“I wasn’t truly aware”: Wernher von Braun to Alan Fox, January 22, 1971, Correspondence file, Wernher von Braun Library and Archives, U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama.
“small satellite spheres”: Constance McLaughlin Green and Milton Lomask, Project Vanguard (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2009), p. 198.
Kennedy regarded the “mismanagement”: Ibid., p. 202.
“duplicating each other’s efforts”: “Kansas Democratic Club Banquet.”
“unannounced but unabashed run”: “Man Out Front,” Time, December 2, 1957, p. 19.
Kennedy had not written: Herbert S. Parmet, JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (New York: Dial Press, 1983).
fought the accusation relentlessly: Klaus P. Fischer, America in White, Black and Gray (New York: Continuum, 2006), p. 96n10.
“we must work as though”: “Johnson’s Talk to Democratic Senators,” New York Times, January 8, 1958, p. B3.
“where the initiative”: “Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958: Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop,” Conducted April 3, 1992, Moderated by John M. Logsdon, Monographs in Space History, no. 8 (Washington, DC: NASA History Office, 1998), https://history.nasa.gov/40thann/legorgns.pdf.
“the flaunting of the Soviets”: “Women’s Club of Richmond” (speech), Richmond, Virginia, January 20, 1958, item JFKSEN-0899-005, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers, Senate Files: Speeches and the Press, Speech Files: 1953–1960, Kennedy Library.
“lap up publicity and attention”: Quoted in Michelle L. Evans, The X-15 Rocket Plane: Flying the First Wings into Space (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), p. 70.
“God gave man a fixed number”: Quoted in Milton O. Thompson, At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), pp. 9–41.
“had a mind that absorbed”: Quoted in Richard R. Truly, “Neil A. Armstrong,” in Memorial Tributes: National Academy of Engineering (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2013).
“Neil was probably the most”: Thompson, At the Edge of Space, pp. 9–41.
“All in all”: Hansen, First Man, p. 53.
7: MISSILE GAPS AND THE CREATION OF NASA
“When the elevator”: “Harvard Club” (speech), Boston, Massachusetts, March 21, 1958, item JFKSEN-0900-012, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers, Senate Files: Speeches and the Press, Speech Files: 1953–1960, Kennedy Library.
“cautioned Dr. von Braun”: John Medaris, Countdown for Decision (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1960), pp. 143–73.
“It makes us feel that we paid”: Ibid.
“I sure feel a lot”: Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, p. 129.
“not make too big”: Dickson, Sputnik, p. 175.
“This is the beginning”: Wernher von Braun quoted in “America in Space, January 31, 2008, 50th Anniversary,” Huntsville Times Commemorative Edition, February 1, 2008, https://www.kozmiclazershow.com/Huntsville-Times%20Gala%20Edition.pdf.
it proved a trouper: Green and Lomask, Project Vanguard, p. 187.
Advanced Research Projects Agency: Lloyd Norman, “G.E. Executive Chosen to Head Space Agency,” Chicago Tribune, February 8, 1958, p. 2.
“It doesn’t look so screwball”: Jack Manno, Arming the Heavens: The Hidden Military Agenda for Space, 1945–1995 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1984), p. 52.
Such a nuclear arsenal: Halberstam, The Fifties, p. 702.
“Dear Jack, don’t buy”: Larry Sabato, The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 46.
Select Committee on Astronautics: Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, p. 141.
“LBJ was eager”: Quoted in Dickson, Sputnik, pp. 151–52.
the National Defense Education Act: Lawrence J. McAndrews, Broken Ground: John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Education (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 10.
Teller’s group concluded: Lieutenant General Donald L. Putt, USAF deputy chief of staff development, to Hugh L. Dryden, NACA director, January 31, 1958, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA HQ.
earned the Distinguished Flying Cross: Thompson, At the Edge of Space, pp. 9–41.
On his inaugural X-15 flight: Richard Branson, Reach for the Skies: Ballooning, Birdmen, and Blasting into Space (New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 257.
