Category THE RACE

Budget director David Bell in February issued a government-wide call for a rapid agency review of the proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 1962 budget that had been submitted by the outgoing Eisenhower administration. James Webb’s initial examination of the NASA budget convinced him that the Eisenhower proposal was not adequate to support the kind of space program he believed was appropriate for the Kennedy administration; he judged that there was a need to accelerate the pace of the milestones that had been set out in NASA’s then-current ten-year plan. For example, he wanted to move the date of a potential lunar landing mission forward from 1973 to 1970; George Low’s report had indicated that it would be possible by that year, and perhaps even sooner. On March 17, NASA submitted a request for an additional $308.2 million, a 30 percent increase over the $1,109.6 million budget in the Eisenhower request. In his budget submission, Webb argued that “the civilian space program clearly can achieve a much more substantial contri­bution in aeronautical research and space exploration and technology if the pace of the program for 1962 is substantially accelerated.”18

Budget director Bell did not think that either he or the president was ready to decide on such an acceleration of NASA’s efforts. He later recalled that “most of us, when we came into office didn’t have any notion of what the space program was all about, what the issues were. A lot of people needed to be educated.”19 In response to the NASA request, BOB indicated that it would approve only a $50 million increase in the NASA budget, with any additional increases deferred until fall 1961, after a comprehensive review of the NASA program had been completed. James Webb refused to accept BOB’s decision and, as was his right as the head of a government agency, asked for a meeting with the president to appeal his case for a larger increase. The meeting was set for the late afternoon of March 22.

Before meeting with the president, Webb, Dryden, and Seamans briefed Vice President Johnson on their budget request. Budget director Bell, his deputy Elmer Staats, and the top career BOB staff person for the NASA
budget, Willis Shapley, explained to the vice president why they had not approved most of the request. In preparation for this meeting, Edward Welsh had prepared a briefing memorandum for Johnson that noted that the “major policy issue” involved in the budget was “does this country want to make an effort to catch up to the Soviet Union in space capability,” and particularly in weight-lifting capability. “To a considerable extent, domination of space will belong to those who can put up large manned and unmanned vehicles,” suggested Welsh.20

After this initial discussion, President Kennedy, Jerome Wiesner, the president’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Glenn Seaborg joined the meeting in the White House cabinet room. Bundy had not been named to his post until January, making him one of the last people to join Kennedy’s White House inner

President Kennedy with two of his top advisors on space issues, special counsel Theodore Sorensen (left image) and special assistant for national security affairs McGeorge Bundy (right image). (JFK Library photos)
circle. He was a Yale-educated member of the Republican Eastern establish­ment who had become a Harvard professor of government with a widely acknowledged intellect, and then in 1953, at age 34, the youngest ever dean of the Harvard faculty. Bundy during the Kennedy administration was to play an important role in the national security dimensions of the U. S. space effort, including the race to the Moon.

The BOB had prepared an agenda for the meeting that indicated that “the future direction and level of the civilian space program primarily depends on decisions to be made by this administration concerning the rate [at which] it wishes to undertake the following: (1) Increasing the rate of closure on the USSR’s lead in weight lifting capability; (2) Advancing manned exploration of space beyond Project Mercury.” Each of these issues, said the BOB paper, “merits assessment in relation to its (1) technological significance, (2) impact on the international prestige of the United States, and (3) effect on present and future budget requirements.” With respect to agenda item 2, the ques­tion was “should we now launch an aggressive program of manned space exploration to follow Mercury, aimed at the progressive goals of (a) multi­manned orbital laboratory and later (b) manned circumlunar flight and (c) manned lunar landing?”21

James Webb had stayed up late the day before the meeting preparing a six-page talking paper. He argued that “U. S. procrastination for a number of years had been based in part on a very real skepticism by President Eisenhower personally as to the necessity for the large expenditures required, and the validity of the goals sought through the space effort.” Webb noted that “in the preparation of the 1962 budget, President Eisenhower reduced the $1.35 billion requested by the Space Agency to the extent of $240 million and specifically eliminated funds to proceed with manned space flight projects beyond Mercury. This decision emasculated the ten year plan before it was even one year old, and unless reversed guarantees that the Russians will, for the next five to ten years, beat us to every spectacular exploratory flight.” Webb told Kennedy that “the first priority of this country’s space effort should be to improve as rapidly as possible our capability for boosting large spacecraft into orbit.” He added that “the Soviets have demonstrated how effective space exploration can be as a symbol of scientific progress and as an adjunct of foreign policy. Without necessarily following the Soviet lead in this kind of exploitation, we should not fail to recognize its potential.” Webb closed his paper by suggesting that leadership in space, “pioneering on a new frontier,” would help to create “more viable political, social and economic systems for nations willing to work with us in the years ahead.”22 These were themes that Webb realized would resonate with John Kennedy.

Robert Seamans followed Webb’s remarks with a concise summary of NASA’s budget request. Kennedy told Seamans: “That was very good; I would like your views in writing tomorrow.”23 With that, the hour-and-a – half meeting concluded. During those 90 minutes, John Kennedy, perhaps for the first time, had had the chance to get a clear picture of the space policy and budget issues requiring his decision.

