Episode 3 - The Home Front (with Emily Margolis)

**Casey Dreier** (0:00)
This is A Political History of Apollo, a limited series podcast from The Planetary Society, exploring the reasons why the United States decided to send humans to the moon, and why the nation pulled back after landing only six times.
I'm Casey Dreier, The Planetary Society's Chief Advocate and Senior Space Policy Advisor. I'm going to be joined by some of the world's leading experts in space policy and history in interviews originally broadcast as part of our monthly show, Planetary Radio, Space Policy Edition. We grouped these interviews together in an attempt to tell a fuller story about Project Apollo. To get beyond the flags and footprints we so often see, and look at the deeper issues like the political prehistory of the space age, the Cold War, the political opposition and cultural impacts to the nation, and even look at the Soviet side of the space race to the moon. The show is a production of The Planetary Society, a non-profit dedicated to space science and exploration. So if you like what you hear, please consider joining or donating at planetary.org/membership.
This is episode three, The Home Front.
Not long after John F. Kennedy announced Project Apollo, the money began to flow.
In the fiscal year following its announcement, the White House requested and Congress provided a NASA budget nearly double that of the previous year. The following year in 1963, NASA's budget doubled again. But heading into 1964 and facing yet another proposed increase, Congress began to push back. It funded NASA, of course, but provided 10% less than that requested by the Kennedy administration. Now, this doesn't sound like much, but it represented the most significant disagreement up to that point between the two branches of government on the priority of the space program. Congressional hearings that year featured skeptics of Apollo and of its cost. Scientists submitted testimony and expressed their worry that Apollo would consume funding better spent on basic research and development. The public even began to question the value of the moon program, with upwards of 40% not approving of the effort in 1964 and ongoing majorities of the public believing that the effort was, quote, not worth the cost throughout the decade. Even President Kennedy began to reconsider his national commitment to Apollo and its stated goal of beating the Soviet Union to the moon. Listen to this part of a speech to the United Nations he gave on September 20th, 1963 And remember that he gave this just one year after he spoke at Rice University, stating that the moon race was something that the United States intended to win.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:11)
There is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon.
Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries, indeed of all the world, cannot work together in the conquest of space.

**Casey Dreier** (3:58)
Kennedy was assassinated just a few months after that speech, so we'll never know what could have happened had he remained in office. But it's possible that history would have unfolded very differently.
I raise these points about opposition and second-guessing because it's so easy to ignore them when looking back onto something as momentous and exciting as landing on the moon for the first time.
But I think it's important to remember that Apollo was not uniformly supported by the public, and it really did not depend on public support to succeed. And that's not really how we tend to look at it now. However, as we know and at the same time, there was an explosion of space-related cultural engagement in the United States both through mass media and in person through things like tourism. People really enjoyed the promise and optimism represented by space exploration. And despite the occasional pushback from Congress, NASA did get the money it needed to succeed in sending humans to the moon. Annual funding legislation at the time would pass with significant congressional majorities.
So to try to reconcile the opposition and support for the space program during this period, I spoke with Dr. Emily Margolis, whose dissertation, Space Travel at 1G, Space Tourism in Cold War America, explores these very issues.
Dr. Margolis, thank you for joining us today on the Space Policy Edition and the special series of Apollo podcasts that we're doing here at the Planetary Society. Previously, our listeners learned about why Apollo happened. The political and international context that created this weird nexus of funding availability for a massive space undertaking. And what I really want to explore today is the domestic side of that and the cultural impact. How did Apollo move forward? What was the impact to the public? And was it a smooth ride for that program? So just really to set the context for all of us, including you and I, who were not alive in the 1960s, we're coming out of the 1950s. You had Eisenhower, who himself was kind of coming out of this post-World War II era. The economy is starting to grow. You have this new thing called the interstate highway system, this huge massive public works project. You have a new type of maybe leisure class happening in the United States. What are some of the major themes and what are some of the major changes happening culturally and politically in the United States in the early 1960s when JFK announced Project Apollo?