“The highest priority should go”: Quoted in George Robinson, “Space Law, Space War, and Space Exploration,” Journal of Social and Political Studies 5 (Fall 1980): 165.
“exercising control over aeronautical”: The full text of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 can be found on the NASA website, https://history.nasa.gov/spaceact.html.
“General Donald Putt recently called”: Dr. W. H. Pickering to Dr. W. V. Houston (president of the Rice Institute), April 19, 1958, Fondren Library, NASA Files, Rice University, Houston, Texas.
“While we [the NACA] knew”: Doolittle, quoted in Dik Alan Daso, Doolittle: Aerospace Visionary (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2003), pp. 105–6.
“the most capable element in the Nation”: Albon B. Hailey, “Army Fights Proposal to Transfer Its Space Experts to Civilian Agency,” Washington Post, October 23, 1958, p. A1.
“Americans were no longer”: “Eighth Annual Pittsburgh World Affairs Forum” (speech), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 18, 1958, item JFKSEN-0900-021, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers, Senate Files: Speeches and the Press, Speech Files: 1953–1960, Kennedy Library.
offer Eisenhower advice: John C. Donovan, The Cold Warrior: A Policy Making Elite (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1974), p. 134.
“unexpected Soviet development”: Greg Herken, Counsels of War (New York: Knopf, 1985), p. 113.
“Our nation could have afforded”: Quoted in Preble, “Who Ever Believed in the ‘Missile Gap’?,” pp. 801–26.
U-2 photographs proved: Glenn Hastedt, “Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, and National Security,” in Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius, eds., Societal Impact of Spaceflight (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2007), p. 369.
control of outer space: Alexander McDonald, The Long Space Age: The Economic Origins of Space Exploration from Colonial America to the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), pp. 165–66.
“As sure as anything”: Ben Price, “Medaris Has to Be out of This World,” Washington Post, February 2, 1958, p. E3.
most top army brass: Hailey, “Army Fights Proposal to Transfer Its Space Experts to Civilian Agency,” p. A1.
“discoveries that have military value”: John M. Logsdon et al., eds., Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, vol. 1: Organizing for Exploration (Washington, DC: NASA, 1995), pp. 334–45.
were all incorporated into NASA: Burrows, This New Ocean, pp. 213–16; McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, pp. 170–76.
George C. Marshall Space Flight Center: “Dr. Wernher von Braun; First Center Director, July 1, 1960–Jan. 27, 1970,” MSFC History Office, Marshall Space Flight Center, https://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/bio.html.
“No doubt this mighty rocket system”: Public Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960–1961 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961), p. 690.
“Employees had been reassured”: James R. Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center from Sputnik to Apollo (Toronto: ChiZine Publications, 2017), p. 2.
NASA launched Pioneer 1: NASA Langley Research Center from Sputnik to Apollo, https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1958-007A.
Doolittle refused: William D. Putnam and Eugene M. Emme, “I Was There: The Tremendous Potential of Rocketry,” Air and Space Magazine, September 2012, https://www.airspacemag.com/space/i-was-there-the-tremendous-potential-of-rocketry-18946468/.
“the same technical value”: U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, “A
uthorizing Construction for NASA,” 85th Congress, science advisor James Killian (Washington, DC, 1958), pp. 9–12.
From 1950 to 1952: Glennan quoted in Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, p. 285.
“One purpose of Eisenhower’s strategic posture”: McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 200.
“the balance sheet of a year”: Hanson W. Baldwin, “The Sputnik Era—Where the U.S. and Soviet Union Stand,” New York Times, October 5, 1958, p. E6.
a “non-entity”: Frank Van Riper, Glenn: The Astronaut Who Would Be President (New York: Empire Books, 1983), p. 103.
morning of July 16, 1957: George C. Larson, “John Glenn’s Project Bullet,” Air and Space Magazine, July 2009, https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/john-glenns-project-bullet-138177585/.
“pretty good position”: Van Riper, Glenn, p. 123.
