Lyndon Johnson’s Unsung Role
in Sending Americans to the Moon
New Yorker,
by
Jeff Shesol
Original Article
Posted By: StormCnter,
7/20/2019 6:53:17 PM
Lyndon Johnson did not blend easily into a crowd. At six feet three inches tall and more than two hundred pounds, he was a towering figure, physically and otherwise, and when he came upon a group of people, his instinct was to address them, or to throw himself into the scrum and become its focus, its center of gravity. But on July 16, 1969, in the reviewing stands at Cape Kennedy, in Florida, Johnson appeared to be just another spectator—looking up at the sky, squinting behind his sunglasses, as the Saturn V rocket lifted off, carrying the Apollo 11 spacecraft toward its destination.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
BarryNo 7/20/2019 8:17:21 PM (No. 129367)
Johnson knew that if he didn't keep the Space Program running, Vietnam would be that much bigger an issue, and with that much negative publicity, there was a much greater chance for themedia to tun on him and start revealing the varous murders he ordered to protect his illegal activities outside the office of the President - or even start hunting for connections to assassinations of John and Robert Kenedy and Martin Luther King.
He had motive to be behind each death. And a history of eliminating inconvenient associates when he was governor of Texas and before. Johnson was the KKK run mob the generation before Bill Clinton set up in Arkansas. Evil, malignant individuals finessing thei crime to win the Presidency.
6 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
ConradCA 7/20/2019 8:27:57 PM (No. 129376)
LBJ was the second worst US president in modern history. He sent 500,000 men while preventing them from even attempting to win. 60,000 men died to make him look tough. He disaffected a whole generation resulting in the extreme progressive fascist movement dedicated to the destruction of our county. He also trapped millions in poverty with his soul crushing war on the poor.
14 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Northcross 7/20/2019 8:34:14 PM (No. 129377)
Unsung? This guy was all over the space program of the 60s, extremely visible, and very accessible to NASA leadership.
1 person likes this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
baydreamer 7/20/2019 10:03:21 PM (No. 129418)
Yeah, he even had a Space Center named after him.
3 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
DVC 7/20/2019 10:15:04 PM (No. 129426)
He wasted hge amounts of money putting much of the space program into his home state of Texas, which was a purely political decision. It should have all been in Fla near the launch site, was quite inconvenient to be so far away.
Johnson was a crooked, lying, racist SOB, always looking for political gain in EVERYTHING, every day.
9 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 7/20/2019 10:26:54 PM (No. 129431)
Like all Demonrats, he just loved spending money that wasn't his.
4 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
montwoodcliff 7/20/2019 10:53:17 PM (No. 129440)
Sorry No.2. Johnson shares 1st place with Obozo as the worst president. Both were worse than the idiot Carter and you have to put Bill Clinton up there with the three of them.
11 people like this.
Re #5 - As a naive young kid, I used to wonder how everything leading up to the launch happened at the Cape but the entire operation then shifted to Houston the instant the rocket left the ground.
And re #2 - I vividly remember our minister asking (rhetorically) how many nameless young men we'll lose in Southeast Asia this week in parallel with the effort and focus to bring the three Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to earth. (Yes, Nixon had the watch by then but lbj had us in chest-deep.)
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
StormCnter 7/21/2019 5:29:14 AM (No. 129529)
#1, I yield to no one in my dislike of Lyndon Johnson and everything he stood for and accomplished. However, he was too smart to have been involved in a Martin Luther King or Kennedy killing, John or Robert.
1 person likes this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
MDConservative 7/21/2019 11:12:05 AM (No. 129840)
If one watches JFK's announcement of our going to the moon by the end of the decade speech in May 1961, sitting behind him are two powerful men: Vice President LBJ and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (D-TX), who was LBJ's mentor. Both men were Texans, and well versed in the art of "bringing home the bacon." That's nothing new or novel.
Mission control for Mercury and early Gemini was at the Cape. Later Gemini and Apollo required something more robust. If one understands, the Cape had control of the launch; Houston managed the mission (mission control center). (It's the same as in air traffic control. The guy in the local tower doesn't guide a plane any further than getting it off the ground.)
The mission control center could have been located anywhere, and Houston (actually 25 miles south of downtown near Clear Lake) was selected later in 1961 over McDill AFB in Tampa - perfect in the eyes of JFK, LBJ, who was Vice President and head of the Space Council, and the Texas congressional delegation, which was a powerful force in Democrat and national politics at the time.
1 person likes this.
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