74 HISTORY OF THI COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



The committee continued in I960 and 1961 to vote full funding for 

 Project Mercury. While the committee was urging accelerated action 

 on the schedule for Moon flights, NASA personnel were quietly 

 working behind the scenes on the future programs to send instrumented 

 and then manned flights to the Moon. NASA remained confident that 

 they would retain strong support in the Congress for these ventures. 



On July 29, I960, an unmanned Atlas-Mercury booster exploded one 

 minute after launch at Cape Canaveral. But NASA announced the 

 same day that planning had commenced on an entirely new manned 

 space flight program called "Apollo," a project to carry three men in 

 sustained orbital or circumlunar flight. The committee moved fast 

 to support the new program, and also to apply pressure to speed up 

 Mercury. 



A NEW ADMINISTRATOR FOR NASA 



With the inauguration of President Kennedy, Dr. T. Keith Glennan 

 resigned as NASA Administrator on January 20, 1961. A struggle ensued 

 over whether the new administrator should be a scientific or technical 

 expert, or whether he should be an individual with proven adminis- 

 trative experience. There is no evidence that the House committee in- 

 fluenced the decision, but it is clear that Capitol Hill was the dominant 

 force in directing the final choice. In meetings with President-elect 

 Kennedy and Vice President-elect Johnson in Palm Beach during 

 December 1960, Senator Robert Kerr (Democrat of Oklahoma) was 

 thoroughly briefed on his prospective role as the new chairman of the 

 Senate Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee which Johnson had 

 chaired. Chairman Brooks joined Kennedy, Johnson, and a special 

 group of scientists headed by Jerome Wiesner, for a January 10, 1961, 

 confab in Johnson's Capitol Hill office to discuss the future of space. 

 Wiesner headed up an "Ad Hoc Committee on Space" for the President- 

 elect, and later was named as President Kennedy's special assistant for 

 science and technology. Wiesner and Johnson clashed on several issues, 

 including what kind of person should be Administrator of NASA; 

 Johnson wanted a man with political savvy and administrative ability, 

 and Wiesner leaned toward an individual who had more scientific and 

 engineering background. 



In addition, Wiesner's committee issued a report labeling Project 

 Mercury as "marginal", expressed the fear that an astronaut might be 

 killed or not recovered from orbit, and urged a deemphasis of manned 

 space flight. 



Johnson, winning the power struggle with Wiesner, proceeded to 

 interview a large number of possible appointees. In his book, The Van- 

 tage Point, Johnson relates that President Kennedy wanted to offer the 



