Trump, like Nixon, is Using Space to Look Great. Again.
By: Amy Shira Teitel
Tags: Apollo, Space, History, Nixon, Trump

1968 was not a good year for America. The decade had seen legislation to end racial injustice signed into law and protests against the slow pace of change. On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, sparking a new wave of protests. Americans were also growing increasingly opposed to the ongoing war in Vietnam, which led to more protests. 1968 was also an election year, and as the presidential race began to build momentum, Democratic hopeful Robert Kennedy was assassinated. It was ultimately Richard Nixon, running on a campaign promise of restoring law and order to the United States, who won the election by a wide margin in November. America was in pain and desperate for change.

Houston marchers in the days following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Photo printed in the Houston Post, April 7, 1968. Photo by Jerry Click. And that’s Buzz Aldrin in front of the woman in the striped dress… yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time identifying astronauts in candid training pictures!

Against this backdrop, on December 21, Apollo 8 launched. Three days later, the three-man crew became the first humans to orbit the Moon.

The mission was a significant step for NASA on its path towards the lunar landing goal. Perhaps more poignantly, the mission gave the world Earthrise. A view of our shared planet from a quarter of a million miles away. It was a glimmer of hope and humanity. The world paused, briefly united by the feat of human ingenuity. Telegrams poured into the White House and the space agency. One from Ho Chi Minh, the leader of Vietnam, reached President Lyndon Johnson via France. “Ho Chi Mihn vous remercie pour l’envoi des photos de la Lune prises par Apollo 8.” — Ho Chi Mihn thanks you for sending the pictures of the Moon taken by Apollo 8. A simple note reached the crew that just said, “You saved 1968.”

Fifty-two years later, on May 30, SpaceX and NASA launched DM-2. Two astronauts launched to the International Space Station while the nation protested police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s murder amid a global pandemic. The parallels between Apollo 8 and DM-2 are apparent. But this mission, widely celebrated as the first time in nine years that American astronauts have launched on an American rocket from American soil, failed to provide the same moment of unity. In the wake of the launch, President Trump not only took credit for the mission, he used the moment to distract from the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement.

As much as people are upset about this leveraging space for political gain, it’s really nothing new. And again, Apollo 8 provides a great jumping-off point for historical comparison.

Apollo’s Political Roots

Though space fans are wont to celebrate Apollo as the peak of human ingenuity, it was always politically motivated. NASA’s whole creation was politically motivated.

The vanishingly short version: After Sputnik’s launch in 1957, then-Senator Lyndon Johnson saw the nascent space age as a tool. He figured that if he became the Senator most associated with space in the public’s mind, he might be able to leverage that support into a Johnson presidency. And so he became the leader of an inquiry into how the Soviet Union beat America into space. When President Eisenhower decided to create a new civilian space agency, LBJ was the one to introduce the National Aeronautics and Space Act to congress. He became Mr. Space in the public eye.

In 1960, Jack Kennedy’s presidential campaign leaned heavily on, among other things, the perceived missile gap and space. With Johnson as his running mate, the pair went up against vice president Richard Nixon. Their platform argued that although Eisenhower had created NASA, it was his party that has left the United States second in space and trailing in the Cold War. Kennedy won the election on promises that his Democratic administration would give space the full attention it deserved as an extension of national security and international relations.

Within months of Kennedy taking office on January 20, 1961, his campaign promises were put to the test.

On April 12, the Soviets launched Yuri Gagarin into orbit, something America didn’t have the technical capacity to do. In a press conference later that day, the president admitted that the United States was lagging behind in space and acknowledged that addressing the technical disparity would take time. While that press conference was going on, Speaker Sam Rayburn presented House Resolution 6169 to the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics. This amendment to the National Aeronautics and Space Act installed VP Lyndon Johnson as chairman of the Space Council. The new arrangement meant Kennedy could take the credit if the space program succeeded and pass the blame to Johnson if things went wrong.

Five days later, Kennedy was dealt another blow with the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. He needed a win to save face, and he turned to space. He asked LBJ what America could do in space to beat the Soviets. Johnson came back after conferring with NASA leaders that America’s best option was a Moon landing. A month later, Kennedy committed to the idea before a joint session of Congress.