Webb then briefly went into the Oval Office with President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson. He assured them, as the newcomer to the NASA leadership, that he believed “that we were moving right ahead with the things that needed to be done”; Kennedy in return told Webb that Dryden and Seamans had made a positive impression on him at this, their first meeting. Meanwhile, Seamans went home and prepared the memorandum that Kennedy had requested, which Webb quickly forwarded to the White House.24

On Saturday morning, May 6, the group charged with preparing the rec­ommendations met at the Pentagon office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Those present at some point in the day included McNamara, deputy secretary of defense Roswell Gilpatric, Harold Brown, the new direc­tor of defense research and engineering, and his deputy John Rubel, from the Department of Defense; James Webb, Hugh Dryden, Robert Seamans, and Abraham Hyatt, director of program planning and evaluation, from NASA; Chairman Glenn Seaborg from the Atomic Energy Commission; and Willis Shapley from the Military Division of Bureau of the Budget (BOB). Neither Jerome Wiesner nor Edward Welsh participated in the weekend sessions, and neither was briefed on their results before LBJ’s recommendations were sub­mitted to President Kennedy on May 8.1

Seamans reports that “there was unanimous agreement that at this that time we needed to do more in space; that we had a reasonable scientific

program; that the military program in space was satisfactory; that we should probably do more in the commercial area, or the civilian area, and specifi­cally, Secretary [McNamara] was very insistent that NASA add to its budget $50 million for communications satellites.” John Rubel added that large space projects “reflect the capacity and the will of the nation to harness its technological, economic, and managerial resources for a common goal”; for these reasons, “a successful space program validates your claim to other capacities.”

During Vice President Johnson’s review over the preceding two weeks, NASA and DOD had never seen each other’s responses to President Kennedy’s April 20 memorandum, so most of the day was spent with NASA and DOD presenting those responses to the other agency. NASA went first and outlined its proposed initiatives, including setting a manned lunar landing goal with a planning date of 1967 for the first landing attempt. There had been enough analysis, dating back to the work of George Low’s task force, to satisfy the NASA leaders that a lunar landing was a technically achievable objective, given a strong commitment of resources and people. That such a program would be recommended to the president was certain enough that NASA had established an internal task force four days earlier to provide a more detailed sense of what would be involved in such an undertaking, but that group’s findings were not due until early June. Thus the specifics of the lunar landing plans discussed on May 6 were in a very preliminary state.

In choosing the lunar landing program as the central feature of its recom­mended program, the group had no firm intelligence regarding whether or not the Soviet Union was already embarked on a similar program. An April 25, 1961, National Intelligence Estimate on “Soviet Technical Capabilities in Guided Missiles and Space Vehicles” had estimated that the Soviet Union could orbit payloads weighing 50 to 100 tons in the “latter part of the decade”; this capability would allow Russia to launch a human mission to circumnavigate the Moon by 1966, to go into orbit around the Moon by 1967, and, “contingent upon success with manned earth satellites and the development of large booster vehicles,” to carry out “lunar landings and return to earth by about 1970.” The estimate noted: “The Soviet leaders clearly believe that achievements in space enable them to persuade the world that in the realms of science, technology, and military strength, the USSR stands in the very front rank of world powers. In seizing an early lead and following it with a series of dramatic successes, they have sought to bolster their claims of superiority of the Soviet system. . . Since 1955, the announced goal of the Soviet space program has been manned interplanetary travel.” There was, however, no hard evidence that the Soviet Union had initiated a lunar landing program.2

Although there is no direct evidence that those preparing the space recommendations had read this intelligence estimate prior to the May 6-7 weekend, they were likely aware of its conclusions. The final recommenda­tions that went to Vice President Johnson the following Monday, May 8, were accompanied by a separate, highly classified, annex on Soviet space capabilities.3

The only question about the wisdom of selecting the lunar landing goal as the key step toward space leadership came from Robert McNamara, who wondered, given the lack of specific knowledge about the Soviet space pro­gram and its record of achievements to date, whether such an effort was ambitious enough. Might the Soviets already be so far along on a lunar land­ing program that they could do it in a year or two, he wondered. Might it be better to focus on sending people to Mars, instead, he asked the group. Seamans told McNamara that going directly to a human mission to Mars was technically not feasible, but, he says, “McNamara kept pressing the issue of whether we shouldn’t embark on a planetary program.”

NASA also listed other areas of space activities that were candidates for acceleration; Shapley suggests that between the items that NASA suggested and those coming from Seaborg regarding nuclear propulsion for space and from DOD with respect to solid-fueled boosters, the result was “a whole smorgasbord.” Part of that “smorgasbord” was setting as a goal of creating as soon as possible an operational meteorological satellite system. Such an initiative had been under study within the government and by a President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) panel in the previous weeks. The panel was headed by Princeton professor John Tukey; it had concluded that “the usefulness of a meteorological system operating on a continuing basis is unquestionable.” Such a system, Wiesner a few days later noted, would “assure to the U. S. the advantages of U. S. leadership in this important peace­ful use of outer space and provide opportunities for a significant interna­tional cooperative program.”4 Another initiative approved by the group was the creation of an operational communications satellite system, which was listed in a May 5 background paper, apparently prepared by Willis Shapley, as a “first” with “continuing prestige impact.” Such a system could be avail­able in about twenty months, suggested the paper, “provided the program is directly pushed by the Government, takes full benefit of private commercial developments, and gives priority to time rather than economic factors.”5

An important reason for Robert McNamara’s desire to have a large civil­ian space program was that it would help him resist Air Force demands for an increase in its space activities. McNamara, aware of the bullish recom­mendations contained in the Gardner Committee report, believed that the Air Force was “out of control,” and that, if NASA was carrying out a large program with heavy involvement of the aerospace industry, it would be more difficult for the Air Force to get political support from the same firms and from the Congress for its space ambitions.6

