The Beginnings of U. S.-Soviet Space Cooperation

On February 20, 1962, U. S. astronaut John Glenn completed the first U. S. orbital space flight. Among the congratulations for the success received at the White House was a February 21 telegram from Nikita Khrushchev. In the message, Khrushchev suggested that “if our countries pooled their efforts—scientific, technical and material—to master the universe, this would be very beneficial for the advance of science and would be joyfully acclaimed by all peoples who would like to see scientific achievements ben­efit man and not be used for ‘Cold War’ purposes and the arms race.”34 What was surprising in this message was that Khrushchev did not link the possibility of space cooperation to prior agreement on steps toward disar-

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mament.

The White House lost no time in its reply, since it appeared to provide the opening that President Kennedy had been seeking since his first days in office. On the next day, Kennedy sent a replying telegram to Khrushchev, saying “I welcome your statement that our countries should cooperate in the exploration of space. I have long held this belief and indeed put it forth strongly in my first State of the Union message.” Kennedy added: “I am instructing the appropriate officers of this Government to prepare new and concrete proposals for immediate projects of common action, and I hope that at a very early date our representatives may meet to discuss our ideas and yours in a spirit of practical cooperation.”36

On February 23, McGeorge Bundy issued a National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) to the secretary of state, directing him to cooperate with the NASA administrator and the special assistant to the president for science and technology to “promptly develop” the new proposals called for in the president’s telegram, “together with recommendations as to the best way of opening discussion with Soviet representatives on these matters.” On February 27, Bundy sent out a revised memorandum, adding the executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council to the list of those being asked to develop the cooperative proposals.37 (There were continu­ing tensions over roles and responsibilities between Wiesner’s science office, which reported directly to the president, and the Space Council, which reported to the vice president. Leaving mention of the Space Council out of the original draft of the National Security Action Memorandum could have been either inadvertent or intentional; it does suggest that Vice President Johnson and the Space Council were not seen as central to international space issues.) On February 23, Bundy also sent a separate memorandum to NASA administrator Webb, explaining that while the NSAM had been addressed to the secretary of state because it involved international negotia­tions, President Kennedy “wants you to know how much he understands the central role of your organization in this problem.” Moreover, said Bundy, the president had asked him to add a “private word.” Kennedy recognized “that there are lots of problems in this kind of cooperation, and he knows that you have a great head of steam in projects which we do not want to see interrupted or slowed down.” However, “there is real political advantage for us if we can make clear that we are forthcoming and energetic in plans for peaceful cooperation with the Soviets in this sphere. It is even conceivable that progress on this front would have an automatic dampening effect on the Berlin crisis.” For these reasons, suggested Bundy, “the President hopes that you will urge your people to go a little out of their way to find good projects.”38

The process of drafting a letter for the president to send to Khrushchev revealed some significant differences in perspective among NASA, the Department of State, and the White House science office. According to Eugene Skolnikoff, who at the time was on Wiesner’s White House staff handling international issues, NASA proposed to include only those proj­ects that it judged both technically and politically desirable, and tended to emphasize information exchanges rather than more extensive and intimate cooperation. This was consistent with the approach that had been developed several years earlier by Hugh Dryden and NASA’s international affairs head, Arnold Frutkin. NASA argued that any cooperative undertaking must have meaningful substantive merit as a necessary condition, and not be under­taken primarily for political reasons.

Only through the intervention of the White House science office was a broader range of potential projects added to the draft list of proposals. Then the State Department watered down the list, favoring the NASA approach. Jerome Wiesner was, together with President Kennedy, interested in coop­erative undertakings that might produce substantial political benefits, even if their technical contributions were relatively minimal. Wiesner and his staff were often at odds with NASA over the space agency’s conservative approach to space cooperation.39

On March 6, Secretary of State Dean Rusk forwarded to the president a draft letter for Chairman Khrushchev that contained “a range of specific proposals. . . in a manner designed to facilitate a positive Soviet response.” The letter reflected the State Department concern that the potential contributions of other nations be recognized, but it did not link any potential bilateral discussions to the upcoming initial meeting of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which was scheduled for later in March, saying only that the results of the bilateral talks would be reported to the Committee. Rusk told Kennedy, “if you approve this proposed letter, we would plan to deliver it promptly. . . without publicity for a sufficient period of time to allow for a serious Soviet reply. We would, however, inform a few interested countries confidentially of this action.”40

