Contrary to the popular view of John Kennedy as a space visionary, the president had little interest in space and strove to put humans on the moon only for its political importance. "I'm not that interested in space," he told NASA chief James Webb late in 1962.

The Kennedy Tapes

Listen to an excerpt of the White House tapes: [ACTIVATE PLAYER]

"We Choose to go to the moon ..." President Kennedy's speech at Rice University rallying the people to forge ahead in the Apollo program. [ACTIVATE PLAYER]

Kennedy made the remarks during a White House meeting about the space agency's priorities in late 1962, eighteen months after he urged the nation to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s.

Just 10 weeks before the November meeting, Kennedy had given a speech at Rice University, to help dedicate NASA's new Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center) near Houston. That speech is remembered for Kennedy's stirring declaration, "We choose to go to the moon! We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

In the Rice University address, Kennedy declared that space exploration was important not only for its technological and scientific benefits, but for its own sake. However, this speech, long considered a prime example of Kennedy's visionary stance on Apollo, contrasts with his private remarks on the newly declassified tape.

The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston has just released a tape recording of the meeting, which took place at the White House on November 21, 1962. In the meeting, Kennedy faced off against NASA Administrator James Webb, who pushed for a broader mission for NASA.

On the tape, Webb tells Kennedy that some of the nation's top space scientists doubt whether it is possible to send humans on a lunar voyage. "There are real unknowns about whether man can live under the weightless environment," he says. Committing to a manned lunar landing, Webb tells the president, could leave the country vulnerable to failure. Instead, Webb insists, landing on the moon should be only part of a broad effort by NASA to understand the space environment and its effects on human beings.

Webb's tone in confronting the nation's chief executive is fearless. Historian John Logsdon of George Washington University says Webb "must have felt very strongly about this," adding that there had been a running feud at NASA Headquarters about how much importance Apollo should have.

But Kennedy stands firm, telling Webb that the moon landing is NASA's top priority. " This is, whether we like it or not, a race. Everything we do [in space] ought to be tied into getting to the moon ahead of the Russians."

Kennedy's science advisor Jerome Weisner, also present at the meeting, agreed with his boss. Initially an opponent of the Apollo program, Weisner can be heard telling Kennedy that scientsts "don't know a damn thing about the surface of the moon," adding that the landing attempt could be "a terrible disaster" if NASA doesn't find out ahead of time what the lunar surface is like. (NASA at this time was already planning the unmanned series of Surveyor landers to answer that question.)

Webb isn't ready to give up his quest for a broader mission, however, and tells Kennedy that NASA's goal ought to be "preeminence in space." The President responds by saying, "We've been telling everybody for five years we're preeminent in space, and nobody believes us." Kennedy's call for a moon landing in 1961 came after the Russians had launched the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, to world acclaim.

"I don't think Kennedy ... had any strong views on the long-term importance of space exploration."
- Historian John Logsdon, George Washington University

Now, he tells Webb that beating the Russians to the moon "is the top priority of the agency and ... except for defense, the top priority of the United States government. .... Otherwise, we shouldn't be spending this kind of money, because I'm not that interested in space."

To Logsdon, the president's remarks challenge the popular view of Kennedy as a space visionary. "I don't think Kennedy, at the time he chose to do Apollo or any other time, had any strong views on the long-term importance of space exploration."

On the tape, Kennedy tells Webb, "I think it's good [to explore space], I think we ought to know about it, we're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we're talking about *fantastic* expenditures. We've wrecked our budget, and all the other domestic programs. And the only justification for it, in my opinion to do it [on this schedule] is because we hope to beat them, to demonstrate that starting behind, and we did, by a couple of years, by God, we passed them."