The group then reviewed the Department of Defense space effort. The only new area suggested for the DOD was the development of large solid – fueled rocket motors. The military wanted this capability, Seamans sug­gested, “for quick reaction, for strategic purposes.” The DOD thought that “the solid motor was going to be the wave of the future, easier to store, easier to operate, no need to top off the oxygen as with an Atlas missile.” The

Department of Defense wanted to develop a 260-inch diameter solid motor, and NASA had limited interest in such an undertaking. There was agreement that both liquid-fueled boosters, NASA’s preference, and solid propulsion boosters would be pursued in parallel, with the choice of which would be used for the lunar landing mission deferred to a future time. The group also agreed that work on a nuclear upper stage for a large rocket should be pur­sued, but that such a stage was unlikely to be available in time for the initial lunar landing attempts. The major role for nuclear propulsion would be later missions to the Moon and then future human missions to the planets.

On late Saturday afternoon, the meeting then turned to how to proceed in preparing a report containing the recommendations that had been agreed to. The Department of Defense had prepared a draft report, written primar­ily by John Rubel. NASA had no similar draft, just a listing of the projects it was proposing for acceleration. Robert McNamara suggested using the DOD draft as the starting point and then folding in the NASA recommen­dations; James Webb agreed to this approach. The meeting then adjourned, with Seamans, Rubel, and Shapley designated as a drafting group to prepare by Monday morning a report for McNamara’s and Webb’s signatures.

Webb, in fact, had agreed to use the DOD draft without first reading it. When Seamans later on Saturday did read the report, which made the same general points as had the April 22 McNamara presentation to the vice presi­dent, but in more detail, he was “very troubled.” What bothered Seamans was the approach the draft report took to competing with the Soviet Union in space. The draft claimed that “the government had allowed industry to proliferate to too great an extent,” with the result being a diffuse and inef­fective effort. It suggested “winnowing” the existing aerospace firms so that only “two or three or four stalwarts” would be allowed to compete for DOD and NASA contracts. The argument was that “free enterprise had gone too far and the government had to take a stronger role.” In addition, “there was a lot of philosophical stuff. . . about the excellent being the enemy of the good.” Seamans, a Republican, was “appalled” by the suggestion that the government should “control the industrial complex in a manner that certainly would have represented a very major change in policy.” He called Webb on Sunday morning, saying, “we’ve got a terrible problem with this [DOD] report. I think it would be much better to start all over again.” Webb told Seamans that this was not possible, since Webb had already agreed with McNamara to use the DOD report as the starting point; he said “it’s up to you to work with John Rubel and revise it until you consider it to be satis­factory.” Webb was on Sunday immersed in making arrangements for what would turn out to be a triumphant visit to Washington the next day by astro­naut Alan Shepard and his Mercury astronaut colleagues.

Seamans, Shapley, and Rubel and some of their staff worked into Saturday evening and all day Sunday on the report, adding the NASA material to the DOD draft, with Shapley providing budget figures. Seamans told Webb on Sunday afternoon that he still was not satisfied with the report’s lan­guage, and Webb agreed that he would come to the Pentagon after having dinner with Alan Shepard’s family. Webb appeared sometime after 9:30 in the evening; between then and 1:00 or 2:00 on Monday morning, in what Seamans describes as “one of the great experiences of my life,” Webb went through the report with Rubel page by page, negotiating changes in language or deletions “clearly to the benefit of the report.” Finally, Webb, Seamans, and Rubel agreed that the report was ready for signature and for­warding to the vice president. Then Webb waited until the secretaries who had been typing the revisions finished their work; he insisted on driving the one secretary who did not have a car to her home during a pouring rainstorm, even waiting at the woman’s house for a few minutes until the rain let up. Seamans describes Webb’s actions as “a remarkable display of a Southerner. . . being gallant.”

Seamans was back at the Pentagon by 7:30 a. m. to make sure the report was in shape for Webb and McNamara’s approval. The two men signed a cover letter, and the report was delivered to Vice President Johnson that morning. The cover letter said: “Attached to this letter is a report entitled ‘Recommendations for Our National Space Program: Changes, Policies, Goals,’ dated May 8, 1961. This document represents our joint thinking. We recommend that, if you concur with its contents and recommendations, it be transmitted to the President for his information and as a basis for early adop­tion [and] implementation of the revised and expanded objectives which it contains.”7

Wiesner noted in his November 20 memorandum that the NASA budget being discussed for Fiscal Year 1963 was 50 percent greater than had been projected just six months earlier. Indeed, the budget projections accompany­ing the accelerated space effort that President Kennedy had approved in May had projected a NASA budget of $3.029 billion for FY1963. However, when NASA submitted its FY1963 request to the BOB several months later, that total had grown to $4.238 billion, which was a 40 percent increase over the May estimate. By the time NASA and the BOB in December 1961 completed their negotiations over what the president would request for NASA in Fiscal Year 1963, the budget level had been reduced from $4.238 billion to $3.787 billion; this was still more than a 125 percent increase over the final FY1962 level. In a memorandum to President Kennedy summarizing the state of the NASA program, budget director David Bell provided a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the program since May and recommended to the president “that it would be desirable for you and the Vice President to have in the near future a short briefing and discussion of the status and plans for the civilian space programs, especially the manned lunar landing program.” Bell noted that NASA administrator Webb had concurred in this recommendation and on the budget figures outlined in his memorandum.28 The proposed briefing did not take place until Kennedy and Johnson visited NASA’s Apollo facilities in September 1962.

