisions in recent weeks affecting the scope or pace of their lunar program.” Rather, a major intent of Khrushchev’s statement was a “deliberate effort to downgrade the urgency of a manned lunar landing” and thus influence “U. S. Congressional and public opinion on the question of the expenditures and pace of the U. S. lunar program,” thereby “making it clear that the Soviet Union is unwilling to allow the United States to set the terms for competition in space.” The head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research told Secretary of State Rusk that in his answer at the press conference, Khrushchev “did not withdraw from the space race,” “did not say that the USSR might not make the first successful moon landing,” “did not accept President Kennedy’s pro­posal,” and “committed to nothing.” The State Department analysis sug­gested that Khrushchev regarded Kennedy’s offer of cooperation “as a vague one, to which he can appropriately respond in vaguely approving terms with­out undertaking negotiations or obligations.” One of Wiesner’s staff sug­gested that Khrushchev’s statement “recognizes that the U. S. determination to send a man to the moon and back has called the bluff of their pretentions since 1957 to world technological leadership.” The U. S. lunar landing deci­sion has also “contributed in a non-belligerent way to imposing major strains on the Soviet economy and their ability to carry out expansionist objectives. Our technological challenge, along with steadfastness over Cuba exactly a year ago, has been successful in getting them to trim their sails.”42

The recommendation to continue Apollo on its current path would most likely have been welcomed by the president. As the BOB review was under­way, John F. Kennedy repeatedly made clear his view that the United States should continue its effort to assume the leading position in space. Kennedy’s excitement during his November 16 visit to Cape Canaveral in recognizing that the upcoming Saturn 1 launch would give the United States the weight­lifting lead in space reflected this determination; he referred to that soon-to – be-realized achievement several times in remarks on November 21 and the morning of November 22 as he moved forward with his tragic Texas tour.

Perhaps Kennedy’s attitude on the space program on the last full day of his life are best reflected in remarks he made at the dedication of an aerospace medicine facility in San Antonio on November 21:

I think the United States should be a leader [in space]. A country as rich and powerful as this which bears so many burdens and responsibilities, which has so many opportunities, should be second to none. . . We have a long way to go. Many weeks and months and years of long, tedious work lie ahead. There will be setbacks and frustrations and disappointments. There will be, as there always are, pressures in this country to do less in this area as in so many oth­ers, and temptations to do something else that is perhaps easier. . . This space effort must go on. The conquest of space must and will go ahead. That much we know. That much we can say with confidence and conviction.

Frank O’Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall—and then they had no choice but to follow them.

This Nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it.21

A contentious issue in developing the U. S. organizational approach to space during 1958 had been how best to coordinate the activities of the new space civilian space agency NASA, the Department of Defense and the military services, the Atomic Energy Commission, and other government agencies that might become involved in space activities. The Senate as it considered space legislation hoped to create a single integrated national space program, with civilian and military elements, rather than separate programs carried out by different agencies, and thought that some kind of formal policy­making and coordinating body was needed to achieve this objective. The White House did not want to interpose such a body between the operating space agencies and the president, and thus was resistant to the Senate pro­posal. After a July 7, 1958, one-on-one meeting at the White House between Dwight Eisenhower and Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson, a primary advocate of the integrated approach to space, an agreement was reached on creating a policy-level body, to be chaired by the president. According to some accounts, at their meeting Johnson convinced President Eisenhower to chair the board. Other accounts suggest that it was Eisenhower who sug­gested this approach.27 Immediately after Johnson left the White House, Eisenhower phoned his deputy chief of staff, Wilton Persons, and told him that he and Johnson had “specifically agreed upon the President’s proposal of modeling the advisory group along the lines of the National Security Council: that the authority would be placed with the President.”28

Following the White House meeting, the policy board was named the National Aeronautics and Space Council. It would have eight members in addition to the president as chair. Other members would include the sec­retaries of state and defense, the NASA administrator, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, one additional government member, and three individuals from outside the government. Although Eisenhower had accepted the creation of such a Space Council, he made it clear to his associ­ates at the White House that

he had no intention of convening this body regularly, nor of acting as its pre­siding officer. He refused to use his discretionary power to appoint an execu­tive secretary or create a separate staff for the Space Council, and he asked [his science adviser James] Killian to preside at its infrequent meetings. Lyndon Johnson may have forced Eisenhower to accept the Space Council as his price for creating NASA, but the president would make sure it would remain a minor body that would never threaten his full control over the nation’s space policy.29

