Category THE RACE

There was another urgent matter on President Kennedy’s mind as he con­sidered options for the future in space. Kennedy had inherited Eisenhower

administration planning for an invasion of Cuba, since 1960 under the control of Fidel Castro, by CIA-trained Cuban exiles. Kennedy had reluc­tantly given the go-ahead to the plan a few days before April 14, and bomb­ing of Cuban airfields by what were characterized as airplanes flown by the exiles but actually flown by U. S. pilots began on April 15. The exiles went ashore at the Bay of Pigs on the morning of April 17. Within thirty-six hours, it was clear the plans had been ill-conceived, and that the invasion was a “perfect failure.”26

The fiasco in Cuba greatly distressed Kennedy; Sorensen describes him on the early morning of April 19, after the failure was evident, as “anguished and fatigued” and “in the most emotional, self-critical state I had ever seen him. He cursed not his fate or advisors but himself.” The days surrounding the failed invasion were “the worst week of his public life.” In the follow­ing days, “Kennedy’s anguish and dejection were evident to people around him.” Not only John Kennedy but also his brother Robert was affected. One account of a top-level meeting in the aftermath of the failure reports that Robert Kennedy, just after the president stepped out of the room, “turned on everybody,” saying, “All you bright fellows. You got the president into this. We’ve got to do something to show the Russians we are not paper tigers.”27

How much Kennedy’s emotional state and competitive character deter­mined or merely reinforced his resolve to proceed rapidly in space cannot be definitively known, but most evidence suggests that they were influential but not decisive factors. The failure was never explicitly linked to the review of the space program that took place in the days following the Bay of Pigs; Edward Welsh maintains that the fiasco was “not a factor at all” in that review. But Wiesner says of the Bay of Pigs, “I don’t think anyone can mea­sure it, but I am sure it had an impact. I think the President felt some pres­sure to get something else in the foreground.” He adds that, although the failed invasion was never explicitly linked to space, “I discussed it with the President and saw his reactions. I’m sure it wasn’t his primary motivation. I think the Bay of Pigs put him in a mood to run harder than he might have.” JFK’s national security adviser McGeorge Bundy suggests that “it is quite possible that, if the Bay of Pigs had been a resounding success, the President might have dawdled a little longer on the space decision.” Sorensen adds that Kennedy’s attitude toward the acceleration of the space program was influenced by “the fact that the Soviets had gained tremendous world-wide prestige from the Gagarin flight at the same time we had suffered a loss of prestige from the Bay of Pigs. It pointed up the fact that prestige was a real and not simply a public relations factor in world affairs.”28

One certain impact of the Bay of Pigs failure was to heighten White House concern regarding a possible failure of the first human launch in Project Mercury, which at that point was scheduled for May 2. A mission failure, especially if it resulted in the death of the Mercury astronaut on live televi­sion, was a possibility that the president and his advisers viewed with great concern.

As Lambright notes in his biography of James Webb, “while the decision to go to the moon was unfolding, a separate decision process—mainly in Webb’s own mind—was unfolding. This was the personal agenda Webb had brought to NASA—“a mission to use science and technology. . . to strengthen the United States educationally and economically.” Webb’s objective was to maximize the benefits of an accelerated space program for Earth in terms of research, education, and regional economic development. Walter McDougall in his award-winning book. . . the Heavens and the Earth described the total­ity of Webb’s vision as “Space Age America,” a term that indeed Webb some­times used.19

While the final review of the accelerated program was underway in the White House, Webb was consulting with his colleagues outside the gov­ernment and those whose support he thought might be important to the public acceptance of the new effort. For example, on May 15, he wrote to Vannevar Bush at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Webb had known Bush since his time in Harry Truman’s BOB. Bush had been President Roosevelt’s top technical advisor during World War II and his report Science, the Endless Frontier had laid the foundation for postwar government support of science.20 Webb told Bush that he regretted that the two “find ourselves on somewhat different sides of the complex ques­tion of manned space flight”; they earlier in May had had a confrontation at a Washington social function over the value of humans in space. Webb noted that “no one could have ridden down Pennsylvania Avenue with Commander Shepard without feeling the deep desire of those lining the Avenue for something to be proud of and a hero. At the moment I believe this feeling is somewhat expanded to include a desire for a real effort in the space field.” Webb assured Bush that “in the programs that are now under­way and which will shortly be put forward, I expect to do all that I can to build up the university research, teaching, and graduate and post-graduate quality and quantity of education. . . If we do not find ways to make the major program carry a burden in each of these fields, we simply are not going to meet the challenge of our times.”21

The most sweeping version of Webb’s vision can be found in a May 23 memorandum he prepared for the vice president as Johnson returned from his Asian trip. Webb told him that Houston Congressman Albert Thomas

has made it very clear that he and [Houston construction magnate and Johnson campaign contributor] George Brown were extremely interested in having Rice University make a real contribution to the effort, particularly in view of the fact that some research funds were now being spent at Rice, that the resources of Rice had increased substantially, and that some 3,000 acres of land had been set aside by Rice for an important research installation. On investigation, I find that we are going to have to establish some place where we can do the technology related to the Apollo program, and this should be on the water where the vehicle can ultimately be barged to the launching site. Therefore we have looked carefully at the situation at Rice, and at the possible locations near the Houston Ship Canal or other accessible waterways in that general area. George Brown has been extremely helpful in doing this.