In his review of the situation for the president, Bell said that even in May the BOB had thought that NASA’s projections for future budgets “appeared to us to be understated,” and that BOB had anticipated a $3.5 billion budget request for FY1963, although it had not used that number in any official documents. Bell told the president that “the cost estimates for the manned lunar landing program appear to have been underestimated to an even greater degree than anticipated.” This was because “earlier estimates were of neces­sity made in advance of detailed technical plans and cost studies,” but such studies were now “showing clearly that the costs of the principal elements of the program will be greater than anticipated.” Bell estimated that the NASA budget would continue to increase, reaching $4.9 billion in FY1964, $5.3 billion in FY 1965, and $5.6 billion in FY1966. This meant that at the end of 1961 the accelerated space effort was projected to cost at least $2.8 bil­lion more than had been estimated just six months earlier. That such cost growth was worrying to the White House was clear; Webb told Dryden and Seamans on November 21 that “there is some evidence that the President is concerned about the cost of our program.”29 Webb was correct; the president was indeed concerned.

X resident Kennedy’s suggestion to Nikita Khrushchev at the June 1961 Vienna summit that the United States and the Soviet Union cooperate in flights to the Moon was made privately, and was not subsequently widely reported. The 1962 discussions on space cooperation were carried out on a low-key basis, with their results being made public only after agreement had been reached. In contrast, President Kennedy’s next cooperative initia­tive came in a most public fashion. Addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 20, 1963, Kennedy said “in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity—in the field of space—there is room for new cooperation. . . I include among these possibili­ties a joint expedition to the moon.” “Why,” Kennedy asked, “should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? . . . Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries— indeed of all the world—cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending some day in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but representatives of all our countries.”[3]

Kennedy’s proposal came as a major surprise to all but a few people who had been involved in preparing his United Nations speech or had been advised by the president of his intent. The decision to include the proposal in the president’s speech was made just a day or two before September 20, although Kennedy had been mulling the idea for some time. The offer was the personal initiative of the president and a few of his closest advisers.

Responsible for drafting the UN address were presidential assistant Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and State Department official Richard Gardner. Schlesinger suggests that as the two “canvassed the scientific and technical agencies of the government, we discovered that specific proposals of American-Soviet cooperation seemed trivial compared to the enormities of the space age.” As they searched for more dramatic initiatives, “there swam into our minds the thought of merging the Russian and American expeditions to the moon.”2

Without clearing the idea with anyone else, Schlesinger included language proposing such a cooperative lunar mission in the speech draft “to see how it sounded.”3 Schlesinger says that he “had forgotten that the President had himself suggested this to Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961,” and thus was not “prepared for his quick approval.”4

Between the September 20 speech and his assassination two months later, President Kennedy continued to hope for a positive response to his proposal and, when it seemed to come in early November, to push NASA to come up with ways of turning the proposal into reality. Given all the practical diffi­culties of doing so, in addition to continuing skepticism within NASA and among many in Congress about the wisdom of the proposal in the first place, he may well indeed have been in “pursuit of an illusion”—the thought that the space arena might “be used as a means to swing the US and the USSR from competition to cooperation.”5 But certainly Kennedy was not prac­ticing what Walter McDougall has characterized as “benign hypocrisy”—a willingness to cooperate only in areas “where the United States was safely dominant.” McDougall suggests that Kennedy’s words about U. S.-USSR space cooperation “were just exercises at image-building.”6 The record sug­gests a different interpretation—that in 1963 Kennedy was quite serious in his hope that there were practical ways of making U. S. space projects, including the challenging undertaking of sending people to the Moon, an area for reducing U. S.-Soviet tensions and for developing habits of working together.

The criticism of Project Apollo took on a more partisan tone as the Senate Republican Policy Committee on May 10 released a report suggesting that there were other important national problems that “should, perhaps, be examined side by side with the moon shot program.” The report sug­gested that “the question is not, then, whether man will ultimately reach the moon and beyond. The question is, rather, how shall it be done, and whether other aspects of human needs should be bypassed or overlooked in one spasmodic effort to achieve a lunar landing at once.” It suggested that “a cold, careful examination is past due.” The report was distributed to all Republican senators; it concluded that “for momentary transcendence over the Soviet Union we have pledged our wealth, national talent, and our honor” and suggested that “a decision must be made as to whether Project Apollo (the moon program) is vital to our national security or merely an excursion, however interesting, into space research. . . If our vital security is not at stake, a less ambitious program may be logical and desirable.” A month later, at a breakfast meeting with Republican congressmen, former President Eisenhower made a widely reported comment that spending $40 billion to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon was “nuts.”17

The Kennedy administration in May began an intensified effort to respond to the critics of its space program. NASA administrator Webb added to a previously scheduled speech the declaration: “At the earliest appropriate stage in the program scientists will be included on Apollo missions.” Vice President Johnson in a May 11 speech responded to criticism that the costs of Apollo would undermine the strength of the dollar as an international currency, saying that “we are not told what would happen to the dollar—or to America—if space were defaulted to the Communists.” He added: “The question is what kind of philosophy, democratic or Communist, will domi­nate outer space? . . . I, for one, don’t want to go to bed by the light of a Communist moon.”

