"There’s Nothing More Important&quot

On Monday April 10, 1961, John F. Kennedy threw out the opening day baseball pitch as the Washington Senators played (and lost to) the Chicago White Sox on a chilly and damp afternoon. Baseball was not the only thing on the president’s mind that day. Sometime early in the game, Kennedy’s deputy press secretary Andrew Hatcher told him that the United Press International news service was about to report that the Soviet Union had successfully recovered the first human to orbit the Earth. Kennedy asked Hatcher to check on the report; he had known for several weeks from intel­ligence briefings that such a launch was imminent. The Soviet Union had successfully completed one-orbit missions of a spacecraft carrying a dog as a passenger on March 9 and March 25. It was almost certain that the next step would be a mission with a human on board. Hatcher reported back a few innings later that the news reports “have not materialized” and that “elaborate Russian plans to make this anticipated announcement have been abandoned for today.” Also, said Hatcher, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “could not confirm or deny the report” of the Soviet launch.1

By the end of the next day, April 11, the CIA did report that the Soviet launch was likely within the next few hours. Press Secretary Pierre Salinger prepared and Kennedy approved a statement for the president to issue once the Soviets had announced a successful mission. The president also had an approach ready to take if the launch were unsuccessful and the cosmonaut died. Famed journalist Edward R. Murrow, whom Kennedy had chosen to head the U. S. Information Agency, in an April 3, 1961, memorandum for McGeorge Bundy had suggested that “in the event of a Soviet manned shot failure we should express, with all the sincerity we can muster, the deep regret and distress of the President and the people of the United States.” Simultaneously, suggested Murrow, one of the Mercury astronauts might “publicly express the regret of his group” and his confidence that “the Soviet astronaut was prepared,” as were the Mercury astronauts, “to give up his life for the advancement of human knowledge.” However, “covertly, the

U. S. might encourage commentators in other countries to deplore the low regard for human life which prompted the Soviets to attempt a manned shot ‘prematurely.’ ”2 As he retired for the evening on April 11, Kennedy told his aides that he did not want to be woken if the Soviet announcement came while he was sleeping.

The expression of regret was not needed. Within a few seconds of the launch of the first human in space at 1:07 a. m. on April 12, Washington time (11:07 a. m. at the launch site in Soviet Central Asia), U. S. intelligence systems knew that it had taken place. They monitored the in-orbit communications during the single-orbit flight and decoded the television transmissions from the spacecraft that showed the cosmonaut moving about.3 It took several hours for Moscow to announce the successful mission; the Soviet dispatch said that “the world’s first space ship Vostok with a man on board has been launched on April 12 in the Soviet Union on a round-the-earth orbit. The first space navigator is Soviet citizen pilot Maj. Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin.” Science adviser Wiesner called Salinger at 5:30 a. m. with this news. The pres­ident was informed of the Soviet achievement when he woke up around 8:00 a. m.; he authorized Salinger to release the prepared statement, which said: “The achievement by the USSR of orbiting a man and returning him safely to ground is an outstanding technical accomplishment. We congratulate the Soviet scientists and engineers who made this feat possible. The exploration of the solar system is an ambition that we and all mankind share.”4

Later that morning, NASA administrator James Webb and Senator Robert Kerr came to the Oval Office for a previously scheduled meeting with the president to discuss a planned national conference on space to be held in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Webb brought with him a model of a Mercury space­craft. Theodore Sorensen recalls that Kennedy, “who had no real grasp of the enormous technology involved, and remained skeptical about the cost and importance of space missions,” quipped about the “Rube Goldberg – like contraption” that “Webb might have bought it in a toy store. . . that morning.”5

President Kennedy had a previously scheduled news conference on the late afternoon of April 12. Inevitably, the questioning turned to the Soviet space achievement. The first question was relatively friendly, and Kennedy’s response predictable:

Q: Could you give us your views, sir, about the Soviet achievement of putting a man in orbit and what it would mean to our space program, as such?

Kennedy: Well, it is a most impressive scientific accomplishment, and also I think that we, all of us as members of the [human] race, have the greatest admiration for the Russian who participated in this extraordinary feat. I have already sent congratulations to Mr. Khrushchev, and I send congratu­lations to the man who was involved.

I indicated that the task force which we set up on space way back last January, January 12th, indicated that because of the Soviet progress in the field of boosters, where they have been ahead of us, that we expected that they would be first in space, in orbiting a man in space. And, of course, that

has taken place. We are carrying out our program and we expect to-hope to make progress in this area this year ourselves.

Then the questioning became a bit more pointed:

Q: Mr. President, a Member of Congress said today that he was tired of seeing the United States second to Russia in the space field. I suppose he speaks for a lot of others. Now, you have asked Congress for more money to speed up our space program. What is the prospect that we will catch up with Russia and perhaps surpass Russia in this field?

Kennedy: Well, the Soviet Union gained an important advantage by securing these large boosters which were able to put up greater weights, and that advantage is going to be with them for some time. However tired anybody may be, and no one is more tired than I am, it is a fact that it is going to take some time and I think we have to recognize it.

They secured large boosters which have led to their being first in sputnik and led to their first putting their man in space. We are, I hope, going to be able to carry out our efforts with due regard to the problem of the life of the man involved this year. But we are behind and I am sure that they are making a concentrated effort to stay ahead.

We have provided additional emphasis on Saturn; we have provided addi­tional emphasis on Rover; we are attempting to improve other systems which will give us a stronger position—all of which are very expensive, and all of which involve billions of dollars.

So that in answer to your question, as I said in my State of the Union Message, the news will be worse before it is better, and it will be some time before we catch up. We are, I hope, going to go in other areas where we can be first and which will bring perhaps more long-range benefits to mankind. But here we are behind.

Earlier in the press conference, Kennedy had mentioned one of the areas “where we can be first” and which might bring “more long-range benefits to mankind”—desalinization of sea water. He told the press conference, “we have made some exceptional scientific advances in the last decade, and some of them—they are not as spectacular as the man-in-space, or as the first sputnik, but they are important.” For example, added Kennedy, “I have said that I thought that if we could ever competitively, at a cheap rate, get fresh water from salt water, that it would be in the long-range interests of human­ity which would really dwarf any other scientific accomplishments.”6 Over the next few days, as he absorbed the political reaction in the United States and around the world to the Soviet achievement, Kennedy would change his mind; by the evening of April 14, he would say “there’s nothing more important” than finding a way to overcome the Soviet lead in space.