The Space Council indeed met infrequently and had little influence on space issues in the months following its creation. In a memorandum dated November 16, 1959, NASA administrator Glennan told President Eisenhower that the National Aeronautics and Space Council had not been “particularly useful or effective” and he doubted whether it could “usefully be employed in the management of the nation’s space program.” He rec­ommended that the president propose amendments to the 1958 Space Act to abolish the Council. However, when Glennan met with Eisenhower on January 8, 1960, he found that the president “seemed to have forgotten our earlier discussion,” even though in the interim the proposed changes in the Act had been drafted and were ready to be sent to the Congress. After this meeting, it was clear to Glennan that “discussions between the president and the legislative leaders (especially Lyndon Johnson) as well as with the mem­bers of the Space Council would be necessary before the amendment could be proposed to Congress.” Eisenhower and Glennan met with Johnson and senior Republican senator Styles Bridges at the White House on January 13 to let them know about the proposed changes in the Space Act; Glennan quotes Johnson as saying “Well, Mr. President, you will remember that you were the one who really wanted this Space Council, and if you want to do away with it now, I’m certain it will be all right with me.”30

The proposed amendment to the Space Act was sent to Congress in January 1960 and approved by the House of Representatives five months later, on June 9. But the Senate refused to act, primarily because Lyndon Johnson, majority leader and, at the time, still candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, opposed the changes, despite what he had told Eisenhower in January. Glennan met again with Johnson on June 23, but was unsuccessful in convincing him to bring the proposed changes before the Senate for approval. Glennan reports Johnson as saying “I don’t see any reason for giving you a new law at the present time. If I am elected president, you will get a changed law without delay.”31 On August 31, Johnson, speak­ing not only as Senate majority leader but also by then as the Democratic candidate for vice president, justified his opposition to changing the Space Act in a memorandum inserted in the Congressional Record: “One fact is of overriding importance. A new President will take office on January 20, 1961—less than five months from now. The next President could well have different views as to the organization and function of the military and civil­ian space programs. Any changes in the Space Act at this session will have little or no effect on the space program during the next few months, but could restrict the freedom of action of the next president.”32

It is unlikely that at this point Johnson envisioned a scenario in which John Kennedy, if elected president, would decide to revitalize the Space Council and turn over its chairmanship to his vice president, i. e., Lyndon Johnson. But four months later, that is precisely what happened.

Beginning in October 1960, NASA had begun to investigate in a preliminary fashion the technological and budgetary requirements for a lunar landing program. After an interim report on this planning effort at a January 5, 1961, meeting of NASA’s Space Exploration Program Council, a small group led by NASA’s program chief for manned space flight George Low was char­tered to continue further investigation into those requirements. The basic objective of Low’s group at that time was to answer the question: “What is NASA’s Manned Lunar Landing Program?”41

Low submitted his group’s fifty-one page report on February 7. Two methods for accomplishing the lunar landing mission were examined: “direct ascent,” i. e., launching on one very large rocket the spacecraft, fuel, and other equipment needed to land on the Moon and return safely to Earth, and “rendezvous,” i. e., launching separately on smaller boosters the various elements required and assembling them in Earth orbit before departing for the Moon. Significantly, the group concluded that “no invention or break­through is believed to be required to insure the over-all feasibility of safe lunar flight.” An initial mission to the Moon would be possible in the 1968­1970 period with an average cost of $700 million per year for ten years, or a total of $7 billion. The report noted that the plan it presented “does not represent a ‘crash’ program, but rather it represents a vigorous development of technology. The program objectives might be met earlier with higher ini­tial funding, and with some calculated risks.”42

Low’s report and the supporting work done by NASA and its contractors on preliminary design of the three-person Apollo spacecraft and the Saturn C-2 launcher (at this point in time, the Nova launcher was only in the early conceptual design phase) would be important to the confidence of the NASA leadership in the following weeks as they responded to President Kennedy’s request for a mission that would give the United States an opportunity to claim space leadership. Between NASA’s 1959 choice of a lunar mission as the long-term objective of its human space flight program and Low’s February 1961 report, NASA had indeed laid the technological foundation for what John Kennedy would soon call “a great new American enterprise.”

