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

Exploring the Unknown 613
such suggestions are a memorandum from Kennedy’s science advisor, Jerome Wiesner, suggesting
a detailed approach to cooperation, and a 12 November 1963 National Security Action
Memorandum signed by Kennedy asking NASA to take the lead in developing an approach to
U.S.-Soviet cooperation in missions to the Moon (Volume II, Document I-42).
Dear Al:
Document II-39
THE WHITE HOUSE
September 23, 1963
I am very glad to respond to your letter of September 21 and to state my position
on the relation between our great current space effort and my proposal at the
United Nations for increased cooperation with the Russians in this field. In my
view an energetic continuation of our strong space effort is essential, and the
need for this effort is, if anything, increased by our intent to work for increasing
cooperation if the Soviet Government proves willing.
As you know, the idea of cooperation in space is not new. My statement of our willingness
to cooperate in a moon shot was an extension of a policy developed as long ago as
1958 on a bipartisan basis, with particular leadership from Vice President Johnson,
who was then the Senate Majority Leader. The American purpose of cooperation in
space was stated by the Congress in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958,
and reaffirmed in my Inaugural Address in 1961. Our specific interest in cooperation
with the Soviet Union, as the other nation with a major present capability in space,
was indicated to me by Chairman Khrushchev in Vienna in the middle of 1961, and
reaffirmed in my letter to him of March 7, 1962, which was made public at the time.
As I then said, discussion of cooperation would undoubtedly show us “possibilities
for substantive scientific and technical cooperation in manned and unmanned space
investigations.” So my statement in the United Nations is a direct development of
policy long held by the United States government.
Our repeated efforts of cooperation with the Soviet Union have so far produced
only limited responses and results. We have an agreement to exchange
certain information in such limited fields as weather observation and passive
communications, and technical discussions of other limited possibilities are
going forward. But as I said in July of this year, there are a good many barriers of
suspicion and fear to be broken down before we can have major progress in this
field. Yet our intent remains: to do our part to bring those barriers down.
At the same time, as no one knows better than you, the United States in the last
five years has made a steadily growing national effort in space. On May 25, 1961,
I proposed to the Congress and the nation a major expansion of this effort, and I
particularly emphasized as a target the achievement of a manned lunar landing in
the decade of the 60’s. I stated that this would be a task requiring great effort and
very large expenditures’ the Congress and the nation approved this goal; we have