Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

Exploring the Unknown 475
Document II-7
Document Title: “Memorandum to the President from Jerome Wiesner Re:
Sidney Memorandum,” 14 April 1961.
Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
President John F. Kennedy was extremely effective in his relations with print and electronic
media, and often became personal friends with reporters covering his presidency. One of
these individuals was Hugh Sidey, who covered the White House for Life magazine. In
the aftermath of the launching of Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961, Sidey requested an
interview with the president and provided Kennedy’s press secretary Pierre Salinger with a
memorandum as background for the interview. On the date of the memorandum, 14 April,
Sidey sat in on a meeting between Kennedy and his top space advisors in the Cabinet room;
he described the meeting in his 1963 book, John F. Kennedy, President. In preparation
for Sidey’s discussions with the president and, separately, Kennedy’s top advisor Theodore
Sorenson, Presidential science advisor Jerome Wiesner prepared a response to the Sidey
memorandum.
To Pierre Salinger
From Hugh Sidey
Date April 14, 1962
Document II-6
Office Memorandum
Questions for the President on Space –
(FYI my initial surveillance of the space problem reveals some ragged
dilemmas on the landscape. There are a lot of good minds in NASA and other
dusty offices of the space agency that think we still are fiddling, haven’t made the
necessary decisions. They claim the President isn’t getting the range of advice on
this problem he should have. Their arguments are damned cogent. They scoff
at the theory of some scientists that the Russians have now gone as far as they can
for a few years. They hoot equally at the idea that our space effort is “locked in”
and can’t be accelerated. They claim, with compelling logic, that if we are to get
in this race at all we’ve got to declare a national space goal, go for broke on a big
booster (which means plenty of dough, granted). If we don’t do this then we are
going to sit here over the next eight years and watch the Soviets march right on
ahead. I must confess, as near as I can tell on the surface there has been no great
urgency attached to this space decision. If it has been made, we don’t know it.
But knowing the President some, I can’t believe he hasn’t sensed [2] the
urgency. Therefore if I could get a little guidance on the following questions it
would help)
1. Why haven’t we declared a crash program on one of the big boosters
and pulled in our horns on others? Has the President accepted the theory that