Lyndon Johnson and his space assistant, Space Council executive secretary Edward Welsh, quickly set to work after receiving JFK’s April 20 memo. Welsh was the only staff member of the Space Council at this point. The orga­nization of the review reflected the “Johnson system” of obtaining informa­

tion through personal contacts rather than formal organizational channels. Johnson consulted many of individuals whom he thought would signifi­cantly contribute to examining the space program. He met with officials from NASA, the Defense Department, the Atomic Energy Commission, and Wiesner’s office. At the suggestion of Welsh, a Bureau of the Budget (BOB) representative attended most of the meetings, so that the bureau could remain informed of the alternatives under discussion and assess their financial implications.2

As the review was getting underway, President Kennedy on April 22 reported to the National Security Council, meeting in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs failure, that “he had asked the Vice President. . . to direct an inquiry into our space effort and make a report to me which I hope will constitute the basis of a Presidential Message on this subject to Congress.”3 It is worth noting that even before he received the vice president’s report, Kennedy anticipated a positive recommendation justifying a “Presidential Message” to the Congress; it is not clear whether at this point he had also decided to deliver that message in person. One indication that he was being pushed, if not already leaning, in that direction was an April 19 memoran­dum from Walt Rostow, who as a MIT professor had been a Kennedy cam­paign adviser and was in April 1961 on McGeorge Bundy’s national security staff. Rostow suggested that “as the first hundred days draw to a close, I believe you should consider a major address taking stock of where we are and where we should go, both at home and abroad.” Rostow identified an accelerated space effort as one of the potential topics in the speech.4

In anticipation of President Kennedy’s decision to approve a lunar landing project as a top priority national undertaking, NASA on May 2, 1961, had begun in earnest to examine just what would be required to carry out the president’s mandate. That examination revealed the immense dimensions of the task. New facilities would be needed, new approaches to space flight would be required, and new hardware would have to be developed. In his book Digital Apollo, David Mindell observes: “For the first couple of years the Apollo project was largely undefined, the money flowed freely, and the nerve-racking deadlines seemed far in the future.”1 This was certainly not the perception of those directly involved with the mobilization of human and financial resources required to carry out the lunar landing project. The second half of 1961 and most of 1962 were marked by a rapid series of decisions. To many of those in the White House and NASA concerned with attempting to meet the late 1967 target date that NASA had set for the first attempt at a lunar landing, there was a sense of urgency in getting a fast start on the needed buildup of people, facilities, and hardware; to them, “nerve-racking deadlines” were a daily reality.

Between the final Eisenhower budget request that went to the Congress in January 1961 and the Fiscal Year 1964 request that President Kennedy sent to Congress in January 1963, the NASA budget grew from $1.1 billion to $5.7 billion, an increase of over 400 percent in just two years. NASA in 1961 and 1962 chose the locations for the facilities that would be required for the lunar landing mission, selected and contracted for the launch vehicles and spacecraft to carry out the mission, and decided on the technical approach to landing on the Moon, this last decision resulting in an intense conflict with the White House science advisers. NASA reorganized itself for the task of managing Project Apollo while carrying out Project Mercury and get­ting started on an intermediate human space flight effort, Project Gemini. The NASA workforce increased from the 10,200 civil servants as John F. Kennedy came into the White House to 23,700 at the end of 1962; the total

would ultimately increase to 34,500 by the end of 1965. The associated contractor workforce grew at an even more rapid rate. At the end of 1960, it totaled 36,500; two years later, it was 115,000, and by the end of 1965, it was 376,700.2 This was truly an unprecedented warlike, albeit peaceful, mobilization of national resources.

President Kennedy and his White House associates viewed this rapid buildup with mixed emotions. On one hand, Kennedy made it very clear that getting to the Moon before the Soviet Union was one of his top policy priorities, and by the end of 1962 appeared willing to provide even more resources to NASA if doing so would increase the chances of achieving that objective. While Kennedy focused his interest on the lunar landing program, NASA argued that across-the-board preeminence—a clearly leading position in all areas of space activity—was the fundamental goal, and the lunar land­ing only the most visible element of achieving it.

