Gerard DeGroot: The dark side of JFK's moon shot
[SUBHEAD] John Kennedy’s commitment to put a man on the Moon in the 1960s is often quoted – most recently by?Gordon Brown – as an inspired civic vision. Gerard DeGroot sees the reality somewhat differently.
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The Soviet launch of Sputnik on October 4th, 1957, plunged the American people into black despair. In one dramatic stroke, the Russians had undermined the credibility of the United States as a modern, dynamic nation. Worse still, it seemed that if the Russians could put a satellite into orbit, they could surely fire intercontinental ballistic missiles at American cities with deadly accuracy, a point made repeatedly by Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic frontrunner in the race for the presidency. He warned his fellow Americans that, if they did not wake up to the problem, before long the Russians ‘will be dropping bombs on us from space like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses’.
A few days later, when rockets were on everyone’s mind, Senator John Kennedy was enjoying a drink at Boston’s Loch Ober Café. The bartender introduced him to Charles ‘Doc’ Draper, a physics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Tech nology (MIT) who specialized in rocket guidance. Kennedy got into a good-natured argument with Draper about the value of rockets. While he accepted that they had some practical uses, like propelling nuclear weapons, the idea of exploring space seemed to him a fantasy suitable only for comic books.
Kennedy was, however, an ambitious man who had no intention of letting Johnson ride a rocket to the White House. He therefore decided to challenge LBJ in spreading fear. ‘If the Soviets control space’, he warned,
"... they can control the earth, as in past centuries the nation that controlled the seas dominated the continents. … We cannot run second in this vital race. To insure peace and freedom, we must be first."
In fact, Kennedy never remotely believed that Soviet space spectaculars endangered American safety, but he did realize that there were votes to be won from panic....
Read entire article at History Today
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The Soviet launch of Sputnik on October 4th, 1957, plunged the American people into black despair. In one dramatic stroke, the Russians had undermined the credibility of the United States as a modern, dynamic nation. Worse still, it seemed that if the Russians could put a satellite into orbit, they could surely fire intercontinental ballistic missiles at American cities with deadly accuracy, a point made repeatedly by Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic frontrunner in the race for the presidency. He warned his fellow Americans that, if they did not wake up to the problem, before long the Russians ‘will be dropping bombs on us from space like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses’.
A few days later, when rockets were on everyone’s mind, Senator John Kennedy was enjoying a drink at Boston’s Loch Ober Café. The bartender introduced him to Charles ‘Doc’ Draper, a physics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Tech nology (MIT) who specialized in rocket guidance. Kennedy got into a good-natured argument with Draper about the value of rockets. While he accepted that they had some practical uses, like propelling nuclear weapons, the idea of exploring space seemed to him a fantasy suitable only for comic books.
Kennedy was, however, an ambitious man who had no intention of letting Johnson ride a rocket to the White House. He therefore decided to challenge LBJ in spreading fear. ‘If the Soviets control space’, he warned,
"... they can control the earth, as in past centuries the nation that controlled the seas dominated the continents. … We cannot run second in this vital race. To insure peace and freedom, we must be first."
In fact, Kennedy never remotely believed that Soviet space spectaculars endangered American safety, but he did realize that there were votes to be won from panic....