On May 26, in an effort coordinated by NASA, “eight scientists, three of them Nobel laureates and most of them in academic positions, spoke out . . . in support of the United States program of landing men on the moon.” Life magazine in a May 17 editorial added its support to the Moon program, suggesting that the United States could “abdicate its national greatness by not doing enough. . . The U. S. commitment to space seems a natural undertaking for the American people, who are a venturesome lot.” A June 3 editorial in Aviation Week and Space Technology suggested that “gradually, the point that the manned lunar landing Apollo program is simply the best possible focal point [for] development of a broad capability in space technology” is “emerging from the verbal pyrotechnics of the cur­rent debate.”18

Arguments for and against proceeding with Project Apollo were aired at June 10-11 hearings of the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences; ten scientists testified and other interested parties submitted written statements. There was general agreement in the hearings that the deadline set for the first lunar landing was probably conducive to waste, and that many national problems deserved equal attention; there was no agreement that the American science enterprise was being distorted by so much attention to space. The strongest protest against the program was a written statement submitted to the committee by Warren Weaver, vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; it listed many other desirable uses for $30 billion of federal spending, which Weaver projected as Apollo’s ultimate cost. Thirty billion dollars, Weaver said, would give every teacher in the U. S. a 10 percent annual raise for 10 years; give $10 million each to 200 small colleges; provide 7-year scholarships at $4,000 per year to produce 50,000 new Ph. D. scien­tists and engineers; give $200 million each to 10 new medical schools; build and endow complete universities for 53 underdeveloped nations; create 3 more Rockefeller Foundations; and leave $100 million over “for a program of informing the public about science.”19

By contrast, the impact of Apollo on the evolution of the U. S. space program has on balance been negative. Apollo turned out to be a dead end undertak­ing in terms of human travel beyond the immediate vicinity of this planet; no human has left Earth orbit since the last Apollo mission in December 1972. Writing in 1970, I suggested that the capabilities developed for Apollo would have “broad and significant impacts on human existence in the decades to come.” Like many others close to the space program, I was caught up in the excitement of the initial lunar landings, and could not conceive of the pos­sibility that having served its political purposes, Apollo and whatever human exploration efforts might follow it would so rapidly be brought to a close.

What happened, however, was that most of the Apollo hardware and asso­ciated capabilities, particularly the magnificent but very expensive Saturn V launcher, quickly became museum exhibits to remind us, soon after the fact, of what once was had been done. Commenting on this reality in 1989, Walter McDougall lamented the fate of Apollo: “a brilliant creation, carrying tremendous emotional baggage for the nation, achieved so quickly through such skilled and dedicated teamwork, only to be discarded, dismembered, or disinherited.” Columnist Charles Krauthammer at the time of the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission in 2009 deplored the fact that humans have not returned to the Moon since the last Apollo mission: “On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints—untouched, unchanged, abandoned. For the first time in history, the Moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage ‘the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.’ And so we did it. We came. We saw. Then we retreated.”25

This rapid retreat should not have come as a surprise to careful observers. By being first to the Moon, the United States achieved the goal that had provided the sustainable momentum that powered Apollo; after Apollo 11, that momentum very rapidly dissipated, and there was no other compelling rationale to continue. In 1969 and 1970, even as the initial lunar landing

missions were taking place, the White House canceled the final three planned trips to the Moon. President Richard Nixon had no stomach for what NASA proposed—a major post-Apollo program aimed at building a large space sta­tion in preparation for eventual (in the 1980s!) human missions to Mars. Instead, Nixon decreed, “we must think of them [space activities] as part of a continuing process. . . and not as a series of separate leaps, each requiring a massive concentration of energy. Space expenditures must take their proper place within a rigorous system of national priorities. . . What we do in space from here on in must become a normal and regular part of our national life and must therefore be planned in conjunction with all of the other undertak­ings which are important to us.”26 Nixon’s policy view quickly reduced the post-Apollo space budget to less than $3.5 billion per year, a budget alloca­tion one-quarter of what it had been at the peak of Apollo. There were in the 1960s proposals, called the Apollo Applications Program, to use Apollo hardware for a variety of Earth orbit and deep space missions. Only one of those missions, the Skylab space station, ever came to fruition; its May 1973 launch was the last use of the Saturn V. The booster’s production line had been shut down in 1970. The 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Program mission was the last use of an Apollo spacecraft and the Saturn 1B launch vehicle. With the 1972 decision to begin the shuttle program, followed in 1984 with the related decision to develop a space station, the United States basically started over in human space flight, limiting itself to orbital activities in the near vicinity of Earth.

The policy and technical decisions not to build on the hardware devel­oped for Apollo for follow-on space activities were inextricably linked to the character of President John Kennedy’s deadline for getting to the Moon— “before this decade is out.” By setting a firm deadline for the first lunar landing, Kennedy put NASA in the position of finding a technical approach to Apollo that gave the best chance of meeting that deadline. This in turn led to the development of the Saturn V launcher, the choice of the lunar orbit rendezvous approach for getting to the Moon, and the design of the Apollo spacecraft optimized for landing on the Moon. Perceptive observer Richard Lewis in 1968 spoke of the “Kennedy effect,” noting that

the political decision to send men to the moon also led to unexpected results in the development of space technology. . . It has determined the priorities, the engineering designs, and the scientific objectives of the space program in this decade, and it is quite likely to control future space work for the remainder of this century. This unforeseen result might be called the Kennedy effect. While its intent at the beginning was to enlarge American competence in space, its implementation has built a Procrustean bed and the American space program has been severely mutilated to fit it.27

The consequences of selecting the lunar orbit approach to the Moon landing were of concern to Kennedy’s science adviser Jerome Wiesner as he opposed the LOR choice in 1962. President Kennedy in his determination to be first to the Moon overruled Wiesner, a decision, as Lewis noted, with profound consequences for the space program. NASA during the second half of the 1960s became what James Webb had feared, a one-program agency; given the budget constraints of the period, there was no money available for major new starts on alternative programs.

