Operation Moonglow

by Teasel Muir-Harmony

  The Science Museum ended up being one of the first stops on the Friendship 7’s “fourth orbit.” In early May 1962, on the first day that the capsule was on display in London, the museum turned away thousands of people because the huge crowds overtaxed the facilities. The British Broadcasting Corporation’s current affairs program Panorama filmed a live telecast from the capsule exhibit that was watched by ten million viewers. Over the next few days two to three thousand people waited in line at all hours of the day to get a glimpse of the famous capsule before the Air Force plane carried it off to its next stop in Europe.29

  When the USIA exhibited the capsule at the Palais de la Découverte, a science and technology museum in Paris, they had to extend exhibit hours until midnight to accommodate the enthusiastic crowds standing in five-hour-long lines to view the capsule. Nearly thirty thousand people attended the Paris exhibit in its two-and-a-half-day stopover, a record-breaking number for the well-known museum. All the major Parisian newspapers featured Friendship 7 in their front-page headlines, and radio and television programs covered the space exhibit as well. The USIA report from Paris noted that the “few spectators recalling Soviet heavier launches [were] quickly silenced by others in [the] crowd who pointed out that at the USSR exhibit in Paris the previous year, the space craft on display was ‘only [a] model, not [an] actual capsule.’”30 For these Parisian onlookers, the US’s and USSR’s opposing approaches to displaying their space accomplishments had real consequences.31

  Although Yuri Gagarin toured the world, his spacecraft, the Vostok 1, was not put on public display; before 1965, only photographs of the Vostok veiled underneath a cover were shared with foreign audiences. Historian Cathleen Lewis suggests that the lack of engineering information on the model of the first Vostok put on public display “represented a deliberate effort to conceal the actual details of the human space-flight program in the Soviet Union by carefully camouflaging details about the design legacy of Vostok and its technical properties.”32 When Glenn’s capsule was put on display during its “fourth orbit,” however, the USIA included engineering diagrams of its interior workings along with other exhibit components. This exhibit, as well as most US space exhibits in this period, highlighted scientific and technological information as a demonstration of openness and a symbol of liberal democratic values.33 Later, USIA staff further articulated how they leveraged the secrecy of the Soviet program: “We capitalized even on Soviet space successes, because most of the material on the scientific and technological background of the Soviet projects was only available from our sources.”34

  Because Friendship 7’s “fourth orbit” was the first major US space diplomacy program, USIA continuously adjusted and revised the capsule exhibit over the course of its tour. After Friendship 7’s overwhelming reception in Paris, representatives from the USIA recommended that at future exhibitions of the capsule, security guards be posted to control the crowds, exhibit sites extend their hours, and a second viewing platform be set up parallel with the first to allow as many people to see the spacecraft as possible. Although curators from the Smithsonian Institution equated the capsule with the Wright brothers’ plane and strongly urged the USIA to cover it in a clear plastic casing to preserve the “original, irreplaceable, priceless relic of history,” public diplomats decided to keep the capsule uncovered so that eager onlookers could touch its coarse surface. The USIA also tailored information panels, lecture themes, and events at each stop.35

  For the exhibits in Africa, like many USIA programs in the early 1960s, the agency took the opportunity to curb civil rights criticisms by presenting an alternate view of the United States.36 Friendship 7 made its “fourth orbit” at a time when many African diplomats were forced to live in substandard housing in Washington because white landlords would not rent to them. Just a year before the tour, the world was shocked when Alabama Ku Klux Klan members burned a Freedom Rider bus and beat the civil rights activists who rode the bus to challenge segregation. President John F. Kennedy believed that the Klan violence threatened the image of the United States in the eyes of the world. The USIA reported that the event “had dealt a severe blow to US prestige which might adversely affect its position of leadership in the free world as well as weaken the overall effectiveness of the Western alliance.” In response to the incident, the Ghanaian Times noted that surely racism in the United States “as well as the plight of oppressed peoples in Africa and elsewhere demand much more serious attention and consideration than the sending of a man to the moon.”37 To curb some civil rights tensions and present a more positive image of the United States and its space program abroad, the USIA hired African Americans to work in Africa. Two of these employees were assigned the job of giving lectures on the space program.38