In essence, Webb was preempting the decision on where to relocate the Space Task Group as it took on the lunar landing assignment, even though the process through which that decision would be formalized extended for four more months. But Webb did not stop with Houston; he now broadened his horizon to the whole region. His vision of using centers of excellence in areas like Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas to spur regional development had been developed during his years working for Robert Kerr in Oklahoma. In January 1956, Webb in a letter to his former boss, President Harry Truman, had laid out his concept of using an Oklahoma-based “Frontiers of Science Foundation” to stimulate science, technology, and industry in that state and beyond.22 Now he told Johnson:

No commitments have been made, but I believe it is going to be of great importance to develop the intellectual and other resources of the Southwest in connection with the new programs the Government is undertaking. Texas offers an unusual opportunity at this time due to the fact that [long-time Webb friend and chairman of the National Academy Space Science Board] Dr. Lloyd Berkner. . . is establishing a Graduate Research Center in Dallas with the backing of Eric Johnston, Cecil Green, and others in that area (estimated at about one hundred million dollars) and in view of the fact that Senator Kerr and those interested with him in the Arkansas, White, and Red River System have now pushed it to the point that it is opening up the whole area related to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and in many ways helping to provide a development potential for Mississippi. If it were possible to get a combination where out – in-front theoretical research done by Berkner and his group around Dallas in such a way to strengthen all the universities in the area, and if at the same time a strong engineering and technical center could be established near the water near Houston and perhaps in conjunction with Rice University, these two strong centers would provide a great impetus to the intellectual and industrial base of this whole region.

Webb was still not done. He related his vision for Southwest regional development to the nation as a whole. Developing a strong technical compe­tence in the Southwest

would permit us to think of the country as having a complex in California running from San Francisco down through the new University of California installation in San Diego, another center around Chicago with the University of Chicago as a pivot, a strong Northeastern arrangement with Harvard, M. I.T., and like institutions participating. Some work in the southeast perhaps revolving around the research triangle in North Carolina (in which Charlie Jonas as the ranking minority on Thomas’s Appropriations Subcommittee would have an interest), and with the Southwestern complex rounding out the situation.23

This “grand mix of noble vision and pork-barrel politics”24 went well beyond anything that President Kennedy had in mind as he approved an accelerated space program, primarily as a foreign policy response to Soviet space successes and their political impacts. But the space program buildup over the next few years that resulted from Kennedy’s decision allowed Webb the room needed to put his agenda into practice, and Webb, a New Deal Democrat, had little hesitation in using his position at NASA to implement his vision of an improved America.

The first stop on President Kennedy’s two-day tour to inspect the facili­ties being developed for Apollo was the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. There he was briefed by Wernher von Braun on the approach that NASA had finally chosen for carrying out the lunar landing mission, called lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR). This approach had emerged in the first half of 1962 as NASA’s preferred approach to getting to the Moon, but the White House Office of Science and Technology and its exter­nal advisers on the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) were at the time of JFK’s trip embroiled in a dispute with NASA over the wisdom of that choice. As von Braun described the LOR approach, Kennedy inter­rupted, saying that “I understand that Dr. Wiesner doesn’t agree with this,” and calling his science adviser to join the discussion. “Some lively dialogue” then ensued among Wiesner, von Braun, Webb, Seamans, and others; this discussion was just out of the earshot of reporters. According to Seamans, the reporters “obviously knew we were discussing something other than golf scores.” Wiesner suggests that he and von Braun were having a “friendly” talk in front of the president when Webb, who thought the two were arguing, “moved right in,” so that “what had been a friendly discussion became a real argument” as the press “watched, heard, and listened.” Kennedy ended the five-minute discussion by saying, “Well, maybe we’ll have one more hearing and then we’ll close the books on the issue.”1

Key to the LOR concept was separating the functions of the lunar landing mission between two spacecraft, rather than the single heavy spacecraft con­templated in both the direct ascent and the Earth orbit rendezvous (EOR) approach to the lunar landing. One spacecraft, designated the command and service module (CSM) , would carry the crew to lunar orbit and back to Earth; the other, designated the lunar excursion module (LEM), would carry two crew members from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface, and then, after they had finished their exploration, back to a rendezvous in lunar orbit with the CSM. After the crew and lunar samples were transferred to the CSM, the LEM could then be discarded. Since the LEM would operate only in the atmosphere-free vicinity of the Moon and would not have to carry the

heavy fuel and even heavier heat shield required for the return to Earth, it could be much lighter than a spacecraft that would both land on the Moon and also have to carry the crew back to Earth. This weight reduction result­ing from this separation of functions made it possible to launch the whole lunar landing mission with one Saturn V booster, rather than the two that would be required by the Earth orbit rendezvous (EOR) approach.

