The von Braun team in Huntsville was ecstatic about Project Mercury, which would fulfill their long-held dream of achieving manned spaceflight. While NASA officials thought of the Mercury Seven astronauts as dexterous test pilots in silvery flight suits, von Braun saw them as field scientists exploring the contours of outer space, courtesy of his Mercury-Redstone launch vehicles. “Man is still the best computer that we can put aboard a spacecraft,” he said, “and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.” But he also knew the Seven needed to be supported by technology that didn’t yet exist. For instance, he envisioned a control protocol whereby astronauts circling Earth could communicate with the ground via a global network of NASA tracking systems; this was soon achieved. Computers in 1959 existed only as huge mainframes that filled rooms. What von Braun envisioned, and NASA contracted from IBM, were smaller computers for the Goddard Space Flight Center that would provide “mission critical” data analysis for NASA in a hurry. These new IBM transistorized computers helped NASA determine “trajectory dynamics” during the launch and early orbit phases.
On the day the Mercury astronauts were introduced, John Kennedy was giving a speech in Milwaukee, but no distance from Washington could erase the impact Mercury would have on both the country and his own personal brand. Space was America’s Cold War Manifest Destiny, and the Mercury astronauts were its rough-and-ready trailblazers, following in the footsteps of Kennedy’s own World War II generation and almost two centuries of American adventurers before. Later that spring, journalist Ben Bradlee, JFK’s Georgetown neighbor, wrote in his private diary that “Kennedy identifies enthusiastically with the astronauts, the glamour surrounding them and the courage and skill it takes to do their jobs.” While Kennedy the seafarer identified with the mythos of the Mercury Seven, Kennedy the politician understood that to be identified with them, to be part of that magnificent fraternity, would be a bonus in his pursuit of the presidency.
On the other side of the political aisle, Vice President Richard Nixon was raising his own presidential stock by getting up in communism’s face. In late July 1959, while viewing a display of modern kitchen conveniences at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Nixon goaded Soviet premier Khrushchev into a schoolyard quarrel on the virtues of democracy versus communism, an exchange that became known as the Kitchen Debate. Two months later, while touring the United States for thirteen days, Khrushchev was denied access to Disneyland, where Tomorrowland space rides were popular attractions with thrill-seekers.
As their leaders squabbled and positioned, scientists advanced. On January 2, 1959, the first of the Soviets’ Luna (or Lunik) spacecraft was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on a trajectory intended to impact the moon. A malfunction caused Luna 1 to miss by some 3,600 miles, but the Soviets recast the mission as a success for becoming the first man-made object to escape Earth’s gravity and enter into a heliocentric orbit. Eight months later, on September 14, the three-thousand-pound Luna 2 probe completed its predecessor’s mission by crash-landing between the Archimedes and Autolycus craters on the lunar surface, becoming the first man-made device to connect with another planetary body. The event prompted elation from people around the world; for instance, the New York Times treated the news as the biggest story of the day. The data in those signals showed, among other things, that the moon has no significant magnetic field.
A month before Luna 2, the United States had scored its own coup when the newly launched Explorer 6 satellite sent back the first-ever photograph of Earth from orbit, showing a sunlit area of the central Pacific Ocean from an altitude of 17,000 miles. Two months later, the Soviet Luna 3 made further history by sending back the first photographic images of the far side of the moon. Meanwhile, operating away from public glare in Huntsville, von Braun had developed a rocket whose first stage could deliver 1.5 million pounds of thrust—an amazing start for a possible American moonshot. He called the rocket Saturn.
In Washington, the Eisenhower administration continued to push for global “freedom of space,” conducting U-2 reconnaissance flights over the USSR, and gearing up NASA for manned-space exploration. The president’s science advisors—prominent experts such as Caltech president Lee DuBridge, MIT president James Killian (who preferred robots to men in space), and engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush (who told a congressional committee that rockets couldn’t span oceans)—warned him not to be goaded by the Kremlin into rushing the manned spaceflight program. The administration’s methodical approach soon became fodder for Kennedy on the campaign trail, where he dismissed Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush, Glennan, Killian, and DuBridge as flat-out behind the times. America, JFK was soon saying, had a “space gap” with the USSR, which in the next year would choose twenty “cosmonauts” for its own manned spaceflight program, almost triple Project Mercury’s total. Under the continuing leadership of rocket designer Sergei Korolev, Soviet engineers had also devised a completely automated spacecraft in which a cosmonaut would ride as a passenger instead of as an active pilot.
