I like Ike - and when it comes to space, I'm not so keen on JFK

This should be a rather less muffled version of my first attempt at TV punditry.

Old paper is exciting

Is there any reason why I should be inordinately excited about receiving bundles of paper from the Kennedy and Nixon Presidential libraries? Given the fact that I'm funding my own PhD while attempting to run my own micro-business on the side, the chances of a trip to Boston or the Los Angeles environs this year are somewhere between exceedingly slim and nil. So, the last few weeks has involved a large degree of online searching plus liaison with the archive researchers at the above institutions to dig out some useful research material (with its attendant vast photocopying bill) from Kennedy and Nixon's 1960 campaign files.

The task now is to analyse the papers to see if a) there was more than a hair's breadth of difference between the proposed space policies of these two doughty Cold War campaigners during the campaign; b) to see if the papers offer any likely pointers to how Nixon may have acted on NASA and the manned space programme had he won in 1960; and c) if there are any indications in the papers on how highly Kennedy rated space as an agenda item for his 1961 policy making before he moved into the White House. 

Plenty then to get my teeth into over the next couple of months.  

Would it all have been different if Nixon had won in 1960?

I'm doing some work today on my paper for 49th Parallel which builds on my presentation delivered in Oxford last November. That was called 'A New Frontier or just a 240,000 mile cul de sac'. It's still my working title for the printed paper, but I'm  tempted to use a great Kennedy quote instead. 

In a meeting held in December 1962 with NASA Administrator Jim Webb, a gathering of the great and the good from NASA management and also JFK's Budget Director, the President rather flippantly said: "I'm not that interested in space." I think it makes a pretty good title for a piece revisiting Eisenhower and Kennedy's role in US space exploration. 

However, I'd also like to use the piece to put forward a view on whether anything would have been different had Nixon won the Presidential election in 1960. 

While defence and the missile gap loomed large in the 1960 election campaign, I can't find much from Nixon particularly on space policy after his work on the 1958 Space Act. Would he have followed Kennedy's single-minded route to the moon? Would he have taken on Khrushchev over space? Who knows. It's fun to speculate. This morning I've spent some time putting the question to a number of renowned space historians. I will be interested in their views if they choose to come back to me.   

Masters Dissertation Chapter 2 - NASA and the reversal of trends

It's quite some time since I posted the introduction and Chapter 1 of my disso - and it's amazing how far my thinking around and understanding of the early years of the space race has matured in the last 15 months. But while I wait for an edited version of the disso to finally run in the pages of Spaceflight, here's the unabridged version of the second chapter. It seems appropriate now to turn to John F Kennedy as we recall his Inauguration 50 years ago. All the material on this entry and, indeed across this blog is copyright Mark Shanahan, 2011

Chapter 2: NASA and the reversal of trends
The period from October 1958 to May 1961 provided the hinge for US space aspirations and a 180 degree change in policy. While Eisenhower had provided strong foundations for the Space Programme as a response to intense media activity, he had done so reluctantly. Once he had seen off Nixon in the race for the White House, Kennedy inherited an agency and space programme that was achieving quiet success but was no longer buoyed aloft on media fervour. At first, he was antipathetic to space and even initially looked for co-operation rather than competition with the Soviets. But the Bay of Pigs fiasco swiftly followed by Gagarin’s space flight changed the attitude of a President looking for an expedient way to recover prestige and set his overall political agenda back on course.

This chapter assesses how the relationship between the President, the media and NASA changed in regard to America’s efforts to catch-up the Soviets and set the course that would ultimately win the space race. In so doing, it will focus on the foundation of NASA; the announcement of the Mercury 7; Life’s astronaut contract, the early space media corps, the Kennedy-Nixon presidential race, and most notably, Kennedy’s ‘Second State of the Union Address’.

The foundation of NASA as a civilian agency (albeit entirely dependent on the military machine) provided both stability and credibility for the US space programme. However, in moving away from the Committee-Director structure of the previous NACA to NASA’s direct responsibility to the President, the new agency became an arm of national and international political policy. While Eisenhower had little time to use the agency to advance his own agenda, and indeed asked Vice President Nixon to lead on space issues, Kennedy proved a much more active manipulator. In this, he was aided by his own Vice President, Johnson who had previously used space policy as a means to further his own national political aims. NASA’s launch in October 1958 was generally met positively by the media – especially as it came into being around four months sooner than predicted. However, its coverage was low-key. In fact it rated only a page 16 story in the Chicago Daily Tribune. .

Eisenhower favoured unmanned scientific rocketry over what he saw as a pointless race to put a man in space. He still would not use the ‘space race’ term or image. He was hugely heartened by the launch and perfect performance of the world’s first meteorological and navigational satellites in the last year of his presidency. But though these were real scientific achievements which changed weather forecasting and marine navigation forever, they were not the attention grabbers that would draw interest to the space programme.

As Eisenhower dealt with increasing tensions in Berlin, NASA was swiftly learning the value of good PR. Recognising the value of symbolic gesture, the agency chose to announce Project Mercury on the 55th anniversary of the first Wright Brothers flight, tapping into the American adventure-mythology that would shape its messaging in the early years. It would seem this was a tacit acknowledgement of the success of Khrushchev’s strategy of tying launches to significant historical events: the prime example being the launch of Sputnik 2 on the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution.

The Chicago Daily Tribune , reported that this marked a speed-up in efforts to get man into space, though Administrator T Keith Glennan expressed NASA’s pre-Kennedy caution by saying: “We shall be working very hard, but at the very earliest, success in this venture is several years away.”
Khrushchev appeared to the US public as much less cautious. His policy of propaganda was not particularly sophisticated, but between 1957 an 1960, it was particularly effective. Khrushchev hid the deficiencies of his missile force and space technology by camouflage and subterfuge . While his force was actually weak, by playing the space card and implying greater rocket strength than he actually possessed, Khrushchev hoped to force the US to weaken its own position. Rattling his atomic rockets in the wake of Sputnik’s launch is a tad ironic, since by 1957, Khrushchev’s decision to reduce spending on conventional arms and focus on a high tech missile deterrent had produced just four ICBMs.

NASA really first connected with the media in April 1959 when it introduced the world to the Mercury Seven – the original US astronauts. The Soviets selected and trained their cosmonauts in complete secrecy. NASA, on the other hand introduced its newly-coined ‘Astronauts’ in the full glare of publicity, long before the seven military test pilots had ever gone near a rocket. Playing on the theme of nationalism, encompassing prestige, national strength and a US lead in international co-operation, NASA considered its image carefully when selecting and publicising ‘the Original Astronauts’. All were presented as ‘all-American, exemplary citizens’, and their introduction to the press brought initially widespread curiosity, soon to be replaced by seemingly unwarranted adulation. But it is worth noting the low-key role NASA’s Public Affairs team played in presenting the Mercury Seven. In April 1959, NASA HQ in Washington issued 100 pages of media material. Two thirds of this was directly to do with the Mercury Astronauts. The press conference announcement was a buried within a three-page release of April 7th 1959 titled: “Seven to enter Mercury Training Program.” In support of the press conference, NASA released a detailed paper covering a blow-by-blow account of the Astronaut selection process; three-page career biographies on each of the Astronauts and a transcript of the Press Conference. A week later, the agency was forced to issue a ‘Press Memorandum’ stating: As soon as they arrive at Langley they will begin Project Mercury orbital flight training. Each will have an important role in engineering and scientific development of the space vehicle, sub-orbital build-up missions and finally manned satellite flight. The training will be conducted on an extremely tight schedule. For these reasons the Astronauts will not be available for special interviews or other public activities for the time being. NASA will report progress on Project Mercury as it occurs, and as the training and work program of the Astronauts permits, we will arrange for special public activities in the future. We know that we have your understanding and cooperation in this activity.”

