Chasing the Moon Read online

  Not surprising given the tenor of the time, NASA gave no consideration to women as astronaut candidates. Despite the example of Jacqueline Cochran, who had set a series of historical firsts during a career as a military and air-race pilot, no woman in the United States had been granted an opportunity to gain experience as either a combat or test pilot. But provocative speculation never hurt sales, so the question of whether a woman might fly in space, and when, often arose in popular magazines. In reality, it was a non-issue, and NASA avoided public statements that would only exacerbate controversy.

  When Real, a publication that advertised itself as “the Exciting Magazine for Men,” had considered the question in 1958, it concluded that women would indeed have a place on lengthy future space missions—as crew members willing to ease the strong sexual urge of men in the prime of life. The author, Martin Caidin, who became a fixture among the Cape Canaveral press corps during the next decade, attempted to make his argument by considering the alternative: “If you ignore the problem, you’re letting yourself in for emotional dynamite and homosexuality—and that is not acceptable.” In a similar vein, whenever von Braun was asked a question about the possibility of women serving as astronauts, he usually responded with a wry smile and a prepared answer: “We have talked about adding provisions in the space capsule for one hundred twenty pounds of recreational equipment.”

  The seven smiling men pictured wearing sports shirts and crew cuts in the pages of Life magazine quickly eclipsed the celebrity of America’s most famous rocket man. When, shortly after their press conference, the astronauts visited Huntsville to see the rockets under development, von Braun said publicly that he found them wonderful people, “serious, sober, dedicated, and balanced.” But behind the scenes during the visit, von Braun and General Medaris were still trying to determine the fate of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency.

  Von Braun’s newest project was the Saturn, a cleverly improvised design for a large, heavy-lifting booster. Built from existing component parts, the huge rocket’s first stage was composed of a cluster of eight individual cylindrical Redstone rocket-size fuel tanks—each eighty feet high and five feet in diameter—surrounding a single, slightly larger Jupiter rocket tank. Five of the tanks, including the Jupiter tank in the center, carried liquid oxygen; the remaining four carried kerosene. Together, the Saturn’s six engines would produce 1.5 million pounds of thrust, enough to place a payload of ten thousand to forty thousand pounds into low earth orbit. While the Department of Defense and the Advanced Research Projects Agency had been planning large reconnaissance satellites, von Braun was thinking of other possible uses. He knew that if he could obtain funding to produce a small yet very powerful heavy-lifting booster and demonstrate its ability, the decision makers in Washington were more likely to approve the design of the next, slightly larger model. By progressing in steps to bigger and more powerful vehicles, he would eventually produce one capable of taking men to the Moon, an option von Braun was always working toward, even though no one in Washington was talking seriously about such an undertaking.

  NASA’s civilian man-in-space program was planning to use the military’s Redstone, Atlas, and Titan missiles for the early missions, but any ambitious later projects involving a space station or leaving earth orbit would require a bigger heavy-lifting rocket. Von Braun’s Saturn now seemed the likely workhorse for NASA’s longer-term future. With Eisenhower’s consent, the Army’s entire rocket development-operations division in Huntsville was brought under NASA’s umbrella as its rocket-development facility. Renamed the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, it became the agency’s largest facility when the transfer took place on July 1, 1960. For the first time in more than a quarter of a century, von Braun would no longer be working for a branch of the military. And his lifelong ambition to design the rockets that would take humans into the heavens was now a reality.

  While von Braun’s future with the Army was still under discussion, his past was being recreated on a Munich movie-studio soundstage. Columbia Pictures was producing I Aim at the Stars, a dramatic biopic intended to tell von Braun’s odyssey from a rocket visionary in Nazi Germany to an American hero. Playing von Braun was German actor Curd Jürgens, a familiar face from other recent Hollywood productions. British filmmaker J. Lee Thompson had intended the movie to address questions about the social responsibility of a modern scientist and what constitutes a war criminal, but these moral issues were lost in a screenplay that focused on telling an inaccurate and sanitized version of von Braun’s life. When the film opened in London, Munich, and New York, protesters handed out “Ban the Bomb” leaflets and displayed placards denouncing von Braun as a Nazi. However, the most bruising attack came from movie critics, and the film disappeared from movie theaters just as the final days of the 1960 presidential election were playing out on home screens. By the decade’s end, 88 percent of American homes had televisions. In addition to the novelty of the nation’s first televised presidential debates, the 1960 election marked a turning point in American politics, as the power of the image proved as crucial as the candidates’ spoken words.

  This was the first presidential election in which both candidates had been born during the twentieth century. Both had also served with distinction during World War II—one returning as a war hero who had saved lives. For those who had fought in the North Atlantic, in Europe, in the Pacific, and in Korea, the election of 1960 marked a dramatic generational shift.

