Category THE RACE

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.

The rapidly increasing costs of the U. S. space program, and particularly its civilian component, continued to trouble President Kennedy after he sent his $3.787 billion Fiscal Year 1963 request for NASA to the Congress in early 1962. There was no parallel single national security space budget request; Department of Defense and intelligence space programs were incorporated into the general DOD budget, rather than receiving separate budget treat­ment. However, increasing DOD expenditures for space were also of con­cern to the president. To obtain a total overview of the U. S. space program, Kennedy asked the BOB in June 1962 to carry out a comprehensive review of all U. S. space efforts.

Initial Budget Concerns

After NASA administrator Webb met with Kennedy on May 3, 1962 to deliver a copy of NASA’s revised long-range plan, he reported that Kennedy “was quite concerned about the high level of expenditures involved in our program, plus the military program, and urged that everything be done that could possibly be done to see that we accomplished the results that would justify these expenditures and that we not expend funds beyond those that could be thoroughly justified.” Webb also reported that the president “had expressed some concern” about the geographical distribution of NASA funding; Kennedy noted that he had received complaints from states such as “Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the eastern states” that NASA was focusing its expenditures on California, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Kennedy was “quite anxious” that NASA “maintain the best geographical distribu­tion of contracts and still get the most efficient job done.” To provide the White House with its own channel of information on NASA procurement actions, Kenneth O’Donnell sent Richard Callaghan, a Kennedy loyalist and congressional staffer, to NASA as a special assistant to Webb. According to one account, “Callaghan’s job was to arrange for a more equitable distri­bution of contracts, which would relieve congressional pressure on Kenny O’Donnell, and find out whether [Senator Robert] Kerr and [Vice President] Johnson were pulling strings for their friends at NASA.” With respect to this latter mission, Callaghan found no evidence of undue Kerr or Johnson influence on NASA’s contract awards.30

Webb responded to Kennedy’s concern regarding geographical distribu­tion in a June 1 letter. He told Kennedy that during 1961, states west of the Mississippi River received 56 percent of NASA prime contracts; states east of the Mississippi, 44 percent. One reason for this distribution was that “major aerospace and electronic companies have concentrated their growth within a few areas of the country.” However, Webb continued, when both prime con­tracts and first-tier subcontracts by the prime contractors were considered, 53 percent of the work was in the East and 47 percent in the West. Webb also noted that in the second half of 1961 Massachusetts had received 64 percent more in NASA funding than it had received in the first half of the year. In summary, Webb told the president, “the NASA effort is being spread broadly throughout the United States.”31

The reasons why President Kennedy chose to propose such a major step in U. S.-Soviet space cooperation were well summarized by Theodore Sorensen: I

A New "Strategy of Peace"

In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy sought ways of lessening the U. S.-Russian tensions and mistrust that had led to that situ­ation. He first tried to once again engage Nikita Khrushchev in discussions on a test ban treaty, but progress toward that objective was slow. By June 1963, he was ready for a broader approach—a new “strategy of peace.”8 In a June 10 commencement address at American University in Washington, DC, Kennedy outlined his approach to a “more practical, more attainable peace,” one based on “a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. . . Both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace. . . Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.”9

President Kennedy did not mention space cooperation in this speech, an omission seen as “striking” by Harvey and Ciccoritti “in view of the great stress he had placed earlier on space as a means of bridging differences between the two countries.” They suggest that “Kennedy for some time had been having second thoughts about pushing space cooperation under existing circumstances.” They offer as evidence for this view Kennedy’s disappoint­ment with the results of the 1962 space cooperation agreement and the fact that “Kennedy had become more and more enthusiastic over the competitive aspects of the space endeavor.” Kennedy, they suggest, “was really interested [in space cooperation] only if the Russians should prove ready to cooperate in a manner and on a scale that would involve meaningful movement toward a genuine rapprochement between the two countries. Otherwise, the US would continue with its program in strict competition with the USSR, since he considered it essential to the national interest that the US continue to develop the capabilities for the full mastery of space.”10

A somewhat different interpretation of Kennedy’s views at the time is more convincing. As suggested in Sorensen’s view cited earlier, in the post-Cuban missile crisis detente atmosphere of 1963, and with the increasing costs and mounting criticisms of the lunar landing program, it is likely that President Kennedy was even more interested in U. S.-Soviet space cooperation than had previously been the case. The President in mid-1963 was actively consider­ing resurrecting the idea. He certainly did not seem to think that he was “in pursuit of an illusion,” but rather pursuing a course of action that was in the U. S. interest. Other than a call for negotiations on a nuclear test ban treaty, Kennedy did not mention any other area for potential U. S.-Soviet coopera­tion in his American University speech, so the fact that he did not mention space cooperation specifically is less than “striking.” It was logical for him to return to a proposal for cooperation in the lunar landing program as one of the “concrete actions” needed to implement his “strategy for peace.”