Several points are worth noting: unlike their Soviet counterparts, the seven were to have active roles in the Mercury development. Second, there is a distinct increase in pace and urgency implied by the note. Finally, the implication is that NASA was surprised by the reaction to the Mercury Seven announcement, and had not yet developed a tactic to deal with the clamour for a piece of the new ‘heroes’. Once the Mercury Seven were announced, the media did indeed have its heroes to face off against the faceless Soviets, small-town, lantern jawed risk-taking frontiersmen, echoes abounded from Davy Crockett to Charles Lindbergh. The Chicago Daily Tribune reported on the Mercury Seven announcement as a page 14 story the day after the April 7th Washington press conference. But three days later, the Seven were on page one. Two were noted to be from ‘Chicagoland’

What is significant in assessing the US media’s response to the Mercury Seven is that there was really no such thing as a daily national news media in the US. Newspapers were local and fiercely parochial, looking for the local angle on any story, be it national or international. Hence the interest in the astronauts’ birth places, where they came from, went to college and had previously worked. There was interest too in their families, their religious beliefs and all the traits that brought a chink of individuality to a fairly homogenous group. From the first, the newspapers focused on the astronauts as heroes: James Reston of the New York Times famously stated that “The astronauts may make Columbus and Vasco de Gama look like shut-ins before they’re through.” This was a new frontier adventure; one was soon to find an echo with Kennedy’s far wider-reaching New Frontier presidential candidacy. As Wolfe wrote: “Within 24 hours of their Washington DC introduction, the astronauts were heroes.” Reston summed up the mood of the media: “What made them exciting was not that they said anything new, but that they said all the old things with such fierce convictions. They spoke of ‘duty’ and ‘faith’ and ‘country’ like Walt Whitman’s pioneers.” These solid citizens appeared to have ‘The Right Stuff’ and an implicit alliance of NASA’s public affairs team and the Washington press corps ensured that nothing would dent that image.

That ‘Right Stuff’ was captured and played back nationally and internationally (though syndicated features and international editions), by one of the key segments of the American media: the news magazines. Without national newspapers and with TV news restricted to generally around 15 minutes a day, news magazines led the public opinion agenda. Newsweek devoted a double page spread to the press conference in its April 20th 1959 issue, presenting an image of the Mercury Seven based on ‘family and faith’ where the seven aviators (and much was made of their test pilot backgrounds, thanks to NASA’s extensive briefing notes) were “fearless but not reckless”, attributes that would stand them in good stead in their endeavours beyond the earth’s atmosphere. Almost equally important was the trade press, with titles such as Collier’s, Popular Mechanics and New Scientist all strong in driving popular opinion. But if NASA’s new Mercury Seven were to shine, they needed the backing of Newsweek, The New Republic, Time and Life all of which had been disparaging of Eisenhower’s apparent hesitancy in embracing the space race they had done so much to create. If there was any opposition to the new manned space programme, it remains terribly well hidden, and even by 1962, Newsweek was reporting that many reporters “are under the temptation to function as rooters for ‘The Team’ – a role abhorrent to most newsmen.”
With the announcement of the Mercury Seven, there was a subtle change in emphasis on the way that space news and features were handled. Up to this point, space had been largely a political story handled by Washington reporters. It stayed a political mainstay during the Nixon/Kennedy election race. However, the growing amount of activity at NASA’s Langley and Cape Canaveral facilities, plus the endless round of astronaut visits to the spacecraft manufacturers up and down the country called for active media management from NASA, and the emergence of a new breed of space reporter who understood the scientific and engineering complexities, but could synthesise them for mass audiences.

Of course, NASA had to maintain a positive public perception if the American public was going to support the agency’s need for billions of Federal dollars to be spent on manned exploration of space. The agency had a good cohort of Governmental PR personnel to call on under the Eisenhower administration. Public relations as a government practice had grown exponentially in the 1950s, and in 1957, the US Civil Service Commission listed 679 personnel as ‘Information and Editorial Employees’ – somewhat more than the numbers of DC news reporters. Walter T Bonney, head of Public Affairs for the NACA took on the same role at NASA. The 1958 Space Act stated that NASA must “provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and accomplishments.” Within months, Bonney had one of the largest public affairs teams in government – over 100 people supporting an engineering and scientific team of some 8,000 NASA employees. It had a dual aim of providing up-front material for journalists to use on every aspect of the space programme, and also a remit to answer media questions “so that reporters won’t besiege the administrator and other management.” Once the Astronauts had been announced, the Public Affairs team also took on the role of barrier between reporters and their prey.

By January 1959, all media enquiries were referred to Bonney’s office and that all material for release, no matter what its source, had to be routed through his Office of Public Information at least a week prior to release. This was significantly ahead of its time in terms of news management and could have caused untold reporting problems had not the media been quite so prepared to take NASA’s pronouncements at face value. Yet given the vast amount of information that NASA provided on an almost daily basis to reporters (the pre-launch press release for Alan Shepard’s 15 minute sub-orbital flight ran to 22 pages for instance), it is hardly surprising that they were so unchallenging. This was an entirely new scientific and technological area: NASA had the best engineering brains and they were planning to deliver a completely new engineering challenge. They simply overwhelmed most journalists with the sheer quantity of available material. But the material was largely technical or procedural. Almost from the outset, NASA devoted its media machine to scientific and engineering issues as well as the logistics of appointments and launches. Personal information about the astronauts swiftly became the remit of Life magazine.

As coverage moved to Cape Canaveral in May 1959 NASA fought an uneasy battle with the Air Force on how to accommodate the needs of the media without compromising national security. The Air Force was all for a media blackout: almost impossible to impose as rockets flashed across the Florida sky. NASA, on the other hand, took the view that it had a duty to report all activities – success or failure. The philosophy of ‘do first, talk second’ became a mantra, with the aim of making known the facts of any launch, and Congressional information and any supplier contract award promptly and accurately. This was 180 degrees removed from the Soviet policy of ‘Do first....and only if it’s a success, spin the story.’

The new NASA facilities being planned for Cape Canaveral were on Merritt Island. However, the early satellite and Mercury’s manned launches took place from the Cape Canaveral Air Force station using an Air Force-run launch pad and blockhouse. After the early very public failures of the Vanguard launches, the Air Force was doubly wary of allowing reporters to cover tests on site, or indeed provide any pre-launch information. However, journalists are generally well-networked, and most knew when a rocket test was likely and even if not officially invited to witness the test, would do so from beyond the reach of the Air Force Cocoa Beach. By the time of the Mercury flights, the Air Force was forced to back down as the TV networks and reporters from all across the US successfully lobbied NASA for access to the launch sites. However, the constant stream of missile tests and even defence satellite launches were conducted, as far as possible, beyond the reach of the media.

At NASA Bonney decreed: “The distinction between publicity and public information must be kept constantly in mind. Publicity to manipulate or ‘sell’ facts or images of a product, activity, viewpoint or personality to create a favourable impression, has no place in the NASA programme. The essential aim of our information work is to furnish Congress and the media with facts – unvarnished facts – about the progress of NASA programmes.” This may have worked in the conservative Eisenhower era, and worked alongside a massive get-out clause in terms of the astronauts’ Life contract. But it had no place after 1960 when space was wrapped up into JFK’s overall ‘New Frontier’ plan. NASA’s administrators and senior managers were political appointments. Bonney moved on the day before JFK took office. Glennan was replaced by Jim Webb.

