"I'm not that interested in space....."

[Michael Hogan]

Historians and researchers often point to President Kennedy's handling of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis and his back channel attempts to negotiate with Fidel Castro as providing possible motives for his assassination.

Kennedy's attempts at rapprochement with the Soviets may have also included the race to the moon, a subject very dear to the military establishment.

"During a September 20, 1963 address before the 18th General Assembly of the United Nations Kennedy made a startling proposal:

Finally, in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity—in the field of space—there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. Space offers no problems of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claim to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries—indeed of all the world—cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending someday in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries.

Considering that the two nations had been to the brink of nuclear war only a year before, this was a rather startling attempt at rapprochement. It followed a similar proposal that Kennedy had made a month before to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin."

Full articles:

Murdering Apollo: John F. Kennedy and the retreat from the lunar goal

by Dwayne A. Day

Monday, October 30, 2006

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/735/1

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/739/1

LBJ’s Space Race: what we didn’t know then

by Alan Wasser

Monday, June 20, 2005

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/396/1

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/401/1