Space Statements during the Campaign

By 1960, it had become customary for specialized publications to ask presi­dential candidates to state their positions on issues of interest to their readers. Thus the trade magazine Missiles and Rockets on October 3, 1960, published an “open letter to Richard Nixon and John Kennedy,” proposing a nine – point “defense and space platform” and asking the candidates to reply, “stat­ing your views and making your stand quite clear on these two closely related problems.” Kennedy’s response, which appeared in the October 10 issue of the magazine, was drafted by Dr. Edward C. Welsh, at that time working for Senator Stuart Symington; Symington had competed with Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination and reflected the views of the more military-oriented elements of the Democratic Party. Both Symington and Welsh were vigorous champions of a strong U. S. space effort; the statement was “full of the clash and clamor of the space race.”14 The Kennedy state­ment said:

We are in a strategic space race with the Russians, and we are losing. . . . Control of space will be decided in the next decade. If the Soviets control space they can control earth, as in past centuries the nation that controlled the seas has dominated the continents. . . We cannot run second in this vital race. To insure peace and freedom, we must be first.

The target dates for a manned space platform, U. S. citizen on the moon, nuclear power for space exploration, and a true manned spaceship should be elastic. All these things and more we should accomplish as swiftly as possible. This is the new age of exploration; space is our great New Frontier.15

How accurately this statement reflected John Kennedy’s actual thinking as of October 1960 with regard to the strategic and military importance of space is questionable; the fact that it was prepared by someone with­out a central role in Kennedy’s campaign suggests that neither Kennedy nor his close policy advisers had much involvement in its content. Many in the space community, however, took the statement at face value and anticipated that if elected Kennedy would favor an accelerated space effort and would put additional emphasis on the military dimensions of the U. S. space program.