“I have never seen anybody”: George Smathers, Oral History, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas (hereafter “Johnson Library”).
“match the Russians missile for missile”: “Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy, Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, Detroit, Michigan, May 23, 1959,” Papers of John F. Kennedy, Pre-Presidential Papers, Senate Files: Speeches and the Press, Speech Files: 1953–1960, Kennedy Library, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/Detroit-MI_19590523.aspx.
“outer space is fast becoming the heart and soul”: U.S. Congress, House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, The United States and Outer Space, H.R. Rep. No. 2710, 85th Congress, 2nd Session (1959), p. 6.
“second-place status”: Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, p. 244.
8: MERCURY SEVEN TO THE RESCUE
a “mystical lure of the unknown”: Ray Allen Billington, America’s Frontier Heritage (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1963), p. 26.
“It is my pleasure”: Logsdon and Launius, eds., Exploring the Unknown, vol. 7: Human Spaceflight: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2008).
“We didn’t know what”: Quoted in DeGroot, Dark Side of the Moon, p. 107.
The press gushed enthusiasms: James Reston quoted in Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, p. 197.
“poked, prodded”: Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journey (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974), p. 27.
Psychologists also administered: DeGroot, Dark Side of the Moon, p. 105.
“I’d go so far as to say”: Wally Schirra with Richard N. Billings, Schirra’s Space (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), pp. 65–66.
“Scientist alone”: Allen Ginsberg, “Poem Rocket,” in Kaddish and Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1961), p. 38.
“opened the door”: Lehman, This High Man, p. 46.
“Man is still the best computer”: Quoted in Charles R. Pellegrino and Joshua Stoff, Chariots for Apollo: The Untold Story Behind the Race to the Moon (New York: Avon, 1999), p. 15.
What von Braun envisioned: “IBM Commemorates NASA’s 50th Anniversary of First U.S. Manned Space Flight and the IBMers Who Supported It,” May 5, 2011, https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34449.wss.
“Kennedy identifies enthusiastically”: Van Riper, Glenn, p. 36.
biggest story of the day: Max Frankel, “Soviet Rocket Hits Moon After 35 Hours; Arrival Is Calculated Within 84 Seconds; Signals Received Till Moment of Impact,” New York Times, September 14, 1959, p. 1.
Kennedy essentially agreed with a snarky: Swenson, Grimwood, and Alexander, This New Ocean, pp. 281–88.
“first but, first and”: Michael R. Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 28.
9: KENNEDY FOR PRESIDENT
“formative stage”: “U.S. Aeronautics and Space Activities,” Report to Congress from the President of the United States, January 31, 1962, https://history.nasa.gov/presrep1961.pdf.
“a serious man on a serious mission”: Quoted in Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days, p. 343.
“Jack was always out”: Shaw, JFK in the Senate, p. 183.
a “pathetic” congressman: “Reminiscences of President Lyndon Baines Johnson,” August 19, 1969, Oral History Collection, Johnson Library.
referred to as “the boy”: O’Brien, John F. Kennedy, p. 430.
“sort of Irishman”: Elizabeth Hardwick, The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick (New York: New York Review of Books, 2017), p. 85.
“I had not realized”: Glennan quoted in Potter, The Earth Gazers, p. 171.
“intrinsic merit”: Michael R. Beschloss, “Kennedy and the Decision to Go to the Moon,” in Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy, eds., Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), p. 60.
“high-thrust space vehicles”: Roger E. Bilstein, Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1980), p. 50.
“I am profoundly worried”: Wernher von Braun, “Space,” Washington Post, March 20, 1960 (reprinted in Current News).
“space is the greatest new frontier”: T. Keith Glennan, comments on “Report from Outer Space,” World Wide 60, NBC, May 14, 1960. See also Susan Landrum Magnus, “Conestoga Wagons to the Moon: The Frontier, The American Space Program, and National Identity” (PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1999), p. 72.
“undeviated Republicanism”: Logsdon, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, p. 7.