On the other hand, the budget projections that had accompanied Kennedy’s May 1961 decision to go to the Moon and to accelerate the other elements of the NASA program were admittedly highly uncertain, and the Bureau of the Budget (BOB) had warned Kennedy that the decisions he was making would lead to a very expensive space effort in the coming years. In his desire to get the country on the path to space leadership, Kennedy seem­ingly did not pay very much attention to that warning. Theodore Sorensen comments that although JFK was a “fiscal tightwad,” at the time of the lunar landing decision “ I’m sure he had no idea what the whole effort was going to cost.”3 Kennedy soon became concerned about the space program’s rapidly growing costs, and this concern intensified during 1962 as the full scope of the lunar landing effort became clearer. Kennedy pressed his staff to make sure that the related costs were fully justified. Even so, at the end of 1962 Kennedy’s determination to win the race to the Moon remained firm; his desire to be first in space justified in his mind the high costs of achieving that position.

The meeting took place on November 21; it was also an occasion to review NASA’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 1964. The BOB had not yet for­warded to the president Webb’s October 29 letter about the budgetary impli­cations of accelerating the target date for the first lunar landing. Like many communications to the president from government agencies, this letter had been referred to one of the staff agencies of the executive office, in this case BOB, for review and a decision of whether it needed direct presidential attention. Kennedy may well have wondered why he had not heard from Webb after asking him about this possibility on his September tour, and that could have added to his concern about the accuracy of the Time article. Of course, Kennedy had also been immersed with the Cuban missile crisis and the midterm congressional elections in the interim. Budget director Bell prepared a November 13 memorandum on the NASA budget situation that incorporated the schedule and budget estimates in Webb’s October letter; this memorandum was distributed to all participants in the meeting. In his memorandum, Bell identified two policy issues on which presidential guid­ance was needed: [2]

subjected to the restrictive budgetary ground rules applicable in 1964 to

other programs of the Government.”

NASA’s budget request for FY1964 was $6.2 billion, including $4.6 bil­lion for the lunar landing program and $1.6 billion for all other NASA activ­ities. To keep the program on an “optimum” schedule aiming at a mid-1967 landing, Bell told the president, would require a supplementary appropriation of over $400 million in 1963 and about $550 million above the estimates for FY1964 made three months earlier. NASA’s recommended program aiming at a late 1967 landing would not require a FY1963 supplement, but would require the full $4.6 billion funding in FY1964. As Webb’s October 29 letter had indicated, advancing the target date to late 1966 would require a $900 million supplement and “create enormous additional management problems.” Bell noted that “in NASA’s view and ours” such a course of action “would not appear to offer enough assurance of actually advancing the date of a successful attempt to be worth the cost and other problems involved.” Bell also offered a lower cost option that would slip the landing target date to late 1968; that option would require $3.7 billion for the lunar landing program in FY1964 rather than $4.6 billion and was “significant as indicating probably about the lowest 1964 estimate under which the first actual manned lunar landing might still be expected to occur during this decade, after a realistic allowance for slippage.” Bell also reported that “our understanding of the latest intelligence estimates is that there is no evidence yet that the Russians are actually developing either a larger booster. . . or ren­dezvous techniques.” Thus “extreme measures to advance somewhat our own target dates may not be necessary to preserve a good possibility that we will be first.” This may have been one of the first warnings to President Kennedy that the race to the Moon he thought the United States was running may not have been a race at all. But as the November 21 meeting unfolded, it became clear that Kennedy was still in a race mentality.

With respect to the other portions of the NASA budget, Bell reported that it was NASA’s view that if there were any reduction in NASA’s $6.2 billion request, it should be applied “at least in part to the manned lunar landing program, in order to maintain a ‘balanced’ total program.” He added that “the Administrator and his principal assistants are fearful that the appeal and priority of the manned lunar landing program may turn NASA into a ‘one program agency’ with loss of leadership and standing in the scien­tific community at home and abroad, and inadequate provision for moving ahead with developments required for future capabilities in space.” The BOB did not agree with this line of argument, suggesting that the “unique sort of national decision” that led to the lunar landing program did not “auto­matically endow other space objectives and programs with a special degree of urgency.” The BOB suggested a $300 million cut in the “other activi­ties” part of the NASA budget, noting that while this amount might “seem small,” in the context of the overall space budget, it was “large compared to most other possibilities for adjustment in the 1964 budget.”21

