Kennedy challenged Nixon in the second televised debate about America’s loss of prestige. The country was in decline and in need of new leadership, he argued. Nixon countered Kennedy’s claim, asserting that “United States prestige is at ‘an all-time high’ and… the Soviet Union at ‘an all-time low.’”25 According to Sorensen, Kennedy’s team obtained classified polls from the USIA that suggested American prestige was in fact in decline and that Nixon was misleading the country. They sent the document to the New York Times.26 “U.S. Survey Finds Others Consider Soviets Mightiest” ran in a large bold font on the front page of the newspaper on October 25, 1960. Fortunately for the Kennedy campaign, there was no mention of the source of the leaked document. The poll found that although three years had passed since Sputnik’s launch, the satellite still undercut confidence in US global leadership. The international public associated space-launch capability with the ability to launch nuclear weapons on intercontinental trajectories. Aligned and nonaligned nations unanimously agreed that “the Soviet Union would maintain and possibly widen its lead over the United States through the next decade.”27 In light of the release, Nixon’s assurances that “United States prestige is at ‘an all-time high’ and that the Soviet Union at ‘an all-time low’” undermined his credibility at a decisive moment in the campaign time line.28
Vice-presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson added fuel to the flames. He undercut Nixon’s claims further by releasing a “white paper” on the status of the US space program. As lead legislator in the Senate on space issues, Johnson and the staff of the Senate Space Committee were intimately aware of the actual state of US space capability, a point that suggests the “white paper’s” clear trappings of political maneuvering, evident since Johnson anointed Sputnik a “Pearl Harbor” in 1957. “The sad truth,” the paper stated, “is that U.S. progress in space has been continually hampered by the Republican administration’s blind refusal to recognize that we have been engaged in a space and missile race with the Soviet Union and to act accordingly. It is a fact,” Johnson explained in a statement accompanying the white paper, “that if any nation succeeds in securing control of outer space, it will have the capability of controlling the earth itself.”29
Less than two weeks later, on November 8, 1960, Kennedy narrowly won the election. He immediately established task forces to advise him on policy making and his future administration’s organization. He requested studies focused on foreign policy needs to evaluate how the USIA could more effectively increase US prestige abroad. The future direction of the space program, on the other hand, received little notice from Kennedy. It may have been useful in his campaign, but when it came to the major priorities of his administration, spaceflight would not be one of them, at least at the start.30
But while Johnson and his colleagues in the Senate were considering the future of US space policy for the coming decade, NASA’s Space Task Group in Langley, Virginia, as well as von Braun’s team in Huntsville, Alabama, spent the fall of 1960 developing plans for an eventual lunar landing program. The President’s Science Advisory Committee also undertook a study of NASA’s post–Project Mercury future. Led by Donald F. Hornig, a chemist and part of the team that built the first atomic weapons in Los Alamos, PSAC kept an eye on spaceflight’s place within society and politics.31 The “international political situation” created the “most impelling reason” for America’s current space effort, concluded the PSAC group. It was not science, the innate human thirst for exploration, or economic incentive that drove the human spaceflight program; instead, it was politics, or more precisely the particular geopolitical moment, where global superpowers competed for global leadership through demonstrations of technological superiority. Political incentive provided the “chief justification” for Project Mercury’s tight time line. And the reasons to invest in human spaceflight versus robotic missions were “emotional compulsions and national aspirations.” The group determined that “at the present time… man-in-space cannot be justified on purely scientific grounds.” They presented the report at one of Eisenhower’s last NSC meetings, on December 20, 1960.32
It turned out to be “quite a day,” as the NASA administrator put it.33 While Eisenhower expressed skepticism about future spaceflight to the NSC, Kennedy foisted off the chairmanship of the National Aeronautics and Space Council onto his new vice president–elect, Lyndon Johnson. The post promised to be impotent, restricted to an advisory role, not a legislative one. It was Kennedy’s response to Johnson’s efforts to expand the vice president’s role within the administration. By assigning LBJ to what appeared to be an ineffectual role, Kennedy meant to temper Johnson’s power from the start. During the Eisenhower administration, the Space Council had rarely met. Earlier in the year, Eisenhower had even proposed amending the Space Act to abolish the Space Council, given its nominal effect on space policy. But Johnson blocked the amendment once it arrived on the Senate floor, though likely not fathoming that he could be saddled with the chairmanship months later.34
Meanwhile, in the West Wing Eisenhower reviewed the President’s Science Advisory Committee’s “Man-in-Space” report at the NSC meeting. Accounts of the December 20, 1960, meeting describe Eisenhower’s shock at the predicted expenditure. Looking a decade ahead, the report concluded that Project Apollo, a three-person spacecraft program in its nascent stages, could achieve a circumlunar flight around 1970. A lunar landing mission—potentially achievable by the mid-1970s—would require advances in rocketry and an additional $26–$38 billion in funding.35 Eisenhower responded that he was “not about to hock his jewels” to land humans on the moon, a reference to the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, who funded Christopher Columbus’s Atlantic voyages.36 Even the NASA administrator found the estimate “quite staggering.”37 Eisenhower asserted tersely that he “couldn’t care less whether a man ever reached the moon.”38