“Whatever the scale and pace”: Kalic, US Presidents and the Militarization of Space, 1946–1967, pp. 62–63.
“its cherished Jupiter missile”: Erik Bergaust, Wernher von Braun (Lanham, MD: Stackpole, 1976), p. 406.
“the image of the god Apollo”: Quoted in Courtney G. Brooks, James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson Jr., Chariot for Apollo: The NASA History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft to 1969 (Washington, DC: NASA History Series SP-4205, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1979), p. 15.
“the next spacecraft beyond Mercury”: Hugh C. Dryden, “NASA Mission and Long-Range Plan,” in NASA–Industry Program Plans Conference (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 8.
lambasted the Johnson campaign: Larry Tye, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon (New York: Random House, 2016), p. 111.
“uneasy and joyless marriage”: Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), p. 215.
“The New Frontier of which I speak”: John F. Kennedy, “Address of Senator John F. Kennedy Accepting the Democratic Party Nomination for the Presidency of the United States—Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles,” July 15, 1960, at John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-senator-john-f-kennedy-accepting-the-democratic-party-nomination-for-the.
giant aerospace corporations: Rachel Reeves, “Aerospace: The Industry That Built South Bay” Easy Reader News, October 17, 2013. https://easyreadernews.com/aerospace-chronicles-industry-built-south-bay/.
“Even before Kennedy took office”: William E. Leuchtenburg, The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 387.
United States had lost its lead: “Split Over Space Issue,” New York Times, October 26, 1960.
advocate for accelerated deployment: Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, pp. 245–46.
“I could expose that phony”: Quoted in Gary Donaldson, The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon and the Election of 1960 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), p. 128.
“This is year three”: Allan C. Fisher Jr., “Exploring Tomorrow with the Space Agency,” National Geographic 118, no. 1 (July 1960).
Kennedy would sometimes retell: Author interview with Ted Sorensen, July 18, 2004, Boston, Massachusetts.
“The people of the world”: “Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy, Multnomah Hotel, Portland, OR,” September
7, 1960, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25675.
apparently spotted Echo 1: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 47.
Strelka gave birth: Allison Gee, “Pushinka: A Cold War Puppy the Kennedys Loved,” BBC News Magazine, January 6, 2014, www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24837199.
“with too many slums”: “Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association” (video), September 12, 1960, Kennedy Library, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/ALL6YEBJMEKYGMCntnSCvg.aspx.
“I am tired of reading”: John F. Kennedy, “Speech by Senator John F. Kennedy at a Democratic Fund-Raising Dinner in Syracuse, N.Y.,” September 29, 1960, Kennedy Library, https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKSEN/0912/JFKSEN-0912-021.
“We have been repeatedly reassured”: Jonathan Croyle, “John F. Kennedy Campaigns in Syracuse in 1960,” Syracuse Post-Standard, September 29, 2016, p. 1.
“I look up and see”: “‘Face-to-Face, Nixon-Kennedy’ Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy Fourth Joint Television-Radio Broadcast, October 21, 1960,” Kennedy Library, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/4th-Nixon-Kennedy-Debate_19601021.aspx.
“You may be ahead of us in rocket thrust”: Ibid.
“The Republican presidential candidate”: John W. Finn, “Johnson Assails U.S. Space Delay,” New York Times, October 31, 1960.
10: SKYWARD WITH JAMES WEBB
“Let the word go forth”: John F. Kennedy: “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1961, Kennedy Library, https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/historic-speeches/inaugural-address.
“I was so proud of Jack”: Ralph G. Martin, A Hero for Our Time: An Intimate Story of the Kennedy Years (New York: Macmillan, 1983), p. 12.
Each of these sites: Neal, Lewis, and Winter, Spaceflight: A Smithsonian Guide, pp. 58–59.
a three-stage Minuteman: T. A. Heppenheimer, Countdown: A History of Space Flight (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999), p. 146.
some Republicans faux-congratulated: McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 328.
“Who ever believed”: Mieszkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, p. 246.
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