Richard Nixon Talks about the Future in Space

President Nixon traveled to the Kennedy Space Center to view the November 14 launch of Apollo 12, the second lunar landing mission; in doing so, he became the first sitting U. S. president to witness an astronaut launch. The weather for the launch was “dismal,” but Nixon, his wife Pat, and his daugh­ter Tricia sat under umbrellas as the Saturn V lifted off through rain and low clouds, generating a lightning strike that threatened to abort the mission. Nixon called the launch “spectacular.”20

NASA Administrator Paine took the opportunity of Nixon’s presence at the launch to press his case for a NASA budget at the level the agency had requested. Paine had received the BOB allowance the previous day, and made sure the president knew of his unhappiness with it. Speaking to NASA employees in the launch control center after the Apollo 12 crew— Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, and Richard Gordon—were safely in orbit, Nixon commented on his reaction to seeing the launch in person. He compared it to seeing a football game live rather than on television, because “it is a sense of not just the sight and the picture but of feeling it—feeling the great experience of all that is happening.” Then, in his first public comments on the space program in the two months since the STG report was submitted, Nixon told the crowd

You can be assured that in Dr. Paine and his colleagues you have men who are dedicated to this program, who are making the case for it, making the case for it as against other national priorities and making it very effectively.

I leaned in the direction of the program before. After hearing what they have to say with regard to our future plans, I must say that I lean even more in that direction.

I realize that within those of the program, between scientists and engi­neers and others, there are different attitudes as to what the emphasis should be, whether we should emphasize more far exploration or more in taking the knowledge we have already acquired in making practical applications of it.

All of these matters have been brought to my attention. I can assure you that every side is getting a hearing. We want to have a balanced program, but, most important, we are going forward. America, the United States, is first in space. We are proud to be first in space. We don’t say that in any jingoistic way.

We say it because, as Americans, we want to give the people of this country, in particular our young people, the feeling that here is an area that we can concentrate on a positive goal.21

That the president was so aware of the arguments about the future direc­tion of the NASA program may have come as a surprise to Paine; the NASA chief must have been heartened by Nixon’s words. But those words turned out to be much more rhetoric designed to reassure the NASA workforce than a reflection of Nixon’s actual attitude toward future space efforts. That attitude was soon to be reflected in Nixon’s budget decisions.