Von Braun, at the president’s request, advises Johnson on how to beat the Soviets in space. He writes that it’s pointless to chase the Soviets on short-term objectives. They’re ahead. Their Venus spacecraft demonstrates that they can orbit masses 10 times greater than ours. We can’t even beat them in orbiting a laboratory with one or more astronauts. A possible challenge is to place a transmitting station on the Moon within a couple of years, or even launch a spacecraft with three men on board into lunar orbit. The outlook becomes more optimistic when it comes to putting a man on the Moon. Von Braun writes, “The USA has an excellent chance of beating the Soviets.” Not even the Soviets have the rocket necessary for the task, so they have to do it from scratch. The challenge is on. Von Braun predicts that it might be possible to achieve the goal between 1967 and 1968, investment permitting and “all-out effort,” working on it around the clock. When NASA Director Jim Webb receives the letter on his desk, he jumps in his seat: “We can’t make the commitment to land on the Moon in 1967!!!” At the end of a complicated negotiation with the President and his staff, Jim Webb agrees to a more vague commitment: “By the end of the decade.”