If NASA was still learning its way in news management, the media were learning their way in reporting space too. A new breed of reporter was emerging, trained largely in the post-Sputnik era. Reporters had mastered a vast amount of scientific and technological complexity, and were still deciding whether to educate the public or merely report events. Some, such as William Hines at the Washington Star and Reg Turnill at the BBC chose the former, but most took the latter route, preferring to hang out at Cocoa Beach in thrall to that new breed of celebrity: the astronaut. NBC’s Jay Barbree was a prime example. His memoir describes the free-flowing relationship between reporters and astronauts beyond the confines of the Cape Canaveral ranges. There was a strong code of respect from the reporters to the new celebrities: astronauts are never asked for information, they have to volunteer it; reporters don’t speak until spoken to; and the party lifestyle, including many women, much drinking and a lot of roaring around in sports cars never, ever, makes it into print or on the air. Thus the image of the seven All-American heroes was never tarnished. James Schefter reflects that this was simply the way journalism operated at the time. “There was an unwritten gentlemen’s agreement between reporters and the astronauts. If it didn’t get entered on a police blotter, it wasn’t a story” The impression is that the reporters were hungry for stories and that anything to do with space was a prime assignment. The ‘collegiate’ atmosphere at the Cape and Langley that drew together a community of astronauts, engineers, hotel owners, reporters, waiters, car salesmen and everyone involved in the enterprise was fragile and relied on a collective management. It would quickly come crashing down if a reporter shattered the great illusion. NASA had to put no rules in place to manage the manufactured presentation of the astronauts’ image. The media managed themselves.

That image was brought most fulsomely to life through the pages of Life, Henry R Luce’s large-format, picture-led magazine that carried his Cold War, anti-Soviet crusade into the homes of millions of Americans and others around the world each week. It became NASA’s mouthpiece in the popular media . Certainly the publication, which was an outlet for Luce’s unbridled patriotism enabled NASA to get around Bonney’s dictum that all public information should be ‘unvarnished’. In mid-1959, ironically at Bonney’s suggestion, NASA invited the press to bid for the exclusive rights to cover the Mercury seven astronauts’ personal stories. Bonney knew that his team of Washington civil servants and former engineers simply didn’t have the experience to meet the demands of the press on personal rather than programme issues. His team’s background with the NACA had been developed through promoting aircraft engineering advances since 1915 – and doing so in a quiet, low-key manner. Promoting the Mercury 7 was an entirely different proposition and needed very different skills.

In the event, the low-bidder Life won, and set about depicting the seven, and their families, as America’s perfect citizens. Prose and photographs combined to build a compelling narrative blending the inherent drama of the programme with the kitchen sink drama of the wives and children standing behind their men. The contract was good for NASA as it bound the astronauts as a group into one coherent, controlled storyline, enabling the agency to popularise the space programme without significant cost, while it helped boost sales of the magazine to beyond seven million copies each week. Indeed, research at the time suggests the reading figures for the publication were six or seven times that, making it the most influential media instrument in the pre-TV era. While other magazines complained of being rather frozen out by the exclusive contract, NASA could contain the personal narrative and ensure a positive image of the astronauts and of Mercury. NASA had a contractual clause approving all ‘personal stories’ and the ‘apple pie America’ text was backed by Life’s key differentiator high quality, feature photography.

Many of the best Life pictures of the Astronauts and their families, including those reproduced here, were taken by Ralph Morse, a Life staffer who developed a close relationship with the Mercury Seven and their wives. NASA had access to all Life images, and many were syndicated for other journalists, enabling the agency to keep control of the visual image of the Astronauts as well as what appeared in print . Throughout an 11-year relationship, Life‘s uncritical coverage of the space programme gave NASA an unprecedented platform for presenting a positive spin on manned spaceflight and, in time, its race to the moon. What is most notable about Life is that its readership was two thirds women. Thus the space race moved from the male perspective of Newsweek and Popular Mechanics into a much wider popular consciousness. There’s no indication that this was a deciding factor in awarding the contract to Life – low bidder status appears to have carried the day. However, being able to reach such a wide audience was a definite if unplanned benefit to NASA.

Under Luce, its fiercely patriotic proprietor, Life set a heroic tone of voice for its coverage of the astronauts, one that was to align significantly with Kennedy’s ‘New Frontier’ agenda through his election campaign and into his Presidency. In the Introduction to We Seven , a contemporaneous account of the Mercury Seven with the strong hand of Life holding the pen, John Dille refers to the astronauts as: “part engineer, part explorer, part scientist, part guinea pig – and part hero.” They are complimented on their “rare standards of courage and stamina, skill and alertness, vision and intelligence.” The men were described as “The raw material for the great adventure.” They were bound as a team, working together, helping each other, but each was filled with “driving ambition.” Unlike the Soviet cosmonauts, each was engaged in a “daring and honest gamble, representatives of a free and open society.” NASA provided the fact: the hyperbole came from Life and was picked up by the rest of the media. It happened to resonate with the campaign plan Robert Kennedy was putting together for his brother’s run for the Presidency.

As NASA’s activities were accelerating, so was the Presidential race between Kennedy and Nixon. Kennedy’s vigorous campaign and decision to compete in the primaries won a significant public groundswell and saw off the challenge of Stevenson before the Democrat Convention. Johnson had chosen not to compete in the primaries but felt his wide and deep Congressional network would be enough to earn him the nomination when the candidates convened in Los Angeles. The media was to play a key role in deciding the candidate. Johnson challenged Kennedy to a televised debate – and the erudite, vigorous and well-prepared Kennedy won handsomely. Johnson’s national support eroded leaving him only his power base in the south west. Nixon had used his Vice Presidency to establish a national power base and was never seriously challenged for the Republican nomination.

Kennedy accepted the Democratic nomination by criticising Nixon’s old ideas and “pledge to the status quo.” Noting that the world was changing and that “The old ways will not do”, Kennedy outlined his “New Frontier” platform, with echoes of the New Deal and the Fair Deal, but focused on the future. Reflecting that he was standing (in Los Angeles) on what was once the last frontier for the pioneers, he noted that America now stood on “a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils”, beyond which stood the “uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war.” His clarion call was for Americans to be pioneers of the New Frontier through “new invention, innovation, imagination, decision.” A vigorous space policy appeared to fit seamlessly within that platform.

As the campaign moved towards the Presidential election space became a battle ground for the two in the media. Nixon initially held the space high ground. Seen as more pro-space and pro-missile than Eisenhower, the Vice President had already engaged Khrushchev head-on in the ‘kitchen debate’ in Moscow. But when it came to campaigning a year later, the Republican nominee came up against a staunch Cold Warrior in Kennedy. Their own early blows were played out not in the national TV debates, but in the pages of the trade magazine Missiles and Rockets. The journal asked the candidates to respond to a series of statements on space and defence, the first asking if they recognized that the US was in a space race with Russia? Kennedy, setting his stall for the next three years said: “We are in a strategic space race...and we have been losing. We cannot run second in this vital race. To insure peace and freedom, we must be first.” Immediately Kennedy set the rhetorical tone that aligned with the voice of the media over the previous two years.

One might have expected Nixon to stick to Eisenhower’s conservative pragmatism, but on issues such as the missile gap and space exploration, Nixon had more radical views than Eisenhower and had been constrained by the President’s more taciturn approach. Stressing his independence from his leader’s position he responded by agreeing the US was in a race, but pointed out it was in the lead in terms of “instrumentation, communications, electronics, reliability and guidance.” For Nixon the race was certainly on and he concluded by saying: “We will continue to maintain a clear-cut lead in the race for space.”

Missiles and space remained a warm issue throughout the campaign. But neither candidate drew any real difference between the weapons of war, the weapons of prestige or even scientific exploration. Kennedy continually stressed the ‘missile gap’ even after briefings from CIA Director Allen Dulles ensured he and Johnson knew the true extent of Soviet missile power. But Kennedy was shrewd: a record of his speech to an American Legion Convention in October 1960 showed him consistently referring to old reports and views to stress the missile gap: a Rockefeller report of 1958; Republican testimony that same year to Johnson’s Senate Preparedness Committee, and arch-hawk Lt. General James Gavin’s comment: “We are in mortal danger. The missile lag portends serious trouble.” All the views were genuine and Kennedy dutifully recorded them – knowing them to be out of date but supportive of his cause.