The LOR concept had been brought to Seamans’s attention in an impas­sioned nine-page November 15, 1961, letter from John Houbolt, an engi­neer at NASA’s Langley Research Center, who had bypassed several layers of the NASA chain of command in sending the letter. NASA in late 1961 was focusing on some form of EOR as its preferred approach to the lunar mis­sion, but Houbolt argued that the LOR approach was the better way to get­ting to the Moon before the end of the decade, was safer and less expensive, and required only one launch.2

After extended analysis of the concept, NASA’s top leaders by early July 1962 had agreed that LOR was indeed the best choice for achieving the

lunar mission by the end of the decade and were preparing to announce their decision at a July 11 press conference. In anticipation of the announcement, NASA on July 3 sent a summary of its comparison of the various options to science adviser Wiesner. By the end of the day, Wiesner called Webb “in a highly emotional state” to say that “L. O.R. is the worst mistake in the world.” Webb asked Joseph Shea, the NASA systems engineer who was lead­ing the effort to select the lunar landing approach, to go to the White House immediately; when he met with Wiesner, the science adviser called LOR a “technological travesty.”3

There were several reasons for Wiesner’s reaction.4 One was the intuitive sense that a mission that depended for its success, and for the crew’s survival, on a rendezvous in lunar orbit, 240,000 miles from Earth, would be exces­sively risky. This was especially the case since there had been no experience with rendezvous, and Project Gemini, the just-initiated effort to gain that experience, was at that time not scheduled to have its first flight until late 1963. (The first flight actually did not come until early 1965.) Given the end of the decade deadline, the choice of mission approach would have to be made before the feasibility of its key element, rendezvous, had been dem­onstrated. (This of course was also true for Earth orbit rendezvous, but if a problem developed in an Earth-orbiting mission, the astronauts could easily return home.) NASA’s engineering analyses showed that LOR was safer than EOR, but Wiesner and his staff did not trust those analyses. The principal staff person supporting Wiesner on space issues was Nicholas Golovin, who had been forced to resign his position at NASA the preceding fall and left the space agency with “bitter gall” in his throat, only to be quickly hired by Wiesner as his top staff person for space issues. Golovin was tenacious in his criticism of NASA’s choice of LOR during 1962 and became a particular irritant to the space agency as NASA attempted to move forward.

Wiesner was also hearing from the space vehicle panel of PSAC that it had serious reservations about the LOR choice. The panel had followed NASA’s planning for the lunar mission throughout the year. Members of the panel together with Wiesner met with the NASA leadership on July 6 to outline their concerns. As a result of this meeting, NASA was forced to change its message for the July 11 press conference to saying that the LOR choice was tentative and subject to further study and review.

Jerome Wiesner transmitted the PSAC views as an attachment to a July 17 letter to James Webb; in that letter Wiesner also set forth his own views. Like the PSAC panel, he was concerned about “which mission mode is most con­sistent with the main stream of our national space program, and therefore the one most likely to be useful in overtaking and keeping ahead of Soviet space technology.” In particular, Wiesner wanted more attention paid to “the ques­tion of which mode is likely to be most suitable for enhancing our military capabilities in space, if doing so should turn out to be desirable.” Wiesner told Webb that he had “reported the results of our discussions to the President.”5

Webb replied to Wiesner’s letter on August 20, listing the various studies that NASA was undertaking based on the Space Vehicle Panel’s suggestions and assuring Wiesner that NASA had thought carefully about the issues raised in Wiesner’s letter. He told Wiesner that “it is our considered opinion that the LOR mode. . . provides as comprehensive a base of knowledge and experience for application to other possible space programs, either military or civilian, as either the EOR mode or the C-5 [Saturn V] direct mode.” Webb thanked Wiesner for his and PSAC’s efforts, saying that “this con­structive criticism by eminently qualified men is of tremendous value.”6 This final comment may not have been totally sincere. The pressure resulting from President Kennedy’s “end of the decade” deadline was being felt within NASA, and continued criticism from the White House science office was a barrier to NASA’s moving ahead with its plans.

Wiesner and his assistant Golovin continued to intervene in NASA’s deci­sion process during July and August, and on September 5, a few days before the president was to visit various NASA installations, Wiesner once again wrote Webb reiterating his concerns regarding the LOR choice. Wiesner sent a copy of his letter to the president. In this letter, Wiesner called the contribu­tion of the LOR choice to the overall space capabilities of the United States “seriously questionable,” noting that any military applications of those capa­bilities “will be in the near earth environment” and that “whether manned military missions are to be either of a defensive or offensive character. . . the obvious needs for maneuverability and reasonable stay-time in orbit would require that refueling techniques be developed more or less contemporane­ously with those for rendezvous and docking.” While James Webb was sym­pathetic to using Apollo to build up overall U. S. space capabilities, his main focus in 1962 was selecting the approach that gave the best chance of getting to the Moon before the Soviets; Wiesner appeared less interested in the race to the Moon and more focused on developing near-Earth space capabilities with military relevance.7

This is where the situation stood as President Kennedy visited Huntsville and was party to the Wiesner-NASA debate. As Kennedy flew to Cape Canaveral, the next stop in his tour, he was asked what the likely outcome of the controversy would be. “Jerry’s going to lose, it’s obvious,” replied the president; “Webb’s got all the money, and Jerry’s only got me.”8

Wiesner and Golovin did not give up their fight easily and continued to contest NASA’s choice and supporting analyses in September and October. NASA finally assembled all of its analyses into a document that it hoped would be a final comparison of the approaches to carrying out the lunar landing mission and sent it to Wiesner on October 24. In that report, NASA estimated that the probability of success for any one lunar landing attempt was 40 percent for the LOR approach, 36 percent for the direct ascent approach, and 30 percent for EOR; probabilities of crew safety were 85 per­cent for LOR, 83 percent for direct ascent, and 89 percent for EOR. Wiesner and Golovin continued to question the NASA figures, but their fight was coming to a conclusion.9