During the transition from Eisenhower to Kennedy, human spaceflight seemed to be heading into an uncertain future. At the end of 1960, neither the outgoing president nor the one assuming the post saw human spaceflight as a major national priority. In his last budget message before he left office, Eisenhower stated that “further test and experimentation will be necessary to establish if there are any valid scientific reasons for extending manned space flight beyond the Mercury program.” But Eisenhower originally intended a harsher, less open-ended message. In his earlier remarks he asserted that there was no military or scientific justification for human spaceflight after Project Mercury. Period. Although the NASA administrator convinced the administration to soften the statement, Eisenhower left the future of America’s human spaceflight program in the hands of the next president, a bleak outcome for lunar space travel.39
Kennedy met with Jerome Wiesner shortly before his inauguration, on January 10, 1961. He had charged the MIT professor of engineering and member of PSAC with heading his task force on “outer space.” Already well-known as an outspoken advocate of nuclear arms control, Wiesner would soon become special assistant for science and technology to the president and chairman of PSAC, arguably the most influential scientific posts at the time. Wiesner viewed science advising as an active pursuit. He took a hands-on role in shaping policy and lobbying for science, as opposed to simply offering dispassionate expertise.40 And when given the responsibility of evaluating America’s civilian space program, Wiesner and his transition team had harsh words for what they considered NASA’s overemphasis on human spaceflight.41
“Space exploration and exploits have captured the imagination of the peoples of the world,” Wiesner’s report acknowledged. In the coming decade, “The prestige of the United States will in part be determined by the leadership we demonstrate in space activities.” After a “hasty review” of the US space program, surveying organizational and technical issues, the report pinpointed a lagging ballistic missile program and ineffectual planning and direction. On the topic of human spaceflight, the report stated that “a crash program aimed at placing a
man into an orbit at the earliest possible” moment could not be justified on scientific and technical grounds and might even “hinder” these areas of development. Recommending a reevaluation of Project Mercury and a curtailment of the popular perception that human spaceflight was the major objective of the US space program, the Wiesner Report urged the incoming president to take swift and blunt action, perhaps even amounting to the cancellation of America’s first human spaceflight program.42
In January 1961, Kennedy ensured that the tone of his inaugural address would set the tone for his presidency. He asked Sorensen to analyze all previous inaugural addresses as well to determine what made the Gettysburg Address so powerful, so momentous. With the objective of giving the shortest inaugural address in the twentieth century, Kennedy delivered a meticulously crafted message in fewer than nineteen hundred words. He deleted all the “I”s and replaced them with “we,” save for the oath and his responsibility as president. Lines such as “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” made their own indelible mark, striking both an air of collective duty and setting a vision of unified striving.43 This message was not written for an American audience alone. The USIA broadcast the speech live over its global radio networks and translated Kennedy’s words into French, Arabic, and Swahili for African audiences. For these listeners, Kennedy swore that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.” After winning the presidential election, Kennedy’s next campaign would be for hearts and minds, and for his promise to restore US prestige.44
Although the space program’s future seemed bleak, Kennedy amplified the status and political influence of the USIA. He asked Edward R. Murrow, the famed CBS journalist with a reputation for evenhandedness and truthful reporting, to head the agency. Kennedy insisted that a representative from the USIA participate in all major foreign policy meetings during his administration. Although Eisenhower both established and championed the USIA, it was Kennedy who would increase the USIA’s world public-opinion polling and advising role. For Eisenhower, polls gauged the success of the USIA’s programming. But for the intensely image-conscious Kennedy, polling also guided policy making. He explicitly articulated this second role and expanded the USIA director’s active participation in the formation of foreign relations policies.45
On January 20, 1961, plows removed eight inches of newly fallen snow just in time for the inauguration ceremony. Shortly after noon, on the crisp 22-degree day, Kennedy stood up from his seat next to the oldest president ever to serve. With the glare of the sun off the snow making it hard to see, the forty-three-year-old Kennedy, the second-youngest president the country had ever known, announced that “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans… together let us explore the stars, conquer deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.” At that moment, as Sorensen later reflected, “It was time to begin.”46
Begin it did, and likely more rapidly and with more force and trial than anyone had predicted. On February 13 the Soviet Union threatened to intervene in Congo. Less than a month later, Kennedy’s aides warned him that Communist forces endangered the pro-American government in Laos. The threat prompted two National Security Council meetings and Kennedy’s announcement on March 23 that the United States would intervene unless there was an immediate cease-fire. March 1961 also saw a nationalist uprising in Angola and major setbacks at the Geneva test-ban talks.47 And then, on a cold Monday in April, an aide whispered concerning news in the president’s ear.