Present at the November 21 meeting in addition to President Kennedy were James Webb, Hugh Dryden, Robert Seamans, and Brainerd Holmes from NASA; David Bell, his deputy Elmer Staats, and Willis Shapley from BOB; Edward Welsh (Vice President Johnson had been invited but was out of town); and Jerome Wiesner. At some point in the meeting, President Kennedy activated the secret tape recording system that had been installed in July 1962 in the Oval Office, in the cabinet room, and on his telephone.22 There is thus available a fascinating verbatim account of the portions of the meeting during which President Kennedy and James Webb got into a spir­ited discussion of the priority to be assigned to the lunar landing mission compared to other NASA activities.23 Excerpts of that conversation include:

Kennedy: Do you think this [lunar landing] program is the top priority of the agency?

Webb: No sir, I do not. I think it is one of the top priority programs.

Kennedy: Jim, I think it is the top priority. I think we ought to have that very clear. Some of these other programs can slip six months, or nine months, and nothing strategic is going to happen. . . But this is important for political reasons, international political reasons. This is, whether we like it or not, in a sense a race. If we get second to the Moon, it’s nice, but it’s like being second any time. So if we’re second by six months because we didn’t give it the kind of priority [needed], then of course that would be very serious. So I think we have to take the view that this is top prior­ity with us.

* * *

Kennedy: I would certainly not favor spending six or seven billion dollars to find out about space no matter how on the schedule we’re doing. . . Why are we spending seven million dollars on getting fresh water from salt water, when we’re spending seven billion dollars to find out about space? Obviously you wouldn’t put it on that priority except for the defense implications. And the second point is the fact that the Soviet Union has made this a test of the system. So that’s why we’re doing it. So I think we’ve got to take the view that this is the key program. . . Everything we do ought really to be tied to getting on the Moon ahead of the Russians.

Webb: Why can’t it be tied to preeminence in space?

Kennedy: Because, by God, we keep, we’ve been telling everybody we’re pre­eminent in space for five years and nobody believes it because they [the Soviets] have the booster and the satellite. . . We’re not going to settle the four hundred million this morning. . . But I do think we ought to get it, you know, really clear that the policy ought to be that this is the top prior­ity program of the agency, and one of the two things, except for defense, the top priority of the United States government.

I think that is the position we ought to take.

Now, this may not change anything about the schedule but at least we ought to be clear, otherwise we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money,

because I’m not that interested in space. I think it’s good, I think we ought to know about it, we’re ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we’re talking about these fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs and the only justification for it in my opinion to do it in this time or fashion is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.

In the course of the November 21 meeting, Brainerd Holmes apolo­gized for letting his differences with James Webb get into the press. He said: “I ought to add that I’m very sorry about this. I have no disagreement with Mr. Webb. . . I think my job is to say how fast I think we can go for what dollars.”

Just before he left the meeting, President Kennedy requested a letter from NASA stating clearly the agency’s position. First, Dryden drafted a relatively brief reply; then Seamans prepared a more extensive response. He took his draft to James Webb, who had stayed home from work with a severe migraine headache. (Seamans comments that “it’s not surprising that one occurred at this time.”) Seamans and Webb revised the letter to their and Dryden’s satisfaction; it was sent to President Kennedy on November 30. At that point, final decisions on the NASA FY1964 budget had still not been made, and so the nine-page letter included a plea for approval of NASA’s $6.2 billion request. The bulk of the letter supported the position that “the objective of our national space program is to become pre-eminent in all important aspects of this [space] endeavor and to conduct the program in such a manner that our emerging scientific, technological, and operational competence in space is clearly evident.” The letter noted that “the manned lunar landing program provides currently a natural focus for the develop­ment of national capabilities in space and, in addition, will provide a clear demonstration to the world of our accomplishments in space.” However, the letter argued, “the manned lunar landing program, although of the highest national priority, will not by itself create the pre-eminent position we seek.”24

Because Vice President Johnson was not present at the November 21 meeting, he was separately asked for his views on the issues discussed there. Budget director Bell wrote Johnson on November 28, saying that “the President would appreciate your views” on whether the manned lunar land­ing “should be regarded as the top priority program—or as one of the top priority programs” and on the “desirability and feasibility of augmenting the funding for the manned lunar landing program in the present fiscal year.” Johnson replied to Kennedy on December 4. He told the president that “as to the matter of relative priorities, I consider your Messages and Budget requests have made it clear that the Manned Lunar Landing Effort has the highest priority even though other projects are to be pursued vig­orously.” Between November 21 and his reply to Kennedy, Johnson had met with Brainerd Holmes for an hour to discuss the impact of a FY1963 budget supplement on the Apollo schedule, and had concluded that, “while I would urge any action that would have a reasonable chance of accelerat­ing the Manned Lunar Landing project target date,” he concurred with the conclusion of the NASA leadership that a “supplemental appropriation could not be made available in time to advance that date much, if any.”25