It may be argued that what won Kennedy victory was the media – notably the contrast in the candidate performances in the first televised debate, broadcast from Chicago on September 26th, 1960. Nixon, still recovering from an infected knee looked tired, underweight and ill in front of the 80 million viewers . Refusing television makeup, he also appeared sweaty with a heavy five o’clock shadow. His performance was less sure-footed that of his competitor. Kennedy won the debate. Though Nixon’s performance improved in the later three debates, they never won such a large television audience. First impressions last, and this event may just have swayed the election.

While pledging strength against the USSR in missile defence, stating that he would never “dare tempt them with weakness” in his inauguration speech, Kennedy sought co-operation in space: “Together let us explore the stars.” For a brief moment, the space race was off. But reaction to Gagarin’s flight ensured it would be rapidly resumed. On April 12th, reports appeared across the country such as the Chicago Daily Tribune’s ‘Reds orbit and land man’ . Details were sketchy. But it was clear that the US had lost another lap in the space race. Just how weak Kennedy’s position was in relation to space was clear a day later. The Chicago Daily Tribune’s Philip Dodd reported on Kennedy’s reaction at a White House press conference. “We are behind in the space race with Russia,” Kennedy stated. Dodd noted Kennedy’s comments that the news would get worse before it got better, and it would be some time before the US caught up. Tellingly, the report picked up on Kennedy’s telegram to Khrushchev in which the President said it was “his sincere desire that...our nations can work together to obtain the greatest benefit to all mankind.” That view hardened in the coming weeks.

Hindsight would have it that Kennedy stood before Congress on May 25th 1961 with the moon landing at the centre piece of a directive that swiftly galvanised 400,000 Americans in every state of the Union into a relentless drive to the moon where this time, the Soviets would finally be beaten. However, it is worth deconstructing the myth to look at the reality of Kennedy’s speech and the degree of direction it actually provided. Undoubtedly the speech was meant to revive the spirit of optimism of the early weeks of the Presidency and, in the run-up to the June summit with Khrushchev was planned to show Khrushchev that Kennedy was not the callow youth the older leader took him for. But the speech gained so much resonance across the world and across four decades of regular repetition not as a whole, but because one section, towards the end, was pounced upon by the media and endlessly replayed – especially after Kennedy’s death, and most especially once the pledge to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before this decade is out had been achieved.

The speech was a set-piece: it was unusual for the President to address Congress directly, but Kennedy valued the public platform and knew it was essential to recapture the high ground at a time when his new Presidency could lose all momentum and credibility due to the body blows inflicted on it by the Bay of Pigs failure and Gagarin’s success. On May 25th, the Washington Post remarked on the short notice given that the President would address Congress in person saying: “There was no public expectation that the President would speak on urgent national needs.” The article later stated: “Ever since the Cuban invasion fiasco, the bloom has been off the bright rose of the early days of the Administration. Now may be the time to recreate the spirit of the January 30th State of the Nation Speech.” The networks were primed to take the speech live and transcripts were made available for print journalists to have as soon as Kennedy stepped down from the podium. But the moon announcement actually comprised only the last fifth of the speech. Before reaching that most famous passage, Kennedy had talked about stimulating the economy at home, fostering global progress by fighting the advance of communism, extending the US Information Agency and tripling the budget for fallout shelters at home – essentially all the issues raised in the media and rejected by Eisenhower a little over two years previously.

The space passage came after calls for an Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, almost as an afterthought. That’s certainly how the Los Angeles Times reported it the following day, in an editorial that was distinctly critical of Kennedy’s address. Robert T Harman wrote: “We expected extraordinary proposals....but he outlines rather ordinary plans...leaked to favourite TV and newspaper reporters days and weeks ago, so there was little impact of surprise. (The speech) was something of a dud....slightly spiced with a 10-year space adventure which Mr. Kennedy didn’t seem too certain of himself.”

The speech did receive national front page coverage and the space pledge drew the headlines. But equal focus on the analysis was placed on the other elements of the speech. Don Shannon, writing the lead news article for the Los Angeles Times, for instance noted that Kennedy had “urged Congress to back a multi-billion programme to put an American on the moon and counter the Soviet Union on earth.” He reflected Congress was split on the ‘omnibus’ plan and “noticeably cool on all except his call for a US challenge in space.” It is perhaps unsurprising that the Los Angeles Times was critical of Kennedy’s speech. California had backed Nixon in the 1960 election (just), and the Times was noted for its conservative stance.

The Democrat-leaning Washington Post was slightly more positive – but only slightly. In its news lead, John G Norris reported: “He (Kennedy) committed the United States to an all-out race to overtake Russia in space and to be the first to put men on the moon...”It is time”, said the President, for a great new American enterprise; time for this nation to take a clearly-leading role in space achievement.” The news report chimed with the intent of the President, picking up on his request for a spending boost for space, arms and the jobless, but undercut this when stating that the proposals would be unsatisfactory to liberals since they favoured big business. Equally Norris noted, they would not satisfy conservatives since the spending boosts would not go far enough. Interestingly, in the ‘Freedom Doctrine’ editorial within the same issue, going to the moon does not even rate a mention.

That pledge is often reported today as a directive for NASA. But that was not within Kennedy’s power. Instead Kennedy was posing a question – would Congress agree to the proposal and would it authorise the funding? Congress could have said no, indeed with just 15 minutes of actual space flight behind them and a very uncertain path to the moon, logic appears to have been outmanoeuvred by the strength of Kennedy’s rhetoric. Two republican Representatives are quoted opposing Kennedy’s call for support: The Los Angeles Times reports Representative Steven Derounian from New York saying: “Not once did I hear him say a word pledging that we would not retreat one inch from the communist tyrants. This was a tired speech full of apologies.” Fellow member of the House, Representative Glenard P Lipscomb added: “This was a lot of words with not enough justification of needs.”

A counterview comes from James Baughman, biographer of American media giant Henry R Luce, the proprietor of Life, Time, and Fortune magazines. In an email exchange with this writer, Baughman recalled his research on Luce and the space programme, noting: “I’m struck, even now, by how few sceptics I could find, in the press and politics, regarding the space programme. I can think of only one senator, Norris Cotton of New Hampshire, who gently questioned JFK’s man on the moon proposal.”

With the hindsight of the President’s assassination and the subsequent success in landing a man on the moon in 1969, the rest of the speech has been forgotten. The final section has been raised to a mythical level at odds with its immediate reaction. It actually took a lot of legwork on Capitol Hill by Vice President Johnson, already the father of space legislation, to ensure that Congress supported Kennedy’s man on the moon funding request. This was achieved by promising a space-industry job boost, with the programme of works for Gemini and Apollo divided up among contractors in every State of the Union.

Kennedy was driven by political motives unrelated to any commitment to a moon landing. He had no great scientific or even romantic attachment to the race to the moon, but had done his homework prior to the May 25th speech. On April 20thth, just after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy wrote to Johnson, the space expert in the Administration, asking for the answers to five questions: “Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man? Is there any other space programme which promises dramatic results in which we could win?” Johnson assembled a committee of advisors including Frank Stanton, head of the broadcaster CBS, Donald Cook of American electric Power, George Brown from engineering company, Brown and Root, Air force Missile Chief Bernard Schriever, Senator Kerr, the newly-appointed chairman of the Senate Space Committee and NASA Administrator Jim Webb. In both a telephone conversation with Johnson and through a detailed five page memo, Von Braun provided a detailed argument to go to the moon. Johnson was convinced, and pulled the rest of the panel towards his view.

