posted 11-02-2006 09:57 AM               

Murdering Apollo: John F. Kennedy and the retreat from the lunar goal (part 1)

What if John F. Kennedy had lived? Would he have canceled the Apollo program, or at least slowed it down?

posted 11-04-2006 11:38 AM               

Mallon wrote, among other things, an account of the JFK assassination called Mrs. Paine's Garage. (Oswald's rifle was stored in the garage; Marina had lived with the Paines, an unsuspecting Quaker couple caught up afterwards in the Warren Commission investigation.)

While dismissing the novel view that JFK planned to cancel or curtail Apollo, Mallon did note that Kennedy was cost- and waste-conscious. In fact, a few hours before his assassination, Kennedy was talking about payloads, but misspoke and said "payroll."

I have listened to the November 21, 1962, recording of the JFK-Webb conversation referenced in Dwayne's article. [on edit: My mistake. Dwayne Day refers to another recorded conversation, not yet available to researchers.] There's no doubt that the two men are having a spirited and even tense exchange.

The president is blunt in private on November 21, 1962, with NASA administrator James Webb ("I'm not all that interested in space"). The president is not delivering a Sorenson speech to taxpayers. He is having a policy disagreement with the NASA administrator.

Listening to the recording, I immediately understood the president to mean that he was NOT interested in the bells and whistles and romance (see science and exploration) on the way to a new frontier. He was interested in winning a contest.

Recall that it was Webb in this 11/21/62 conversation who was soft-pedaling (if not back-pedaling) on JFK's emphatic lunar ambitions. Webb was arguing with the president, as though JFK didn't understand or appreciate all the cool science. I detected a patronizing tone from Webb.

It's at this point that one can hear JFK's palpable annoyance: he was really ticked off at Webb. It was the race he was interested in. The race to the moon and beating the Soviets there. So JFK's blunt statement about space not "interesting" him makes perfect sense.

It wasn't space. It was the contest in space that animated JFK's interest in Apollo.

"Not because it is easy but because it is hard."

Exactly. Too hard for the Soviets. Not too hard for the U.S.

Gilruth had assured JFK of this before JFK announced the lunar program, that the U.S. could beat the Soviets to the moon.

posted 11-05-2006 10:26 AM               

I may be getting the original topic wrong, with the link to Dwayne Day's article, but it was my sense from an opening presentation (not Day's if I recall correctly) at the NASM/NASA conference that some historians were suggesting (rather darkly, in my view) that by 1963 JFK had active and well-formed plans to scuttle the Apollo program in favor of a cost-sharing lunar expedition with the Soviet Union.

According to this theory, the Kennedy assassination constituted a welcome turning point for NASA, as LBJ swooped in with the vision thing to ensure a U.S. moon landing "before the decade was out," fulfilling a Kennedy promise that--again, according to this theory--Kennedy himself had planned to break.

Apparently, presidential conversations purported to address this subject--conversations that would bolster or bust this startling historical theory--remain classified at the JFK Library.

Dwayne Day is urging their declassification sooner rather than later, suggesting perhaps that he believes it would be nice, if one has a theory, to present evidence that consists of more than one speech to the UN.