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

Exploring the Unknown
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But I believe all three of those goals would also have been assured by a
joint Soviet-American venture to the moon.
The difficulty was that in 1961, although the President favored
the joint effort, we had comparatively few chips to offer. Obviously the
Russians were well ahead of us at that time. . . . But by 1963, our effort
had accelerated considerably. There was a very real chance we were even
with the Soviets in this effort. In addition, our relations with the Soviets,
following the Cuban missile crisis and the test ban treaty, were much
improved—so the President felt that, without harming any of those three
goals, we now were in a position to ask the Soviets to join us and make it
efficient and economical for both countries. (II-43)
President Kennedy met Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev only once, on 3 and
4 June 1961. This was soon after Kennedy had made his speech announcing the
lunar landing goal, but twice during the summit meeting, and at the President’s
initiative, Kennedy and Khrushchev had discussed the possibility of cooperation
in going to the Moon. 45 Khrushchev reacted negatively to Kennedy’s proposal,
and the matter was dropped for the next two years.
In mid-1963, the president began again to float the idea of a joint U.S.­
Soviet mission to the Moon. One problem, however, was that there was no
evidence from intelligence sources that the Soviet Union was in fact intending
to send cosmonauts to the Moon. 46 In fact, it was reported that a leading British
scientist, Bernard Lovell, had been told by his Soviet counterparts that there
was no Russian program to send people to the Moon. Asked at a 17 July press
conference on whether he favored a joint U.S.-Soviet lunar mission, Kennedy, for
the first time in a public forum, said “we have said before to the Soviet Union that
we would be very interested in cooperation.” However, he added, “the kind of
cooperative effort which would be required for the Soviet Union and the United
States to go to the moon would require a breaking down of a good many barriers
of suspicion and distrust and hostility which exist between the Communist world
and ourselves.” Kennedy concluded that he would “welcome” such cooperation,
but that he “did not see it yet, unfortunately.” 47
By September, Kennedy had decided to publicly test the waters with respect
to possible U.S.-Soviet cooperation in going to the Moon. During a 18 September
meeting with James Webb, Kennedy told the NASA Administrator for the first
time that he intended to make such a proposal in a 20 September speech to the
General Assembly of the United Nations. (Volume II, I-41) In his 20 September
speech, Kennedy said
45. John M. Logsdon, “To the Moon Together? John F. Kennedy and U.S. Soviet Space
Cooperation,” unpublished paper in author’s files.
46. The reality was that in 1963 the Soviet leadership had not yet decided to approve a lunar
landing mission. See John M. Logsdon and Alain Dupas, “Was the Race to the Moon Real?” Scientific
American 270, no. 6 (June 1994): 36.
47. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963, (Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office, 1964), pp. 567–568.