The NASA report was accompanied by a “peevish” letter from Webb to Wiesner. Webb told Wiesner that “my understanding is that you. . . will examine this and you will let me know your views as to whether we should ask for an appointment with the President.” Webb’s view was “we should proceed with the lunar orbit plan, should announce our selection of the con­tractor for the lunar excursion vehicle, and should play the whole thing in a low key.” Webb said that unless he heard to the contrary, he would advise President Kennedy’s appointments secretary Kenneth O’Donnell “that nei­ther you nor the Defense Department wishes to interpose a formal objec­tion” to NASA’s going ahead with LOR. “In that case,” wrote Webb, “I believe Mr. O’Donnell will not feel it wise to schedule the President’s time and that the President will confirm this judgment.”10

As Webb wrote his October 24 letter, President Kennedy was totally involved with dealing with the problem of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and most certainly was not going to take time to referee the NASA dispute with his science adviser. Webb and Wiesner talked by telephone on October 29, the Monday after the weekend during which the Cuban missile crisis was resolved. Wiesner said that his message to the president would not be to overrule any decision NASA might reach, but rather to be sure that a full and honest assessment had been made of all the options; Wiesner still questioned whether this was the case. Webb told Wiesner he “thought it better not to go to a formal hearing or involve the President personally in the decision,” but Wiesner thought that “involving the President couldn’t be avoided” because someone was sure to ask Kennedy whether the decision was made after the best possible analysis. On November 2, Wiesner and three PSAC members met with Webb and his senior staff to go over once again the White House objections to LOR; Wiesner recommended that NASA select instead a new alternative, a two-person flight using the direct ascent approach that was being strongly advocated by the builder of the Apollo command and service module, North American Aviation. Choosing this approach would mean that North American would manufacture spacecraft that would land on the Moon, not just the ship that would ferry astronauts from the Earth to lunar orbit and back. Again NASA refused to alter its position that LOR was the preferred approach. After discussing his reservations with the president, Wiesner decided not to insist on a formal meeting with Kennedy to make a final decision.11

On November 7, the day that NASA confirmed its tentative choice of lunar orbit rendezvous and announced its intent to issue the contract for the lunar lander to Grumman Aerospace, McGeorge Bundy wrote Wiesner, saying that the “President’s conclusion on the moon method is that he would like a last letter from Wiesner to Webb saying that Kennedy “thinks the time is coming for a final recommendation and relies on Director Webb to review all the arguments and to produce that recom­mendation.” Bundy also told Wiesner that “we should make Webb feel the responsibility for a definite decision and the importance of weighing all opinions, without trying to make his decision for him.” This com­munication was somewhat after the fact, given the NASA announcement that day.12

Webb did write the requested letter to President Kennedy. He told the president that “by adopting LOR, the mission can be accomplished at least one year earlier in comparison to the EOR mode.” By this time, Webb was aware of Kennedy’s desire to accomplish the initial lunar landing at the earli­est possible date in order to give maximum assurance of accomplishing the landing before the Soviet Union did. The cost of LOR approach, suggested Webb, would be “10% to 15% less than for the EOR approach.” He told Kennedy that the decision to go with the LOR mode “had to be made at this time in order to maintain our schedules, which aim at a landing attempt in late 1967,” and that, with this decision made “we intend to drive forward vigorously on every segment of the manned lunar landing program.”13

With NASA’s November 7 announcement and Webb’s letter to Kennedy, NASA now indeed had all the pieces in place to “drive forward vigorously” on Project Apollo. Kennedy’s approach with respect to the LOR decision was again typical of his management style as president. He welcomed a wide variety of views being expressed while decisions were being made, but sel­dom if ever forced on an operating agency of the executive branch a course of action with which its leadership disagreed. If Kennedy felt that a wrong policy was being pursued, he was more likely to remove the agency head than insist on his carrying out a White House-imposed perspective. Now it was up to NASA to deliver on its commitments.

Reactions to Kennedy’s proposal were quick to appear and mixed in charac­ter. The New York Times editorialized that the proposal showed that Kennedy was “courageous” and that he was “able and willing to seize the opportunity of the moment to exercise an imaginative political initiative.” In the same edition of the newspaper, reporter John Finney noted that Kennedy’s pro­posal had “caught many Government officials by surprise,” caused “bewil­derment,” and was seen by many in Washington as “the first step toward pulling out of the costly ‘moon race.’ ” The Times reported the next day that “Europe’s Press Praises Kennedy,” citing the Manchester Guardian’s charac­terization of the president’s proposal as a “minor master-stroke.” Two weeks later, the Times reported that Brainerd Holmes, who had left his position in NASA as head of manned space flight in June, thought that a coopera­tive lunar mission would be “a very costly, very inefficient, probably a very dangerous way, to execute the program.” The trade publication Missiles and Rockets was most negative, rejecting “such a naive internationalist approach to the lunar project. It can only harm the U. S. effort to the benefit of the Soviet Union.” The magazine characterized Kennedy’s proposal as “ill con­ceived,” potentially leading to the U. S. manned space flight program facing the prospect of “dwindling from one of the most exciting challenges ever accepted by a nation to an unimportant pawn in the Cold War to be sacri­ficed in the first gambit of appeasement.”33

On November 16, 1963, John Kennedy made the short flight to Cape Canaveral from his family home in Palm Beach, Florida for an inspection tour of progress being made by NASA in the Gemini and Apollo programs. He also took a helicopter to a Navy ship offshore to witness the launch of a submarine-based Polaris missile. The president’s visit was seen as “an effort to focus attention on the nation’s space program” as the Congress made final decisions on the NASA FY1964 budget.