By April 23rd, Johnson had provided the answers and Kennedy had shifted his position from his immediate comments following Gagarin’s launch. At his press conference that day, he said: “If we can get to the moon before the Russians, then we should.” Johnson’s panel had convinced Kennedy that a lunar landing was viable for the Americans – but not for the Russians who were way behind on technology and would need an unfeasibly large rocket to lift their larger, heavier technology out of earth orbit and on the way to the moon. That panel was probably swayed more by Johnson’s strength of feeling than by a logical belief that a moon landing could be achieved within a decade. Even his phrasing: “Before this decade is out”, gave Kennedy a get-out card. Even if he fulfilled a complete two-term presidency, Kennedy would almost certainly be out of office before the moon landing. If it failed, it would not be on his watch – and potentially could be laid at the feet of Johnson, the Administration’s most persuasive space advocate. And that would likely be the case if the Soviets got there first as well.

Whereas the media had set the space agenda for Eisenhower, Kennedy had turned the tables. He was now attempting to set the agenda, using the New Frontier of space as a way to regain standing and challenge the Soviets to what Wolfe describes as ‘single combat’ on the Cold War battlefield. Domestically, the speech coalesced all thinking around space on one goal. The public, press and networks were now focused on one message that summed up the “invention, innovation imagination, decision” of Americans. The President’s claim that: “No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long range exploration of space, and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish” recalled the romance and adventure of Lewis and Clark.

Coupled with the relief and outpouring of positivity that Shepard’s successful Mercury flight had achieved, and the carefully-nuanced image of an All-American Astronaut elite ready to struggle against the unknown travails of space, the mixture was potent. Congress would never turn Kennedy down, and the perceived failure to get an American into space first could be turned into a positive: a catalyst for America’s next great adventure. However, not all the elements were truly aligned yet, and a Gallup poll completed as Kennedy spoke showed that the public remained sceptical of the President’s pledge being delivered. Asked whether participants viewed the US or Russia as being ahead in the Space Race, the response was evenly split. And on which would be first to send a man to the moon, 34% said the US, 33% said Russia and 33% didn’t know . There was clearly still much work to be done on public opinion.

Rep. Lipscomb’s comments on the speech: “This was a lot of words with not enough justification of needs” were prescient. Kennedy had put the building blocks in place to turn the media and public opinion on space from adversary through ally to involved partner. He had set a goal that defined the next lap of the space race. He had made space a core part of the Administration’s policy. He had control of the agency that would deliver space success. But still there were sceptics in the media and in Congress. The US had just 15 minutes of space experience and was clearly still some way behind the Soviets. The moon seemed an awfully long way away. What would make the difference was action. As the final chapter will show, that ‘action’ came in the form of the flight of Friendship 7.
 

This is the introduction and first chapter of my Master's Dissertation which gained an 'A' as part of my overall MA with Distinction. All the material is copyright to Mark Shanahan, 2010. As it forms the basis for my PhD research, I would be grateful for any feedback and comment.

Introduction

The Space Race was a media construct from the outset. The prestige of the United States was materially damaged by its failure to put the first satellite in space, and while President Eisenhower was comfortable for the Soviets to be the first nation in space, and had no plans to create a 'race', public perception, fanned by radio broadcasts and printed media was very different, and worked against the US President and his chosen stance.

Through Sputnik, and the early Soviet manned spaceflight programmes, Khrushchev exploited America's slow start in rocket and satellite development, propagandising the Soviet space programme as a means of creating a false impression of the relative power of the Superpowers. In the US, Johnson, first through his position in Congress and then as VP to Kennedy following the end of Eisenhower’s presidency, grabbed the space mantle and politicised NASA's efforts as a weapon to fight back against the Soviet threat to US power. In so doing, he and, most publicly, the youthful, photogenic Kennedy, the master of political rhetoric, galvanised media support behind an ambitious rocket programme under the auspices of the new agency reluctantly created on Eisenhower’s watch: NASA. The US media cohort finally bought into this acceleration in the race only following the flight of a true ‘Right Stuff’ All-American hero, John Glenn.

As a means of fighting the Cold War on a very public front, using missiles without warheads, the Space Race provided a compelling vehicle for Eisenhower’s successor, John Kennedy. Through a carefully managed media campaign, supported by the Cold War typewriter warrior Luce and the Time/Life organisation, the Mercury Seven’s growing success came to epitomise all that was good about the Kennedy administration – and deflected the national security issues around unmanned space missions, notably the growing number of military reconnaissance satellites the US had in the sky. Indeed, by setting a goal that America could buy into, heightened, articulated and analysed by a hungry media, Kennedy’s administration created a righteous weapon to use in the fight against the perception of the growing threat of communism.

In the space of just three and a half years, the role and influence of the media changed significantly. Under Eisenhower’s watch, the US press and broadcasters surprised the President and prompted significant action beyond his wishes. By reacting to Khrushchev’s missile and space pronouncements, the media talked up a race that didn’t exist, and gave credence to the notion of the USSR as a technological superpower when the reality was that all the Soviets had was a launch rocket with significantly more thrust than any American equivalent. But whereas under Eisenhower, the tail may well have been wagging the dog, under Kennedy the role was reversed and, the new President was able to galvanise the power of the media behind his aim to overturn the perception of Soviet power by making the race to the moon a ‘safe’ battlefield for prosecuting the Cold War.

While there has been analysis of the space race as the culmination of the US frontier spirit – Murray and Bly Cox comes to mind here; as a triumph of technology coupled with the human spirit – any number of participant memoirs as well as the works of Launius, Cadbury, Seamans and Chaikin apply here; and the political distraction from the perceived missile gap, Bay of Pigs fiasco and social unrest within US borders, one looks to McDougall and Dallek as authorities; there has been little, if any significant analysis on the shaping role that the media – and its associated NASA/Governmental public affairs - played in the space race.Media memoirs recall the reporting of individuals, but comment little on the influence they brought to space policy as a subset of Governmental policy. And while this piece is limited in time scope to the first four and a half years of the space race, it will endeavour to provide a historian’s exploration into how influential the media was in creating and embedding an appetite for space exploration around the world.

One might argue that the most effective media influence on the space programme came towards the end of the Apollo period when, moon landing completed, the news agencies and broadcasting companies cut their coverage significantly and cast around for ‘new news’ stories. Suddenly the visceral sore of the last stages of the war in Vietnam and the actions of Senator Edward Kennedy at Chappaquiddick, had pushed Apollo off the front pages and relegated the moon landings well down the broadcast news agenda – only for the fire to be rekindled, briefly, by the heroism of failure with Apollo 13. However, this dissertation focuses on the early years of the Space Race, primarily from the launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, to the completion of John Glenn’s first American orbital mission in 1962. It will assess how a national security issue became one of prestige as each side aimed to use its achievements to enhance their relative status, and how the US media finally found alignment with the US governing executive and its fledgling space agency to add the power of imagery and dialogue to the race to the moon.

How space became a race

Following the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite on October 4 1957, the Chicago Daily News declared that if the Soviets “could deliver a 184-pound ‘moon' into a predetermined pattern 560 miles out into space, the day is not far distant when they could deliver a death-dealing warhead onto a predetermined target almost anywhere on the earth's surface.” The intense surprise at the Soviets’ action was global. A day later, in the UK the Manchester Guardian ran an editorial titled ‘Next Stop Mars. The columnist wrote: “The achievement is immense. It demands a psychological adjustment on our part towards Soviet society [and] Soviet military capabilities.....the Russians can now build ballistic missiles capable of hitting any chosen target anywhere in the world.....Clearly they have established a great lead in missile technology.”

The US was simply not used to coming second in any technological endeavours and the USSR’s success was hard to stomach. In its editorial, The Nation, entitled Red Moon over the US, the October 14th issue of the news weekly Time stated that Sputnik 1 opened “a bright new chapter in mankind’s conquest of the natural environment and a grim new chapter in the Cold War......Russia’s victory in the satellite race proved that the US had not tried hard enough.”

