JFK and the Moon

12 Responses to JFK and the Moon

1. Gary Miloglav says:

   November 25, 2013 at 12:29 pm

   Thank you Dr Spudis for yet another, well written account of our space history. I, too, am a “space cadet” and remember those days well. The first shock of sputnik, then Yuri Gagarin, and all their continuous “firsts” were devastating and depressing. The relentless march of the Soviet Union and their allies had so many of us building fallout shelters in fear of the certainty of nuclear war as the Russian ships approached our blockade of Cuba. In the meantime, all our rockets were blowing up on the pad before finally getting one small satellite into orbit. Somehow, however, we made it through those times, albeit with the Viet Nam war and apparently endless wars that followed. I am so disappointed in my “boomer” generation that we did not have the vision to continue our lunar exploration. I suppose I should be happy with the space station, but it just is not enough. Now that I’m retired, I have the time and inclination to advocate and support bold initiatives in space. I just hope more of us will come out of the woodwork to do the same.
2. Marcel Williams says:

   November 25, 2013 at 1:04 pm

   Read your excellent article yesterday! One thing people forget, however, are the domestic and international politics of the time. The cold war was very serious between the US and the USSR at that time– and the space race was part of it.

   Kennedy was barely getting started in office when the Soviets dropped another Sputnik moment on America in the form of Yuri Gagarin in orbit in 1961. Its no coincidence that Kennedy quickly announced America’s manned lunar program just a week after the Soviet Union placed the first man into orbit. Americans and the rest of the world were waiting to see how Kennedy, the new leader of the Free World, would respond to the latest Soviet advances in space. And Kennedy did so in a very very big way!

   Marcel F. Williams
   • Chris Castro says:

     November 30, 2013 at 9:21 pm

     John Kennedy was a very exceptional statesman! He seized the great historic opportunity, the coinciding of intense geopolitical rivalry, to get the country to do grand things in the space arena. Indeed his political response to the Gagarin Vostok flight was a swift one. But certainly some credit has to go to his science advisors as well. Can you imagine if they’d have told him that he should focus exclusively on LEO activities & LEO stations?! THAT is just about the only area of spaceflight that the Soviet Union was strongly willing to compete with us in. The LEO stagnation of both nations could’ve easily began, right then & there, and we’d have seen NOT a single manned deep spaceflight ever, in all the five decades since! Thank God & Providence that we had a Kennedy in the Oval Office, at the time, to put forward the big challenges in front of the nation, and to make the boast & dare about America reaching the Moon with astronauts by the decade’s end! The current President, by contrast, would be fully content to see America confined to LEO for the next 15 to 20 years!
3. Mark R. Whittington says:

   November 25, 2013 at 3:40 pm

   Rand depends on, as do a lot of people, an off hand sentence in a recorded conversation with then NASA Administrator James Webb when Kennedy states, “I’m not interested in space.” But placed in context with the entire exchange, Kennedy was clearly calling for a clear focus for the space program of his time, which was the moon race, and not on an ill defined program of “space exploration” that Webb was calling for. In any case a lot of non moon stuff was approved or carried out during JFK’s administration, such as the Mariner flybys to Venus and Mars, the latter taking place after the assassination.
   • Marcel Williams says:

     November 25, 2013 at 5:46 pm

     Most importantly, Kennedy put his money where his mouth was!

     In today’s dollars, Kennedy inherited a nearly $6 billion a year NASA budget from Eisenhower. Kennedy nearly doubled that to nearly $12 billion (today’s dollars) in 1962 and doubled it again to nearly $24 billion (in today’s dollars) in 1963.

     After his assassination, President Johnson (whose political influence helped to create NASA), increased the NASA budget still further, up to more than $30 billion a year (in today’s dollars) in 1964.

     The current NASA budget is less than $18 billion a year.

     Marcel
   • Joe says:

     November 25, 2013 at 6:36 pm

     Mark,

     Exactly correct.

     I read the transcript some time ago and it was clearly Webb trying to tell Kennedy that he should let Webb decide how to spend all of the extra money Kennedy was getting him.

     Kennedy’s response was simply reminding Webb who the boss was.

     Having gone through all the political mechanizations of Constellation Systems, it would have been a real relief to have a high level manager (the President himself in the case of Apollo) keeping the project focused on the original goals of the VSE

     Joe
     • Warren Platts says:

       November 26, 2013 at 8:58 am

       The President shouldn’t have to micromanage NASA. To the extent that Apollo was a success, the credit should mainly go to Webb himself IMHO. Note that Webb was neither an aerospace engineer nor an astronaut–he was an oil man. The other good administrator we had was O’Keefe–an accountant. There is a lesson here….
       • Joe says:

         November 26, 2013 at 11:51 am

         I was not trying to denigrate Webb. I assume he was an excellent manager.

         But it is not micromanagement to assure that an executive branch agency sticks to the top level goal set for it.

