Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

362 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age
as against improving the maps of van allen belts, of suppressing ignorance and
disease on earth as against fnding new moons in the skies.” 23
other critics were even more impulsive in their censure. If spacefight
was truly about demonstrating to the world american capabilities, cautioned
nuclear physicist Leo Szilard, “we are making the wrong choice.” americans
could demonstrate this in other more positive ways. “to race the russians to the
moon and let our old people live on almost nothing is immoral,” he remarked
specifcally about the apollo lunar program. “the moon is not science—not
bread. It is circus. the astronauts are the gladiators. It’s lunacy, I say.” 24 as time
passed, for Szilard and a minority of other americans, space exploration seemed
like an increasingly embarrassing national self-indulgence. 25
Several of the leaders in the u.S., especially those within the Democratic
party, found that support for NaSa’s space exploration agenda clashed with
supporting funds for social programs enacted through “great Society” legislation.
they disparaged apollo both as too closely linked to the military-industrial
complex and defense spending and too far removed from the ideals of racial,
social, and economic justice at the heart of the positive liberal state the Democrats
envisioned. Liberal senators such as J. William fulbright, Walter Mondale,
and William proxmire challenged the Johnson administration every year over
funding for NaSa that they believed could be more efectively used for social
programs. accordingly, bureau of the budget Director Charles Schultze worked
throughout the middle part of the 1960s to shift funds from NaSa to such
programs as the war on poverty. Johnson even tried to defend NaSa as a part of
his “great Society” initiatives, arguing that it helped poor southern communities
with an infusion of federal investment in high technology. Nonetheless, this
proved a difcult sell and the NaSa budget declined precipitously throughout
the latter half of the 1960s. 26
Indicative of this concern, even as apollo 11 was being prepared for launch
from the Kennedy Space Center in florida on July 16, 1969, rev. ralph
abernathy led a protest at the gates of the Center for 150 protesters and 4
23. amatai etzioni, “International prestige, Competition and Cooperative existence,” Archives of
Europeenees de Sociologie 3, no. 1 (1962): 21-41, quotes from pp. 38-39.
24. Quoted in oscar h. rechtschafen, ed., Refections on Space: Its Implications for Domestic and
International Afairs (Colorado Springs, Co: uSaf academy, 1964), p. 118, available from Defense
technical Information Center, accession no.aD0602915.
25. W. henry Lambright, Powering Apollo: James E.Webb of NASA (baltimore, MD: Johns hopkins
university press, 1995), pp. 140-141.
26. robert Dallek,“Johnson, project apollo, and the politics of Space program planning,” in roger
D. Launius and howard e. McCurdy, eds., Spacefight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership
(urbana, IL: university of Illinois press, 1997), pp. 75-88.