gO HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



As the noon hour approached, Low announced that he had a 

 movie of the Ham flight, just produced the day before, which he 

 wanted to show the committee. Chairman Brooks responded: "We 

 better recess at this point, so you will have a prelude to your movie 

 when you present it to the committee." 



Low had scarcely finished his testimony on April 11 when an 

 event as shocking as Sputnik occurred, which spurred a radical change 

 in attitudes and timetables from the top to the bottom of the space 

 program. 



EFFECT OF GAGARIN FLIGHT 



On March 9 and 25, the Russians had successfully orbited and 

 recovered dogs in their spaceships. Suddenly on April 12 came the 

 electrifying news that Maj. Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin in a 5-ton 

 Vostok spacecraft had orbited the Earth in 89 minutes, returning safely 

 to Earth without any problems caused by weightlessness or reentry. 



In the early morning hours, many telephones rang to alert com- 

 mittee members and NASA officials with the skimpy details of the 

 Gagarin flight. Newsmen awakened John A. "Shorty" Powers, "the 

 Voice of Mercury Control" and public affairs officer for the Mercury 

 program at Cape Canaveral, to ask for a public statement. Powers 

 responded candidly: "We're all asleep down here." 



The House committee had scheduled Dr. Edward C. Welsh, Execu- 

 tive Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, for 

 April 12. Welsh appeared on behalf of legislation to make the Vice 

 President Chairman of the Space Council. He was battered with ques- 

 tions about the Gagarin flight. Initially, he told Chairman Brooks: 



You said before this bearing that you were woke up about 3 o'clock this morning 

 to receive some information, and so was I. So each of us missed that much sleep. 



Welsh realized what every NASA official soon discovered also, that 

 the Science Committee was expressing the insistent, demanding, senti- 

 ment of most Americans that it's about time we start doing something 

 to demonstrate our capabilities in space. The blows to national pride 

 caused angry reactions. There had been a brief honeymoon after Presi- 

 dent Kennedy took office, but it was obviously now over. NASA offi- 

 cials, in turn, were expected to demonstrate that they shared the sense 

 of urgency being strongly expressed through the committee. 



Representative James G. Fulton (Republican of Pennsylvania), 

 who had become the laughing stock of many Members by his repeated 

 announcements he wanted to make a flight himself, startled Welsh by 

 suggesting: 



I think we are getting to the point where if they are afraid, let more of us go 

 who aren't afraid of the risk. If it is good enough for Ham, and a chimpanzee can 

 do it, why couldn't a man do it? 