Kennedy essentially agreed with a snarky Newsweek article that mocked Eisenhower’s space policy recipe: “start late, downgrade Russian feats, fragment authority, pinch pennies, think small, and shirk decisions.” Advanced technology, he believed, was a primary indicator of the economic health of a nation. While Ike methodically slow-walked into the future, Kennedy wanted a decisive American victory in space. As a senator, he pushed for NASA’s getting caught up with Russian space technology. Not yet saying directly that America would put an astronaut on the moon by 1970, he nonetheless guaranteed crowds that if he were U.S. president, the nation would not just be “first but, first and, first when, first if, but first period.”
Wives of the seven Mercury astronauts became NASA celebrities in their own right. Top row: Jo Schirra and Louise Shepard. Middle row: Annie Glenn and Marjorie Slayton. Bottom row: Trudy Cooper, Rene Carpenter, and Betty Grissom.
Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Senator John F. Kennedy during his 1960 campaign for the U.S. presidency.
Paul Schutzer/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
9
Kennedy for President
The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.
—JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY ANNOUNCING HIS CANDIDACY FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (JANUARY 2, 1960)
When John F. Kennedy formally announced his candidacy for president of the United States on January 2, 1960, he boasted that he would “rebuild the stature of American science and education.” He showcased himself as the oracle of public education. There was genuine excitement in the Democratic Party that the precocious Kennedy was a relatively fresh face. Party leaders relished the distinction of having a presidential aspirant under fifty. This was also welcome news at NASA, which was struggling to move out of what it called its “formative stage, accelerating its space research and development.” In his more technology-oriented speeches in early 1960, Kennedy came across as a potential inspirational president willing to prioritize ICBMs and NASA funding more vigorously than Eisenhower had.
A strange sense of momentum and destiny swirled about Kennedy. Hugh Sidey of Time called him “a serious man on a serious mission.” Extremely in demand and the darling of the press, JFK was receiving five hundred speaking invitations per month, according to his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln. His visionary rhetoric about innovation and technology threw into sharp relief the more staid approach of Vice President Nixon, who was gunning for the Republican nomination. Joseph Kennedy Sr. bought a Convair 240 twin-engine airliner for Jack’s personal use, marking the first time a White House aspirant had a plane at his constant disposal. Named the Caroline, after Jack and Jackie’s two-year-old daughter, JFK’s Convair became an extension of his personality, helping him cover some one hundred thousand campaign miles. (Unbeknownst to Kennedy, rocketeer extraordinaire Hermann Oberth was then worki
ng as a technical consultant for Convair, on the Atlas rocket program. Von Braun befriended his old hero, who was on loan to the United States from West Germany, even coaxing him to join the Huntsville rocket team at the Marshall Space Flight Center, for a stint working at the Space Sciences Laboratory there.)
The Caroline gave Kennedy an edge over his political rivals, letting him choose his itinerary based on political benefit rather than train and airline schedules. He was helped by a top-notch campaign staff that mixed battle-proven Democratic operatives with Ivy League academics, all held together by the steely ambition of two generations of Kennedys and their spouses. Also, the public hadn’t missed the fact that Kennedy’s focused, well-organized campaign had essentially begun with his 1958 Senate reelection, an extreme rarity in a time when campaigns typically began within the same calendar year as Election Day.