Kennedy approved the letter; it was sent to Nikita Khrushchev on March 7. It first listed some relatively modest proposals for specific areas of coopera­tion, including a joint weather satellite system, cooperation in space tracking, research on the Earth’s magnetic field, satellite communications experiments, and space medicine. There was no mention of specific cooperation in human flights to the Moon or even in Earth orbit.41 However, Kennedy noted in the letter that “beyond these specific projects we are prepared now to dis­cuss broader cooperation in the still more challenging projects which must be undertaken in the exploration of outer space.” Observing that “leaders of the United States space program have developed detailed plans for an orderly sequence of manned and unmanned flights for the exploration of space and the planets,” the president suggested that “out of discussion of these plans, and of your own, for undertaking the tasks of this decade would undoubt­edly emerge possibilities for substantive scientific and technical cooperation in manned and unmanned space investigations.”42

Khrushchev replied to Kennedy’s letter on March 20. He noted “with satisfaction” that his proposal “that our two countries unite their efforts in the conquest of space has met with the necessary understanding on the part of the Government of the United States.” He found that Kennedy’s mes­sage showed “that the direction of your thoughts does not differ in essence from what we conceive to be practical measures in the field of such coop­eration,” and asked “what then should be our starting point?” He reacted favorably to most of the U. S. proposals contained in Kennedy’s letter, and added to the list of areas for possible cooperation joint robotic exploration of the Moon and the planets, search and rescue of re-entered satellites, espe­cially spacecraft with people on board, and various legal problems associated with space activity. Like Kennedy, Khrushchev agreed that “in the future, international cooperation in the conquest of space will undoubtedly extend to even newer fields of space exploration if we can now lay a firm foundation for it.” Khrushchev also noted, reinjecting the longstanding Soviet position into the interchange, “it appears obvious to me that the scale of our coop­eration in the peaceful conquest of space, as well as the choice of lines along which such cooperation would seem possible is to a certain extent related to the solution of the disarmament problem. . . Considerably broader prospects for cooperation and uniting our scientific-technical achievements, up to and including joint construction of spacecraft for reaching other planets—the moon, Venus, Mars—will arise when agreement on disarmament has been achieved.” Khrushchev agreed to an early start in discussions on coopera­tion, saying that “representatives of the USSR on the UN Space Committee will be given instructions to meet with representatives of the United States in order to discuss concrete questions of cooperation.”43

With this exchange of letters, the logjam in getting started on U. S.-Soviet discussions on space cooperation had been broken. On March 27-30, 1962, toward the end of the first meeting of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, there was an initial round of discussions between a U. S. del­egation led by NASA deputy administrator Dryden and a Soviet delegation led by academician Anatoly Blagonravov. The State Department guidance for this first round of talks was “to make clear the genuine U. S. interest in cooperation” and “to explore the Soviet attitude toward cooperation.” Dryden was instructed to “make it clear we are willing to take concrete, practical first steps in order to get started despite the problems of secrecy which particularly troubles the Soviet side.”44 The talks were to be “private with no publicity other than to acknowledge that exploratory talks had been held and would continue”; U. S. allies and other interested parties would be “informed confidentially” about the nature of the talks. Although Dryden was a senior official of NASA and thus intimately knowledgeable about U. S. space policy and programs, Blagonravov as a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was several steps removed from a similar position of influence and knowledge in the Soviet Union. Even after President Kennedy had des­ignated Dryden as the head of the U. S. delegation, McGeorge Bundy had raised the possibility of identifying as the lead negotiator for future discus­sions a more publicly known figure, “with good standing in the Congress,” so that “there would be confidence that the United States is not giving any­thing away, but at the same time taking a positive approach.”45 When the initial discussions, which were characterized as “amicable but inconclusive,” suggested that no high-profile cooperative agreement was in the offing, this idea was abandoned, and Dryden was designated as the U. S. lead in subse­quent negotiations.