This chapter discusses the elements that came together: media speculation, public fear, secret intelligence, Presidential misreading of the public and an opportunistic Soviet leader to make space such a high profile issue for the last years of Eisenhower’s Presidency.

The popular impact of Sputnik 1’s launch went far beyond its scientific value. It was not seen nor reported simply as a scientific triumph (other than by the TASS news agency in Pravda and on Radio Moscow ), but as a direct threat to the USA’s national security and by implication, the security of the non-communist world. “Death dealing warhead” and “capable of hitting any chosen target anywhere in the world” shows a level of language that was intent – consciously or not – on sowing fear in a society that had only recently come to terms with the Soviets as an H-bomb power. Yet one must question whether Sputnik 1 was a thought-out aspect of Khrushchev’s great plan for systematic revolution – or more a case of happenstance.

It may be argued that the Soviet leader simply benefited from an engineer’s vision to conquer space, and US fear of a ‘missile gap’. However, Sputnik 1’s success was largely down to Khrushchev’s growing understanding of the potency of symbolic gestures in the Cold War climate of tension. It also relied on a US President fettered by the knowledge of the real relative missile strengths of the Superpowers, and the inability to share that knowledge without compromising a significant intelligence advantage. So while elements of the media reacted hysterically to Sputnik 1, for security reasons Eisenhower was unable to respond in a way that could diffuse the situation.

It’s notable that the media was already reporting a ‘race into space’ and a ‘race for satellites’ in the immediate wake of Sputnik 1’s launch. Eisenhower never wanted a Space Race but was harried into a response to Khrushchev’s actions by a media both obsessed with space, and seemingly unable to differentiate between rockets without warheads – focused on manned and unmanned space exploration - and those carrying nuclear warheads offering both offensive and defensive security capability. The US media had been obsessed with space since the early days of rocketry though they often confused scientific fact and science fiction. This confusion was amplified in the public, as evidenced along the East Coast in October 1938, when a radio adaptation of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds tapped into significant public gullibility. While thousands were panicked by the fear of invasion from Mars, the lure of space and space travel was already a staple of film, notably through Fritz Lang’s 1929 classic Frau im Mond, as well as the fiction of HG Wells and Jules Verne.

On both sides of the Atlantic, comic books glamorised space adventure. In the UK, The Eagle led each week with the Dan Dare, pilot of the future - while his stories were also voiced each night on Radio Luxembourg in a popular radio series. In the US, Buck Rogers ruled the airwaves and the syndicated comic strips. More serious science fiction was flourishing with iconic titles such Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, capturing the public imagination. But the 1950s also saw the rise of popular science on television and at the fore was the inventor of the V2 rocket, and SS Major, Werner Von Braun.

By the mid 50s, he was a US citizen and had been working for the US Army for almost a decade. The first half of that spell had seen little advance in rocketry in the US as Truman’s policies had focused on an aircraft-based nuclear strike force. And Von Braun’s media activities were focused as much on his bosses as the American public as the rocket scientist lobbied for more funding and status for missile – and by implication space rocket – research. An opportunity to work with Walt Disney on national television network ABC did much to raise Von Braun’s profile while cementing the potential of spaceflight as an aspiration for America.

The growth of TV as the mass media of choice, especially in America was phenomenal in the 1950s and early ‘60s. In 1950 fewer than 8% of American families owned TV sets. By 1954, more than half had televisions. By 1957, 78% of families were set owners, and by 1964, almost everyone - 92% of families had become TV viewers. New channels demanded factual content to balance the family entertainment of Lassie, Father Knows Best, and I Love Lucy. News broadcasting changed from newsmen simply reading the news to shows with taped pictures of events from around the world, and then to more and more live broadcasts of events happening at the time of viewing. In the late 1950s, the battle between print and television as the prime medium was at its height. By the mid 1960s, television would be dominant. Sensing the rising influence of the media, Von Braun, frustrated by a lack of support for his team’s rocket development, turned to both magazines and television to wake up the world to the possibilities of space travel. He did not use comic strips or science fiction, but spelled out what could be possible if only government would support his efforts.

In a bid to reinforce the promotion of his new theme park, Walt Disney linked up with ABC to launch a new TV show – Disneyland – in 1954. The format varied each week, ranging from animations to science instruction programmes. By 1955 it was ranked by TV pollsters Nielsen as the fourth most popular show across the nation. Disney had read Von Braun’s series of articles in Collier’s Magazine, where the rocket engineer had sought to spread the space exploration gospel. The articles prompted two spin-off books, Across the Space Frontier in 1952 and Conquest of the Moon a year later. Von Braun was being seen and heard at many more space-related events. His biographer, Bob Ward, notes that he hit the speechmaking trail in the early 1950s, and would accept invitations from “any semi-respectable group that would invite him.” With his charm, quirky German accent, opinion on everything and mission to explain, he became an obvious choice for Disney. Disney was not being altruistic: he was looking for a scientist to ally with his soon-to-be-opened ‘Tomorrowland’ at his California theme park. Von Braun opened with a documentary Man in Space, following with Man and the Moon and Mars and beyond. All three programmes received excellent viewing figures in the US and were significant in building the momentum to educate Americans in the wonders of the coming space age.

Von Braun was convinced he had the technology and capability to put the first object into space, and appeared to have the opportunity to do as a response to Eisenhower’s 1954 announcement of the International Geophysical Year, planned to run not for a year, but from July 1 1957 to December 1 1958 . This was Eisenhower’s effort to differentiate a science-(and civilian) based space exploration effort from the missile race he was at pains to avoid. The President encapsulated his attitude in 1960.Responding to a press question asking whether he felt any sense of urgency to catch-up the Russians’ missile development and entry into space, he said: “I am always a little bit amazed at this business of catching up. What you want is enough, a thing that is adequate. A deterrent has no added power, once it has become completely adequate, for compelling the respect of your opponent for your deterrent and, therefore, to make him act prudently.”

Eisenhower’s attitude towards a missile race – and the new forum for Cold War competition that space offered - was a stolid resistance to the demands made often in the media and among his opponents on Capitol Hill to embark on very public, very visible and potentially highly expensive crash programs to compete with the Soviet Union. His economic view on defence spending was close to the parsimony of post-war Truman. Callahan and Greenstein describe it as ‘conservatism along with a strategic doctrine that rejected overkill’. He saw economic peril in every budget increase and was less concerned than many of his contemporaries about the Soviet threat. He was also seemingly unconcerned by ‘prestige’ and the prospective damage to national prestige that being beaten into space by the Soviets might deliver.

His apparent lack of concern came from CIA intelligence reports; not least analysis of the pictures captured by U2 spy plane over-flights of Soviet territory that showed clearly that the Soviets had few ballistic missiles and few, if any, aircraft capable of posing a nuclear threat to the US. So with hindsight, his reaction to the launch of Sputnik 1 is entirely understandable. But Democratic politicians on Capitol Hill did not have that access to intelligence. What they did have was access to the Washington reporters and to every local newspaper and radio station in their locale. And how the likes of Symington, Johnson and even, to an extent, Nixon, chose to fill their days after Sputnik’s beep-beep-beep was first heard - across the world’s radio networks - was by talking to journalists and fanning the flames of a non-existent missile crisis.
It is ironic to note that even in Moscow, the initial media interest in the launch of Sputnik 1 did not capture the significance of the launch and was distinctly low-key. The Soviet public first learned of the “scientific experiment conducted at such a high altitude” through a down-page article on the front of Pravda. The issue that day was led by Marshall Zhukov’s visit to Yugoslavia, and the Sputnik announcement was initially made with no hype, little triumphalism and, under just the terse banner ‘TASS announcement’.

