Congress Calls for a Crash Effort

The most vocal demands for an immediate response to the Soviet flight came from the House of Representatives, and particularly its Committee on Science and Astronautics. Committee hearings took place in a highly charged atmosphere.13 On April 12, the committee held a previously scheduled hear­ing on the proposal to revise the 1958 Space Act to make the vice president the chairman of the Space Council. Edward Welsh was the only witness. But the minds of the representatives were on the Gagarin flight, not the Space Council. Committee chair Overton Brooks stated that “we ought to make a determination that we. . . are going to be first in the future.” Republican James Fulton proclaimed that “we in the United States should publicly say that we are in a competitive space race with Russia and accept the challenge.” On April 13, James Webb and Hugh Dryden appeared before the commit­tee to defend the NASA budget increases that the president had approved on March 23. The focus of the hearings was not on those additions to the NASA budget to speed up the booster programs; rather, it was on the funds for human space flight on which the president had deferred approval. Fulton told Webb and Dryden that “I believe we are in a race, and I have said many times, Mr. Webb, ‘Tell me how much money you need and this committee will authorize all you need.’ ” Congressman Vincent Anfuso suggested that he was “ready to call for a full-scale congressional investigation. I want to see our country mobilized for war because we are at war. I want to see our schedules cut in half.”14