American Moonshot
Page 58
“were just exercises in image-building”: Wilford, “Race to Space Through the Lens of Time,” p. D1.
“We have received no response”: John F. Kennedy Press Conference, October 9, 1963, Kennedy Library, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKPOF-061-003.aspx.
that Khrushchev was “unquestionably planning”: Bureau of Scientific Intelligence, CIA, “A Brief Look at the Soviet Space Program,” October 1, 1963, National Security File, Box 308, Kennedy Library.
Unbeknownst to the CIA: Logsdon, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, p. 179.
“If the United States ever experiences”: Arthur Krock, “The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam,” New York Times, October 3, 1963, p. 34.
“I don’t know of any technical problem”: John W. Finney, “Apollo Capsules Now Being Built,” New York Times, October 13, 1963, p. 80.
“What could be better”: Theodore Shabad, “Russians Report Launching Craft That Shifts Orbit,” New York Times, November 2, 1963, p. 1.
“an homage”: Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953–71 (New York: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 172.
create proposals on accommodating: National Security Action Memorandum No. 271, November 12, 1963, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda Series: National Security Action Memoranda, Kennedy Library.
21: CAPE KENNEDY
biggest payload that any nation: Richard Witkin, “First U.S. Hydrogen-Fueled Rocket Is Orbited,” New York Times, November 28, 1963, p. 9.
“began to realize the dimensions”: John M. Logsdon, “Analyzing the New Kennedy Tape,” Space Review, May 31, 2011, www.thespacereview.com/article/1856/1.
“the myths of the future”: Clarke, “Space Flight and the Spirit of Man,” p. 78.
“We gave him a first-class”: Gordon Cooper with Bruce Henderson, Leap of Faith: An Astronaut’s Journey into the Unknown (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 131.
“Now, be sure”: Robert Seamans, Aiming at Targets: The Autobiography of Robert C. Seamans, Jr. (Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012), p. 115.
“Many Americans”: Kennedy, “Remarks at Aero-Space Medical Health Center Dedication, San Antonio, Texas, 21 November 1963,” Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Speech Files, Kennedy Library.
The term space medicine: Since 1976, NASA has annually published Spinoff, a handsome publication featuring technological innovations from space research. I read all copies to glean the technologies that were most viable. There is a profusion of mythology regarding the medical advances NASA did or didn’t innovate.
“Examinations of the astronauts’ physical”: Kennedy, “Remarks at Aero-Space Medical Health Center Dedication, San Antonio, Texas, 21 November, 1963.”
“how, as a boy”: “Remarks at Aero-Space Medical Health Center Dedication, San Antonio, Texas, 21 November 1963.”
“We were at Brooks Air Force Base”: Cooper, with Henderson, Leap of Faith, p. 159.
“It would be a disgrace”: “Harris GOP Chief Urges Cordiality,” Houston Chronicle, November 21, 1963, p. 9.
the NASA connection had lured corporations: Cody C. Stanley, “Albert Thomas: Space in the Bayou,” MA thesis, January, 2016, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas, https://library.sfasu.edu/find/SummonRecord/FETCH-proquest_journals_18346716083.
By the time the Manned Spacecraft Center: Kevin M. Brady, “NASA Launches Houston into Orbit: The Economic and Social Impact of the Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969,” in Dick and Launius, eds., Societal Impact of Spaceflight, pp. 451–65.
“He has helped steer this country”: “Remarks at Representative Albert Thomas Dinner, Houston Coliseum, Texas, 21 November 1963,” Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Speech Files, Kennedy Library.
“[Kennedy] and I had a big argument”: Quoted in Dallek, “Johnson, Project Apollo, and the Politics of Space Program Planning,” p. 73.
“We have regained the initiative”: “Undelivered Remarks for Dallas Citizens Council, Trade Mart, Dallas, Texas, 22 November 1963,” Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Speech Files, Kennedy Library.
“a mecca for those who see”: Saul Friedman, “Dallas Frame of Mind Has Led to Outbreaks of Violence Before,” Houston Chronicle, November 22, 1963, p. 6.
“He wanted to go to the Cape”: Olin E. Teague to NASA historian Eugene Emme, January 24, 1979, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. See also Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days, p. 34.
On a more somber note: Dickson, Sputnik, 55.
“That was a bad day”: Dr. Robert Gilruth, oral history interview with the National Air and Space Museum, February 27, 1987, Washington, DC, https://airandspace.si.edu/research/projects/oral-histories/TRANSCPT/GILRUTH5.HTM.
“I called Bobby and Ethel”: Glenn and Taylor, John Glenn, p. 395.
