When space politics was born
President John F. Kennedy’s historic pledge in September 1962 to beat the Soviet Union to the moon launched NASA’s ambitious Apollo program, which ultimately achieved his bold vision of landing an American on the moon before the decade was out.
Why Kennedy, who was assassinated a little over a year after his famous speech at Rice University, staked so much of his political capital on the moon mission is the subject of a new book by presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “American Moon Shot: John F. Kennedy and Great Space Race.” The book, which will be published April 2 ahead of the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, recounts the Democratic president’s brief but seminal role in the space race after defeating Republican Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960.
It also chronicles the dawn of space politics — including the leading deal-makers and bureaucrats who steered much of the lucrative work to their local constituencies — from Kennedy’s vice president , Lyndon Johnson, and Democratic Rep. Albert Thomas, both of Texas, Democratic Sen. Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, and NASA Administrator James Webb.
“[They] wanted to build up the South and the Southwest,” Brinkley said in an interview. “If you look at where all the money went for NASA in Kennedy’s years, it went to states like Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida. This was vulnerable territory for Kennedy. This was going to be Big Government technology dollars anchored on the space program and he poured the money into the Southern states.”
Brinkley, a professor at Rice University in Houston who was captivated by the Apollo program in his youth, has written books about Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter, as well as Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal.
He spoke about how Kennedy toyed with joining forces with Moscow in the moon race, the role of the “shrewd and effective” NASA chief James Webb, and the critical influence of pioneering German-born rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun in making the moon shot possible.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
How did this book come about?
I grew up in a town called Perrysburg, Ohio, and it wasn’t very far down the road from where Neil Armstrong was from. When I was 9 years old is when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and I went through a massive youthful space craze, where I would collect memorabilia, books, anything I could about the space program. It was a seminal experience, particularly the moon landing, in my childhood.
[Years later] on a lark I wrote Neil Armstrong a letter saying, ‘I grew up not far from you in Ohio and I’d love to interview you.’ I got a letter back from Armstrong and he said, ‘I am not doing interviews but I’ll keep you in mind for something down the line.’ A few years later I got a phone call from the NASA administrator asking if I’d be willing to do the oral history interview of Neil Armstrong. He was turning 70. This was 2001.
Rice University was intimately involved with the birth of manned space. We have a big NASA archive. Most importantly, Jack Kennedy gave his famous September 12, 1962, speech just outside my History department doorway. I started thinking, ‘Why did Kennedy put $25 billion to go to the moon? That would be $180 billion today. We can’t do a $5 billion wall. Why did John F. Kennedy put so much of his legacy on space exploration?
Why did he?
The Soviets were seemingly beginning to lead. The Soviets got the atomic bomb. They developed ICBMs. They got the hydrogen bomb. And then by 1957 they also put Sputnik up into space. [Former President Dwight] Eisenhower gave the nod to the Navy to build Vanguard rockets. Those rockets exploded at Cape Canaveral [in Florida]. They never took off. Eisenhower’s policy was more interested in balanced budgets.
Wernher Von Braun, the great German rocketeer, and his Huntsville group [in Alabama] were also working. And Von Braun believed in the leapfrog: ‘You can’t go incremental, astronaut to astronaut.’ The Explorer was a Von Braun rocket. Then the Redstone. Von Braun was the one who built the rocket that got us to the moon, the Saturn V.
And [candidate] Kennedy becomes part of all this because he adopts what Von Braun is saying; that there is a missile gap [with the Soviet Union] and a space gap and we are losing the battle of tomorrow. And it gave Kennedy a very convenient sledgehammer to beat up on Richard Nixon over eight years [during the Eisenhower administration] of the Soviets beating us in space.
[Kennedy’s line of argument against opponent Nixon] was ’You are saying we are No. 1 in kitchen appliances. I want to be beat the Russians in rocket thrust. You are saying you are not sure about going to the moon. Well, if we follow you, there will be a Soviet flag planted on the moon.’
So Kennedy started defining himself as ‘What do we do to beat the Soviets in the space race for global prestige?’
Who were the other pivotal players?
Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, James Webb, and Von Braun were the four leading forces. Lyndon Johnson, [along with] Congressman Albert Thomas and Senator Robert Kerr wanted to build up the South and the Southwest. Kerr was head of the Senate committee on space, while Thomas ran the House committee. They were both space advocates.
If you look at where all the money went for NASA in Kennedy’s years, it went to states like Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida. This was vulnerable territory for Kennedy because in 1960 he didn’t win the South and barely won Texas. This was going to be Big Government technology dollars anchored on the space program and he poured the money into the Southern states. Kennedy saw his ‘New Frontier’ as also about science and education, space, rocketry, communications, satellites. And he starts putting government money to work in these Southern states, which would ostensibly keep them in Democratic control for 1964.
Those Southern senators were Democrats and they were not happy with John F. Kennedy’s civil rights program. If you are getting $100 million for a rocket facility it might make you think a little bit about criticizing the president.
What’s remarkable about this is that it worked — integrating the federal government, state government, academia, the aerospace industry.
Kennedy’s NASA administrator, James Webb, is also a major figure in the book?
He worked for [President] Harry Truman. He was a genius at how to move money around and get things done on Capitol Hill. He was from North Carolina. He knew how to deal with Southern Democrats quite well. I have never encountered an administrator of a bureaucracy as shrewd and effective as Webb. He really ran NASA like Swiss clockwork.
What surprised you most in the research?
It is interesting to hear Kennedy on the [White House] tapes with Webb strategizing. Your hear Kennedy in his voice saying, ‘It’s got to be about winning and being first. Nobody wants us to be second.’ It was very much Kennedy wanting to win.
Also on the tapes, Kennedy was toying with the idea of a joint U.S.-Soviet moon program. He was willing to dabble with that idea. In the end he never did it.
Space was also high on the agenda during the 1963 trip to Texas where Kennedy was killed.
In San Antonio he gave a whole speech … all about space medicine and all of the new bio-med research that was spawning miracles. And then he went to Houston and spoke to Albert Thomas about manned spaceflight and how under the Kennedy administration Houston became the new technology hub of America — in the Deep South.
And then he went into Dallas and he doubled down on the moon shot. When he was killed he was supposed to have the astronaut Gordon Cooper with him. But Cooper at the last minute had to do work for NASA. Kennedy was going to ride in the open car with Cooper because up in Dallas he wasn’t very popular.