Author Topic: Murdering Apollo: John F. Kennedy and the retreat from the lunar goal  (Read 1939 times)

Offline Chris Bergin

Support NSF via L2 -- Help improve NSF -- Site Rules/Feedback/Updates
**Not a L2 member? Whitelist this forum in your adblocker to support the site and ensure full functionality.**

Offline hektor

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2706
  • Liked: 1193
  • Likes Given: 54
This guy has read too much of Stephen Baxter...

Offline Jeff Bingham

  • Extreme Veteran
  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1592
  • aka "51-D Mascot"
  • Liked: 38
  • Likes Given: 56
Interesting article..."but"....it leaves out some important details about the controversy over Kennedy's September 20, 1963 address at the UN, as well as the situation in the Congress at the time, which was in the midst of considering NASA's FY 1964 Budget.

Just a quick example: Dwayne mentions the concerns raised after the speech by Representative Thomas, the Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee, who felt the speech undermined his ability to press for full funding for Apollo in the appropriations process, and the letter from Kennedy written in response. A more complete excerpt from that letter from Kennedy reveals a clearer picture of where he was coming from and the degree to which he still supported the Apollo program:

“This great national effort and this steadily stated readiness to cooperate with others are not in conflict.  They are mutually supporting elements of a single policy.  We do not make our space effort with the narrow purpose of national aggrandizement.  We make it so that the United States may have a leading and honorable role in mankind's peaceful conquest of space.  It is this great effort which permits us now to offer increased cooperation with no suspicion anywhere that we speak from weakness.  And in the same way, our readiness to cooperate with others enlarges the international meaning of our own peaceful American program in space.

“In my judgment, therefore, our renewed and extended purpose of cooperation, so far from offering any excuse for slackening or weakness in our space effort, is one reason the more for moving ahead with the great program to which we have been committed as a country for more than two years.

“So the position of the United States is clear.  If cooperation is possible, we mean to cooperate, and we shall do so from a position made strong and solid by our national effort in space.  If cooperation is not possible-- then the same strong national effort will serve all free men's interest in space, and protect us also against possible hazards to our national security. So let us press on...."

In the period of time between September 20 and the middle of November, the Congress did actually make a considerable reduction in the proposed NASA appropriations--$250 million less than had been authorized, prompting NASA Administrator James Webb to say the Apollo landing date could not be met unless the cuts were restored. The day before Kennedy was assassinated he spoke about the space program in terms that could be seen as setting the stage for a veto of the appropriations bill as being inadequate to meet the needs of Apollo:

“Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside; and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high to climb, too doubtful to try, too difficult to permit their journey to continue, they took off their caps and tossed them over the wall and then they had no choice but to follow them.  My friends, this Nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space and we have no choice but to follow it.  Whatever the difficulties, they must be overcome.”  

Referring to the Senate's appropriations action, he said, “There will be pressures for our country to do less and temptations to do something else.  But this research must and will go ahead.  That much we know.  That much we can say with confidence and conviction.”

My reading of that...and a lot of other details about that period of time, is that Kennedy was not reducing his level of support for the Apollo goal; rather he was repositioning and re-casting its pursuit in the context of the emerging domestic political context of 1963, when there was increasing rhetorical challenge to the Apollo program--largely from Republicans like Eisenhower and Goldwater--who were preparing to set the stage for the presidential election the following year.

Offering only my own views and experience as a long-time "Space Cadet."

Tags:
 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
1