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

416 Project Apollo: Americans to the Moon
Apollo Under Review
In November 1962 President John F. Kennedy had identified beating Russia
to the Moon as the country’s highest priority in space. Less than five months later,
there was some suggestion that the president might have been having second
thoughts about that priority and about the impacts of the accelerated space
program on the nation’s economy and technical activities, although whether
this indeed was the case is not clear from the historical record. On 9 April,
the president wrote Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in his role as Chairman
of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, saying that “in light of recent
discussions, I feel the need to obtain a clearer understanding of a number of
factual and policy issues relating to the National Space Program which seem to
rise repeatedly in public and other contexts.” Kennedy asked Johnson to carry
out a quick review of the program to answer a number of specific questions. 43
(Volume I, III-15)
Johnson’s report came on 13 May; NASA and DOD had been closely involved
in its preparation. In addition to answering the specific questions posed by
the President, the report noted “the space program is not solely a question of
prestige, of advancing scientific knowledge, or economic benefit or of military
development, although all of these factors are involved. Basically, a much more
fundamental issue is at stake . . . the future of society.” (Volume I, III-16)
To the Moon Together?
If Kennedy was indeed questioning the wisdom of racing Russia to the Moon,
one reason may have been the changed nature of U.S.-Soviet relations after the
United States had forced the Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles from Cuba in
October 1962. Kennedy seems to have concluded that the time was ripe to revisit a
notion that had preceded his decision to enter the space race—that a flight to the
Moon should be a cooperative U.S.-Soviet undertaking. According to Kennedy
advisor Theodore Sorensen, “it is no secret that Kennedy would have preferred
to cooperate with the Soviets” in manned missions to the Moon. 44 In an interview
shortly after Kennedy’s assassination, Sorenson expanded on this idea:
I think the President had three objectives in space. One was to ensure its
demilitarization. The second was to prevent the field to be occupied by
the Russians to the exclusion of the United States. And the third was to
make certain that American scientific prestige and American scientific
effort were at the top. Those three goals all would have been assured
in a space effort which culminated in our beating the Russians to the
moon. All three of them would have been endangered had the Russians
continued to outpace us in their space effort and beat us to the moon.
43. Compton¸ Where No Man Has Gone, Chap. 3.
44. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and
Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: Norton, 1997), p. 121.