Kennedy’s vision for NASA inspired greatness, then stagnation

The spring of 1961 was a time of uncertainty and insecurity in America. The Soviets had beaten the United States to space four years earlier with Sputnik, and in April 1961, they flew Yuri Gagarin into space for a single orbit around the planet. Finally, on May 5th, America responded by sending Alan Shepard into space, but he only made a suborbital flight.

Few would have predicted then that just five years later the United States would not only catch the Soviets in space but surpass them on the way to the moon. Perhaps that is the greatness of John F. Kennedy, who found in such a moment not despair, but opportunity. When Kennedy spoke to Congress on May 25th, 55 years ago, NASA hadn’t even flown an astronaut into orbit. Yet he declared the U.S. would go to the moon before the end of the decade.

“No single space project in this period will be more exciting, or more impressive, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish,” Kennedy told Congress. “In a very real sense it will not be one man going to the moon, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.”

This was such a bold statement that some NASA personnel at the time were incredulous. A few years ago, legendary Mercury flight director Chris Kraft recalled thinking, “How the hell are we going to do that?” A little more than a year later Kennedy reiterated his ambitions even more eloquently in a speech at Rice University in Houston. Kennedy’s desire to surpass the Soviet Union led to arguably the greatest human technological achievement of the 20th century—the Apollo moon landings.

But as NASA contemplates undertaking an even greater adventure in the coming decades—sending humans safely to the surface of Mars and back—it’s worth remembering exactly why Kennedy put America on a course to the moon. Those historical lessons remain relevant today, as the space agency attempts to muster the will and funding to send humans beyond low-Earth orbit for the first time since 1972.

Perhaps the best insight into Kennedy’s motives can be found in a recording of a November 21, 1962 meeting in the White House Cabinet Room. Kennedy had boasted of the lunar plan just a month earlier at Rice. The main participants that day were Kennedy and James Webb, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. At issue was the true purpose of NASA and the Apollo program, and at the outset of the meeting Kennedy asked Webb, “Do you think this program is the top priority of the agency?”

In hindsight, Webb’s answer was surprising: “No sir, I do not. I think it is one of the top priority programs, but I think it is very important to recognize here, that as you have found out what you could do with a rocket, as you find out how you could get out beyond the Earth’s atmosphere and into space to make measurements, several scientific disciplines that are very powerful have (begun) to converge on this area.”

To this Kennedy responds that Apollo is the top priority. That ought to be very clear, he explained. “This is important for political reasons, for international political reasons,” Kennedy said. He told Webb he did not want to finish second to the Soviets in the “race” to the moon.

Later in the conversation, Webb mentions scientists who have doubts about the importance and viability of the moon project. These “people that are going to furnish the brain work,” as Webb called them, thought the highest priority was to “understand the environment and the areas of the laws of nature that operate out there.” The scientists wanted to science.

But Kennedy did not. Science was all well and good, Kennedy replied, but only when it applied directly to the Apollo program. Webb argued further, saying the overall program should be tied to preeminence in space, including space science. Kennedy dismissed him: “You can’t because by God, we keep—we’ve been telling everybody we’re preeminent in space for five years and nobody believes us because they have the booster and the satellite.” After the meeting President Kennedy left no doubt about what he wanted from his NASA administrator.

A couple of points stand out from this exchange: the Apollo program succeeded because it was the top priority of the President of the United States, and its success was linked directly to the national interests of the country. America was fighting a Cold War, and the best way to prove to the world that Democracy was superior was to achieve something like landing humans on the moon.

After the strategic significance of NASA faded, so too did its budget, beginning a decline in the late 1960s from 4.5 percent of the federal budget to less than 0.5 percent today. During testimony to Congress in 2014 one of the final four space shuttle astronauts, Sandy Magnus, summed up the space agency’s predicament since then.

“For NASA, it became, to a certain extent, a survival game,” Magnus testified. “There was no committed long-term strategic plan, even though there was a community that was engaged in trying to define and institute one. In the absence of a strategic vision we instead planned and executed short-term tactical goals outside of a larger defined stable framework. This is the operational mode we are still working under today.”

No president has been a stronger champion for NASA than Kennedy, and no president has worked so hard to see his vision for NASA carried out. Did a lack of interest on behalf of subsequent presidents lead to NASA’s ever-shriveling budget and decreased relevance to national security? Or did NASA’s declining budget and decreased relevance to national security mean that presidents were less willing to champion it? Debate persists to this day. Whatever the cause, stewardship of the agency has been left mostly to Congress, which often has a more parochial view of policy rather than an overarching view of how to move NASA forward. The legacy of all this is that NASA’s “Journey to Mars” is more likely to benefit states with key congressional representation such as Alabama than it is to get off the ground.

The brilliance of the Apollo program is that it led the world on a grand voyage of discovery and demonstrated the superiority of a free world and free market system. Even today, nearly half a century later, we still marvel at images of astronauts on the moon. The unfortunate legacy is that this exploration paradigm led to an unsustainable space program. NASA planted flags on the moon, but lacked the funding and planning to make that presence permanent. Absent a national security mandate and strong presidential leadership, NASA has scaled back its ambitions. We’ve been locked in low-Earth orbit ever since.

But in the last 10 years another powerful aspect of Democracy has emerged to push the United States back toward deep space—capitalism. A growing number of companies is working to lower the cost of launch in order to facilitate business models built around resources that can be found on the moon, asteroids, and beyond.

NASA, finally, is talking about going back into deep space. This is welcome. But equally welcome is the vision by companies such as SpaceX, which wants to colonize Mars, and United Launch Alliance, which wants to help other, smaller space businesses commercialize the moon. It is not clear whether government alone, private industry alone, or some combination will get us back into deep space. Nevertheless, more than half a century after Kennedy’s grand vision, we are finally moving into an era in which just going is not enough. We will go to stay.

Listing image by NASA