         In that conversation Webb was clearly trying to get Kennedy to let him deemphasize the human lunar mission in favor of spreading the money around to a more “diverse” portfolio. No doubt being able to please a wider set of his own “constituents” would have made Webb’s job easier. It would also have made actually achieving Kennedy’s goal much more difficult (if not impossible).

         There is indeed a lesson here.

         I stand by my original statement.
         • Warren Platts says:

           November 26, 2013 at 9:27 pm

           Here’s the link to the conversation–I just listened to it:

           http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/john-kennedy-james-webb-robert-seamans-hugh-dryden-jerome-wiesner-fly-me-moon

           Joe, I think your characterization of Webb is really unfair. IMHO he was not trying to deemphasize the lunar mission: he was trying to emphasize to the President that they needed to learn about the basic space environment–including the nature of the Moon’s surface, before they tried sending people there.

           Really, there was no was no basic disagreement at all. Kennedy wanted to make damned sure they beat the Russians to the Moon; Webb just wanted to be damned sure that the Moon shot didn’t turn into a Bay of Pigs-like fiasco–it would not look good to beat the Russians to the Moon by 6 months only to have the astronauts swallowed up and smothered by 30 feet of soft dust….

           I admire a guy like Webb who can stand up to a president and make it clear that Program X isn’t simply of a matter of saying “Make it happen!” Obamacare anyone? Also, as I think Seamans said on the tape, assigning a “top priority” on one thing, if carried to an extreme, can result in the absolute gutting of everything else–like the meteorology program for the Navy and Air Force just when the USA was on the brink of WWIII!! I am reminded of one of Griffin’s many glib comments when he said that the Science Mission Directorate’s budget ought to be exactly equivalent to zero!

           You betcha, there is indeed a lesson to be learned here….
4. Peter says:

   November 26, 2013 at 11:31 am

   Interesting that you bring up a potential ulterior motive in JFK’s proposal for a joint American-Soviet moon mission. China just did the same thing with an invitation for international partners on their moon mission and space station.
   • Chris Castro says:

     November 30, 2013 at 9:43 pm

     Only the America of the 2010’s, is just TOO bogged down in LEO to even think about doing anything else! The ISS has been a heavy vacuum taking up all of the nation’s space resources. I have always predicted that until we were done dealing with LEO stations, that NOTHING in the way of deep spaceflight would ever start again. By the way, China does NOT seem to be intent on bogging itself down to LEO, and copying us to the letter: their “space station” project appears to be just a pre-launched target vehicle for a manned rendezvous——much like the Agena target vehicle was, during the Gemini program——-and it could just as easily be replaced with a translunar vehicle, complete with a lunar lander & an earth departure stage. (Much like was the Constellation flight plan). WHEN they eventually do this, and attempt either a circumlunar flyby, or a lunar orbital flight, as a prelude to their lunar landing & outpost base program; they will have put together all the basic elements for future interplanetary flight, and will move forward with much agility & flexibility, with regard to technological options.
5. Joe says:

   November 27, 2013 at 2:06 pm

   Warren Platts says: November 26, 2013 at 9:27 pm

   Hi Warren,

   I do not want to contribute to this becoming another of those endless point/counterpoint internet exchanges with each side trying to get the last post (because of course – getting the last post means you win). So I will make a couple of what I hope will be last points on this subject.

   (1) Thanks for the link to the audio. I had read the transcript before but hearing the actual talk (with the transcript also being displayed) was interesting.

   (2) The transcript/audio just does not support the contention that “Webb just wanted to be damned sure that the Moon shot didn’t turn into a Bay of Pigs-like fiasco–it would not look good to beat the Russians to the Moon by 6 months only to have the astronauts swallowed up and smothered by 30 feet of soft dust….”. There were 5 people involved in the discussion (Kennedy, Webb, Seamans, Dryden, Wiesner). Webb was arguing for a far more generic program that would (if necessary) delay implementation of the of the core program in favor of more vaguely defined generic research. The specific references to the robotic precursor’s (complete with the required Centaur upper stage) were made by Wiesner not Webb. He seems (with Seamans support) to be trying to bridge a divide between the President and the Administrator and by the end of the meeting they had succeeded. It should be noted that Kennedy said he already considered the Precursors/Centaur part of Apollo. If you agree with the Webb approach (open ended research with no specific goals or schedules) then I am sure he seems to you to be speaking “truth” to power. If you do not, you would have another opinion entirely. Personally if I was going to give a medal to anyone if would Seamans/Wiesner for salvaging what could have been a high profile disaster.

   (3) My interest in this is very narrowly defined. It all took place fifty years ago and Webb (after this meeting) got with the program (at least publicly). My only real interest is that the out of context quote by Kennedy (about not caring about space) has been repeatedly used to portray him as basically anti-space (and therefore attack the Apollo Project) and that is simply not true. Whatever you think of Webb, Kennedy or Apollo, the actual truth deserves better.

   Joe

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