Former US president John F. Kennedy, who was killed 50 years ago, will always be linked with space exploration, the space race and moon landings.
He had shown very little interest in space issues in his time as a senator and during his presidential campaign, yet only three months after his inauguration, he asked his advisers to find him “a space programme which promises dramatic results, which we could win”. This was a reaction to the Russians launching the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961.
The US had already been challenged by the Soviet’s pre-eminence in space when they launched the satellite Sputnik on October 4, 1957. In reaction, president Eisenhower established Nasa in October 1958.
Eisenhower was not enthusiastic about a space programme but he realised that the US had to have one, and plans were started to launch Americans into space with the Mercury programme.
By April 1959, Nasa had recruited seven astronauts who were adulated as superheroes by the public. Nasa was also thinking ahead and even planned a manned lunar landing but this was considered a preposterous idea. Eisenhower supported the Saturn booster programme which would build rockets large enough to reach the moon. Nasa had named the moon spacecraft Apollo in January 1960.
During his electoral campaign, Kennedy spoke about his concern with the ‘space gap’ but did not offer anything specific. He was not convinced that space travel would be part of his ‘new frontiers’ programme and he thought that rockets and space were a waste of money.
At the time Nasa’s early rockets were exploding on their launch pads and it is not surprising that the new president suggested dissolving the National Aeronautics Space Council which was the liaison between the White House and Nasa.
This was only saved by vice-president Lyndon Baines Johnson who was a keen exponent of space and had stated that “control of space is control of the world”. Kennedy appointed James Webb as the new Nasa administrator but did not authorise funding for detailed planning of the Apollo spacecraft.
The launch of Gagarin into orbit was a triumph for communism; Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev compared him to Christopher Columbus. The next day Kennedy called a meeting in the White House for his science and space advisers. He was told that the Russians were ahead in space and they would remain so unless the US leapfrogged ahead. He was also told that the US could put a man on the moon in 10 years with a crash programme at a cost of $20 billion.
Kennedy balked at the enormous cost and asked whether his advisers could invent some other race on earth that might do some good. He ended the meeting saying that they had to figure out a way to catch up, saying “there is nothing more important”.
Less than a week later, America was humiliated by the botched attempted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
And only a few weeks after that, on April 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to be launched into space in a near textbook ride. Kennedy watched and cheered with all Americans. He understood perfectly: the nation was euphoric.
On May 21, 1961, an uncharacteristically nervous Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress “on urgent national needs” and asked for an additional $7 to $9 billion over the next five years for the space programme:
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of
space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
Despite the cost, Kennedy took up the political and patriotic banner of the space race and embraced it. Nasa delivered.
On February 20, 1962, John Glenn was launched into orbit and Kennedy was there to meet him on his return.
“This is a new ocean and I believe America must sail upon it,” he said.
Covering the event, Time magazine commented: “In terms of national prestige, Glenn’s flight put the US back in the space race with a vengeance, and gave the US and the entire free world a huge and badly needed boost.”
Kennedy felt that the space race was about the US and “the free world” and this is apparent in his speech at Rice University in September 1962:
“The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not. And it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this space race. We mean to lead it, for the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace.”
There were tensions between Kennedy and Nasa about the priorities of funding in various space projects. On November 21, 1962, in a meeting at the White House Kennedy told Nasa administrator Webb that the moon programme was top priority: “This is important for political reasons, international political reasons. This is, whether we like it or not, in a sense, a race”.
A doubter who was converted, once he overcame his reluctance, Kennedy put all his force behind the space programme.
On the day before he was killed, the president spoke about a story by Irish writer Frank O’Connor who walked across the countryside with his friends.
When they were faced with a seemingly insurmountable wall, they would toss their caps over the wall, and then had no choice but to follow.
“This nation has tossed its cap across the wall of space and we have no choice but to follow it,” Kennedy said.
However, he often considered cooperation in space with the Soviet Union. In his State of the Union address on January 30, 1961, Kennedy called for cooperation in space with all nations including the Soviet Union.
“Both nations would help themselves and other nations from the bitter and wasteful competition of the Cold War,” he said.
Kennedy discussed cooperation with Khrushchev at the Vienna summit on May 3 and 4, 1961. The Soviet response was that there could be no cooperation in space without disarmament because rockets could be used in space and in war. Later, Khrushchev’s son would say that his father did not want to reveal the Soviet weakness of having only one good missile at the time – the R7 (Semyorka).
The US president persisted in his attempt for cooperation over the years and the talks received a new impetus after the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis. On September 20, 1963, Kennedy addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations where he said: “In a field where the US and the Soviet Union have a special capacity – in the field of space, there is room for new cooperation… I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon.”
He was serious in hoping to “swing the US and the USSR from competition to cooperation”. Khrushchev replied on November 1, 1963: “We studied president’s Kennedy’s proposal for a joint moon project... would it not be fine if a Soviet man and an American or Soviet cosmonaut and an American woman flew to the moon?”
On November 22 of that year, Kennedy was assassinated. With him died the possibility of a US-Soviet cooperation in going to the moon. The US was, of course, first to the moon and the Soviet Union experienced a series of failures in its lunar programme.
The opportunity to test whether dramatic space cooperation between the US and the Soviet Union could serve as a counterweight to their Cold War rivalry had passed.