The “Kennedy effect” went well beyond rockets and spacecraft. The Apollo program created in NASA an organization oriented in the public and political eye toward human space flight and toward developing large-scale systems to achieving challenging goals. It created from Texas to Florida the institutional and facility base for such undertakings. With the White House rejection of ambitious post-Apollo space goals, NASA entered a four-decade identity crisis from which it has yet to emerge. Repetitive operation of the space shuttle and the extended process of developing an Earth-orbiting space station have not been satisfying substitutes for another Apollo-like under­taking. NASA has never totally adjusted to a lower priority in the overall scheme of national affairs; rather, as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board observed in its 2003 report, NASA became “an organization strain­ing to do too much with too little.”28 All of this is an unfortunate heritage of John Kennedy’s race to the Moon.

Yale University organizational sociologist Gary Brewer in 1989 observed that NASA during the Apollo program came close to being “a perfect place”—the best organization that human beings could create to accom­plish a particular goal. But, suggests Brewer, “perfect places do not last for long.” NASA “perfected itself in the reality of Apollo, but that success is past and the lessons from it are now obsolete.” The NASA of 1989, according to Brewer, was “no longer a perfect place” and was “deeply troubled.” He added:

The innocent clarity of purpose, the relatively easy and economically painless public consent, and the technical confidence [of Apollo] . . . are gone and will probably never occur again. Trying to recreate those by-gone moments by sloganeering, frightening, or appealing to mankind’s mystical needs for explo­ration and conquest seems somehow futile considering all that has happened since Jack Kennedy set the nation on course to the Moon.

Brewer’s comments of more than two decades ago might usefully be applied to the twenty-first century NASA and its supportive space commu­nity, which still struggle to maintain the approach to human space flight developed during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. It is well beyond the scope of this study to discuss the future of the U. S. space explo­ration program; the point to make here is that the conditions that made Apollo possible and the NASA of the 1960s a “perfect place” were unique and will not reoccur. I agree with Brewer’s conclusion that NASA needs “new ways of thinking, new people, and new means to come to terms and cope with social, economic, and political environments as challenging and harsh as deep space itself.”29

Space issues did not play a major role in John Kennedy’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. Once the nomination was secured, Kennedy in his July 15 acceptance speech first used the term “New Frontier,” saying “we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of the 1960’s—a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils—a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats” and noting that “beyond that frontier are the uncharted areas of science and space.” Foreshadowing the most famous line in his inaugural address, Kennedy said that the New Frontier of which he was speaking “is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.”8

The Democratic platform on which Kennedy would run stated:

The Republican Administration has remained incredibly blind to the pros­pects of space exploration. It has failed to pursue space programs with a sense of urgency at all close to their importance to the future of the world.

The new Democratic Administration will press forward with our national space program in full realization of the importance of space accomplishments to our national security and our international prestige. We shall reorganize the program to achieve both efficiency and speedy execution. We shall bring top scientists into positions of responsibility. We shall undertake long-term basic research in space science and propulsion.9

The most pressing of these issues was finding someone to run NASA. As the new administration took office, no one had been selected as the nominee for the job of NASA administrator, which thus became the most senior unfilled position as the Kennedy presidency began. That no nominee had been named was not for lack of trying. There are several versions of how many people were considered for the position. The number in various accounts ranges from nineteen to twenty-eight.7

In their December discussions on space issues, John Kennedy had given Lyndon Johnson the responsibility of identifying the person to be the next NASA administrator. In turn, Johnson asked the staff director of the Senate space committee, Kenneth Belieu, to coordinate the search for the nomi­nee. Belieu had told Johnson on December 22 that “the Administrator of NASA doesn’t have to be a technician. He does need to have firm adminis­trative ability, and be able to work with scientists and technicians.” Belieu’s initial thoughts about people qualified for the NASA position included Karl Bendetsen, an industrialist who had served in the Truman adminis­tration; General Maxwell Taylor, retired Army Chief of Staff; and George Feldman, who had been the staff director of the House committee estab­lished in 1958 as proposals to create NASA were being considered. Belieu noted that Feldman had been “actively seeking” the NASA job. He also noted that the current Air Force chief of staff, Thomas White, who was soon to retire, “might be interested,” and that he had gotten suggestions that Jet Propulsion Laboratory director William Pickering and Marshall Space Flight Center director Wernher von Braun might be good candidates.8

Most of these possibilities did not survive a first round of scrutiny. On January 23, Belieu gave a list of possible picks to now-Vice President Johnson. They were Laurence (Pat) Hyland of Hughes Aircraft; Charles (Tex) Thornton of Litton Industries; James Fisk of Bell Laboratories; James Doolittle, World War II hero and former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics; and William Foster of Olin Mathieson

Chemicals. On January 25, Belieu reported to top Johnson assistant Bill Moyers, who was interviewing candidates and then deciding whether or not to send them forward to the vice president, that “we have run through about 25 names to date,” and that the 25 did not include “Generals Maxwell Taylor, Jim Gavin, Bruce Medaires [sic – the correct spelling is Medaris], Earl Partridge, [and] Thomas White.” An unsigned January 26 memorandum, most likely composed also by Belieu, reflected a view that NASA should not be headed by an active military man because “the Communists would scream that this proved our militaristic intentions in space and that NASA was and is a facade”; because “it would have the effect of scaring off allies and neutrals from a program of international cooperation in space”; and because “many of the scientists in NASA might prefer to work elsewhere if NASA took on a military look.”9 According to Lyndon Johnson, at some point Kennedy had suggested appointing retired General James Gavin, who had been a campaign adviser, to head NASA, and Johnson had told Kennedy that “that’s the worst thing we could do for the program, would be put a man with stars on his shoulder and a general’s uniform, in charge of the space effort of this country, because it would frighten other countries and do a great disservice to our own program.”10