  In late May the USIA displayed Friendship 7 in Accra, the capital city of the newly independent nation of Ghana. The USIA estimated that twelve thousand Ghanaians viewed the capsule on the first day of the exhibit alone. The exhibit included a large photographic panel displaying general information about the US space program as well as the song “Everything Is a Go,” adapted from the West African “highlife” musical genre and written in collaboration by a Ghanaian and an American for the event. According to the USIA press release, “The crowd reaction in Ghana was strongest each time the speed of the spacecraft was announced in local terms. John Glenn’s ‘friendship-7’ an announcer pointed out ‘can fly from Accra to Kumasi in 30 seconds. More than 100 miles separate the two cities.’” More than fifty thousand people viewed Friendship 7 in Accra, a number that surpassed attendance numbers in each of the previous cities the spacecraft visited.39

  After receiving a very favorable reception in Ghana, the capsule traveled to Nigeria, where the USIA displayed it in both the capital, Lagos, as well as Kano, the northern city near the NASA tracking facility. In preparation for its stop in Lagos, the USIA took US-Nigerian relations into account when organizing the exhibit. USIA Director Murrow stressed that it was imperative to show in the exhibit all African American “personnel working with white staff on project.” He noted that any other “visually evident African contribution to operation” was important.40 The opening ceremony in Lagos was televised, and during its thirty-hour display the capsule drew a crowd of nineteen thousand in addition to the thousands who saw it as it was towed through the city.41

  In Egypt the Friendship 7’s visit to Cairo convinced skeptics that the flight had really happened and that people were really traveling to space, according to the Washington Post. One onlooker remarked, “I thought this space flight business was a rumor but now [that] I can see the ship I believe it.” It was important for this observer, as it was for many others around the world, to see the spacecraft in person. In the mid-twentieth century, space exploration had just left the realm of science fiction. The extraordinary idea that a man had orbited the Earth was made more tangible when the spacecraft that had carried Glenn could be seen and felt.42 A few months before the exhibit, Al-Akhbar, a daily newspaper, reported that “in his endeavors to invade Africa, Kennedy relies on four weapons, namely foreign aid, labor unions, peace corps, and the U.N.,” a view of the US that many Egyptians were expressing at the time. The USIA reports for the exhibition of Glenn’s capsule paint a very different picture that suggests the spacecraft at least—as the USIA had hoped—appeared more apolitical than Kennedy’s other “weapons.”43

  Although the Friendship 7 capsule drew record crowds in Paris and Accra, the most overwhelming response came in Asia.44 In late June, when the capsule arrived in India, more than a million Bombay residents welcomed Friendship 7 to their city over the course of the capsule’s four-day exhibition. The USIA field office reported that “hundreds of thousands lined streets as the capsule trailered into the city from the airport for public display at the city’s Brabourne stadium.” Lines of fifty thousand people waited for up to four hours to see the spacecraft. A NASA scientist lectured on Project Mercury as well as US plans for lunar exploration to scientists at
the Tata Institute on Fundamental Research and the Atomic Energy Establishment in Bombay.45 The major Bombay newspapers dedicated over twenty-five hundred inches of column space to Friendship 7. A report summed up many of the USIA’s hopes of the tour: In addition, the report highlighted that this reception was especially significant in light of current press attitudes and low public opinion of the United States in India.46

  Friendship 7 world tour, July 1962. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

  The fact that America’s manned space program is conducted in the full light of international publicity is highly appreciated among Indians in general and particularly by those who believe in democracy and an open society. While the Russian sputniks initially made a tremendous impact upon Indian public opinion, it is believed that the showing of the Friendship 7 film and John Glenn’s space capsule to the public of Bombay has demonstrated, at least in this area, which American efforts in space exploration are equal, if not superior, to the efforts made by the Soviets. Gagarin’s visit was well publicized, but few Indians had an opportunity to see him. The arrival of and display of the Friendship 7 capsule captured the hearts and imagination of the people of this area and the public turnout exceeded the post’s most optimistic expectations.