Kennedy during his 1961 address to Congress. LBJ is in the upper left. NASA

“We have examined where we are strong and where we are not, where we may succeed and where we may not. Now it is time to take longer strides — time for a great new American enterprise… I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

Kennedy didn’t love Apollo. As the price tag rose and the Cold War intensified, he worried that his legacy would be as the president who wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on a stupid program. He even suggested before the 18th U.N. General Assembly that Apollo should perhaps be cancelled in favour of a joint lunar mission with the Soviets. But his assassination just two months later in November of 1963 sealed Apollo’s fate. All of a sudden, the lunar landing wasn’t just a presidential order, it was honouring the dream of a fallen president.

Throughout his terms as president, Lyndon Johnson gave NASA the support it needed for the lunar landing. In 1965 and 1966, he approved the agency’s largest-ever budgets of 4.31 and 4.41 percent of the US national spending, respectively.

But by 1968, Johnson had no interest in seeking another term. And so the election saw Eisenhower’s former VP Richard Nixon go up against LBJ’s VP Hubert Humphrey. When Nixon won, he inherited a divided country with a space program poised for greatness.

Nixionizing Apollo

Nixon was president-elect when Apollo 8 circled the Moon at the end of 1968, and he was immediately drawn to the power of a successful mission to bring people onto his side. And things only got better once he took office. Unlike Kennedy’s early months, Nixon’s were marked by the successes of Apollo 9 and Apollo 10, the last two missions before NASA’s attempted lunar landing.

His team quickly started moving to cement the public’s association between successes in space and Nixon, even though it was his predecessors who had done all the legwork. His chief of staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman and appointment secretary Dwight Chapin, both former advertising men, began applying their marketing expertise to making a Nixon presidency synonymous with the triumph of Apollo 11.

The administration went about injecting Nixon into as many pre-launch activities as possible. Nixon wanted to host a $100 per plate gala dinner with the crew after the mission with the money going to some aeronautical scholarship, but the idea was later dropped. He wanted to watch the launch in person, ideally from a ship, and hold a post-launch reception that would be a presidential affair rather than a NASA event, but this too was scrapped to avoid his being stuck at the Cape if there was a launch delay. Nixon loved the idea of being on the carrier to talk to the crew after recovery, and his favourite was the proposed televised phone call with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while they walked on the Moon’s surface. He really wanted to dine with the crew the night before launch, but the idea was nixed by flight surgeon Chuck Berry to avoid unnecessary exposure to new germs.

The “most historic phone call ever made from the White House” as Nixon called it. AT&T Archives and History Center

When the mission came, Nixon’s stamp was everywhere. As sitting president, it was his signature on the plaque left on the Eagle’s landing leg along with the crew’s. He made July 21 a national holiday so all Americans could stay up and watch the late-night moonwalk without worrying about getting up for work in the morning. This also meant the world watching the EVA got to see a split-screen telephone call between an elated president and two somewhat confused astronauts who weren’t prepared for that item in their checklist. Days later, the world again watched as Nixon made painfully awkward small talk with the crew through the window of their recovery van.

Nixon took great pride in the mission and felt the phone call, in particular, reflected the pride, power, and peace he wanted to be associated with his presidency. But his attempt to claim the mission as his own was met with backlash from the media. He was criticized for not honouring Kennedy; a call to name the rocket the John F. Kennedy had been ignored. The Post noted that Apollo was not a simple public works program like a bridge, so Nixon’s signature shouldn’t have been on the plaque at all. The New York Times called the lunar phone call a stunt that wasted precious time on the Moon, a criticism that earned the paper a ban from the White House.

Though Nixon tried to take credit for Apollo, his post-Apollo actions of defunding the program and approving only minor space activities for the 1970s undid what he’d hoped to gain. His administration’s approach to space became focussing on the domestic implications — applying space technologies to Earthly problems and using the space program to stimulate American interest in science and technology. Moreover, Nixon didn’t think America needed or wanted another big, expensive program. He just didn’t share his predecessor’s interest in space.

The Kennedy Moment

Nixon tried to takeover THE Kennedy Moment — assuming credit for Kennedy’s lunar landing promise. Later presidents shifted tactics to attempting to create a Kennedy Moment of their own.

On July 20, 1989, just months after taking office, George H. W. Bush took advantage of Apollo 11’s 20th anniversary to attempt his own Kennedy Moment. He announced what became known as the Space Exploration Initiative, a long-range, continuing commitment to American space exploration. He threw his support behind the Reagan-era Space Station Freedom as the first step to going “back to the Moon; back to the future. And this time, back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet: a manned mission to Mars.” The subsequent study into this mission came back with a $500 billion price tag, a staggering amount even spread over 20 or 30 years. The mission failed to gain traction in the face of political infighting over the cost.