The article stressed the peaceful and scientific nature of the mission and the authorities clearly had not yet seen the propaganda possibilities that the launch offered. It is worth noting that the authorisation to proceed with a Soviet satellite project had come from the Praesidium of the Academy of Sciences on August 30, 1955 . As the proposal was not for a major weapon project, it received lower priority status and this didn’t require approval from the party leadership.

While the Soviets had stated more than a month before that they were ready to launch a satellite , specific details were shrouded in secrecy, with appearing only when Sputnik was safely in orbit broadcasting to the world.

As much is unsaid as said in the article – clearly Sputnik 1 didn’t deliver much in the way of ‘scientific research’. This was merely a step to beat the America into orbit. The Soviets’ chief rocket designer, Korolev had planned to launch Sputnik 1 on October 6th, but learned that the Americans were to present an IGY paper in Washington that night entitled ‘Satellite In Orbit’ . Assuming that this implied a US launch on or just before October 6th, he brought Sputnik’s launch two days forward. However, while this was a simple, stripped down satellite containing little more than a radio transmitter, Korolev launched it into retrograde orbit – travelling east to west. Given that this required a significantly greater thrust to achieve orbit, this was clearly was intended to show the Americans that the Soviet launch vehicle (essentially their ICBM launch vehicle) was more powerful than anything the Americans had or planned.

Pravda’s text is notable in that none of the key figures in the development of the R7 launch vehicle or Sputnik satellite is named – Korolev and his team were deemed to be at risk of kidnap or death by western agents and therefore they were never, in life, given publicity. But most significantly, while the report closes with a generic socialist homily, there is no specific political statement – no message from Khrushchev. This supports the assertion that neither he nor the Politburo saw the political and propaganda significance of this scientific achievement at this stage. According to his son Sergei’ , Khrushchev was in Kiev when he learned of the launch and was certainly not waiting expectantly for any pre-planned outcome.

The reaction in the West over the coming days delighted him; highlighted the significance of the successful launch; and gave him a fantastic propaganda tool for foreign policy. The western world woke up to being over-flown by a Soviet satellite. For Khrushchev, from this night on, the space programme was never about space exploration. It was a bold display of military might meant to match – and indeed top – America’s own frequent displays of firepower.

In response to the launch, US Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson wrote: “Now, somehow, in some new way the sky seemed almost alien. I also remember the profound shock of realizing that it might be possible for another nation to achieve technological superiority over this great country of ours.” Around the world, despite Eisenhower’s apparent calmness, the media response – and public shock - was intense. General James Gavin, a member of the US ICBM development team described it as ‘a technological Pearl Harbour’ – though it of course provided a great lever to swiftly put the US IBCM programme into over-drive. The western media focus was on the possibility of sending not a rocket into space, but a nuclear warhead from Moscow to the west.’ The New York Times screamed with a rarely-used three deck headline: “Soviet Fires Earth Satellite Into Space: It Is Circling The Globe at 18,000mph: Sphere Tracked In 4 Crossings Over US.” When Pravda realised the significance of the launch, it chose not to laud the Soviet achievement directly, but to reproduce stories and headlines from the Western media together with congratulatory messages from the world’s major leaders.

Eisenhower understood better than most the real situation the Soviets were in, but could reveal little of this without undermining US surveillance efforts. He did not comment officially on the launch until October 9th when he issued a statement prior to his White House news conference, congratulating the Soviets for their achievement. But, his composure concealed an ulterior motive. Eisenhower and the U.S. intelligence community had been evaluating proposals for an orbiting military reconnaissance satellite, but had been grappling with the political ramifications of Soviet reaction to over-flights of its territory. The launch of Sputnik effectively ended those concerns, allowing the United States to pursue a policy of space as an ‘open platform,’ establishing that national boundaries did not extend into space. Donald Quarles, Eisenhower's assistant Secretary of Defence, commented to the President on October 7th that the Soviets: “have, in fact, done us a good turn, unintentionally, in establishing the concept of freedom of international space”, a principle which the Soviets could not now refute.

It is worth remarking that Eisenhower waited a full five days after Sputnik 1’s launch to respond to the media and he was taken aback by their hostility at his news conference on October 9th. His belief was that the early hysteria of ill-informed press responses such as the Chicago Tribune’s lead would dissipate once he provided the calm reassurance that had previously been readily accepted by the Washington press corps. Indeed, the President had been used to an easy ride from the press corps. He was still revered as the great war leader and the man who had brought an end to the war in Korea within six months of assuming the presidency. While financially conservative, he had presided over a period of strong economic growth and his approval ratings remained high. As Ambrose said: “Trust Ike was the watchword.” But now he faced journalists ready to ask tough questions and, seemingly, unwilling to believe the administration’s view that Sputnik was just “a silly bauble”.

Ambrose describes the news conference as the most “hostile” Eisenhower faced in his career. And while the transcript clearly shows the 1950s politeness and deference the press was used to operating by, there are some sharp questions that Eisenhower did not deal with particularly effectively. United Press International Reporter Merriman Smith, noting the satellite launch and the Soviet claim to have successfully launched an ICBM – both ahead of the US -challenged the President as to what he was going to do about it. Robert Clark of Associated Press echoed his colleague, asking if the Russians were now ahead of the Americans. ‘Miss May’ Craig, Washington Correspondent for the Portland Marine asked Eisenhower if the satellite gave the Russians the ability to launch missiles from platforms in space, while NBC’s Hazel Markel nailed the country’s concerns, asking: “Are you saying at this time, with the Russian satellite whirling about the world, you are not more concerned or overly concerned about our nation’s security?”

Eisenhower’s response was measured and downplayed – as had been his responses to the previous questions. He had denied the link between the satellite and ICBMs; he had downplayed the Soviet satellite advantage, though he acknowledged it as a psychological success. He had allayed Miss Craig’s fears stating that the satellite was most certainly not a nuclear missile platform, and now sought to allay those of the whole nation. He said: “I see nothing at this moment, at this stage of development that is significant in that development as far as security is concerned.” Indeed, he felt that the Soviets had done little more than ”put one small ball in the air. ”

This set the tone for Eisenhower in the coming weeks as he faced down demands for nuclear shelters, for bombers and more and better bombs, for more missiles and for a sea of dollars to get an American satellite into space even more quickly. For Ambrose it was “one of his finest hours.” Regarding Sputnik coolly, he saw no increased threat. Indeed, at this stage, pouring money into a catch-up satellite programme seemed only an opportunity to build a huge budget deficit in what was likely to be a year of recession anyway. However, the media was rolling Sputnik and a perceived deficit in the missile race into one issue, something Eisenhower would not do. Eisenhower saw military missile development as something entirely separate from a contest in space, and knew that American technology outstripped Russian equivalents in all areas other than a heavy lift ballistic booster. But the public mood was simply not on the same wavelength as the President, and the launch of Sputnik 2 to coincide with the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution caused Eisenhower to modify his response and set the scene for the space race proper .

Sputnik 2 was another propaganda coup for Khrushchev, putting the dog Laika into orbit just a month after Sputnik 1’s launch. Behind the scenes, Eisenhower had been manoeuvring to educate the public beyond the media’s speculation. He still saw no substantiation that the Soviets actually had a workable, accurate and reliable ICBM, and urged both Nixon and Dulles to stress these points. Nixon used this argument in a public speech in San Francisco on October 15th, and Dulles in a meeting with the press a day later. But the facts seemed to refute the administration’s thinking: Sputnik 2 carried a 1,121lb payload, which underscored the strength of the Soviet rockets. The fact its payload was a dog implied the Soviets were focused on manned space flight. Near-hysteria followed in the popular press. Time noted: “The Soviet rocket generated a total thrust more than enough to power an atomic bomb to the moon, more than enough to power a missile around the earth.....In such an apocalyptic week, communism's new coalition of dazzling technology and cutthroat politics represented an epochal threat to the free world.”