Kennedy was first briefed on the Gemini program by astronauts Gus Grissom and Gordon Cooper. He then had a short presentation on Apollo by George Mueller in the launch control center at Launch Complex 37; a Saturn 1 booster was sitting on that launch pad for a planned December launch attempt. As his party left the control center, the president lagged behind to inspect the models of the various launch vehicles being used by NASA, ranging from the small Redstone booster that had been used for the suborbital launches of Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom to the mighty Saturn V that would be used to send astronauts to the Moon. When he was assured that the models were all to the same scale, Kennedy used words like “amaz­ing” and “fantastic.” Robert Seamans, who accompanied Kennedy through­out the visit, suggests that the President “maybe for the first time, began to realize the dimensions of these projects.”

Kennedy then walked to the vicinity of the Saturn 1 booster, where he was briefed on the rocket’s dimensions and capabilities by Wernher von Braun (see cover image). Before leaving the launch pad, and much to the discom­fort of his Secret Service detail, Kennedy walked over and stood directly underneath the rocket. At that moment, he asked whether the upcoming launch “will be the largest payload that man has ever put in orbit.” When told that this was indeed the case, Kennedy responded: “That is very, very significant.” He recognized that with the upcoming launch the United States would finally surpass the Soviet Union in lifting capacity, a goal that he had pursued from his first presidential decisions on space. The party then flew by helicopter over the Saturn V launch facilities under construction at Launch Complex 39 on the adjoining Merritt Island; Kennedy had been shown a model of the complex during his earlier briefing by Mueller.

As he returned to the mainland after witnessing the Polaris launch, Kennedy said to Seamans, “I’m not sure that I have the facts really straight” with respect to the launch capability of the Saturn 1. “Will you tell me about it again?” Seamans responded that “the usable payload is 19,000 pounds, but we’ll actually have 38,000 pounds up there in orbit.” The rocket’s lift­off thrust would be 1.5 million pounds. Kennedy then asked, “what is the Soviet capability?” and Seamans told him that it was approximately 15,000 pounds of usable payload and that the Soviet booster had only a lift-off thrust of 800,000 pounds. Kennedy once again said: “That’s very impor­tant. Now, be sure that the press understands this.” As he was preparing to return to Palm Beach, he turned to Seamans and said: “Now, you won’t forget, will you, to do this?” He asked Seamans to get on the press plane to emphasize that the United States would soon close the weight-lifting gap in space. Seamans was successful in his presidentially assigned mission. The New York Times reported the next day that Kennedy was “enthralled by the sight of the Saturn 1 vehicle, which is expected to make space history next month” by putting the United States ahead of the Soviet Union in the weight placed in orbit.13

Six days later, on the short flight from Fort Worth to Dallas, John F. Kennedy told Representative Olin Teague that “he wanted to go to the Cape for the Saturn launch in December. He thought the space program needed a boost and he wanted to help.”14

There were several significant space issues that were unresolved in the final months of the Eisenhower administration.12 Dealing with these issues was to occupy president-elect Kennedy’s attention only briefly during the postelec­tion transition period. They included the relationship between civilian and military space efforts; a proposal to abolish the National Aeronautics and Space Council, the White House body for developing national space policy and strategy; the pace at which larger rocket boosters ought to be developed in order to close the weight-lifting gap with the Soviet Union; and NASA’s plans for a human space flight program to follow the initial U. S. effort to send an astronaut into orbit, Project Mercury.

The publicity-seeking chairman of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Overton Brooks, was aware of and concerned by the Air Force campaign. Unsatisfied by Air Force assurances that it did not hope to take over the lead role in the U. S. space program, Brooks wrote a three-page let­ter to President Kennedy on March 9, saying that he was “seriously disturbed by the persistence and strength of implications reaching me to the effect that a radical change in our national space policy is contemplated.” Brooks told Kennedy that he did not want to see “the military tail wag the space dog.”30 Brooks followed this letter with hearings on the NASA-Air Force rivalry, but he was not able to get top DOD officials to testify, most likely due to an administration decision not to cooperate with the committee. The hearings shed little light on the evolving situation.

Despite the hopes raised by Kennedy’s campaign rhetoric, it is unlikely that the new administration could have, or would have, agreed with the Air Force hope for a larger role in space at the expense of NASA. As he left office, Dwight Eisenhower had warned of the increasing power of the “military- industrial complex,” and a move in the early months of the administration to increase Air Force activity in a visible area such as space would have been politically very difficult. Secretary of Defense McNamara was trying to get the management of defense activities under centralized control. The top peo­ple in DOD were not particularly space conscious, and McNamara and Webb had reached an understanding of the respective roles of their agencies that the White House would have been unlikely to countermand. NASA under Webb’s direction seemed to be shaping up in terms both of its organization and program success, and there were no compelling reasons to downgrade the importance of the agency. One of presidential science adviser Wiesner’s major priorities was to control the spread of the arms race into new areas; he too was unlikely to have supported an expanded military space effort.