  Watching the campaign from Huntsville, one World War II veteran saw something of himself in John Kennedy. Like the Massachusetts senator, von Braun had been born to privilege and wealth and, with a combination of charisma, intelligence, and persuasive rhetoric, had risen to national prominence. Hungry for a change after the cautious policies of the Eisenhower White House, von Braun thought Kennedy might be the right person to usher in the dawning age of human space travel. Kennedy was not afraid of making bold decisions, such as his choice to ignore the advice of campaign strategists and help secure the release of Martin Luther King, Jr., from an Atlanta jail cell during the final week of the campaign.

  Von Braun and his wife went to their local Huntsville polling place on Election Day and cast their ballots for the Democratic presidential candidate.

  As his second term was nearing its end, President Eisenhower was determined to deliver a final message to the American people. He had been contemplating the content of his farewell address for nearly two years and had labored over more than twenty drafts before appearing in front of live television cameras three days before the inauguration of the thirty-fifth occupant of the executive office. Considered by many the most important speech of his presidency, Eisenhower’s televised farewell famously voiced a warning about the increasing influence of the American military-industrial complex. In it he expressed respect for scientific discovery and the ways in which technology could improve lives, but he called equal attention to the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

  Eisenhower subsequently declined to elaborate in public about what specifically led him to make this speech. But some months later in a private conversation, a noted nuclear physicist asked the former president whether he had anyone in mind when he mentioned the scientific-technological elite.

  Eisenhower answered without any hesitation. He had two people in mind: physicist Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” and Wernher von Braun.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE NEW FRONTIER

  (1961–1963)

  JOHN KENNEDY CONVEYED a sense of confidence and ease as he strode to the podium. The youngest man ever elected president, Kennedy had not yet been in office for three months. Seated before him in the large State Department auditorium were more than four hundred journalists. Present in the room as well were three very large TV cameras. Today’s presidential news conference would be broadcast on live network television, as had be
come the custom in this new administration. Never attempted in the Eisenhower years, these afternoon exchanges between the president and the press were a new attraction, occurring nearly every other week, preempting afternoon soap operas and game shows.

  Kennedy’s apparent comfort before the cameras that afternoon gave little indication that the days ahead would define his presidency and greatly affect the course of the twentieth century. But April 12, 1961, had begun with extraordinary news. That morning the Soviet Union had announced the successful launch and return of the Vostok 1 spacecraft, carrying cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to enter outer space and orbit the Earth.

  The news was electrifying yet not entirely unexpected. For the past few days American intelligence sources had been predicting that the Russians might attempt such a feat. A few hours before the news conference began, viewers in Europe had seen the first live television images ever broadcast from inside the Soviet Union. A somewhat blurry transmission from Moscow presented a carefully orchestrated display in which Gagarin stepped from an airplane and strode across a red carpet toward a jubilant and beaming Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. The two men were then seen proceeding in a motorcade to a massive celebration in Red Square.

  The face of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin as reproduced on newspaper front pages around the world when he became the first human to travel into space on April 12, 1961. It was likely this photograph that caused Arthur C. Clarke to compare him to a modern-day Charles Lindbergh.

  In Washington, however, journalists were even more concerned with another subject: Cuba. Following the revolution two years earlier that had overthrown dictator Fulgencio Batista, American relations with the government of Fidel Castro had deteriorated badly. The United States broke off all diplomatic ties with Cuba only days before Kennedy was inaugurated. In one of his first actions, the new president approved a CIA plan for an armed invasion of this island nation, which he was assured would be carried out in such a manner that American involvement would remain entirely hidden. But in early April, newspapers reported that the United States was training an anti-Castro military unit in a remote Guatemalan base. This prompted the first question from one of the assembled journalists, asking Kennedy not about the Soviet launch but rather how far the United States was willing to go to assist an anti-Castro invasion. Kennedy’s careful response attempted to define the current situation as a conflict between opposing Cuban factions, with added assurance that under no circumstance would any American armed forces intervene militarily in Cuba.

  Considering the tension of the moment, the second question from the State Department auditorium, about Gagarin’s flight, was far easier to answer. Calling it “a most impressive scientific accomplishment,” Kennedy announced that he had sent his congratulations to the Soviet Union and reported that the United States had previously expected that Russia would be the first to orbit a human in space. But, he added, NASA had hopes of doing likewise within the year.

  However, a few minutes later—after another question about Cuba—a journalist confronted the president, noting that members of Congress and other Americans “were tired of seeing the United States second to Russia in space.” He wanted to know if additional spending would result in the United States being able to catch up and surpass the Soviet Union.

  “We are behind,” Kennedy conceded. “No one is more tired than I am.” And then, after alluding to von Braun’s Saturn rocket and other very expensive advanced space projects, he said, “We are, I hope, going to go in other areas where we can be first and which will bring perhaps more long-range benefits to mankind.” He went on to speak of the importance of developing technology to desalinate salt water to provide cheap fresh water to the developing world, something he admitted was not as spectacular as a man in space or Sputnik but an accomplishment that would dwarf any other scientific feat.

