Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXXIV, Energy Diplomacy and Global Issues

54. Memorandum From the Chairman of the Policy Planning Council (Owen) to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow)¹

Washington, September 19, 1966.

SUBJECT

• A Key Issue—Future Space Goals

1 One of the most important questions to be faced by this administration is, quite simply: “After the moon, what?”

2 Post-lunar space objectives have not been fixed. The basic issue is illustrated by two crude and over-simplified alternatives:

• Alternative #A: Agreement with the USSR that any further exploration into outer space beyond the moon will be conducted only in a framework of close cooperation. Since this kind of cooperation will be long in coming, and hard to come by, main emphasis would be placed in the meantime, within the US national space program, on “bringing space down to earth,” i.e., on using the knowledge gained in space to enhance human welfare, particularly in developing countries (resources surveys, communications, etc). We would not abandon other efforts but would pursue them on a more orderly basis rather than at the forced pace of the moon race.
• Alternative #B: Continuing US and Soviet competitive exploration of outer space beyond the moon.

Both these courses would be expensive. But if Soviet attitudes should make course (a) feasible, the saving over course (b) might conceivably run to several billion dollars annually. The difference in expenditures (plus some difference in employment in the aerospace industry) might begin to be felt around FY 1968.

3 The issue does not, of course, present itself in these stark terms. There will be many options—not two. And a wide variety of technical and foreign policy considerations not mentioned above will need to be brought to bear.

4 The burden of this memo is that the choice should not, however, be made solely on the basis of these considerations. This is an issue in which important domestic and foreign considerations intertwine.² Someone whose main concern is with our domestic programs should interject himself into the exercise—both to ensure that all the alternatives are examined and to grind into the final mix of staff work a careful weighing of the domestic effects of each alternative.³

HO

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Charles E. Johnson Files, Post-Apollo (Outer Space Goals), Box 16. Confidential.
2. Owen explained to Rostow in his September 27 covering memorandum to this memorandum: “What our space policy does to domestic expenditures and to employment in the aerospace industry at home is as important as what it does to our ‘image’ abroad.”
3. Responsibility in the White House devolved to Spurgeon Keeny and Charles E. Johnson. (Memorandum from Johnson to Keeny, October 13; Johnson Library, National Security File, Charles E. Johnson Files, Post-Apollo (Outer Space Goals), Box 16)