President Kennedy replied to the Brooks letter on March 23, telling the congressman that “it is not now, nor has it ever been my intention to subor­dinate the activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to those of the Department of Defense.”31 With that response, the con­troversy over the NASA-Air Force relationship became a secondary policy issue, although it never completely disappeared.

It had been assumed since the March meetings on the NASA budget that Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson as the new chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council would, once he formally assumed that position, lead a comprehensive review of the U. S. space program that would provide the basis for decisions in fall 1961 on the future of that program, and especially the future of the human space flight effort. But the events of April 1961 drastically shortened the time allotted to that review. Johnson did not attend the April 14 White House meetings on the space program. He was returning from his first overseas trip as vice presi­dent, to the West African nation of Senegal, which was celebrating the first anniversary of its independence from France, with stops in Geneva and Paris on the way home. But on April 19, after President Kennedy had in the early hours of the day walked disconsolately with Ted Sorensen and then alone on the south lawn of the White House in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs failure, he met later in the day with Lyndon Johnson and James Webb to discuss the organization of the accelerated review he had decided was needed. Johnson suggested that he would “have hear­ings, lay a background and create a platform for a recommendation to Congress.” He asked Kennedy to give him a memorandum “that would provide a charter for those hearings” and would be an “outline of what concerned him.”29

Ted Sorensen drafted a one-page memorandum, and President Kennedy signed it and sent it to Johnson the next day, April 20. The memorandum stands as a historic document; it spelled out the requirements that led directly to the decision to go to the Moon as the centerpiece of an accelerated U. S. space effort. It said:

In accordance with our conversation I would like for you as Chairman of the Space Council to be in charge of making an overall survey of where we stand in space.

1. Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man. Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win?

2. How much additional would it cost?

3. Are we working 24 hours a day on existing programs? If not, why not? If not, will you make recommendations to me as to how work can be speeded up.

4. In building large boosters should we put our emphasis on nuclear, chemical, or liquid fuel, or a combination of these?

5. Are we making maximum effort? Are we achieving necessary results? [1]

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

April 20, 1961

MEMORANDUM FOR

VICE PRESIDENT

In accordance with our conversation I would like for you as Chairman of the Space Council to be in charge of making an overall survey of where we stand in space.

1. Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man. Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win?

2. How much additional would it cost?

3. Are we working 24 hours a day on existing programs. If not, why not? If not, will you make recommendations to me as to how work can be speeded up.

4. In building large boosters should we put out emphasis on nuclear, chemical or liquid fuel, or a combination of these three?

5. Are we making maximum effort? Are we achieving necessary results?

The April 20, 1961, memorandum that led to the decision to go to the Moon (LBJ Library image).

The Kennedy memorandum both contained a very clear statement of a requirement—“a space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win”—and a sense of urgency. Kennedy wanted Johnson’s report “at the earliest possible moment.” Budget director Bell suggests that “the President would not have made such a request unless he expected a positive answer and a strong program, and therefore he was pretty sure before he made that request that that was what he intended to do.” At an April 21 press conference, Kennedy was asked: “Mr. President, you don’t seem to be push­ing the space program nearly as energetically now as you suggested during the campaign that you thought it should be pushed. In view of the feeling of many people in this country that we must do everything we can to catch up with the Russians as soon as possible, do you anticipate applying any sort of crash program?” Kennedy replied:

We are attempting to make a determination as to which program offers the best hope before we embark on it, because you may commit a relatively small sum of money now for a result in 1967, ‘68, or ‘69, which will cost you billions of dollars, and therefore the Congress passed yesterday the bill providing for a Space Council which will be chaired by the Vice President. We are attempting to make a determination as to which of these various proposals offers the best hope. When that determination is made we will then make a recommendation to the Congress.

In addition, we have to consider whether there is any program now, regard­less of its cost, which offers us hope of being pioneers in a project. It is possible to spend billions of dollars in this project in space to the detriment of other programs and still not be successful. We are behind, as I said before, in large boosters.

We have to make a determination whether there is any effort we could make in time or money which could put us first in any new area. Now, I don’t want to start spending the kind of money that I am talking about without making a determination based on careful scientific judgment as to whether a real success can be achieved, or whether because we are so far behind now in this particu­lar race we are going to be second in this decade.

So I would say to you that it’s a matter of great concern, but I think before we break through and begin a program which would not reach a completion, as you know, until the end of this decade—for example, trips to the moon, maybe 10 years off, maybe a little less, but are quite far away and involve, as I say, enormous sums—I don’t think we ought to rush into it and begin them until we really know where we are going to end up. And that study is now being undertaken under the direction of the Vice President.