Even with all that he had heard, President Kennedy did not easily give up on the idea that the lunar landing program could be accelerated. As Kennedy toured various nuclear facilities in New Mexico and Nevada in early December 1962, he asked Wiesner to look once more into “the pos­sibility of speeding up the lunar landing program.” Wiesner on January 10, 1963, reported to Kennedy that “approximately 100 million dollars of the previously discussed 326 million dollar supplementary could have a very important effect on the schedule.” Wiesner thought that funds in this amount might be transferred from the Department of Defense budget to pay for DOD involvement in NASA’s Project Gemini, the new NASA program to test out rendezvous activities in Earth orbit and to serve as a bridge between Mercury and Apollo. Wiesner told the president that funds in that amount could be used to advance the date of the first Saturn V launch by some five months, and there was some chance that this accelera­tion could allow an earlier attempt at the landing. Wiesner noted that “the date of the first lunar landing attempt can be accelerated only” if Saturn V availability were advanced. Kennedy the same day sent the Wiesner memo­randum with these suggestions to Vice President Johnson, asking for his views. Johnson replied on January 18, telling Kennedy that “the people we need on the Hill tell me that the supplemental request would be inadvis­able and could not be approved in time to accelerate the program.” With that response, the thought of requesting supplemental funds for NASA was put to rest.26

Even before this January exchange of correspondence, as the final bud­get decisions for Fiscal Year 1964 were made by the president and BOB in December 1963, any thought of a supplemental request for FY1963 were abandoned, reluctantly on the president’s part. Kennedy had once again accepted the position of NASA administrator Webb on how best to go for­ward. Indeed, BOB made reductions in both the lunar landing budget and the “other activities” portion of the NASA request. The president in mid – January 1963 sent a FY1964 budget proposal to the Congress requesting $5.712 billion for NASA, an almost half-billion dollar cut from what NASA had requested in September. Although the increase was not what NASA had hoped for, it still reflected a 55 percent jump over NASA’s FY1963 appro­priation.

Conclusion

By the end of 1962, the White House appeared to have accepted the arguments set forth in the November 30 NASA letter arguing that the lunar landing program, though clearly a very high NASA priority, was in itself insuffi­cient to achieve the goal of American space preeminence—a clearly leading position in all areas of space activity. Seamans noted that “whether from agreement, exhaustion, or diversion, President Kennedy gave tacit approval to NASA’s programs and policies by not engaging us in further discussion on the questions of NASA’s top priority.” Seamans adds: “Preeminence in space on all fronts was our goal; landing men on the Moon was the top (DX) priority.”27

During 1963, John Kennedy was no longer totally focused on how soon the United States could get to the Moon; he seemed in fact to have accepted NASA’s argument that preeminence in all areas of space activity was the more appropriate goal. In addition, at least some of the president’s associ­ates, and perhaps Kennedy himself, questioned whether getting to the Moon before the Soviet Union remained a compelling national objective. Indeed, Kennedy asked, might it be both desirable and feasible to cooperate, rather than compete, with the Soviet Union in humanity’s first journeys beyond Earth orbit? John Kennedy had brought with him the idea that space might be a particularly promising arena for tension-reducing U. S.-Soviet coopera­tion as he entered the White House in January 1961, and it had never totally disappeared from his thinking.

In the first weeks of November 1963 there was seemingly a real opportunity to act on President Kennedy’s initiative to turn the lunar landing program into a cooperative enterprise. But was the United States ready to seize that opportunity? And was meaningful cooperation technically feasible?