While these initial meetings were in general free of cold war propaganda, on March 28 Blagonravov stated that prior to his departure from Moscow he had been instructed by his government “to convey a message from Soviet scientists to the effect that they would welcome a joint statement by US and USSR scientists restricting outer space to peaceful purposes and condemning the use of ‘spy-in-the-sky’ satellites.” The freedom to operate reconnaissance satellites was a very high priority for President Kennedy, and Dryden quickly told Blagonravov that such a suggestion was a “legal and political question” and thus not within the scope of the current discussions. The talks identified several areas of mutual interest for further negotiations, and the delegations agreed to meet again in one or two months.46

At an April 20 senior-level meeting chaired by under secretary of state George McGhee to review the U. S.-Soviet interactions, Dryden noted that the “Soviets clearly prefer that cooperative arrangements with the US be developed and implemented on a step-by-step basis” and that “at the moment it appears unlikely that any significant measure of joint effort in outer space activities will develop.” Both NASA administrator Webb and Space Council executive secretary Welsh agreed that such a step-by-step approach was pref­erable; Wiesner also thought that this would probably have to be the way to proceed, even though, reflecting the president’s priorities, he would have preferred more substantial cooperative engagements. In preparing Under Secretary McGhee for the meeting, Philip Farley suggested that “in view of the past interest of the White House in a possible major political negotia­tion with the Soviet Union for outer space cooperation, if the step by step approach is agreed to be the most feasible one,” it would be desirable “to obtain the President’s concurrence.”47

To obtain that agreement, Secretary of State Dean Rusk wrote the presi­dent on May 15, reporting that the president’s senior advisers on space had agreed “that the present low-key, step-by-step approach through informal talks by scientific representatives holds the most promise of breaking through Soviet reservations and initiating cooperation.” He added that “for the time being we do not think it necessary or wise to set a specific deadline by which these talks should be completed successfully or terminated.”48 In another meeting with Under Secretary McGhee on May 18, Dryden was told that President Kennedy was not interested in propaganda payoffs but rather “he had in mind real cooperation,” and that Kennedy “was anxious to go just as far as the Soviets could go.”49

From May 30 to June 8, 1962, there was a second round of meetings, this time in Geneva, between a U. S. delegation, once again headed by Dryden, and a Soviet delegation, once again headed by Blagonravov. These negotia­tions led to a June 8 agreement to cooperate in three areas: (1) the exchange of weather data from satellites and the eventual coordinated launching of meteorological satellites; (2) a joint effort to map the geomagnetic field of the Earth; and (3) cooperation in the experimental relay of communications.

Under secretary of state George Ball wrote the president on July 5 to inform him of the results of these discussions and to propose a future course of action. Ball told Kennedy that the agreements reached in Geneva “repre­sent a sound way of proceeding so long as they are adhered to by the Soviet Government and are developed in such a way as not to foster an impres­sion abroad that they represent a more significant step toward US-Soviet cooperation than they actually do or that US-USSR cooperation will in any way preempt the cooperation already being developed with other countries.”

Ball’s memorandum set out seven next steps in the cooperative process; these steps had emerged from a recent interagency meeting similar to that follow­ing the March talks.50

Bundy responded to the Ball memorandum on July 18, saying that “the President concurs in the general approach described in the report.” In his cover memorandum obtaining the president’s concurrence, Bundy noted that “I know that you [Kennedy] have been concerned lest Dryden make agreements that might come under political attack. I believe that these three projects are quite safe. They have been reviewed with a beady eye by CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and Defense, and they have been reported in detail to determined and watchful Congressmen like Tiger Teague, with no criticism.” In these projects, Bundy suggested, “we get as much as we give” and “neither our advanced techniques nor our cognate reconnaissance capa­bilities will be compromised.”51

Thus a modest start had been made in U. S.-Soviet space cooperation. The three initial areas for cooperation were quite limited in comparison with both the hopes of early 1961 and President Kennedy’s June 1961 suggestion to Nikita Khrushchev of cooperation in going to the Moon. But, as Donald Hornig, Princeton chemist and chair of the space panel of the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee (and later science adviser to President Lyndon Johnson), who had been a member of the U. S. delegation to the Geneva talks, observed to Wiesner: “I believe about as much was achieved as was possible at this time. The USSR representatives were apparently anxious to conclude an agreement” but “were extremely cautious,” suggesting that “we must take little steps before we can take bigger ones.”52

This incremental approach, favored by NASA and the State Department, was not sufficient for President Kennedy. As 1963 unfolded, he once again sought Soviet cooperation in going to the Moon.