Then, for the first time in public, Kennedy said: “If we can get to the moon before the Russians, then we should.”30

Preparation of Kennedy’s message to Congress began in mid-May; the sec­tion on accelerating the space program was first drafted by the BOB’s Willis Shapley; NASA, DOD, AEC, and the Space Council provided their comments. The overall theme of the speech was the need for U. S. citizens to make sacri­fices to meet the challenges facing the country and to insure the U. S. position as the leading power in the world by addressing “urgent national needs,” the title given to the address. After Kennedy received messages from Moscow suggesting that he was likely to encounter a belligerent Nikita Khrushchev in their meeting in Vienna, the speech was “quickly redrafted” and “the language toughened to signal his [Kennedy’s] resolve to Khrushchev.”25 On May 25, in a nationally televised address,26 President John F. Kennedy told the assembled lawmakers that “these are extraordinary times. And we face an extraordinary challenge. Our strength as well as our convictions have imposed on this nation the role of leader in freedom’s cause.” He noted that “there is no simple policy that meets this challenge.” But “there is much we can do—and must do. The proposals I bring before you are numerous and varied. They arise from the host of special opportunities and dangers which have become increasingly clear in recent months.” Then the presi­dent turned to his specific proposals, which included measures to continue economic recovery from the recession the new administration had inherited; measures to help developing nations make economic and social progress; cooperation in terms of military alliances and military assistance to U. S. allies; an enhanced overseas information program; an additional build-up of U. S. military power beyond what Kennedy had requested just two months earlier; a strengthened civil defense program; and an increased emphasis on disarmament negotiations. All of these initiatives, Kennedy said, would involve substantial costs. Echoing his inaugural address call to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” Kennedy argued that “our greatest asset in this struggle is the American people—their willingness to pay the price for these programs—to under­stand and accept a long struggle.” He warned that “this Nation is engaged in a long and exacting test of the future of freedom.”

After listing all of the other areas he was recommending for new action, the president turned last to space. As he did, he deviated from his pre­pared text to emphasize the sacrifices involved and the commitment he was requesting; Sorensen says that this departure from the text was “the only time I can recall his doing so in a formal address.”27 Kennedy’s words as they deviated from the prepared text are indicated in bold italics below. Kennedy also skipped a few portions of the prepared text or deleted passages by hand. These deletions from the prepared text are in brackets:

Finally, if we are to win the battle for men’s minds, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all as did Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Since early in my term, our efforts in space have been under review. With the advice of the Vice President, who is Chairman of the National Space Council, we have examined where we are strong and where we are not, where we may succeed and where we may not. Now it is time to take longer strides—time for a great new American enterprise—time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.

I believe we possess all the resources and all the talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or mar­shaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never spec­ified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment.

Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines, which gives them many months of lead-time, and recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit this lead for some time to come in still more impressive successes, we nevertheless are required to make new efforts on our own. For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make [find] us last.

We take an additional risk by making it in full view of the world—but as shown by the feat of astronaut Shepard, this very risk enhances our stature when we are successful. But this is not merely a race. Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

I therefore ask the Congress, above and beyond the increases I have earlier requested for space activities, to provide the funds which are needed to meet the following national goals:

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. No single space project in this period will be more [exciting or] impressive to mankind or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. [Including the necessary supporting research, this objective will require an additional $531 million this year and still higher sums in the future.] We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar spacecraft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fueled boosters much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations—explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon—it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

* * *

Let it be clear—and this is a judgment which the Members of Congress must finally make. Let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action—a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs, 531 million dollars in fiscal 1962—an estimated $7-9 billion additional over the next five years. If we are

[were] to go only halfway, or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my judgment it would be better not to go at all.

Now this is a choice which this country must make, and I am confident that under the leadership of the Space Committees of the Congress, and the Appropriating Committees, that you will consider the matter carefully.

It is a most important decision that we make as a nation. But all of you have lived through the last four years and have seen the significance of space and the adventures in space, and no one can predict with certainty what the ultimate meaning will be of the mastery of space.

I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it success­ful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year.

[Let me stress that more money alone will not do the job.] This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other impor­tant activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedi­cation, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel.

New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could, in fact, aggravate them further—unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant involved gives his pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.28

Sitting near the rostrum as Kennedy delivered his speech, Sorensen “thought the President looked strained in his effort to win them over.” Kennedy apparently had sensed that some in the Congressional audience were “skeptical, if not hostile, and that his request was being received with stunned doubt and disbelief”; this likely led to his decision to deviate from his prepared text to try to convince the congressmen of the need for what he was proposing, and to skip a few passages toward the end of his address. Returning to the White House, Kennedy remarked to Sorensen that “the routine applause with which the Congress greeted” his proposal for a national commitment to go to the Moon had struck him as “less than enthusiastic.”29 Indeed, during the speech the Senate and House Republican leaders “took notes, inspected their fingernails, brushed their hair back and joined in the almost complete Republican silence.”30

The New York Times the next morning had a banner headline saying “Kennedy Asks $1.8 Billion This Year to Accelerate Space Exploration, Add Foreign Aid, Bolster Defense” and also “Moon Trip Urged.” The news­paper reported that “Members of Congress embraced with some warmth today the objectives outlined in President Kennedy’s speech, but shied at providing all the funds to meet them,” and that “some fears were expressed by Democratic liberals, however, that the huge spending in the effort to reach the moon. . . might divert funds from programs such as aid to the aged.” The Times editorialized that “there is an element of ‘race’ involved cannot be denied, but that is only secondary to the main purpose” and that “it is in the spirit of free men, and the cherished traditions of our people, to accept the challenge and meet it with all our resources, material, intellectual and spiritual.” The editorial thought that “the majority of our people will agree” with the lunar landing goal.31