Belieu reported to Moyers that “at the Vice President’s direction” he had called several of the people on his list and would meet with William Baker, head of Bell Laboratories, and Tex Thornton. Belieu also reported that he had interviewed William Pickering, who was “definitely interested,” but “we might do better.” The head of General Dynamics, Frank Pace, was also involved in the search process. Belieu on January 26 said that Pace “would call me back this afternoon with a check on some of these people and fur­ther suggestions.” He told Moyers, “it looks as though it will be impossible to find anyone who is completely satisfactory to all factions involved in the space program.”11

Kennedy, tired of the delay in identifying a candidate for the NASA job, reportedly told Johnson and new science adviser Wiesner soon after his inau­guration that he would find someone himself if they did not act soon. On January 25, he told his first press conference that he was “hopeful” that a NASA administrator would be named in the next few days.12

One underlying reason for the difficulty in finding a person to take over NASA was the pervasive uncertainty about the future of the agency and of the U. S. civilian space program. John Kennedy had given little indication during the campaign of how he would approach space policy as president. In addition, the Air Force campaign to take over the U. S. lead in space was at a peak, and no individual was interested in presiding over the dissolution of NASA. There were three general perspectives on what kind of person should head NASA. One view favored a person with administrative experi­ence in a science and technology setting; this had been the background of Keith Glennan. Another argued for a top-flight scientist with an academic background. A third argued that political savvy in addition to administrative skill was a more necessary background than either a scientific or engineering background. The first of these positions was supported by Wiesner.13 The second position was held by many nongovernmental scientists, who wanted NASA priorities determined solely by scientific criteria. The third was the position of Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kerr.14

Another significant barrier to getting someone to accept the NASA position was the probability that the NASA administrator would find himself having to work closely with, or even for, Johnson, given LBJ’s anticipated new role as Space Council chairman. The new vice president was known for “his tantrums and his wheedling and bullying.” Few senior people who had experienced the “Johnson treatment” were eager to undergo it on a continuing basis. According to Wiesner, “no good scientists wanted to take the job on because they didn’t want to come under LBJ.” Wiesner remembered that “8 or 9 of the best scien­tists in America were asked to head NASA, and they all said no.”15

The next day, President Kennedy met with Vice President Johnson, Welsh, Bell, and Wiesner. No NASA representatives were present. The BOB had prepared a paper for Bell’s use at the meeting, which noted that “the case for budget increases. . . was well presented by Mr. Webb and his associates.” Bell told the president that he wanted to indicate “some of the points which sug­gest that the lower alternatives deserve serious consideration when a general decision is made on the course of the space program, either at this time or in the 1963 budget decisions in line with my suggestion that this matter be deferred to that time insofar as possible.” Bell noted that even if increases in the budget for boosters were approved, “we will still be in a ‘tail chase’ and that there is still a strong probability that the Russians will beat us to future spectacular space achievements if they choose, regardless of what we do.” He suggested that “the wisdom of staking so much emphasis and money on prestige that might or might not be gained from space achievements in the late 1960s and 1970s appears questionable” and that “it seems virtually certain that alternative, surer, and less costly ways of increasing our national prestige in the world scene could be developed.” Bell said that he “cannot help feeling that the total magnitude of present and projected expenditures in the space area may be way out of line with the real value of the benefits to be expected.”25 In support of Bell’s memorandum, BOB staff prepared five different proposals for the future NASA program and their budget implica­tions for the coming years. The alternatives ranged from the program NASA was suggesting to much smaller programs with an emphasis on scientific and application objectives, no manned flight beyond Mercury, and cancellation of the Saturn launcher.26

The memorandum prepared by Robert Seamans specified the impacts of the budget increases that NASA had requested, which included $98 mil­lion for the Saturn C-2 project, $27.5 million for a prototype engine for a nuclear rocket, $10.3 million for the large F-1 engine for use in a Nova launcher, and $47.7 million for the initial version of the Apollo spacecraft for use as an orbital laboratory. Other items in the NASA budget request were not discussed in Seamans’s memo. If the requested increases were approved, said Seamans, the orbital laboratory could begin flights in 1965 rather than 1967; circumlunar flights would be possible in 1967 rather than 1969; an initial manned lunar landing might be possible in 1970 rather than 1973.27

The president started the meeting by asking Vice President Johnson for his views on the NASA budget. Johnson responded: “Dr. Welsh here knows more about it than I do—let him speak.” Welsh told the President that “the main thing to be done was to stimulate the work on boosters; that we were farther behind on our propulsion side of the space program than anything else.” This was a refrain that President Kennedy had been hearing repeatedly, and he asked Wiesner if he concurred; Wiesner responded that he did. Bell did not protest, even though his arguments had been overruled; his response was “Whatever the President wants, we will try to get that done.”28

On the day of the NASA budget meeting, Secretary of Defense McNamara had been consulted by the vice president’s office for his views on the NASA budget and policy issues. McNamara’s response was that “he was personally unable to assess” the prestige payoffs from human space flight, and would suggest proceeding at “a normal rate of investigation,” which was consider­ably less than a maximum effort. With respect to increases in the NASA bud­get, McNamara suggested that he would give higher priority to all items in the Department of Defense budget than to increased funding for NASA.29

The final increase in the NASA FY1962 budget approved at the meeting was just under $126 million, almost all of it to accelerate the NASA booster effort. No funds for the Apollo spacecraft and thus for human space flight beyond Project Mercury were approved. This was an increase of a bit over 10 percent compared to President Eisenhower’s budget submission, but 20 percent less than NASA had hoped for.