  * * *

  —

  BUT THE LONG-TERM beneficial implications of Russia’s achievement were not what caught the world’s attention that afternoon. Photographs of the handsome twenty-seven-year-old Yuri Gagarin soon appeared on the front page of newspapers throughout the world. Readers learned that he was the son of a carpenter and a milkmaid from a collective farm. He was described as a modest, five-foot-two-inch, hardworking, fit, quick-witted elite jet pilot, well liked by his comrades. In Ceylon, where he was now living, Arthur C. Clarke saw the photographs of Gagarin and immediately compared him to a modern-day Charles Lindbergh.

  The latest issues of Time, Newsweek, and Life, with Gagarin on the cover, were appearing on newsstands across the nation as the CIA’s collaboration with anti-Castro Cuba forces went into full swing. But the Bay of Pigs operation, as it came to be known, had an outcome far different from what Kennedy had been assured would happen. And when he failed to provide the necessary air support, the invasion turned into an unmitigated disaster. Instead of a rapid removal of the Castro regime, the Kennedy administration faced a diplomatic crisis and an international public-relations nightmare. Even worse, the Soviet Union’s leaders had begun to assume America’s photogenic new president was callow and weak.

  It was in the wake of these two isolated events, separated by less than a week, that the promise of space suddenly arose as a way to dramatically alter the narrative about America’s future and its standing in the international arena.

  A White House staffer heard Kennedy angrily complaining in the midst of the media frenzy about Gagarin. “If somebody can just tell me how to catch up. Let’s find somebody—anybody, I don’t care if it’s the janitor, if he knows how.”

  Prior to this moment, human spaceflight had not played a significant role in Kennedy’s imaginative or political thinking. Unlike Clarke and von Braun, Kennedy read no science fiction during his childhood. His bookshelf contained the classics encountered by most upper-middle-class boys his age: The Jungle Book, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, The Arabian Knights, and The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. The American pulp magazines, such as those Clarke bought from the table at the back of Woolworth’s, were not what a boy from an elite school like Choate should be seen reading. Rather, during his prep school years, young John Kennedy carried a copy of The New York Times under his arm. Reading books about space travel would have marked him as an intellectual lightweight.

  Life magazine’s White House correspondent observed that the new president had a weak understanding of space policy. His science adviser, MIT professor Jerome Wiesner, recalled that Kennedy hadn’t thought much about the issue during his first few weeks in office. While von Braun had voted for JFK, hoping that he might push the United States toward an ambitious spacefaring policy, those who knew Kennedy well had never heard him discuss such thoughts.

  By the time of Inauguration Day, 1961, there had already been eleven unpiloted flights to test hardware for the Mercury program—and the success rate was not good. The first flight of the Mercury Redstone the previous November had reached an altitude of four inches before the rocket settled back onto the launchpad. Kennedy’s one mention of space during his inaugural address was to suggest that “together we explore the stars,” framing such endeavors as a possible area of cooperation rather than competition. At the celebrity-studded inauguration gala, held the night before, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson watched from their boxes as the American space program was satirized by comedians Milton Berle and Bill Dana, the latter in character as reluctant astronaut José Jiménez, a skit that became wildly popular a few months later.

  Attending the gala was a thirty-four-year-old Chicago lawyer who had arrived in the capital by train a few hours earlier. Newton Minow had worked on Adlai Stevenson’s two presidential campaigns and had clerked at the Supreme Court in the early 1950s. Kennedy had asked him to serve as the administration’s new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, an agency in need of reform after a pair of highly publicized scandals.

  Like most who joined the new adminis
tration, Minow was a war veteran. He had enlisted in the Army at age seventeen and served in the Pacific during World War II. That experience had forced him to grow up quickly under unusual circumstances, a tempering that forged sobering realism with a sense of idealism and a desire to make a better world for coming generations. John Kennedy once spoke of himself as “an idealist without illusions,” a description that Minow thought succinctly summarized the generation that came to Washington to work with the new president.

  Television was still a young medium, but Kennedy was aware of its power and potential. He told his new FCC commissioner that he wouldn’t have been elected without it, echoing the widely held belief that the 1960 televised debates with Vice President Nixon were a decisive factor in his victory. But television was still evolving; broadcast journalism was primarily headlines read from wire-services reports, occasionally supplemented with filmed images. The three commercial networks’ national newscasts were only fifteen minutes in length, with reception for ABC available in only about half the country.

  On his first day on the job at the FCC, Minow met a senior commissioner on his new staff, an older man named T.A.M. (“Tam”) Craven, who was an engineer.

  “Do you know what a communications satellite is?” the older man asked.

  “No, I don’t,” Minow replied somewhat sheepishly.

  Craven groaned. “I was afraid of that.” He had been trying to get Washington interested in them. “It’s the one place where we are ahead of the Russians in space,” he explained, “but I can’t get anybody to do anything about it.”