“neither fair nor carefully prepared”: Bilstein, Stages to Saturn, p. 54.
“met with complete failure”: T. Keith Glennan, The Birth of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan (Washington, DC: NASA History Office, 1993), p. 304.
NASA’s primate program: Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 317.
seventeen candidates: Piers Bizony, The Man Who Ran the Moon: James Webb, NASA, and the Secret History of Project Apollo (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006), p. 15.
“technological anticommunism”: McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, pp. 344–45.
“blabbermouth”: Bizony, The Man Who Ran the Moon, p. 18.
advice on the best person: W. Henry Lambright, Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 82–83.
“I want you because”: Ibid., p. 84.
“President Kennedy said”: Nola Taylor Redd, “James Webb: Early NASA Visionary,” Space.com, November 21, 2017.
failed missions and dead astronauts: McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 309.
“one of the ablest”: Wolfe, The Right Stuff, pp. 226–27.
reassuring them of his commitment: Roscoe Drummond, “NASA Now Could Come into Own,” Washington Post, February 15, 1961, p. E5.
“John Kennedy, perhaps for the first”: Logsdon, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, p. 64.
Vostok 1 cosmonaut: “Soviet Lands Man After Orbit of World,” Washington Post, April 13, 1961, p. A1.
“We feel there is no better means”: “Administrator’s Presentation to the President,” March 21, 1961, NASA History Office, Washington, DC.
JFK had a tireless advocate: McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 317.
11: YURI GAGARIN AND ALAN SHEPARD
Gagarin completed a single low orbit: Gruntman, Blazing the Trail, p. 345.
“Modest; embarrasses”: Asif Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2000), pp. 261–62.
“The road to the stars”: Roger D. Launius, The Smithsonian History of Space Exploration: From the Ancient World to the Extraterrestrial Future (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2018), p. 7.
weighing 5 tons: Roger D. Launius, Frontiers of Rocket Exploration, 2nd ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2004), p. 99.
“walking on thin ice”: Neal Thompson, Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, America’s First Spaceman (New York: Crown, 2004), p. 250.
“However tired anybody may be”: John F. Kennedy, “The President’s News Conference,” April 12, 1961, at John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/the-presidents-news-conference-211.
“had no real grasp”: Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 345.
the president’s disposition: Hugh Sidey, John F. Kennedy, President (New York: Atheneum, 1964), p. 119.
“our two major organizational concepts”: James Webb to Keith Glennan, April 14, 1961, NASA History Office, https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4105.pdf.
When Shepard first learned: Francis French and Colin Burgess, Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961–1965 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), p. 57.
“the most expensive funeral”: Quoted in ibid., p. 57.
“I didn’t like it worth a damn”: Christopher Kraft, Flight: My Life in Mission Control (New York: Dutton, 2001), p. 132.
“Of course, we tried to derive”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 53.
“the Americans talked a lot”: Hugh Sidey, “How the News Hit Washington—with Some Reactions Overseas,” Life, April 21, 1961, pp. 26–27.
“trying to break the chains of imperialism”: McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, pp. 245–46.
“Is there any place”: Hamish Lindsay, Tracking Apollo to the Moon (London: Springer-Verlag, 2001), p. 21.
“Jefferson’s expeditions”: Julie M. Fenster, Jefferson’s America: The President, the Purchase, and the Explorers Who Transformed a Nation (New York: Crown, 2016), p. 367.
“Kennedy began to really get”: Logsdon, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, p. 77.
“anguished and fatigued”: Quoted in John Noble Wilford, “Race to Space, Through Lens of Time,” New York Times, May 23, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/science/space/24space.html.
a gala at the White House: Godfrey Hodgson, JFK and LBJ (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), p. 109.
“All you bright fellows”: John Noble Wilford, “Race to Space, Through the Lens of Time,” New York Times, May 23, 2011.
“Do we have a chance”: Quoted in Richard W. Orloff and David M. Harland, Apollo: The Definitive Sourcebook (New York: Springer Science and Business Media, 2006), p. 12.