  Friendship 7 world tour, Karachi, Pakistan, July 1962. (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

  When Friendship 7 reached Bangkok, roughly eighty thousand spectators, including the crown prince, saw the spacecraft during its three-day visit. According to a USIA report, “A Thai official described the turnout as probably the largest in Thai history to view one object exhibited by a foreign country.” At the exhibit’s opening ceremonies in Djakarta, the chairman of the Indonesian Council for Sciences commented, “We heartily welcome the holding of this exhibit because this event will give the Indonesian people an opportunity to witness an American apparatus which has such a great and important role in increasing our knowledge in the field of space science and technology.” And in Manila the Philippine vice president, Emmanuel Pelaez, noted that the capsule “symbolizes the aspirations of free nations in a break-away from a humdrum existence to a helpful life of progress,” a commentary on the spacecraft’s significance that aligned with the rhetoric of USIA information material. Priests, students, grandmothers, and Boy Scouts waded through six inches of rainwater to see the Friendship 7 spacecraft during its first day on display in Manila. The Philippines Herald noted that the capsule “represents tangible proof of man’s conquest of space. To the beholder, it is a connecting link that brings him within arm’s reach of the reality of this conquest.”47

  Friendship 7 was exhibited in two locations in Australia, an important partner of the US space program. Australia’s Weapons Research Establishment managed two Mercury ground tracking stations, one near Perth and the other near Woomera. The city of Perth had left its lights on the night Glenn orbited overhead so that he could spot the city far below on Earth. It quickly earned Perth the nickname the “City of Light.” In recognition of Perth’s gesture, the USIA added a brief overnight exhibit in the western Australian city to the official schedule. The Friendship 7 tour staff kept the exhibit open all night as a thank you to the citizens of Perth. At another stop in Sydney, roughly 250,000 people saw Friendship 7 over the course of four days. In addition to NASA officials, Sydney University students stationed at the exhibit answered questions from the eager onlookers.48

  When Friendship 7 arrived in Japan in late July, the press covered its visit from the moment it was unloaded at the airport. Takashimaya, the leading department store in downtown Tokyo, where exhibits were usually mounted in Japan, set up an elaborate display. In the first hour of the exhibit more than 12,000 people saw the spacecraft, and by the end of its four-day display more than 500,000 people came to the store to see Friendship 7 in person, “a crowd,” according to the USIA report, that was “exceptional in size even by Tokyo standards.” In comparison, a USIA exhibit on Frank Lloyd Wright that toured four locations in Japan that year was deemed a significant success even though its attendance records were 5 percent of the attendance of the Friendship 7 exhibit.49

  Several hundred police and guides were called on to direct the crowd into a line that climbed nine flights of stairs, zigzagged across the roof of the building, and then descended nine flights of stairs to the first floor, where the capsule was on display. The store’s eighth-floor exhibit hall was transformed into a movie theater that screened the ten-minute film John Glenn Orbits the Earth. The exhibit fueled favorable publicity for the US space program throughout Japan. The USIA officials were glad to report that the open information policy and the desire for international cooperation in space were widely publicized by “every communication media in Japan.” According to the USIA report, “The openness of our manned space program which it symbolized was not lost on the Japanese who in several instances contrasted it favorably to the earlier presence of Soviet astronaut Gagarin.”50