Kennedy need not have worried about congressional, and particularly Senate, support of the accelerated space effort he had proposed. Lyndon Johnson’s earlier consultations with congressional leaders had helped lay the foundation for strong bipartisan support of the initiative. The Senate on June 28 took up a House authorization bill passed the day before the May 25 speech, and amended it to include the full $1.784 billion for NASA that White House had requested for Fiscal Year 1962; the bill passed with­out even the formality of a roll-call vote. The House of Representatives agreed to this increase in a conference committee, and the authorization bill passed the House on July 20 by a 354 to 59 vote. The appropriations bill containing NASA funds had a similarly easy ride through Congress; it passed both houses on August 7 and contained a $1,671,750,000 NASA appropriation for Fiscal 1962, only $113 million less than Kennedy had requested.32 This amount represented an 89 percent increase over the pre­vious year’s NASA budget, the last one enacted during the Eisenhower administration.

Kennedy’s speech called for sending Americans to the Moon “before the decade is out.” There is some uncertainty on how the decision was made to use this phrase, rather than the 1967 date for the first landing attempt that was being used in NASA’s internal planning. The May 8 Webb-McNamara report had suggested an “end of the decade” target for the first lunar landing. The BOB review of the Webb-McNamara memorandum had suggested that there should be “a major effort to avoid any public commitment to a specific target date.” Robert Seamans reports that the first draft of Kennedy’s speech “called for a lunar landing by 1967” and that NASA was “aghast” at speci­fying a particular year. He says that James Webb “called Ted Sorensen and convinced him, and later the President, that the stated goal should be by the end of the decade.” Sorensen, by contrast, says that Kennedy’s “self-imposed deadline, ‘this decade,’ was chosen and inserted by JFK himself to exert pressure on NASA. The phrase deliberately left some flexibility—it could mean within the decade of the sixties, or within the next ten years.”33 A “within the next ten years” interpretation was never acknowledged; “before this decade is out” was universally seen as setting a target of the end of 1969 (or, for some, before the end of 1970) for the initial lunar landing. Indeed, as the Apollo program gained momentum, John Kennedy pushed for a landing as soon as possible, in 1967 or even late 1966.

Kennedy’s September 1962 trip to space installations was intended to give him a sense of the character and scope of the accelerated space effort he had approved in May 1961. At Huntsville, he saw one of the very large F-1 engines that would be used to power the Moon rocket, and witnessed a test firing of the engines of the first stage of the Saturn 1 booster that generated 1.5 million pounds of thrust. At the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the NASA Launch Operations Center on Merritt Island in Florida, he saw the launch pad from which two Saturn 1 boosters had already been success­fully launched, and was briefed on the Gemini and Apollo programs. He told the NASA staff at the Launch Operations Center that “as long as the decision has been made that our great system and others will be judged at least in one degree by how we do in the field of space, we might as well be first.”14 On the flight from Florida to his next stop in Houston, Kennedy spent more than an hour in informal conversation regarding both the civilian and the military space programs with BOB director Bell, director of defense research and engineering Harold Brown, and Seamans of NASA. Kennedy was surprised to discover that he and Seamans had both been members of the Class of 1940 at Harvard. (James Webb was on a separate plane with Vice President Johnson.)

The trip also provided an opportunity to make a major speech on the reasons behind his decision to go to the Moon; that speech is often con­fused with the May 25, 1961, address to a joint session of Congress during which Kennedy had announced his decision. At 10:00 a. m. on September 12, 1962, on a day that was oppressively hot and humid, President Kennedy addressed a Houston crowd of more than 40,000 people, mostly students, in the Rice University football stadium. Like many other of the president’s speeches, various government agencies had suggested to the White House what Kennedy might say; in this case, material had been submitted to JFK’s top speechwriter Theodore Sorensen from at least NASA, BOB, the State Department, and by Sorensen’s brother Tom at the U. S. Information Agency. Sorensen drew on ideas, phrases, and words from most of these inputs in drafting Kennedy’s Rice University speech, but he was a consum­mate master of spoken rhetoric, and his drafts transcended the sometimes pedestrian content of the agency submissions. Even so, most of Kennedy’s speeches as president, including this memorable space address, were group products.

The Rice University speech is perhaps most remembered for the line “we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” The original version of this sentence was actually suggested by NASA; the agency’s lengthy input into the speech preparation included the sentences: “We chose to go to the moon in this decade not because it will be easy, but because it will be hard. It will bring out the best in us.” These words formed the basis of a much more eloquent declaration. As Kennedy spoke, he substituted the word “choose” for the word “chose,” and said, “we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” Among the other memorable sentences in Kennedy’s Rice University address are the following:

“The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.”

“This generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the com­ing age of space. We mean to be part of it—we mean to lead it.” (This last sentence was extemporized rather than in the prepared text of the speech.)

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the prog­ress of all people.”

“But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?” (This last sentence was written into the speech’s reading text in Kennedy’s hand.) “Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, ‘Because it is there.’ Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”15

President Kennedy completed his tour of space installations later in the day, first visiting the temporary quarters of the new Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, then flying to St. Louis to visit the plant of the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, where the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft were devel­oped. By the time he returned to the White House, Kennedy had had an apparent change of mind; rather than giving high priority to controlling the costs of sending Americans to the Moon, Kennedy wanted to know “how soon can we get there?”