Space Issues Requiring Early Attention by the Kennedy. Administration

There were several significant space issues that were unresolved in the final months of the Eisenhower administration.12 Dealing with these issues was to occupy president-elect Kennedy’s attention only briefly during the postelec­tion transition period. They included the relationship between civilian and military space efforts; a proposal to abolish the National Aeronautics and Space Council, the White House body for developing national space policy and strategy; the pace at which larger rocket boosters ought to be developed in order to close the weight-lifting gap with the Soviet Union; and NASA’s plans for a human space flight program to follow the initial U. S. effort to send an astronaut into orbit, Project Mercury.