Why We Went to the Moon

There was history and poetry and raw power waiting out in the stars — to be assembled and shaped and used for the glory of the U.S. It was everything John Kennedy loved. It was why he was in the Oval Office.

And on the soft, clear evening of April 14, 1961 — two days after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went into his triumphal orbit and three days before the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion — Kennedy tilted back on the hind legs of a leather chair in the Cabinet Room and, I believe, decided to send Americans to the moon. I watched it happen in one of those unusual episodes when Kennedy opened a window on the inner White House for an outsider. Maybe he understood that, as astronomer Michael Hart wrote, the moon landing would “be forever remembered as one of the greatest achievements of the human race.” I think Kennedy, steeped in history, saw himself beside Thomas Jefferson sending Lewis and Clark to explore the West, and with Theodore Roosevelt building the Panama Canal.

The timing and rationale of the decision are disputed by historians and other experts. Many feel Kennedy’s commitment was a desperate political maneuver to lift himself out of the calamity of the Bay of Pigs and rally a nation nervous from escalating tension with the Soviet Union in Berlin.

But I saw something more that night, when Kennedy’s novice government still thought it would win at the Bay of Pigs, still had not encountered Nikita Khrushchev’s table pounding at the Vienna summit in June. I saw a very young American awed by the romance of the high frontier. I saw him brush aside the doubts and point this nation toward great adventure.

“What can we do now?” he asked his assembled experts, noting that the Soviet edge in big rockets enabled Gagarin to circle the earth. “Is there any place where we can catch them? Can we leapfrog?”

The answers were less than reassuring. NASA Director James Webb was not certain we could beat the Soviets to the moon. Chief NASA scientist Hugh Dryden thought it might take a program like the atom bomb’s Manhattan Project and cost $40 billion. (The entire federal budget was then $98 billion.) Budget Director David Elliott Bell asked where the money would come from. Staff aide Ted Sorensen brought up the financial needs of earthly social programs. Science adviser Jerome Wiesner, sucking on a cold pipe, wasn’t sure a manned lunar landing made good scientific sense.

Kennedy knew nations do not rally behind cost accountants. “If somebody can just tell me how to catch up,” he scolded. “Let’s find somebody — anybody. I don’t care if it’s the janitor over there, if he knows how.” Feet on the table, Kennedy pulled a piece of rubber off his shoe sole, which was built up to ease his back ailment. He ran his hands through his hair, tapped his teeth with his fingernails. He was only 43 and holding the world in his hands, and it was slippery. But he relished the challenge.

The sun faded outside, and the lights over the South Lawn came on as the discussion wound down. “There’s nothing more important,” Kennedy said quietly as he got up to leave. But what of the final commitment to go for the moon? I asked as he left the room. “Wait here,” he said, beckoning Sorensen to follow him into the Oval Office. A few minutes later, Sorensen came out. “We are going to the moon,” he said. So simple. But the decision committed the greatest power on earth to the unknown.

Kennedy’s conviction never wavered, nor did his determination. He ordered Lyndon Johnson, his Vice President and head of the Space Council, to bird-dog Congress for funds. He celebrated the early space rides of Alan Shepard and John Glenn as if they were great military victories. On space, he could sense the country uniting behind him even as other troubles mounted. “This is the new ocean,” he told the people. “The U.S. must sail on it and be in a position second to none.”

Just a couple of months before his death, Kennedy went to Cape Canaveral to view the first stage of the giant Saturn rocket. Even as his scientists argued off to the side about how to land men on the moon, the President for a moment stood alone beneath the huge booster casing, rocked back on his heels and stared up. For those seconds, I could see he was beyond the earth, above the quibbling technicians. He was riding with history. I think he knew it was going to work.

This week we will relive the excitement of the first Apollo moonwalk. We will argue what it all added up to for the average person. This was not like Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system, which meant a new freedom for all Americans. Apollo’s meanings are more difficult to grasp but may be more important. Historian Melvin Kranzberg insists that “man’s most abiding quest is the effort to understand himself in relation to the cosmos.”

But our moon legacy leaves a daunting question. Why can we not find such a national project in today’s contentious world that would give us a common purpose? What about a fleet of hypersonic transport planes that would move Moscow and Tokyo as close as Chicago? “Too many hands stirring the pot,” says Keith Glennan, the first director of NASA. He remembers the daring and boldness of the leaders back then and fears that those qualities can no longer be found in a political system that seems to honor timidity. Why not health care or welfare reform or the elimination of deficit spending by a certain date? Too many special interests, suggests former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, who has long pondered the question. Yet, he adds, “I could get behind a program on American unity.”

Maybe on this anniversary our task is to question again. Where’s our new moon? And who are the men and women to take us there?