“dramatic accomplishments in space”: Lyndon B. Johnson to John F. Kennedy, April 28, 1961, LBJ Library, http://www.lbjlibrary.org/assets/uploads/news/LBJ-response-to-JFK.pdf
“Manned exploration of the moon”: Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to President John F. Kennedy, April 28, 1961, memorandum, LBJ Library, http://www.lbjlibrary.org/assets/uploads/news/LBJ-response-to-JFK.pdf.
“a performance jump by a factor 10”: Wernher von Braun to Lyndon Johnson, April 29, 1961, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, https://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/documents/vp_ljohnson.pdf.
“We were being rushed”: Quoted in Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, pp. 406–7.
secretly arranging a summit meeting: Günter Bischof, Stefan Karner, and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, eds., “John F. Kennedy and His European Summitry in Early June 1961,” in The Vienna Summit and Its Importance in International History (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2014), p. 113.
one final test: Ernest Barcella, “Balloonist’s Widow Gets Kennedy Call,” Washington Post, May 7, 1961, p. A6.
“He was hard to get”: Quoted in French and Burgess, Into That Silent Sea, p. 45.
“I’m cooler than you are”: Quoted in John Noble Wilford, “Alan B. Shepard Jr. Is Dead at 74; First American to Travel in Space,” New York Times, July 23, 1998, p. 1.
“Boy, what a ride!”: quoted in Richard Witkin, “U.S. Hurls Man 115 Miles into Space,” New York Times, May 6, 1961, p. 1.
“My name is José Jimenez”: Thompson, Light This Candle, p. 259.
“Hello, commander”: Ibid., p. 306.
“the greatest ‘suspense drama’”: Howard Stentz, “Space Shot Top Television Thriller,” Houston Chronicle, May 5, 1961, p. 16.
“a symbol of the twentieth century”: Quoted in Logsdon, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, p. 225.
“We had a big laugh”: Quoted in French and Burgess, Into That Silent Sea, p. 74.
“even more thrilled”: Alan B. Shepard Oral History, June 12, 1964, pp. 1–2, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program, Kennedy Library.
“Thus Alan Shepard”: Steven Watts, JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier (New York: Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s, 2016), p. 342.
TASS’s rote criticism: Von Hardesty and Gene Eisman, Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2007), p. 125.
“incentive to everyone”: News Conference 11, May 5, 1961. Kennedy Library, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other.resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conference-11.
“In choosing the lunar landing mission”: Logsdon, The Decision to Go to the Moon, p. 124.
the point of Project Apollo: McDonald, The Long Space Age, pp. 166–67.
“He talked to them”: “Posthumous DFC Given to Prather,” Washington Post, May 21, 1961, p. B4.
12: “GOING TO THE MOON”: WASHINGTON, DC, MAY 25, 1961
The White House had billed: W. H. Lawrence, “Kennedy Asks 1.8 Billion This Year to Accelerate Space Exploration, Add Foreign Aid, Bolster Defense,” New York Times, M
ay 26, 1961, p. 1.
“As far as President Kennedy”: Quoted in Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, The Kennedy Presidency: An Oral History of the Era (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003), pp. 248–49.
consult with a wide array: Theodore Sorensen, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 336.
“You’re the people”: Hugh Dryden, interview by Walter D. Sohier, Arnold Frutkin, and Eugene M. Emme, March 26, 1964, p. 18, John F. Kennedy Oral History Program, Kennedy Library.
moon was starting to win out: Wolfe, The Right Stuff, pp. 218–19.
“JFK was obviously prepping”: Paul Haney, foreword to French and Burgess, Into That Silent Sea, p. xviii.
“public discovery”: Daniel Boorstin, “The Rise of Public Discovery,” in John M. Logsdon et al., Apollo in Historical Context (Washington, DC: Space Policy Institute/George Washington University, 1990), p. 21.
“Well, I’m glad they got”: Quoted in John Glenn with Nick Taylor, John Glenn: A Memoir (New York: Bantam/Random House, 1999), p. 275.
Congress had already signaled: “Dollars for Man to Go to Moon,” Business Week, June 3, 1961, p. 18.