“We loved John”: Douglas Brinkley interview with Ethel Kennedy, December 14, 2018.
Over the decades: Author interview with John Glenn, November 1, 2004, Columbus, Ohio.
“He was devastated”: Thompson, Light This Candle, pp. 294–96.
“Before the assassination”: Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, pp. 317–18.
“everything will be different”: Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, pp. 603–5.
from Pensacola to Houston: Hansen, First Man, pp. 223–24.
a “50-50 chance”: Paul Gallagher, “Neil Armstrong Last Interview: Rare Glimpse of Man and Moon Mission,” Guardian, August 25, 2012, https://www.guardian.com/science/2012/aug/25/neil-armstrong-last-interview.
“that’s going to be forgotten”: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, oral history interview, January 11, 1974, pp. 7–8, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program, Kennedy Library.
would be renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center: Cabell Phillips, “Canaveral Space Center Renamed Cape Kennedy,” New York Times, November 29, 1963, p. 1.
“The loss of John Kennedy”: Cooper, with Henderson, Leap of Faith, p. 131.
“make sure Mr. Webb”: Bonnie Holmes/Wernher von Braun office diary, December 9, 1963, in private collection.
the “one time I ever saw”: “Behind the Scenes with von Braun,” Huntsville Times, September 8, 1994, p. 1.
achieved a major milestone: Witkin, “First U.S. Hydrogen-Fueled Rocket.”
EPILOGUE: THE TRIUMPH OF APOLLO 11
“We cannot be the first”: Lyndon B. Johnson speech, October 25, 1964, Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, www.fau.edu/fiftieth/speech.php.
Johnson evoked the martyred JFK: Roger D. Launius “What Are Turning Points in History, and What Were They for the Space Age?” in Dick and Launius, eds., Societal Impacts of Spaceflight, pp. 34–35.
“Ten times in this program”: “Statement to the President Following the Completion of the Final Flight in the Gemini Program,” November 15, 1966, Public Papers of Lyndon B. Johnson.
“do something for grandma with medicine”: Roger D. Launius, “Interpreting the Moon Landings: Project Apollo and the Historians,” History and Technology 22, no. 3 (September 2006): 225–55.
“We’ve always known”: Webb quoted in Dickson, Sputnik, p. 219.
Newspaper stories about the Apollo 1: Burgess, Liberty Bell 7: The Suborbital Mercury Flight of Virgil I. Grissom, p. 219.
By October 1968 President Johnson had grown weary: W. Henry Lambright, Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
Webb was right: Rod Pyle, Destination Moon: The Apollo Missions in the Astronauts’ Own Words (New York: HarperCollins/Smithsonian, 2005), 8.
“The world of space holds vast promise”: “James E. Webb” (biography), International Space Hall of Fame, New Mexico Museum of Space History, Alamogordo, New Mexico, www.nmspacemuseum.org/halloffame/detail.php?id=122.
&n
bsp; “drastically revised and expanded”: Dwight D. Eisenhower to Frank Borman, June 18, 1965. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas. Also in Yanek Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment: The Race for Space and World Peace, p. 268.
the New York World’s Fair: McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 399.
engraved the initials JFK: Chris Matthews, Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), p. 402.
“In our elation” . . . “I so thank you”: Wernher von Braun to Jacqueline Kennedy, February 1, 1964, and Jacqueline Kennedy to Wernher von Braun, February 11, 1964, both in Correspondence file, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama.
Von Braun’s Huntsville team: Andrew Duna and Stephen Waring, Power to Explore: History of Marshall Space Flight Center 1960–1990 (Washington, DC: NASA, 2018), p. 3.
“Von Braun made a Faustian bargain”: Michael J. Neufeld, “Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor: Questions of Moral, Political, and Criminal Responsibility,” German Studies Review 25, no. 1 (February 2002). The quote is from a published letter he wrote defending his interpretation on December 2002, which appeared in “Wernher von Braun and Concentration Camp Labor: An Exchange,” German Studies Review 26, no. 1 (2003).
an “act of graciousness”: Stephen Bull to H. R. Haldeman, June 13, 1969, Memorandum, Richard Nixon Presidential Library, Yorba Linda, California. See also John Logsdon, After Apollo?: Richard Nixon and the American Space Program (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
refused to evoke: John Logsdon, ed., The Penguin Book of Outer Space Exploration (New York: Penguin, 2018), p. 236.
“Houston . . .”: “One Small Step . . . A Giant Leap,” Houston Magazine, September 1969, p. 18.
“I am absolutely isolated”: Collins, Carrying the Fire, p. 402.
The 528 million moon-mad global citizens: Wilford, We Reach the Moon, p. xvii.