In the weeks following the president’s United Nations speech, the lack of a Soviet response had left U. S. officials somewhat uncertain on how to proceed. This did not put a halt, however, to thinking about the issue. On the Monday following the president’s Friday address, NASA administrator Webb drafted “policy guidance for NASA staff.” Webb sent a copy to the White House, where it was approved by McGeorge Bundy the same day. The only deletion Bundy made from Webb’s draft was to strike a sentence saying “No one should be misled by any feeling that the President has put this for­ward as a political move or as a sign of weakening support for the program.” Webb pointed out that the president had said only that “we should explore” whether a joint moon mission was feasible, and that “the key word here is ‘explore,’ and the projection of the purpose as ‘joint’ is a statement of how far we would be willing to go in our ‘exploration’ talks and examination.” Webb added that “while we are putting forward to the Russians the possibil­ity of working with them, and opening up to the world the image of a nation prepared to address itself to all the problems of cooperation in this extremely important area to which weapons systems have not yet been extended, we must continue the forward drive of the US effort.” The NASA official in charge of the agency’s international relations, Arnold Frutkin, noted that “to jump from the suggestion that the matter be explored to the conclusion that the President was explicitly asking to put a US spacecraft upon a Soviet booster for a lunar voyage, or vice versa, or suggesting that American and Soviet astronauts be paired off for joint trips to the moon. . . were unwar­ranted” conclusions, yet “they served as the straw men for the shafts and arrows directed at the ‘feasibility’ of the proposal.”43 In thinking about how the president’s proposal might be implemented, should a positive response from the Soviet Union be received, NASA once again preferred a cautious, step-by-step approach. Webb pointed out that as a “first step” the United States and the Soviet Union could cooperate on choosing a landing site, and that “a joint effort could start with lots of things short of putting each other’s men on the same space craft.”44

Deputy under secretary of state U. Alexis Johnson wrote to Webb on October 14, noting that while the United States had not received a Soviet response to the president’s proposal, “we should have as clear as possible an understanding of the broad technical aspects involved,” should such a response be forthcoming. Johnson noted that “it seems doubtful that the Soviets will soon bring themselves to face up to the severe security, program­matic and political problems involved in discussing such a joint undertak­ing.” He asked Webb to suggest “What modes of cooperation would be most useful? Which would be practicable? Which would be most advantageous from the viewpoint of our national program? Which would be most likely to evoke a constructive response from the Soviets?”45

The NASA response to the State Department letter noted that “the objec­tive, as we understand it, is a substantive rather than a propaganda gain in relations with the Soviet Union, to be achieved through meaningful rather than token projects, with comparable contributions by both sides and with­out, at this stage, compromising our ability to pursue our own programs.” After listing several of the “virtually unlimited number of specific proposals” for cooperation, NASA indicated that it would “strongly prefer” that such proposals be used only “as a second resort.” Rather, “first priority should be placed instead on an escalating series of exchanges which are, in their initial stages, subject to verification and are, therefore, calculated to build a level of confidence upon which progressively significant cooperative activities may be based.” NASA pointed out that even the modest cooperative activities agreed to in June 1962 had not yet been implemented by the Soviet Union, which was “seriously delinquent” in this respect.46

Senior White House interest in cooperation intensified at the end of October. On October 25, McGeorge Bundy requested that interested par­ties prepare concrete proposals for how to proceed with planning for space cooperation negotiations with the Soviet Union. A few days later, Bundy received a specially prepared estimate of Soviet intentions from the CIA. That estimate was likely similar to the October 1 CIA analysis of the Soviet space program cited earlier. Since the later analysis had been completed after President Kennedy had made his September 20 cooperative proposal, it noted that “if the Soviets are not engaged in an all-out manned land­ing program, it is expected that they will substitute major goals or some­how reduce the effects of the U. S. accomplishment.” The CIA added that “a cooperative venture with the U. S. for a manned lunar landing would reduce the Soviet problems in this regard tremendously,” since then the Soviet Union could divert its space spending toward establishing several types of orbiting stations “of enough significance to dim somewhat the luster of the Apollo program.”47

On October 29, Wiesner gave President Kennedy a memorandum pro­posing a technical strategy for cooperation. He said that his proposal would “decisively dispel the doubts that have existed in the Congress and the press about the sincerity and feasibility of the proposal itself.” Wiesner’s idea was “a joint program in which the USSR provides unmanned exploratory and logistic support for the U. S. Apollo manned landing.” Wiesner noted that “such a program would utilize the combined resources of the US and USSR in a technically practical manner and might, in view of Premier Khrushchev’s statement, be politically attractive to him.” He also suggested that while Apollo “would remain a purely U. S. technical program. . . A Russian could easily be included as a member of the landing team.” Wiesner suggested to Kennedy that “It might be extremely advantageous to you to publicly offer this plan to the USSR. . . while the Khrushchev statement is still fresh in the mind of the public. If the proposal is accepted we will have established a practical basis for a cooperative program. If it is rejected we will have demon­strated our desire for peaceful cooperation and the sincerity of our original proposal.”48