Although, in the past, sitting U.S. senators had had a hard time jumping from Capitol Hill to the White House—only one, Warren Harding, in 1920, had successfully made the journey—Kennedy’s three major rivals for the Democratic nomination were all among his Senate colleagues: airpower maven Stuart Symington of Missouri, liberal Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, and political operator Lyndon Johnson of Texas. Also hovering around the race was the 1952 and 1956 nominee, Adlai Stevenson, who, though not actively seeking the nomination, let it be known that he’d accept a convention draft. Kennedy himself leaned Cold War center-left—more Scoop Jackson than Adlai Stevenson—but his true ideological home was simply the winners’ club; he had never lost an election. While Symington, on moral principle, refused to embrace racism and flatly refused to speak to segregated audiences in the South, Kennedy would and did. Like FDR before him, JFK didn’t want to lose rural white Southern voters over civil rights, so he pandered around the issue rather than risk alienating too many white Protestants in the region. Later in 1960, though, he telephoned Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, sending a strong symbolic signal to African Americans that he was on their side of the freedom struggle.
Yet, throughout hundreds of resolute speeches and rah-rah articles, what made Kennedy stand out among all the Democratic candidates of 1960 was his streak of vivid Catholic idealism, which shone brightly enough to mask ideological divisions. Right-wing voters could focus on Kennedy’s anti-Soviet “missile gap” tough talk, while more liberal voters heard his high-minded defense of New Deal programs such as Social Security. Another of JFK’s gifts was his ability to attract smart people to serve as personal assistants and aides. First and foremost was Theodore Sorensen from Nebraska, whose family had a distinguished history in progressive politics. Handsome, quick-minded, and a brilliant speechwriter, Sorensen knew how to make campaigning fun for Kennedy. He was also, incongruously, a bookish intellectual mired in the carnival of grassroots Democratic politics, an erudite fix-it man with an ironic sense of existential philosophy, and one of the few people who knew about Kennedy’s health problems, including his two major spine operations in the mid-fifties and his use of steroids to combat his Addison’s disease.
Kennedy was thoroughly in his element on the campaign trail. His well-crafted eloquence, private plane, picture-perfect family, fund-raising chops, circumlocutory manner, singlemindedness, and willingness to speak anywhere reflected a strategy that separated him from the other Democratic senators who were running. Compared with the other professional pols, JFK was a breath of fresh air—unflappable, graceful, and comfortable around people. Even though he was often in the throes of health-related pain, the demands of his twelve-hour workday never debilitated him. “Jack was always out kissing babies, while I was passing bills,” Lyndon Johnson crossly complained, “including his bills.” Later in life, Johnson, in an oral history, censured Kennedy for being a “pathetic” congressman and senator who had mastered the suspect art of purposelessness. It puzzled the driven Texas operator how Kennedy could be so detached and yet so beloved.
Johnson had a point: Kennedy’s lack of a legislative record was his biggest liability during the 1960 campaign. But LBJ was wrong that JFK (whom he regularly referred to as “the boy”) was a lightweight. Kennedy was a resolute man on a mission, and while Johnson, Humphrey, and Symington might have been better senators, Kennedy was the better presidential candidate. Like Elizabeth Hardwick said of philosopher William James, Kennedy was a “sort of Irishman among the Brahmins,” which allowed him to be apropos on every occasion. And although Adlai Stevenson still had an adoring Democratic following, there was a palpable sense that his time had passed; by contrast, JFK was the flush, exuberant candidate of the bold future.
AS 1960 BEGAN, NASA was still trying to fully absorb the army’s Saturn rocket program in Huntsville. Although Eisenhower had ordered the transfer of von Braun and his rocketeers from the army to NASA, resentment abounded. Wanting to avoid brawls with the service branches, NASA administrator Keith Glennan cultivated bonds with the air force. By favoring the air force publicly during a time when NASA’s Mercury program was dominating the headlines, Glennan made the army jealous enough to begin to fall in line.
Recognizing that his fate was in the hands of NASA, von Braun visited Glennan at his Washington home and aggressively prodded his new boss to adopt his ambitious plan of going to the moon in a three-stage rocket. He was envisioning a Saturn rocket that would dwarf other rockets in complexity. Glennan was vague and reserved, giving von Braun general assurances. “Wernher finally ended the discussion,” Glennan recalled, “by saying, ‘Look, all we want is a very rich and very benevolent uncle.’ What a personality!” Glennan promised von Braun that the rocket programs in Huntsville would be fully funded by NASA, but von Braun still went away wondering just what kind of uncle Glennan would turn out to be. And Glennan saw von Braun as a blowtorch personality hungry to have the army beat the air force in interrelated fields of ballistic missiles, satellites, and space vehicles.“I had not realized,” a perturbed Glennan wrote, “how much a pet of the Army’s von Braun and his operation had become.”
