“I Am Not That Interested in Space”

Abstract

one critical decision with respect to the lunar landing project still remained unsettled as President Kennedy prepared in September 1962 to make an inspection tour of the facilities being developed for the accelerated space effort. That decision was the best approach to getting astronauts to the lunar surface. NASA in July 1962 had selected as its preferred approach rendezvous in lunar orbit, a way to the Moon that had emerged in its consideration only at the very end of 1961. Kennedy’s science adviser Wiesner and his staff did not agree with this choice, and were actively pressuring NASA to reverse it in favor of an Earth orbit rendezvous approach. The president’s September 11–12 visit to NASA and industry installations was intended to give him an overview of the human space flight effort in preparation for the hard budget decisions that all knew were upcoming later in the year; it also exposed him to the ongoing argument about the choice of how best to fly to the Moon. It was also on this trip that John F. Kennedy at Rice University in Houston gave his most memorable address on the reasons why he had chosen to accelerate the U.S. space effort.