Apollo’s Impact

When Kennedy took office in January 1961, he learned that the missile gap did not exist. Also, he had many priorities other than space. While willing to aug­ment NASA’s budget, he did not see a particular urgency to do so immediately. Then came Yuri Gagarin’s April flight in space. The first human in space was a Russian. This was another blow to U. S. pride and prestige, one on which Khrushchev fully capitalized. Soon afterward, Kennedy suffered another per­sonal defeat when the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba failed ignominiously. He directed his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, to come up with a program he could back which would garner the United States a visible and dramatic victory in the Cold War contest with the Soviet Union. Johnson came back with what would be called Project Apollo. The proposal bore the imprint of Kennedy’s NASA Administrator, James Webb.8

In May, Kennedy addressed Congress and declared his belief that the United States “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”9 This was a race with the Soviet Union Kennedy affirmed the United States would win. What was most important about this decision for the robotic Mars exploration program—Mariner—was that it made NASA a “presidential” agency. That is, NASA was now a priority for the nation, and its program mattered greatly to the president. All of a sudden, NASA could get resources from the White House and Congress for virtually anything it wanted to do—including robotic Mars exploration.

Kennedy’s decision reinforced the Moon as NASA’s priority. However, it was a major punctuation point for Mars because it removed the financial reins on

the planetary program. As Newell wrote, “The renewed sense of urgency that the Apollo decision bestowed on the space program made Webb’s task [as NASA Administrator] one of loosening the shackles imposed by the previous admin­istration and stepping up the pace.”10 Webb told NASA (and later President Kennedy in a memorable White House debate the two men had) that Apollo was not only an end of the space program but a means to a broader national goal: preeminence. That latter goal meant advancing all NASA programs, not just human spaceflight.

Immediately after the Apollo speech, Kennedy increased NASA’s budget by 89% and by another 101% the following year.11 Employment at NASA surged apace. The 54-year-old Webb was neither scientist nor engineer. Trained as a lawyer, he had vast experience in government and business management. He was unusually politically skilled. Moreover, he showed a strong appreciation for science. Soon after the Apollo decision, he reorganized NASA. In doing so, he established the Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA) with a status independent of and equal to that of the newly created Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF). He also promoted Newell to associate administrator for space science, a level identical to that of the director of OMSF. All programs became far bigger and moved far faster. With Webb’s vigorous backing, NASA acted to create a new space science community, pouring money into universities for research and graduate fellowships. This community consisted of those in tra­ditional disciplines (e. g., geology, meteorology, chemistry, biology, and others) eager to extend their work to outer space and the planets. NASA was building a constituency that would help support the agency and its goals. That constitu­ency included a small band of scientists who called themselves exobiologists.