Ad Hoc Committee on Space (Jerome B. Wiesner, Chair), "Report to the President-Elect of the Ad Hoc Committee on Space," 10 January 1961. Available in the NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. John F. Kennedy was the first president-elect to set up high-level "transition teams" to advise him on issues that he would face upon assuming the presidency. This is one of 29 task forces that studied national policy for the president-elect. Chaired by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Jerome Wiesner, a member of President Eisenhower's President's Science Advisory Committee (and thus familiar with discussions inside the Eisenhower administration on space policy and programs), this report was very critical of the management of the human space flight program and urged Kennedy to distance himself from potential failures. It asserted that the U.S. holds "a position of leadership in space sciences," but not in piloted space flight, which the committee nonetheless holds to be inevitable for "the same motives that have compelled [man] to travel to the poles and to climb the highest mountains of the earth." It specifically suggested shying away from an aggressive project such as Apollo.
Divine, Robert A. "Lyndon B. Johnson and the Politics of Space." In The Johnson Years: Vietnam, The Environment, and Science. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987. Pp. 217-53. This excellent article traces the political leadership of Senator-Vice President-President Johnson concerning the space program from the Sputnik crisis of 1957 through January 1969. It emphasizes the role he played as chair of the National Aeronautics and Space Council in 1961 in investigating the option for the United States in Space and presenting to the president a well-crafted decision-package in favor of the Apollo commitment. It emphasizes his political acumen and ability to construct a coalition of interests supporting the lunar landing.
Dryden, Hugh L. "The Exploration of Space." Cosmos Club Lecture, 13 April 1959. Copy in NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquar- ters, Washington, DC. The nation's post World War II scientific elite, nurtured by the unprecedented federal investment in scientific research during the war, had as its Washington gathering place the Cosmos Club, located in one of the elegant Renais- sance revival mansions that line Massachusetts Avenue. NASA Deputy Administrator Hugh L. Dryden, who had spent most of his career at the National Bureau of Standards before his appointment in 1947 as Director of Research of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), was a Cosmos Club member and had served a term as its president. The Club was a fitting location for a lecture that laid out in some detail the broad agenda of space science and exploration envisioned for NASA in 1959. Interestingly, Dryden's view of NASA's long range objectives projected an orbiting space station as a prerequisite for the first human journey to the Moon.
_. "Exploring the New Frontiers of Space." An address to the Western Space Age Conference, Los Angeles, California, 5 March 1959. Copy in NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. Very similar to Dryden's Cosmos Club speech, this address sets out NASA's "inevitable" long-range plan and compares it to other exploits of discovery. He calls for human exploration of the Moon.
_. "The Next Fifty Years." Aero Digest. July 1953. In this article, the author, Director of the NACA wrote: "If there is any Twentieth Century aspiration which corresponds to that of the Nineteenth Century for the conquest of the air, it is perhaps that of the conquest of space with the early goal, travel to the moon. Like the conquest of flight during the Nineteenth Century, these concepts of space travel are the results of imaginative men to apply the technology of their day to the problem of interplanetary flight."
_. "Space Technology and the NACA." An address to the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, New York, NY, January 27, 1958. Copy in NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. In this speech Dryden forecasts the long-range goal as "development of manned satellites and the travel of man to the moon and nearby planets."
Hechler, Ken. Toward the Endless Frontier: History of the Committee on Science and Technology, 1959-1979. Washington, DC: U.S. House of Representa- tives, 1980. Contains the best account to date of Congressional wrangling over Project Apollo and demonstrates the bipartisan nature of both Apollo support and opposition.