Scientific Cooperation with the Soviet Union

Report Outline
Difficult Path to Scientific Cooperation
Beginnings of Cooperation a Decade Ago
Areas of Current Scientific Cooperation
Plans for World Scientific Cooperation

Difficult Path to Scientific Cooperation

Moon Project Proposal and Soviet Rejection

President Kennedy's proposal to convert the race to the moon into a joint lunar expedition of American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts, advanced in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 20, aroused little enthusiasm in this country and was met in Russia at first only by silence. More than a month passed before Soviet Premier Khrushchev told newspaper correspondents, Oct. 26, that “We are not at present planning flights by cosmonauts to the moon.” Khrushchev wished the Americans success and added that “We shall take their experience into account.” Initial assumptions that Russia was abandoning aspirations to make a moon landing proved over-hasty. However, there seemed no doubt that the Premier's statement signified rejection of the Kennedy proposal.

Advocacy of Cooperation; Khrushchev's Conditions

The President had said in his address to the General Assembly three days after it convened for its 18th regular session:

Space offers no problem of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claims to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the U.N. Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? … 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 some day in this decade to the moon, not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all humanity.