posted 05-27-2017 08:57 AM               

1. Take whatever Congress decides to allocate to NASA and do whatever is possible with it, or

2. Set a bold national agenda in space, and then endeavor to advocate for the resources to fund it.

posted 05-27-2017 11:39 AM               

In a discussion with NASA Administrator James Webb in 1962, Kennedy said that he wasn't interested in going to the moon to advance science and didn't see a reason to support expanding the program or NASA's other projects to include additional objectives. A year later, in 1963, he met again with Webb to discuss the budget and what he felt was needed to defend it (emphasis mine):

...this looks like a hell of a lot of dough to go to the moon when you can go — you can learn most of that you want scientifically through instruments and putting a man on the moon really is a stunt and it isn't worth that many billions. Therefore the heats going to go on unless we can say this has got some military justification and not just prestige.

...we've got to wrap around in this country, a military use for what we're doing and spending in space. If we don't, it does look like a stunt and too much money – some people – Christ, we can't get money for some ( ) and all the rest and people saying we're spending billions in going to the moon. If we can show that that's true but there's also a very significant military use.

...I'd like to see what we could do to get the military, you said they're holding out, but we can, we can give this thing a military slant. In the final – we can justify the military or national security route much better than we can justify the prestige these days.

posted 05-27-2017 02:32 PM               

Ward: Getting back to the Apollo science program: At least my own perception is that Apollo didn’t begin as a scientific program the way [President John F.] Kennedy outlined it, sold it to the public, to the Congress. It was not perceived as a science program. And yet after Apollo 11, that really became the strong thrust of it.

McDivitt: Yeah. I remember sitting down at the Cape with General [Samuel C.] Phillips, who was the [NASA Headquarters Apollo] Program Director, and somebody else, I don’t remember who it was, I think it was near the time that we were flying Apollo 10. And the subject came up that, if we landed Apollo 11 where we thought we were going to land it, where should we land Apollo 12? Nobody had ever focused on the second landing! And so, we started talking about that. And we already had this ALSEP [Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package] thing. It was being designed, but it wasn’t really included much in the Apollo Program. It was sort of being designed over here on the side. And the stuff that was going to go on the lunar surface and what we were going to do with it was sort of a big question mark.

And so, as he and I were chatting about that—I was already the Deputy Program Manager, or whatever we called it, for Lunar Surface Exploration—he said, “You know, we’d better start figuring out how we’re going to do this stuff and what comes next!” And so, that’s—we really were sort of getting our wheels ground up, rotating. But up until Apollo 11, the mission was, as the President said, it was to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth. And that didn’t say anything about science.

Ward: So, it really was impressive the way that whole science program came together.

McDivitt: Indeed. Yeah.

posted 05-27-2017 02:45 PM               

Ward: But EVAs, spacewalks on the later flights, [Gemini] IX, X, XI, we had some really serious problems on them.

McDivitt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because they were trying to do things. And I think we got carried away. But you know, there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, we would’ve never gotten to the Moon when we did if we’d taken baby steps all the way. I mean, we could’ve gone from the Gemini IV EVA to a little bit more, a little bit more, and then we’d never have gotten there. I think when the President said, “we’re going to get there in that decade,” he provided the best management tool ever known to man. Because you could say, “We’ve got to stop fooling around and make a decision. Take a big step.” And so, we did.

posted 05-28-2017 01:36 AM               

Whatever the reason we first mustered the Apollo program, however mired it was in Cold War, nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of Apollo. What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival.

posted 05-28-2017 10:20 PM               

The real escalation happened under Johnson after the Aug 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.