In the weeks following his United Nations speech, President Kennedy himself apparently did not push for taking next steps on an urgent basis, but he did maintain his interest in his proposal. On October 23, he sent a copy of The New York Times article of September 18 reporting on the Dryden-Blagonravov talks to James Webb, saying “I think it would be help­ful to collect clippings similar to the attached showing that the Russians are interested in getting a man on the moon. This would make an additional defense for our efforts.”49 It is not clear whether the “efforts” he was refer­ring to were the cooperative overture to the Soviet Union or to the lunar landing program itself.

In light of the negative comments about a Soviet moon program made on October 25 by Nikita Khrushchev, Kennedy was asked at an October 31 press conference: “do you think that Premier Khrushchev has actually taken the Soviet Union out of the so-called moon race, and in any case do you think that the United States should proceed as if there were a moon race?” Kennedy replied:

I didn’t read that into his statement____ I did not get any assurances that Mr.

Khrushchev or the Soviet Union were out of the space race at all.

* * *

The fact of the matter is that the Soviets have made a very intensive effort in space, and there is every evidence that they are continuing and that they have the potential to continue. I would read Mr. Khrushchev’s remarks very care­fully. I think that he said before anyone went to the moon, there should be adequate preparation. We agree with that.

In my opinion the space program we have is essential to the security of the United States, because as I have said many times before it is not a question of going to the moon. It is a question of having the competence to master this environment.

I think that we ought to stay with our program. I think that is the best answer to Mr. Khrushchev.

Asked whether it was true that the Soviet Union had made no response to his proposal for joint moon exploration, Kennedy replied “that is correct.”50

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, had, of course, many consequences. One of them was turning the U. S. space program, and particularly the lunar landing effort, into a memorial to the fallen president. There was essentially no chance that the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, would modify the goal set by President Kennedy in 1961, a goal that Johnson had himself so strongly recommended. To rein­force his commitment to President Kennedy’s space legacy, less than a week after the assassination Johnson announced that Cape Canaveral would be renamed Cape Kennedy and that the space launch facilities located there would be called the John F. Kennedy Space Center.1

In the more than five-and-a-half years between Kennedy’s death and the July 20, 1969 landing of Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, dedication to Kennedy’s commitment to achieving that feat “before this decade is out” sustained the program through delays and difficult times, including the death of three Apollo 1 astronauts in a launch pad accident on January 27, 1967. When the Apollo 11 command module Columbia returned to Earth, landing in the Pacific Ocean at dawn on July 24, 1969, a large video screen in Apollo Mission Control in Houston dis­played these words:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.

John F. Kennedy to Congress, May 25, 1961

Above the image of the Apollo 11 mission patch on another screen appeared: Task accomplished July 1969

A half century has passed since President Kennedy decided to send Americans to the Moon, and almost forty years since the last two Apollo astronauts walked on the lunar surface. As noted in the prologue, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. some years ago suggested that “the 20th Century will be remembered, when all else is forgotten, as the century when man burst his terrestrial bounds.”2 While the broadest historical significance of the initial journeys to Moon may indeed take centuries to fully appreciate, it is certainly possible to evaluate the impacts of the lunar landing program to date and of John F. Kennedy’s role in initiating the effort and continuing to support it until the day of his death.3 This chapter contains my assessment of what Kennedy’s commitment to the race to the Moon tells us about how John F. Kennedy carried out his duties as President of the United States; asks whether such a presidentially directed large-scale undertaking can serve as a model for other such efforts; and evaluates the several impacts of Project Apollo. I carry out this last evaluation in terms of how well Apollo served the objectives sought by President Kennedy in sending Americans to the lunar

surface, in terms of its impact on the evolution of the U. S. space program since the end of Project Apollo, and in terms of how humanity’s first jour­neys beyond the immediate vicinity of their home planet will be viewed in the long sweep of history.