Glennan may have been benevolent, but he didn’t want to be profligate, and the idea of planning a moon mission before humans had yet to send an astronaut into space smacked of the kind of Cold War one-upmanship he distrusted. Like Eisenhower, Glennan preferred to advance more slowly and methodically, funding programs that offered “intrinsic merit” rather than showering money on fast-track programs that promised the United States a chance to be “first.” It was this kind of conservative approach that persuaded Ike, on January 14, 1960, to grant top priority to “high-thrust space vehicles.”
In early 1960 the term New Frontier was ubiquitous in space-related television and print stories. It floated around, and Kennedy grabbed it as his own. NASA publicists were successfully shopping the idea of selling Project Mercury as a Western frontier opera. “I am profoundly worried,” von Braun told the Washington Post in a March 1960 article, “as to what has happened to the American frontier spirit.” On the NBC-TV program World Wide ’60s, a May 1960 segment “Report from Outer Space,” Glennan seized upon the Wild West analogy, saying that “space is the greatest new frontier to be breached by man in over four hundred years. Backing away from the opportunity would be a denial of our heritage.” That kind of Glennan “new frontier” space rhetoric appealed mightily to Kennedy in the throes of an election season. Not that Glennan had coined the term New Frontier in politics. Back in 1934, then-secretary of agriculture Henry Wallace published an economic manifesto titled New Frontiers; he argued that the “old frontier” of raw individualism had to be grown into a “new frontier” of “cooperation” anchored around large projects such as the Boulder Dam and Tennessee Valley Authority. By choosing the singular “New Frontier” as his own overarching campaign slogan, Kennedy was cleverly giving a nod to Wallace, who had run for president in 1948 as the Progressive Party nominee. At the same time, the term had futuristic techonology and innovation connotations, something that appealed to those ready to beat the Soviets in space exploration.
Exhibit A o
f how Kennedy processed space imperatives came in a serendipitous way. In February 1960, William Everdell, a Princeton freshman who described himself as a Republican, wrote Kennedy to ask for his solutions to the mixed messaging in America’s space program. In the midst of his perpetual campaign, Kennedy normally didn’t have time to answer letters personally, but while traveling in Wisconsin, he composed a detailed response to Everdell, who later became a professional historian.
In a humorous opening, Kennedy thanked Everdell for a letter that stood out because of his “undeviated Republicanism, Princetonian self-assurance and uncomplicated handwriting.” Then the letter addressed the serious issues the college student had raised:
Whatever the scale and pace of the American space effort, it should [be] and is a scientific program. In this interval when we lack adequate propulsion units, we should not attempt to cover this weakness with stunts. And when this weakness is overcome, our ventures should remain seriously scientific in their purposes.
Since the exploration of space is, scientifically, a relatively new venture, it is rational to expect pay-offs we cannot calculate, as in the early stage of any major scientific breakthrough. This has two consequences. First, the basic scientific component of our program should be financed and encouraged to the hilt. It is out of the work in basic research that possibilities of leap-frogging the Russians are likely to emerge. And without leap-frogging I fear we shall be getting their exhaust in our face for quite a long time. Second, projects for exploration should at this early stage be viewed with a bias toward hope rather than skepticism. We can count on good payoff from a high proportion of our probes, at this stage. Thus, on a scientific basis alone, the program should be generously financed.
With respect to the competitive and psychological aspects of the space program, it is evident that we have suffered damage to American prestige and will continue to suffer damage for some time. But, our recent loss of international prestige results from an accumulation of real or believed deficiencies in the American performance on the world scene: military, diplomatic, and economic. It is not simply a consequence of our lag in the exploration of space vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. The space lag has in fact, had a disproportionate impact because it is one of a group of lags and gaps.
American Moonshot Page 22