An August 9 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) memorandum on “The New Phase of Soviet Policy” provided evidence that Kennedy’s strategy was well conceived. On July 25 the Soviet Union agreed to sign a Limited Test

Ban Treaty, including a prohibition on tests in outer space. The CIA analysis thought that Nikita Khrushchev in the post-missile crisis period had “a vested interest in perpetuating. . . the impression that a new era in East-West relations has begun” and that “the USSR intends to sustain an atmosphere of reduced tensions for some time.” These observations were certainly sup­portive of a proposal for enhanced space cooperation as part of President Kennedy’s new approach.11

By mid-1963 there was increasing criticism of the lunar landing program from both sides of the political spectrum. Theodore Sorensen was asked whether by 1963 “the size of this [space] program and its rate of growth were beginning to worry the President, and that he was more eager to stress the cooperative issue because he was dubious about either the wisdom or the possibility of maintaining the rate of increase that NASA was suggesting.” Sorensen replied that Kennedy “was understandably reluctant to continue that rate of increase. He wished to find ways to spend less money on the program. . . How much that motivated his offer to the Russians, though, I don’t know.”12

As he began during the summer to think again about suggesting to the Soviet Union that sending men to the Moon become a cooperative under­taking, President Kennedy was faced not only with the lingering doubts regarding whether Russia in fact was intending to go to the Moon, but also questions regarding the possible hostile purposes of the Soviet space pro­gram. The August 1963 issue of the widely read Reader’s Digest featured an article headlined “We’re Running the Wrong Race with Russia!” that asked “are we suffering from moon madness?” and suggested that “the over­publicized ‘race’ to get a man on our faraway neighbor has obscured an imminent threat to our security—Soviet strides toward military conquest of the space just over our heads.”20

Not surprisingly, this article caught President Kennedy’s attention. On July 22 he sent a memorandum to Robert McNamara and James Webb, not­ing “the lead article in the Reader’s Digest this month states that the Soviet Union is making a major effort to dominate space while we are indifferent to this threat. I wonder if you could have some people analyze this and give me a response to it.” A week later, he wrote a similar memorandum to Vice President Johnson: “The attack on the moon program continues and seems to be intensifying. Note Reader’s Digest lead article this month.” Kennedy asked the vice president to develop answers to two sets of questions: (1) “Did the previous administration have a moon program? What was its time schedule? How much were they going to spend on it?” and (2) “How much of our present peaceful space program can be militarily useful? How much of our capability for our moon program is also necessary for military control in space?” Kennedy added: “I would be interested in any other thoughts that you may have on the large amounts of money we are spending on this program and how it can be justified.”21

In his response to this second Space Council review, Webb suggested that “all” of the civilian space program “can be directly or indirectly militarily useful.” An important justification for the sums being spent on the NASA program, said Webb, was to develop “the power to operate in space” and “as insurance against surprise and as the building of the necessary underlying capacity” for an accelerated military space program, should the United States decide that such a speed-up was needed. The Department of Defense reply to Kennedy’s questions was signed by deputy secretary Roswell Gilpatric. He told the president that “the article is based for the most part on Soviet propaganda statements, faulty and greatly exaggerated interpretation of technical data, quotes by U. S. authorities taken out of context or distorted, excerpts from Air Force magazine articles, and the author’s personal opin­ions and unsupported statements.” Gilpatric added: “At the same time, he [the author] deliberately ignores or is strangely uninformed about our on­going military space program.”22

A rapidly convened meeting of the Space Council on July 31 discussed the appropriate reply to the president’s questions. Vice President Johnson noted that “we had entered a very tricky period,” and that there seemed to be a “political basis” for much of the criticism of the lunar landing program, with “more trouble to be expected as we get closer to [election year] 1964.” Johnson suggested that “we are facing a Congress where a majority is for the program, but there is a very vocal minority.” The group discussed the language to be included in the response to the president, and agreed to have Edward Welsh draft that response, which took the form of a one-page letter signed by Johnson that told the president that “there was no Administration moon program until your message to Congress in 1961.” Johnson, agreeing with Webb’s argument, added that “all of the scientific and engineering abil­ity in space has direct or indirect [military] value” and that “the space pro­gram is expensive, but it can be justified as a solid investment which will give ample returns in security, prestige, knowledge, and material benefits.”23

Webb on August 9 sent to the White House a separate response to Kennedy’s original July 22 memorandum, noting that NASA had also “received from the Vice President a number of questions which we under­stand he is answering.” This somewhat disingenuous comment, since Webb had participated in the July 31 Space Council meeting, was indicative of the preference on Webb’s part to report directly to the president rather than working through the Space Council. Webb associated himself with the views in Gilpatric’s July 31 memo to the president and added that Apollo would require extensive operations in near-earth orbit and that “75-80% of the cost of the Apollo program will be devoted to the development of a capabil­ity for conducting near-earth orbital operations which could form a basis for any military systems we may require.” Webb noted that “the Reader’s Digest article ignores the fact that these basic resources—large launch vehicles, advanced spacecraft, extensive and complex ground facilities—are vitally important resources for future military missions as well as in fulfillment of the NASA program.” Webb’s belief in the military value of NASA’s activities was not shared by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Webb observed that McNamara “was unwilling to stand up and be counted for the [NASA] program.” He told President Kennedy later in 1963 that “the Secretary of Defense will not want to support the program as having substantial military value.”24

John F. Kennedy’s late July 1963 questioning of the justifications for con­tinuing to spend large amounts of money to get to the Moon before the Soviets came at the same time as very public discussion of the suggestion that the Soviet Union in fact did not have a lunar landing program. At the end of August, Kennedy in a conversation with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin “raised the question of activities in outer space, pointing out that these are very expensive.” “If outer space was not to be used for military purposes,” thought Kennedy, “then it became largely a question of scientific prestige, and even this was not very important, as accomplishments in this field were usually only three-day wonders.”25 This was certainly a rather dif­ferent attitude toward Project Apollo than what Kennedy had been saying publicly, and may well have reflected his emerging doubts about proceeding with the lunar landing program at its planned pace and increasing costs.