President Bush at Apollo 11’s 20th anniversary celebration. NASA

The space program Bill Clinton inherited in 1993 was centred on space station Freedom that was both behind schedule and over budget. Rather than scrap it as he was advised, he approved a proposal to redesign the station into one that would use both American and Russian-built elements. Space was otherwise low on his priorities list.

With the ISS starting to take shape and his first term marked by terrorist attacks of 9/11, George W. Bush Jr. set his sights on a new vision in space. In 2004, before beginning his second term, he called for NASA to return “human return to the moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations.” As part of this vision, he began the end of the shuttle program and lay the foundation of a new crew exploration vehicle program.

The Modern Kennedy Moment

Trump is both pulling a Nixon in Trumpizing the latest mission and attempting to have a Kennedy Moment. And not for the first time, either.

In 2017, Trump started talking about sending NASA back to the Moon in time for Apollo 8’s 50th anniversary in 2018. He wanted to add a crew to the first SLS Exploration-1 mission — the first ever integrated SLS-Orion flight. At the time, the robotic mission was slated to fly within the year with a human mission on the books for 2021. At of now, that mission has been rebranded Artemis-1 an is slated to fly in November of 2021 without a crew.

My February 2017 video about Trump’s initial proposal to redo the Apollo 8 mission for its 50th anniversary.

But his Trumpizing the DM-2 mission is another level. His post-flight speech at the Kennedy Space Centre focussed on celebrating what his administration has done in space.

“This is the first big space message in 50 years! Think of that. And it is an honor to be delivering it. Today as we gather in this special place to celebrate not only the launch of a new spacecraft but also our nation’s bold and triumphant return to the stars, it’s a special day. Moments ago, the world bore witness to the flight of the first new manned US manned spacecraft in nearly 40 years since the space shuttle launch in 1981… With this launch, the decades of lost years and little action are officially over. A new age of American ambition has begun. Past leaders put the United States at the mercy of foreign nations to send our astronauts into orbit. Not anymore…”

He didn’t acknowledge that the Commercial Crew program under which SpaceX developed the crewed Dragon started during President Obama’s administration. Obama has been widely criticized for cancelling Bush’s Constellation program, but he did emphasize the new era of NASA leaning on commercial partners. As a commercial partner mission, DM-2 is Obama’s to celebrate much the same way that Apollo 11 was LBJ’s mission to celebrate.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine echoed Trump’s tone in his own post-flight remarks.

“To be clear I think he’s the only sitting president to watch American astronauts launch on a brand new rocket that has never launched before and, uh, that’s a big risk. You know, he also said we’re gonna go to the Moon by 2024 that means he’s [laughs] putting himself at risk to say look, I’m going to be accountable, potentially I’m going to be accountable to the initiatives that I put forward. That’s — we’ve not had that kind of leadership in space for a very very long time.”

Four days later, on June 3, Trump’s camp released a video on his YouTube channel that seemed to solidify this “Nixonizing.” It began with historical footage of Kennedy’s 1961 speech and Apollo astronauts on the Moon before segueing into shots of modern astronauts over snippets of his own speeches. In one soundbite, he proclaimed that “the future belongs totally to us.” The ad was up for less than a day. It turns out NASA doesn’t allow its astronauts to appear in any advertising or marketing campaigns, something the president’s inner circle ought to have known.

My Two Cents…

Should we be surprised that space is being politicized like this? Not at all. Space has long been a presidential prop. In this case, the celebration seems like a distraction from pressing social issues plaguing the country and an attempt to turn a win for SpaceX and NASA into a win for his administration.

Space people want to believe space is above politics, that any administration that supports space exploration is a good one, but that’s a damaging way to look at something. Saying we should be glad Trump supports space is saying you’re happy to turn a blind eye to everything else his administration has done in exchange for a few missions, even if those missions are another administration’s legacy.

I agree that space should be a uniting, human adventure. It should be something that pulls together the best and brightest to achieve missions whose inspiration transcends borders, language, and culture. Science, taken broadly, is the ultimate domaine where humanity should work together for a brighter future for everyone. But it’s just not the case, at least not yet. Until presidents can commit to programs beyond their terms in office and stop relying on the flawed Apollo model, until leadership can stop leveraging space for political ends, space will always be a politically loaded endeavour.