  Although the response in Korea did not rival the response in Japan, within the first nine hours of its display thirty thousand people had seen the spacecraft, and the half-mile-long line showed no sign of thinning. The Korean newspaper Hankuk Ilbo discussed the exhibit and contrasted the Soviet and American space programs, commenting that “while the US government and its agencies have tried to make their space projects widely known throughout the world by means of television communications, tracking stations and other ways,” the Soviet achievements resulted from “extreme secrecy behind the Iron Curtain.” As the newspaper went on to suggest, “The mere fact that the vehicle is displayed should be enough to give stimulus to local scientists and experts.”51 Chairman Park Chung-hee, acting president of the Republic, shared a similar sentiment when he commented that the “scientific attitude of the Americans,” which allowed the world to follow the flight, “demonstrates the deep-rooted spirit of true scientific democracy.”52 As in many cities the capsule visited, local organizers and events in Korea contributed to the size and scope of the event. The mayor of Seoul, Major General Yoon Tae-il, oversaw the exhibit, while the National Academy of Sciences of Korea sponsored a scientific conference in conjunction with it.53

  In October 1962, Donald Wilson, the acting director of the USIA, told James Webb, the NASA administrator, that everywhere the display of Friendship 7 “dramatized our willingness to make known the facts about our program to explore space, in contrast to the secrecy which surrounds the Soviet efforts in this field.” Within just three months, he pointed out, the capsule was seen and frequently touched by roughly four million people. Wilson noted that as a result of Friendship 7’s exhibit, “Colonel Glenn’s epic orbit and US progress in space have been etched more deeply upon the world’s consciousness.”54

  It is worth noting that the extent to which the idea of US progress was etched upon the world’s consciousness is impossible to measure. USIA officials were acutely aware of the difficulties and complexities of determining the effectiveness of their work in influencing foreign public opinion of the United States; Murrow was known to say that no cash register rang when people’s minds were changed, highlighting the difficulty of adding up the impact of USIA programs.55 The USIA evaluation studies and reports determined whether or not programming reached their intended audiences, the size of the audience, if the programming was of interest to the audience, and recommendations on how to improve distribution, but they could not ascertain the impact of the programming on these audiences.56

  President Kennedy’s report to Congress on US space activities for 1962 highlighted the significance of Glenn’s flight and the subsequent capsule tour. The USIA also distributed a television program about the flight to TV stations in seventy-four countries in English, Spanish, and a number of other languages; according to the report, Glenn’s flight was likely the most covered story in the history of broadcasting. A short documentary on the flight was shown in 106 countries in 32 languages followed by another hour-long documentary distributed to 71 countries in all the major languages. Describing the “fourth orbit,” t
he report noted that “at every stop the public impact was impressive, particularly upon young people. Audiences included many chiefs of state who were given detailed explanations by accompanying NASA space scientists. Millions of people filed by to touch and examine the spacecraft.”57

  Compared to the USIA’s previously most popular exhibit, a series of displays designed to complement President Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace Program in the 1950s, the Friendship 7’s “fourth orbit” was an astonishingly major event. The 217 Atoms for Peace exhibits that the USIA had mounted around the world to change the way people viewed the word “atom” explained the potential peaceful uses of atomic energy with model reactors, illustrated panels, guides, and films, all while emphasizing the United States’ significant role in this development. These exhibits were attended by unprecedented numbers of people, with some visitors waiting in lines of up to two hours. A public diplomat in Bonn commented that “by now it has become virtually trite to report that the Atoms for Peace exhibit achieved a greater impact… than any other project undertaken… by the US Information Service.”58 Although impressive and record breaking in the 1950s, the attendance numbers for the Atoms for Peace exhibits paled in comparison to the numbers for the Friendship 7 “fourth orbit” tour. The audiences that attended both exhibits commented on their openness and factual approach, and found them to be educational, not political. The USIA press releases for both exhibits were written in a “journalistic style” that “masked the agency’s messages, which were hidden in quotes by ordinary people, newspapers, and government officials.”59