“What we had in mind”: James E. Webb, interview with H. George Frederickson, Henry J. Anna, and Barry Kelmachter, May 15, 1969, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
“I’m a relatively cautious person”: Lambright, Powering Apollo, p. 95.
“Every time the Air Force”: Paul B. Stares, Space Weapons and US Strategy (London: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 64.
no “man-on-the-moon” requirement: U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services, Military Procurement Authorization for Fiscal Year 1964, Hearing, 88th Cong., 1st sess. (1963), p. 152.
Kennedy would be pushing: W. H. Lawrence, “President to Ask an Urgent Effort to Land on Moon,” New York Times, May 23, 1961, p. 1.
to buy NASA more time: Mike Wall, “The Moon and the Man at 50: Why JFK’s Space Exploration Speech Still Resonates,” Space.com, May 25, 2011.
by ad-libbing: The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library has various versions of the speech. The original reading copy of the speech, with Kennedy’s edits, can be located in Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Box 34, Kennedy Library.
“our skills and our capital”: John F. Kennedy, “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs,” May 25, 1961, at John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-urgent-national-needs.
“If we are to win the battle”: Ibid.
“We go into space”: Ibid.
“I believe this nation should commit”: Ibid.
“his audience was skeptical”: Theodore Sorensen, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 336.
“stunned doubt and disbelief”: Logsdon, John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, p. 115.
Republican leaders scribbled notes: Alvin Shuster, “Congress Wars on Cost, But Likes Kennedy’s Goals,” New York Times, May 26, 1961, p. 13.
“The president is ahead”: Robert C. Albright, “President’s Arms, Space Aims Get Full Backing by Congress,” Washington Post, May 27, 1961, p. A6.
“doubting the value”: Robert Seamans, Aiming at Targets (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1997), p. 88.
“our debt may reach”: “Public Debt Limit, Hearing Before the Committee on Finance,” U.S. Senate, 87th Cong., 1st sess., June 27, 1961 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961).
“Damn it, I taught”: Quoted in Beschloss, The Crisis Years, p. 166.
“make the so-called race”: Washington (DC) Sunday Star, June 13, 1971.
“anybody who would spend $40 billion”: Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, p. 269.
“Space technology will eventually”: 107 Cong. Rec. S917496 (June 8, 1961).
“It will cost thirty-five billion”: Quoted in Mieczkowski, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment, p. 265.
“My head seemed to fill with fog”: Kraft, Flight, p. 143.
“We’ve only put Shepard”: Ibid.
Robert Gilruth: Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox, Apollo (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), p. 4.
“Of course, the moon”: Neufeld, Von Braun, p. 354.
“What Kennedy did with the moon program”: Quoted in Strober and Strober, The Kennedy Presidency, pp. 251–52.
“what would propel us to the moon”: Quoted in Neil McAleer, Arthur C. Clarke (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1992), p. 216.
“power to persuade”: Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: Wiley, 1960), p. 10.
“greatest open-ended peacetime commitment”: McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 305.
NASA’s annual operating budget: James L. Kauffman, Selling Outer Space: Kennedy, the Media, and Funding for Project Apollo, 1961–1963 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), p. 2.
“spirit of discovery”: Sorensen, Kennedy, p. 525.
13: SEARCHING FOR MOONLIGHT IN TULSA AND VIENNA
“seething with excitement”: “The Moon by 1967 or Bust,” Business Week, June 3, 1961, p. 18.
“deals with the very heart”: John F. Kennedy: “Remarks by Telephone to the Conference on Peaceful Uses of Space Meeting in Tulsa,” May 26, 1961. Online at Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-telephone-the-conference-peaceful-uses-space-meeting-tulsa.
“Man has progressed”: United Press International, “Moon Landing Sure, Top Scientists Say,” May 26, 1961.
“If you want me in the landings”: A. M. Sperber, Murrow: His Life and Times (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998), p. 624.
“Landlords will not rent”: Edward R. Murrow, May 24, 1961, National Press Club Luncheon Speakers, Library of Congress Recorded Sound Research Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, https://www.loc.gov/rr/record/pressclub/murrow.html.
