Listening In (38 page)

WEBB:
But the environment of space is where you are going to operate the Apollo and where you are going to do the landing.

JFK:
Look, I know all these other things and the satellite and the communications and weather and all, they’re desirable, but they can wait.

WEBB:
I’m not putting those … I am talking now about the scientific program to understand the space environment within which you got to fly Apollo and make a landing on the moon.

JFK:
Wait a minute—is that saying that the lunar program to land the man on the moon is the top priority of the Agency, is it?

UNKNOWN SPEAKER:
And the science that goes with it …

ROBERT SEAMANS:
²
Well, yes, if you add that, the science that is necessary …

PRESIDENT KENNEDY WITH NASA ADMINISTRATOR JAMES WEBB, JANUARY 30, 1961

JFK:
The science … Going to the moon is the top priority project. Now, there are a lot of related scientific information and developments that will come from that which are important. But the whole thrust of the Agency, in my opinion, is the lunar program. The rest of it can wait six or nine months.

WEBB:
Well, the trouble … Jerry is holding up his hand … Let me say one thing, then maybe you want to [unclear]. The thing that troubles me here about making such a flat statement as that is, number one, there are real unknowns as to whether man can live under the weightless condition and you’d ever make the lunar landing. This is one kind of political vulnerability I’d like to avoid such a flat commitment to. If you say you failed on your number-one priority, this is something to think about. Now, the second point is that as we can go out and make measurements in space by being physically able to get there, the scientific work feeds the technology and the engineers begin to make better spacecraft. That gives you better instruments and a better chance to go out to learn more. Now right now, all through our universities, some of the brilliant able scientists are recognizing this and beginning to get into this area, and you are generating here on a national basis an intellectual effort of the highest order of magnitude that I’ve seen develop in this country in the years I’ve been fooling around with national policy. Now, to them, there is a real question. The people that are going to furnish the brainwork, the real brainwork, on which the future space power of this nation for twenty-five or a hundred years are going be to made, have got some doubts about it and …

JFK:
Doubts about what?

WEBB:
As to whether the actual landing on the moon is what you call the highest priority.

JFK:
What do they think is the highest priority?

WEBB:
They think the highest priority is to understand the environment and … and the areas of the laws of nature that operate out there as they apply backwards into space. You can say it this way, I think. Jerry ought to talk on this rather than me, but the scientists in the nuclear field have penetrated right into the most minute areas of the nucleus and the subparticles of the nucleus. Now here, out in the universe, you’ve got the same general kind of a structure, but you can do it on a massive universal scale.

JFK:
I agree that we’re interested in this, but we can wait six months on all of it.

WEBB:
But you have to use that information to do these things.

JFK:
I see what you’re saying, yeah, but only when that information directly applies to the program. Jim, I think we’ve got to have that.

MEMO FROM PRESIDENT KENNEDY TO VICE PRESIDENT JOHNSON REGARDING THE SPACE PROGRAM, APRIL 20, 1961

WIESNER:
³
Mr. President, I don’t think Jim understands some of the scientific problems that are associated with landing on the moon, and this is what Dave Bell was trying to say and what I’m trying to say. We don’t know a damn thing about the surface of the moon, and we’re making the wildest guesses about how we’re going to land on the moon, and we could get a terrible disaster from putting something down on the surface of the moon that’s very different than we think it is, and the scientific programs that find us that information have to have the highest priority. But they are associated with the lunar program. The scientific programs that aren’t associated with the lunar program can have any priority we are pleased to give them.

UNKNOWN:
That’s consistent with what the President was saying.

SEAMANS:
Yeah. Could I just say that I agree with what you say, Jerry, that we must gather a wide variety of scientific data in order to carry out the lunar mission. For example, we must know what conditions we’ll find on the lunar surface. That’s the reason that we are proceeding with Centaur in order to get the Surveyor unmanned spacecraft to the moon in time that it could affect the design of the Apollo.

JFK:
Yeah. The only thing is I would certainly not favor spending six or seven billion dollars to find out about space. Why are we spending seven million dollars on getting fresh water from salt water, when we’re spending seven billion dollars finding out about space? So obviously, you wouldn’t put it on that priority because, except for the defense implications behind that, and the second point is the fact that the Soviet Union has made this a test of the system. So that’s why we’re doing it. So I think we’ve got to take the view that this is the key program, the rest of it we can find out about, but there’s a lot of things we want to find out about, cancer and everything else.

WEBB:
But you see, when you talk about this, it’s very hard to draw a line with what, between what …

JFK:
Everything that we do ought to really be tied in to getting onto the moon ahead of the Russians.

WEBB:
Why can’t it be tied to preeminence in space, which are your own words?

JFK:
Because, by God, we’ve been telling everyone we’re preeminent in space for five years, and nobody believes it because they have the booster and the satellite. We know all about the number of satellites we put up, two or three times the number of the Soviet Union … we’re ahead scientifically. It’s like that instrument you’ve got at Stanford which is costing us a hundred and twenty-five million dollars and everybody tells me that we’re the number one in the world. And what is it? I can’t think what it is.

MANY VOICES:
The linear accelerator.

JFK:
That’s wonderful, but nobody knows anything about it!

WEBB:
Let me say it slightly different. The advanced Saturn is eighty-five times as powerful as the Atlas. Now we are building a tremendous giant rocket with an index number of eighty-five if you give me Atlas one. Now, the Russians have had a booster that’ll lift fourteen thousand pounds into orbit. They’ve been very efficient and capable in it. The kinds of things I’m talking about that give you preeminence in space are what permit you to make either that Russian booster or the advanced Saturn better than any other. A range of progress possible [unclear].

JFK:
The only … We’re not going to settle the four hundred million this morning. I want to take a look closely at what Dave Bell …

But I do think we ought to get it, you know, really clear that the policy ought to be that this is the top priority program of the agency and one of the two, except for defense, the top priority of the United States government. I think that that’s the position we ought to take. Now, this may not change anything about that schedule, but at least we ought to be clear, otherwise we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money, because I’m not that interested in space. I think it’s good. I think we ought to know about it. We’re ready to spend reasonable amounts of money, but we’re talking about fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs, and the only justification for it, in my opinion, is to do it in this time or fashion is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind as we did, by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.

CALL TO MAJOR GORDON COOPER, MAY 16, 1963

Gordon Cooper (1927–2004) was one of the original Mercury astronauts and flew an important mission on May 15–16, 1963, orbiting the earth twenty-two times and guiding his craft back safely after several major navigation systems had failed. JFK called Cooper just after he was taken aboard the recovery ship. In 1965, Major Cooper commanded Gemini 5.

JFK:
Hello, Major Cooper!

COOPER:
Yes, sir.

OPERATOR:
Can you hear the President?

COOPER:
Yes, sir.

JFK:
All right. Major, I just want to congratulate you. That was a great flight.

COOPER:
Thank you very much, sir.

JFK:
We talked to your wife, and she seemed to stand it very well.

COOPER:
Oh, very good.

JFK:
And we hope, we are looking forward to seeing you up here Monday, but we are very proud of you, Major.

COOPER:
Thank you, sir. It was a good flight, and I enjoyed it.

JFK:
Oh good, fine. Well, I look forward to seeing you Monday. Good luck.

COOPER:
Thank you, sir.

JFK:
Thanks, Major.