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

Exploring the Unknown
419
with the Soviet Union . . . including cooperation in lunar landing programs.”
(Volume II, I-42)
Uncertainties Resolved . . . In the Worst Possible Way
On 18 November 1963, the Senate voted to cut $612 million from NASA’s
budget request, leading The New York Times to question “whether the Administration
can count on the budgetary support necessary to achieve a lunar landing by the
1969 deadline.” 50 That was a good question, given what was happening within the
White House budget staff. The Bureau of the Budget staff in November 1963 was
completing a comprehensive review of the national space program that had been
initiated in October; its draft report asked: “Should consideration be given at this
time to backing off from the manned lunar landing goal? [Emphasis in original].”
The budget office suggested “the review has pointed to the conclusion that in the
absence of clear changes in the present technical or international situations, the
only basis for backing off from the MLL [manned lunar landing] objective at this
time would be an overriding fiscal decision either (a) that the budgetary totals in
1965 or succeeding years are unacceptable and should be reduced by adjusting
the space program, or (b) that within present budgetary totals an adjustment
should be made shifting funds from space to other programs.” 51 (II-42) When
Congress passed the NASA FY 1964 appropriations bill, the space agency was
allocated a $5.1 billion budget, an increase of $1.3 billion over FY 1963 but a $0.6
billion reduction from what the president had requested for NASA at the start
of the year.
President Kennedy visited Cape Canaveral on 16 November, and saw the
progress being made on the facilities being developed for Apollo. 52 On 21
November, Kennedy gave the space program a strong endorsement in a speech
in San Antonio, where he had started a three-day political trip. That evening the
president attended a testimonial dinner for Albert Thomas in Houston, and then
flew to Dallas. The next day, Kennedy fell victim to an assassin’s gun.
With John F. Kennedy’s death and Lyndon B. Johnson becoming president,
any chance of the United States “backing off” of the lunar landing program
that Kennedy had initiated vanished; instead, the program became in a sense
a memorial to the fallen president. Lyndon Johnson was far less interested in
cooperating with the Soviet Union in space than had been Kennedy. In January
1964 NASA submitted the report requested by Kennedy’s 12 November national
security directive (Volume II, I-43), but there had been no sign from Nikita
Khrushchev that he was interested in discussing cooperation, and President
Johnson did not press the issue. For the next three years, while James Webb fought
to maintain congressional support for a budget adequate to meet Kennedy’s
50. Quoted in Murray and Cox, Apollo, p. 161.
51. It is not clear from available sources whether this review was carried to completion.
Document II-42 is a labeled draft, and contains only the thoughts of the Bureau of the Budget staff.
Room was left for recommendations by various senior officials, but whether those recommendations
were made in the aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination is not known.
52. Seamans, Aiming at Targets, p. 113-–15.