“The first colored man”: Edward R. Murrow to President John F. Kennedy, April 23, 1962, “Memorandum for the President,” Kennedy Library.
“The Russians are now graduating”: Quoted in “An American on the Moon—A $20 Billion Boondoggle?” U.S. News & World Report, August 20, 1962, p. 59.
“I am quite sure”: “Thirring: Sending a Man in Space Is Nonsense,” U.S. News & World Report, May 22, 1961, p. 49.
“really rather a nuisance”: “Man Is a Nuisance in Space,” U.S. News & World Report, August 20, 1962, p. 56.
“I’m not saying that it’s unwise”: Ibid., p. 57.
dark side of the moon program: Elizabeth Gibney, “The Quest to Crystallize Time,” Nature 543 (March 9, 2017): 165.
“What was difficult for us”: Eric Berger, “JFK’s Speech Today Would Be Hard to Believe,” Houston Chronicle, September 12, 2012, p. 1.
the best general design: Anthony Young, The Saturn V F-1 Engine: Powering Apollo into History (New York: Springer Science and Business Media, 2008), p. 18.
secure a massive government contract: John W. Finney, “Capital Worried by Lags in Plans on Race to Moon,” New York Times, August 13, 1961, p. 1.
“We thought it was too risky”: Quoted in James R. Hansen, “Enchanted Rendezvous: John C. Houbolt and the Genesis of the Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Concept,” Monograph in Aerospace History, ser. 4 (January 25, 1999), p. 4, https//:nasa.gov.archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19960014824.pdf.
“Houston’s first reaction”: Quoted in Bergaust, Wernher von Braun, p. 408.
“No, Jim, I cannot bring”: Keith Glennan to James Webb, July 21, 1961, Glennan Personal Papers, Archives, Kevin Smith Library, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
five times the speed of sound: “X-15 Rocket Plane Flies 3,370 M.P.H.,” Chicago Tribune, May 26, 1961, p. 2.
American commitment to space: “Remarks at the Dedication of the Aerospace Medical Health
Center, San Antonio, Texas, November 21, 1963,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 882, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/San-Antonio-TX_19631121.aspx.
“With respect to the possibility”: The President to Chairman Khrushchev, Vienna, June 3, 1961, Memorandum of Conversation, p. 2, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v24/d107.
“At first he said no”: Ibid.
“if we cooperate”: Quoted in James Schefter, The Race (New York: Doubleday, 1999), p. 145.
categories of “competition” and “cooperation”: W. D. Kay, “John F. Kennedy and the Two Faces of the U.S. Space Program,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 28, no. 3 (Summer 1998): 576–79.
“Mr. Kennedy’s reaction”: James Reston, “Kennedy Is Firm on Defense Aims,” New York Times, June 6, 1961, p. 1.
14: MOON MOMENTUM WITH TELEVISION AND GUS GRISSOM
“You know, Lyndon”: Robert Dallek, “Johnson, Project Apollo, and the Politics of Space Program Planning,” in Launius and McCurdy, eds., Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, p. 72. See also Newton Minow, interview, March 19, 1971 (oral history), Johnson Library.
“Space was the platform”: Johnson, Vantage Point, p. 285.
NASA’s proposed Manned Spacecraft Center: McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, pp. 302–3. See also Minow interview.
“Many friends of Lyndon Johnson”: Shepard, Slayton, with Barbree, Moon Shot, p. 165.
“Maybe I watch more newscasts”: Don Mahan, ETC: A Review of General Semantics 27, no. 1 (March, 1964): 114–15.
“Kennedy felt very strongly”: Pierre E. G. Salinger, recorded interview by Theodore H. White, August 10, 1965 (no. 2), p. 108, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program, Kennedy Library.
every sixteen days: Ibid., p. 109.
“reveal his innate characteristics”: Virginia Kelly, “Will TV Audience Get Too Much JFK?” Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram, February 19, 1961, p. 14.
“the real factor in all of this”: “Dangerous White House Procedure,” Shreveport (LA) Times, January 31, 1961, p. 6.
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