Space: Kennedy’s New Frontier
Rice University historian Douglas
Brinkley has written a terrific book about America’s race to the moon and John
Kennedy’s crucial role in it. The book is part history of the American space
program and its antecedents and part biography of President Kennedy. I lived
much of that history while growing up. As a teenager I was one of the thousands
who wrote letters to rocket scientist Wernher von Braun offering up my plan for
combining liquid and solid fuel stages in missile development. Later I stood
and cheered John Glenn in his 1962 ticker tape parade up Broadway after his
successful Mercury mission. And I can never forget showing up I my orderly room
at Fort Bragg after returning from leave to watch Neil Armstrong walking on the
moon on grainy portable black and white TV set. Brinkley evocatively brought
back all of those memories.
Brinkley starts his history by
discussing the role of America’s first rocketeer Robert Goddard whose
experiments in the 1920s inspired many into thinking that going to the moon was
not a pipe dream. He spends much time on the German rocket program during World
War II where von Braun was a leading scientist in developing the V-1 and V-2
rockets. It is also clear that he was a war criminal in using slave labor to
build those rockets. Von Braun gets picked up by the U.S. Army in Operation
paper clip and with Cold War tensions rising he is expunged of his past sins
and becomes America’s leading rocketeer.
In the late 1950s Kennedy was a
politician on the make. The Cold War was heating up and America was shocked by
Russia’s 1957 launch of Sputnik. His leading issue was the missile gap, which
later was proved to be non-existent, but it elects him president. In 1961 with
Russian moves on Berlin, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and Russian success in
manned orbital flight, Kennedy makes a decision for America to go to the moon
by the end of the decade and thus was born the Apollo program. The space
program became a critical asset in America’s fighting the Cold War.
Kennedy owns the space program and he
befriends America’s new heroes, the astronauts where the names of Glen, Grissom,
Shephard and others would become household words. The glamour of the astronauts
and Kennedy’s personal magnetism gave form to the new frontier in space and
supports his poll numbers. With his strong political support the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) formed by Eisenhower is flooded
with money which by the mid-1960s accounts for 5% of all federal spending.
However, at the outset, Kennedy didn’t fully realize what a herculean systems
engineering task that would lie ahead and required a great deal of luck as
well.
Brinkley recounts the role of NASA
administrator James Webb in organizing the moon effort. Webb with both
government and industry experience molds the agency to do his bidding in a very
efficient manner. Because he previously worked for Kerr-McGee Oil, He knows
Senator Robert Kerr well and as a consequence Kerr becomes a leading supporter
of the space program. Kerr along with Vice President Lyndon Johnson (a big
supporter from Day 1) and Houston Congressman Albert Thomas make the
appropriations flow and they also bring the space program headquarters to
Houston. Brinkley also highlights the role of private contractors in making the
moon landing a success. North American Aviation built the rocket engines,
Boeing the airframe, McDonnell Aircraft the space module and Grumman Aviation
the lunar lander.
Of course the moon program was not
without its critics. From the Right came howls that it was too costly and if
the money were to be spent it should be spent on military applications and from
the Left came criticism that the money should have been spent on poverty
programs. Despite the criticism the moon program continued as tribute to the
martyred president.
My one quibble with the book is that
Brinkley only has one mention in passing on Theodore von Karman who founded Cal
Tech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and rocket engine maker Aerojet-General. Von
Karman was a true pioneer in space flight. Nevertheless Brinkley shows that the
America of the 1960s had the ability to come together to do great things. Would
that be true today? I would humbly suggest that instead of an amorphous Green
New Deal we have a focused Green Moonshot modeled after the space program.