“Task Accomplished July 1969”: Logsdon, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, p. 223.
Index
The pagination of this digital edition does not match the print edition from which the Index was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.
Key to abbreviations:
John F. Kennedy = JFK
Robert F. Kennedy = RFK
Lyndon Baines Johnson = LBJ
Page numbers of photographs and their captions appear in italics.
Abbey, George, xiii
ABC News, 147, 288–89, 354
Abernathy, Ralph, 371, 414
Acheson, Dean, 215
Adams, Sherman, 136
Adenauer, Konrad, xx, 125, 126, 127
Aerobee Hi rocket, 122
Aerospace Corporation, 340
Aerospace Medical Health Center, San Antonio, TX, 433–34
Age of Jackson, The (Schlesinger), 86
Aggregat rockets, 26, 33, 35, 36, 38
Alcock, John, 318
Aldrin, Edwin “Buzz,” iv, xvi, xxiv, xxv, 443, 447, 453, 458, 461
All-Inventors’ Vegetarian Club of Interplanetary Cosmopolitans, 15
American Electric Power, 234
American Radio Relay League, 129
American University, JFK address, 409–10, 416
America’s Cup Race, 370, 374
Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, 168
Ananov, Alexandre, 310
Anderson, Clinton, 414
Annapolis (U.S. Naval Academy), MD, 238, 380
Annapolis Experiment Station, MD, 68, 75
Apollo 1 disaster, 451
Apollo 11, xxv, 3, 9, 447, 456, 458–60, 461; Armstrong and, iv, xiii, xxiv, xxv, 443, 447, 453, 458, 461; command module Columbia, 459; LEM Eagle, xiii, 413, 458–59; Nixon and, 458; personal items taken on, 458; televising of, xiii, xxiv–xxv, 448, 458–59
Apollo 14, 442
Apollo program (Project Apollo), xii, xix, xxii, 247–63, 273–75, 318, 335–36, 366, 369, 413, 442, 456–60; allies of, 400, 407; Apollo 1 disaster, 451; Apollo 11 moon landing, xiii, xxiv–xxv, 443, 447, 448, 456, 458–60; astronauts, 458, 461; beating the Soviets and, 408, 413–14, 415, 426, 427; capsule of, 267, 273, 427; command module mockup, 366, 366; companies with federal contracts, 273–74, 335–36, 369, 413, 427, 437; contributors to the effort, 268; cost, xxi, 226, 255, 363, 365, 367, 388, 434; critics, xii, 350, 351, 367, 369, 397–98, 399, 405–6; flight mode problem and solutions, 273, 274–76, 296; funding and, 257, 263, 396–97, 400, 446, 453; Holmes as head of, 313; Houbolt/LOR (lunar orbit rendezvous) plan, 274–76, 296, 349–50, 353, 354, 397; Houston economic benefits, 360; Houston headquarters, 300–304; JFK briefed, Nov. 16, 1963, 431–32; JFK prioritizing, 389–93, 415; JFK’s budget message as “State of Space” white paper, 397; JFK’s congressional speech and, 256; JFK’s press conference, July 17, 1963, and, 415; jobs created by, 251, 268; launch site, 298–99; mandate, 446; moonshot decision made, 243, 248; naming of, 198–99; NASA-DOD collaboration on, 243; Nova rocket, 274, 275; orbiting first hydrogen-fueled rocket, 445; publicity and, 399; risks of, 275; Saturn C-1 booster, 295, 296, 353, 355, 431; Saturn 1B and, 267; Saturn V and, 276, 296, 297, 336, 350, 353, 354, 413, 418, 445, 449, 456, 458; Space Task Group and, 268; technological challenges, 251, 261, 263, 266–67, 297; televising missions, xiii, xxiv–xxv, 442, 448, 458–59; time frame, 271, 349–50, 367, 420, 431; von Braun and, 262, 274, 276, 295, 313, 454, 459; Webb and, 209, 267–68, 276, 420–21; Webb-McNamara Report, 243, 248. See also moonshot
Apollo’s Legacy (Launius), 247
Arendt, Hannah, 129
arms race, 330, 352, 410. See also nuclear weapons
Armstrong, Neil, xiii, xv–xvi, xvii, 14, 108, 150–52, 163, 332, 372, 374; Apollo 11 and, iv, xiii, xxiv, xxv, 443, 447, 453, 458, 461; Dyna-Soar corps and, 252; “The Eagle has landed,” 459, 460; Gemini and, 374, 375, 443; “giant leap for mankind,” xiii, xxv; JFK’s assassination and, 443; JFK’s Rice speech and, 365; MISS program and, 162–63; on U.S.-Soviet space race, xix–xx; X-15 program and, 150–51, 173