Internationally, even sober journals such as Spaceflight, the journal of the British Interplanetary Society, added warnings to the President on the apparent power of the Soviet rockets. “It is… logical to assume that at least in the early development stage (the rocket) was a military project, having as its goal the delivery of an H-bomb warhead over perhaps 5,000 miles.”

Rather than repeat his almost passive response to Sputnik 1, Eisenhower chose to address the nation via television on November 7th. He addressed the fear in people’s minds about national security. In seeking to soothe nation, he said: “We are well ahead of the Soviets in the nuclear field both in quantity and quality. We intend to stay ahead.” In fact, perhaps the greatest consequence of Sputnik’s launch was a redoubling of US efforts to build ICBMs and other nuclear strike forces. The perceived missile gap in favour of Moscow was swiftly replaced by an actual gap in Washington’s favour. Yet even this was not so much an action of Eisenhower, but of a Congressional team led by Johnson looking for a lever to enhance his own standing on the Democratic ticket for the 1960 election, and to ensure the Democrats caught the popular will to beat the Soviets. Following Sputnik 2’s launch, Johnson used the Preparedness Sub-Committee within Congress to “ask the people in charge to tell us...how we can regain the leadership.” Over the next two months, Johnson played the subtle partisan, exposing the Administration’s flaws in developing a credible missile and space programme and enabling him to present himself as the country’s leading advocate for space exploration. This initial investigation led to Johnson’s prime role in 1958 as the architect of the legislation that enabled the creation of NASA.

As owner of a number of TV and radio stations across Texas through Texas Broadcasting (later the LBJ Company) Johnson was certainly the most media-savvy politician at the time. Now he also had an issue to use as his personal battering ram towards the Democratic Presidential nomination. Time reported his addressing the 1958 Democratic Caucus saying: "Our national potential exceeds our national performance. Our science and technology has been, for some time, capable of many of the achievements displayed thus far by Soviet science. That the Soviet achievements are tangible and visible, while ours are not, is a result of policy decisions made within the governments of the respective nations. the evaluation of the importance of the control of outer space made by us has not been based primarily on the judgment of men most qualified to make such an appraisal. Our decisions... have been made within the framework of the Government's annual budget. This control has, again and again, appeared and reappeared as the prime limitation upon our scientific advancement . . . What should be our goal? If, out in space, there is the ultimate position—from which total control of the earth may be exercised—then our national goal and the goal of all free men must be to win and hold that position."

The tone of the Time piece was very favourable towards the Texan Democrat.
Towards the end of 1957, Eisenhower’s approval ratings had fallen from 79% to 57% - by far the lowest rating of his presidency. For once the media appeared to hold the high ground, with the influential weeklies lined up against a perceived slow-moving presidency. Indeed, Time crowned Khrushchev its man of the year for his Sputnik successes. American prestige dropped further with the first test of America’s Vanguard rocket. This was to be launched from Cape Canaveral in a blaze of publicity – literally. For the scientists, this was an merely a staging point on the way to perfecting the Vanguard rocket, but to a public and media stung by America’s second-best status, this ‘launch’ was all about catching up the Soviet space lead – albeit with a 6.5lb satellite. But the US space effort was to be humiliated further when ‘Test Vehicle 3’ exploded four feet off the pad. Thanks to live TV coverage, enabled by the Eisenhower’s demand that International Geophysical Activities be entirely open to public scrutiny, millions watched the unfolding debacle in amazement. The humiliation of the spectacle was global: in London, the Daily Express led next day with the headline: ‘US calls it Kaputnik’. The Daily Herald was no less scathing with: ‘Oh what a flopnik!’ The French were ‘obscure’ with Paris-Journal’s “It seems there is a worm in the grapefruit”, while the US regional dailies could be summed up by the Louisville Courier-Journal which reported: “A shot may be heard around the world, but there are times when a dud is even louder.” At the United Nations, the tongue-in-cheek Soviets asked their American counterparts if the US might wish to receive assistance under the Soviet programme of foreign aid for technical assistance to backward nations.

While America finally lurched into space with Explorer 1 on Von Braun’s Redstone in January 1958, public opinion believed that the US still lagged behind the Soviets. Lyndon Johnson, the Senate majority leader summed up the critical thinking around the public fear of Soviet domination in space. “There is something more important than the ultimate weapon,” Johnson declared. “That is the ultimate position – the position of total control over Earth that lies in outer space.”

While Eisenhower had been willing to let his three armed services compete to develop both satellites and missiles in the hope that competition would bring forth rapid technological advance, the effect had not been what he hoped for. Instead, the administration appeared weak for the first time. Eisenhower looked to have no cohesive space policy; to have lost the lead in the arms race and to have hindered progress in putting the US ahead in space by the very fact he had allowed the US air Force Army and Navy to compete on missile development. Public opinion, fuelled by a critical media, insisted he now had to act decisively to bring coherence to the space programme and a clear separation from what would be seen by the Soviets as aggressive military spending. Eisenhower had already named MIT’s James Killian as Head of the President’s Scientific Advisory Council, bringing all the rival services together under one missile czar. Now, on July 29th 1958 he formally established NASA, building on the existing National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to add “Importantly to our knowledge of the Earth, the Solar System and the Universe.” NASA’s role was to ensure the USA’s leadership in space science, but it would come to life for the American public – and thus be deserving of the necessary federal dollars - only by putting a man in space and, after the Sputnik humiliation, getting there first.

Without the media reaction to Sputnik, it is impossible to think that Eisenhower would have increased US investment in space as quickly or to the extent that he did before his presidency ended. While he was held in huge esteem as a successful war leader, he was the last of the old-school warriors who had fought a war with manpower and aircraft. He was not of the rocket age. It is clear too that much of the action and activity to bring the US into the Space Race was not of Eisenhower’s doing. As Sputnik 1 was followed by the heavier and more complex Sputniks 2 and 3, he was continually urged to respond to the apparent shows of Soviet space might. In setting up NASA as a civilian organisation, he was responding to a suggestion from Vice President Nixon to convert the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics into the civilian and space-science orientated National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Congress supported Nixon’s suggestion and in fact the 1958 Space Bill was drafted and introduced to Congress by the Democrat Senator and Majority Leader, Lyndon B Johnson. With a Presidential election looming in 1960, it is clear that both Nixon and Johnson assessed that space, and closing the rocket and missile gap, would be a leading issue in the debate. As the next chapter will show, both were manoeuvring to be in a strong position to use the space race issue in the fight for the White House.

Yet one should not underrate Eisenhower’s contribution to NASA’s foundation. Nor should one disregard his influence on attempting to win the next lap of the space race, namely putting a man in space. On October 1st 1958, the President removed the task of developing a man in space project from the military and gave it to the fledgling NASA. In less than a year, a sceptical President had created a funded, Congressionally-supported, non-military agency to manage the US’ scientific space efforts. This immediately put clear space between the peaceful exploration of space and military defence – where a parallel missile programme continued largely beyond the reach of the media and immediate interest of the public.

The newly-emerging US space programme was building on four foundations defined by the President’s Space Advisory Committee, namely: man’s thrust of curiosity; national defence; national prestige and scientific growth. Each was to play a strong role in Johnson and Nixon’s presidential aspirations, but found their true articulation with Kennedy. Meanwhile, the harsh military undertones of stockpiling ballistic missiles and developing ever-more refined launchers was seen as very different from NASA’s activities – despite the fact that they shared the same core technologies, research programmes and even launch sites. Yet while the nation was to back Kennedy in his drive to remove the perceived ‘missile gap’, it also saw an urgency not to win the Cold War with warheads, but through the prestige of winning the race to put man in space. With Congressional support, Eisenhower had provided the means to achieve this. Yet it was the media which provided the catalyst for him to act in the first place.