In this initial engagement with space policy and program issues, President Kennedy had heard the full range of arguments with respect to the goals and pace of the U. S. civilian space program. He decided that it was a matter of some urgency to begin the process of closing the weight-lifting gap that its powerful rocket had given the Soviet Union, but was not yet ready to commit himself to the use of those new boosters for a post-Mercury human spaceflight program. The expectation as of the end of March 1961 was that this issue would be the focus of a comprehensive review of NASA’s future to be conducted by Lyndon Johnson as the new chairman of the Space Council, with a decision coming as the Fiscal Year 1963 budget was being prepared in the coming fall.

One reason for the hesitance at this point to approve any funds for a Mercury follow-on was likely the uncertainty about Mercury’s success. The Hornig panel had not finished its work, and its medical experts were very worried about whether an astronaut could survive the stresses of space flight. Jerome Wiesner shared their concern, and had communicated it to the President. In addition, according to Seamans, although Kennedy was tend­ing toward the approval of future human space flight efforts, he “wanted to know more about it. This was all pretty new as far as he was concerned, except in very general terms.”30 Webb recognized that Kennedy “was con­cerned about a tremendous range of problems as an incoming president,” and that he was being asked to make a choice between his budget director, whose judgment he had come to trust, and that of the NASA leadership, whom he did not know well.31 Added to these factors were the immediate concerns over Laos, which were occupying most of Kennedy’s time. The March 23 outcome was thus “deliberately intended as a partial decision which would leave him [Kennedy] free, within a considerable range, to decide later how much of a commitment to make.”32

As he attempted to resist NASA demands to meet with the president to appeal the original BOB decisions, David Bell had told Hugh Dryden that Kennedy was too busy for direct involvement in decisions on NASA’s future. Dryden replied: “You may not feel he has the time, but whether he likes it or not he is going to have to consider it. Events will force this.”33 Dryden’s words proved prescient; within three weeks, Kennedy would be faced with a Soviet space challenge that led him to set dramatic new space goals for the United States.

On the morning of May 8, Alan Shepard and the six other Mercury astro­nauts were flown from Grand Bahama Island, where Shepard had been brought after his recovery from his suborbital mission, to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and then by helicopter to the White House lawn. They were met in the Rose Garden by a gathering that included President Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, members of Congress, NASA leaders, and others. Awarding the NASA Distinguished Service Medal to Shepard, the president said: “how proud we are of him, what satisfaction we take in his accomplishment, what a service he has rendered to his country.” He noted that “this flight was made out in the open with all the possibilities of failure, which would have been damaging to our country’s prestige. Because great risks were taken in that regard, it seems to me that we have some right to claim that this open society of ours which risked much, gained much.”8 After the award ceremony, the seven astronauts and others in the gather­ing joined President Kennedy in the Oval Office; the group totaled 20 to 25 people, including Vice President Johnson, the chairs of the Senate and House space committees, and several managers from NASA. The astronauts sat on couches on either side of the president, who “gushed with questions.” He and Shepard discussed how Shepard’s flight had demonstrated the abil­ity of a human not only to survive, but also to carry out various functions in space; Kennedy seemed well aware of the reservations of his science advisers on this point. Alan Shepard recalls that “everybody certainly was running over with confidence at that time because the flight had gone so well and we had proved our point. . . that a man can operate effectively in space.” Robert Gilruth, the director of NASA’s Space Task Group that was manag­ing Project Mercury, was present. He remembers Kennedy saying, “Look, I want to be first.” Gilruth replied: “Well, you’ve got to pick a job that’s so difficult, that it’s new, that they’ll [the Soviets] have to start from scratch. They can’t just take their old rocket and put another gimmick on it and do something we can’t do.” Gilruth added, “it’s got to be something that requires a great big rocket, like going to the moon. Going to the moon will take a new rocket. . . and if you want to do that, I think our country could probably win because we’d both have to start from scratch.” Kennedy’s reply was “I want to go to the Moon.” Gilruth, himself only five years older than Kennedy, added that while Kennedy seemed to accept Gilruth’s view, “he was a young man; he didn’t have all the wisdom he would have had. If he’d been older, he probably would never have done it.”

After leaving the White House, Shepard was taken by President Kennedy to a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters; this was not on the planned schedule for the day, but Shepard’s surprise visit provoked a tumultu­ous welcome. After his stopover at the broadcasters’ meeting, Shepard and the other astronauts, accompanied by the vice president, paraded up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol as thousands, assembling with little advance notice, cheered. Shepard suggests that “these two things—the successful dem­onstration of man’s capability and the public support of a program which immediately became to them a very thrilling, exciting program—affected him [President Kennedy] in his decision-making process.” After a “throng – packed, pulsing” meeting with members of Congress, the group went to the State Department for a luncheon hosted by Vice President Johnson; then Shepard held a press conference.9

As he left the luncheon to go first to the White House and then to the airport to catch the plane that would take him to Southeast Asia for two weeks, Lyndon Johnson carried a large manila envelope. In it was the Webb – McNamara report recommending sending Americans to the Moon.