Armstrong, Viola, 151
Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), 105, 149, 167; first U.S. satellite launched by, 156; Redstone rocket, 107, 108, 114, 122, 149, 155, 167–68; Saturn rocket, 168, 169, 187, 211; transferred to NASA, 168, 177, 194
Army Flyer (Eaker), 82
Arnold, H. H. “Hap,” 95
Around the Moon (Verne), 3
ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), 157–58, 161; MISS program, 160–61, 173; Project Orion, 158
Asimov, Isaac, 125
astronauts, xiii, xviii, 377; academic credentials and, 173; Apollo, 458, 461; astronaut mania, 181; characteristics of, 182, 183; Gemini New Nine, 372, 373–75, 399; JFK’s bond with, 272; JFK’s New Frontier ethos and, xviii; Mercury Seven, xi, xii, xviii, xxii, 173, 181–88, 200, 283, 365, 432; “Mercury 13,” 377, 378, 379; minorities as, 379; MISS program and, 161–63, 173; space medicine and, 434–35; television and, 291; women as, 376–79, 428; X-15 program and, 150, 161–62. See also specific programs and astronauts
AT&T, Telstar 1, 349
Atlantic University, LBJ dedication speech, 449
Atlas rockets, 122, 166, 172, 184, 185, 192, 219, 250, 313; Atlas-Centaur, 445; Aurora 7 and, 347; Friendship 7 and, 320–21
Atomic Age, 77, 87
atomic bomb, xvii, 77–79, 85, 88, 100, 101–2, 120, 219, 230; Manhattan Project, 78, 116, 230, 236, 276; McMahon and, 100, 102, 103. See also nuclear weapons
Atomic Energy Act of 1946, 100
Atomic Energy Commission, 100, 170, 303, 341
Aurora 7, 344–46, 347, 453
aviation, 4–6, 99; Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, 98; “bomber gap,” 167; breaking the sound barrier, 98, 162; commercial, 98–99; Dyna-Soar, 252, 253; Eaker’s innovations, 82; first jet, 33, 69; German innovation, 26, 33, 75, 88; high-altitude reconnaissance planes, 93, 121, 152, 167, 187, 197–98, 383; long-range nuclear bombers, 110; “100,000 Foot Club,” 331–32; postwar craze for,
98–99; swept-wing design, 172; transonic problems, 172; U.S. fighter planes in Korea, 108; Vought F-8U Crusader, 174; women discriminated against, 376–77; X-15 program, 149–50, 252, 277
Baker, Doran, 96
Banks, Ernie, 182
Barbree, Jay, 354
Barnett, Ross, 352
Bay of Pigs, xvii, 232–33, 236, 247, 371
Becker, Karl, 33, 34, 35
Bell, Alexander Graham, 8
Bell, David, 229, 234, 387, 389, 407
Bell Aerospace, 314
Bell Aircraft Corporation, 150
Bellcom, 437
Bellevue Hotel, Boston, MA, 89
Bell Laboratories, 119
Bergaust, Erik, 353
Bergman, Jules, 288–89
Berlin, 99, 101, 102, 279; crisis in, 95, 309–12, 337; JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, 410, 411, 422, 424; Wall, 279, 311
Beyond the Planet Earth (Tsiolkovsky), 12
B. F. Goodrich, 237
Bikle, Paul, 150
Billings, Lem, 20, 28, 29
Billington, Ray Allen, 181
Bilstein, Roger E., 212–13
Black, Hugo, 352
Blagonravov, Anatoli, 419–20
“Blue Marble” photo, 300
Boeing, 132, 172, 296, 336, 392
Bolden, Charles, 326
Bonnet, Roger, 290
Boone, Daniel, 182
Boorstin, Daniel, 249
Borman, Frank, 372, 375, 452
Bormann, Martin, 35
Boulle, Pierre, 66
Boyd, Robert, 271
Bradlee, Ben, 186
Bridgeman, Bill, 162
Bridge over the River Kwai, The (Boulle), 66
Bridges, Styles, 164
Brinkley, David, 299
Britain: V-1 “buzz bombs” hit, 53–54, 55, 61; V-2 rockets hit, 63–64, 67–68, 70; World War II and, 31, 37, 38, 49, 61
British Interplanetary Society, 127
Brooks, Overton, 438
Brooks Air Force Base, TX, 433–35
Brown, Arthur, 318
Brown, George R., 234, 301–2, 304
Brown & Root, 234, 301, 437
Brucker, Wilber, 156
Buck Rogers, 22, 182, 258