Kennedy on that April 11 afternoon had just thrown the opening pitch at the Senators’ first baseball game of the season at Griffith Stadium in Washington. After he took his seat in the presidential box to watch the game, an aide explained that rumors that the Soviet Union had orbited a human into space were spreading. The news did not come as a surprise to Kennedy. Intelligence experts had briefed him weeks earlier on the possibility of such a mission. The Soviet Union had already sent dogs on two orbital missions in March. Days earlier, USIA Director Murrow had even crafted the president’s response if the Soviets’ first attempt at human spaceflight ended in failure. “Covertly,” Murrow explained, “the U.S. might encourage commentators in other countries to deplore the low regard for human life which prompted the Soviets to attempt a manned shot ‘prematurely’ despite their earlier assertion… that their ‘lofty humanism’ demanded ‘absolute certainty’ of success.”48
While Kennedy watched the baseball game and ate a hot dog, his aide, Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Hatcher, gathered more information. After a few innings he told the president that reports could not be substantiated and that the Russians were not planning on making any announcement that day. Then the Washington Senators lost their first game of the season to Chicago’s White Sox.49
On the other side of the world, Khrushchev vacationed at his dacha on the Black Sea. On April 11 his phone rang. The head of the Military-Industrial Commission reported that the date was set. The first crewed spaceflight—with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin onboard—would take place the next day. Straightaway, Khrushchev envisioned a grand public ceremony. The celebration would start at Vnukovo Airport with “as much magnificence as possible.” Next would be an event for hundreds of thousands in Red Square followed by a reception at the Kremlin. Among the reception’s fifteen hundred guests, Khrushchev would invite the diplomatic corps and foreign press.50
In the United States, rumors about a Soviet space shot only increased. White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger composed a statement for the president. Science Advisor Jerome Wiesner told Kennedy he thought the launch would happen in the middle of that night.
“Do you want to be [woken] up?” Kennedy’s military aide, asked.
“No. Give me the news in the morning,” the president replied before retiring to the White House living quarters.51
Like Kennedy, Gagarin lay down for a full night of sleep on April 11. Physicians had covertly placed strain gauges under his bed, which confirmed that the first space traveler was well-rested for his historic flight. Chief rocket designer Korolev, on the other hand, tossed and turned. Anticipation gripped the father of Soviet rocketry, much like it had before he launched Sputnik into space three and a half years earlier.
Gagarin rose at 5:30 a.m. Moscow time; ate a light breakfast of meat paste, marmalade, and coffee; received a physical examination; suited up; and then rode to the launchpad. Four hours later, aboard a Vostok spacecraft, he became the first human space traveler.52 On April 14, when he arrived at Vnukovo Airport outside of Moscow, he gave a sixty-six-word memorized account of the mission. His intonation was perfect, the result of thirty minutes of practice with an Air Force official who had scripted the report, specific details and all.53
Wiesner’s prediction had been right: the Soviet Union captured the title of “first human in space” on April 12 at 1:07 a.m. Washington time. Seconds later, US intelligence picked up Gagarin’s in-flight communications. Salinger’s bedroom phone rang at 1:35 a.m. It was Wiesner on the line, informing Kennedy’s press secretary that the Soviet Union had launched a rocket. Within half an hour, Radio Moscow broadcast the news. Salinger’s phone rang again, this time at 2 a.m. It was a reporter from the New York Times, the first in a series of calls from newspapers and television networks he would receive that morning.
Wiesner called again at 5:30 a.m., this time to tell Salinger that the orbital spaceflight was a success and that cosmonaut Gagarin had returned safely to Earth. Roughly seven hours after the launch, at 8:00 a.m., Kennedy spoke with Salinger from his bedroom on the second floor of the White House.54
As Sorensen recounted, “The President felt, justifiably so, that the Soviets had scored a tremendous propaganda victory, that it affected not only our prestige around the world, but affected our security as well in the sense that it demonstrated a Sovie
t rocket thrust which convinced many people that the Soviet Union was ahead of the United States militarily.” Kennedy, Sorensen observed, “thought of space primarily in symbolic terms.”55
Unlike 1957—when Sputnik surprised the world—in April 1961, Moscow media stood prompted and primed. For four full days after Gagarin’s flight, 95 percent of Soviet domestic and international radio broadcasts focused on the mission. The only comparable coverage in Moscow Radio history was Stalin’s death in 1953. The celebration that Khrushchev planned for the new Soviet hero in Red Square was aired live on Moscow radio and television for viewers in the Soviet Union and fourteen European countries. Coverage emphasized that Gagarin’s mission signaled the superiority of the Communist system. The USSR—not the United States—claimed yet another space victory.
Reporters gathered at the State Department at 4:00 p.m. on April 12 for Kennedy’s previously scheduled press briefing. Although Kennedy did not include Gagarin’s flight in his remarks—instead choosing to focus on the anniversary of the polio vaccine and his establishment of an advisory group on foreign aid—questions quickly turned to space and whether the US had plans for an armed intervention in Cuba.
“Could you give us your views, sir, about the Soviet achievement of putting a man in orbit and what it would mean to our space program, as such?” one reporter asked.
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