Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S4E04 - Selling The Moon, Part I

Episode Date: January 25, 2015

Across the two episodes, we’ll trace the way NASA marketed the expensive moon landing to both the American public, and to Congress. In this first part, we see how the Russians got to space first, prompting President John F. Kennedy to promise a moon landing - not only as a way to win the space race - but to improve his public relations after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The journey to the moon will be one of the most expensive endeavours in history, and NASA needed to constantly market the program to keep Americans interested, and Congress signing the cheques.Part One is all about putting the moon shot in motion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. You're so king in it. Scores of it in an instant. Your teeth look whiter than noon, noon, noon You're not you when you're hungry You're in good hands with us

You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. On the night of July 18th, 1969, Ted Kennedy hosted a party in a rented house on Chappaquiddick Island, not far from the larger island of Martha's Vineyard. The get-together was a reunion for a group of women who had worked on his late brother Bobby's presidential campaign. At around 11.15 p.m., Ted Kennedy left the party with a 28-year-old woman named Mary Jo Kopechny, who had been one of RFK's secretaries. According to Kennedy's later testimony, he had offered Kopechny a ride back to her hotel. About 75 minutes later, Kennedy missed a slight left turn on an unlit road

and drove off a bridge, plunging his car into 10 feet of water. Kennedy said he was able to escape the overturned car and made seven or eight dives to try and save Mary Jo Kopechny. Unsuccessful, he ran back to the party and returned with two male friends who also dove in but failed to save Kopechny. A distraught Kennedy told the men to go back to the party and take care of the guests,

and he would contact the police. Kennedy didn't report the accident for another eight hours. According to police, eight hours elapsed from the time of the accident until he showed up at the police station to report it. Experts later said Mary Jo Kopechny probably lived for two or three hours in the car due to the presence of an air pocket. But because of Kennedy's delayed response in reporting the accident,

she eventually suffocated. That decision would hang over Ted Kennedy's head for the rest of his life and no doubt derailed his hopes of one day becoming president. Just two days after Chappaquiddick, another historic event occurred. Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. When astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered those immortal words from the surface of the moon, he was fulfilling a promise John F. Kennedy had made just eight years before. I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. Two historic events on the same weekend in July of 1969. One Kennedy dream realized. One Kennedy dream dashed.

When John F. Kennedy made that speech to Congress in May of 1961, he set a clear goal, to land a man on the moon before the end of 1969. It was a Herculean task, and it gave the United States less than a decade to achieve it. While much has been said about the moon landing, it would not have happened without the ongoing support of the tax-paying public and members of Congress. And neither would have been possible without one critical thing. Marketing. The moonshot had to be consistently sold to the public

in order for Americans to continue supporting the project. And members of Congress had to be persuaded to continue allocating budgets on what was to become one of the most expensive endeavors in U.S. history. It would take creativity, strategy, fear, patriotism, and persuasion. But there was no getting around it. It was time to market the moon. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched a satellite into space called Sputnik. While the U.S. government had some knowledge of its existence, the Sputnik launch shocked Americans,

shattering their perception of American scientific superiority. Until two days ago, that sound had never been heard on this Earth. It's a report from man's farthest frontier, the radio signal transmitted by the Soviet Sputnik. In response, President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the launch of an American satellite two months later. It exploded on the launch pad, prompting the press to call it Kaputnik. At the end of July 1958,

Eisenhower ordered the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA as it became known. Not long after NASA announced its first major undertaking called Project Mercury. The goal was to send a manned spacecraft to orbit the Earth

observe the astronauts' performance under those conditions and return them safely. Six months later NASA called a press conference to name their first astronauts hailed as the Mercury 7. These men, the nation's Project Mercury astronauts. They were Donald Slayton, Alan Shepard, Wally Shira, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Gordon Cooper, and Scott Carpenter. As the astronauts began training for their journey, the minds at NASA were busy inventing the technology that would take those men into outer space.

But NASA was not only technologically savvy, it also had an acute understanding of marketing. It knew that it had to both educate and excite the general public to get them to buy into the adventure of manned space travel. So it created a public affairs office that pushed out ready-made stories and interviews the press could call their own, including background materials, television newsreels, fully produced radio broadcasts, and documentary films. This is the greatest force ever applied to move a vehicle. This is the cluster of rocket engines boosting the Saturn vehicle free of gravity.

NASA distributed the films to churches, libraries, nonprofit clubs and organizations. It also sent them to schools, prompting classrooms to buy their first film projectors. But NASA's most brilliant marketing idea came in the form of a magazine. NASA had limited ways to speak directly to the American public, so it sought out a partnership with a major media outlet. It chose Life magazine. The deal with Life gave the magazine exclusive rights to the astronauts' personal stories,

their wives, their children, and their home lives. In return, it gave NASA a glossy weekly vehicle to project a very carefully constructed image. The astronauts hired Henry Batten as their agent. He was the head of the NW Air advertising agency. Batten negotiated a three-year contract with Life magazine that was worth $500,000. It was a mind-boggling number for the Mercury 7.

Distributed equally, it meant $70,000 per man. For astronauts earning around $7,000 a year, it was 10 times their annual salary. Batten also negotiated one other stipulation. Each astronaut was given a $100,000 life insurance policy. That was critically important to their families, as no insurance company would underwrite an astronaut. It was a big coup for Life to land exclusive rights to the Mercury 7, and competitors complained loudly. But for Life, it was a survival strategy,

as the magazine was battling fiercely with television for advertising dollars, and its sales were falling. But the magazine's power was pictures. Its pages were bigger than all other periodicals, and it presented the astronauts to the nation in stunning full-color multi-page pictorials. Even though Life had the appearance of an objective weekly magazine,

in reality, NASA maintained strict approval power over all articles and photographs. Life magazine essentially became an arm of NASA's PR department. Staff writers, lorded over by NASA, produced a uniform image of the Mercury 7 as unblemished heroes. It ghostwrote articles on behalf of the wives to appeal to female readers, and Life photographers

captured endless moments of colorful family bliss. NASA wanted perfect astronauts, perfect astrowives, perfect children, and perfect homes. Life magazine didn't disappoint.

Between 1959 and 1963, the magazine would run over 70 NASA-approved stories in 28 issues didn't disappoint. Between 1959 and 1963, the magazine would run over 70 NASA-approved stories in 28 issues, with astronauts and their wives gracing 12 covers. We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom,

symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. Newly elected President John F. Kennedy made his inaugural address on January 20, 1961. JFK said, in no uncertain terms, that the torch had been passed to a new generation. His good looks, youth, and optimism was a breath of fresh air in the Oval Office.

That optimism was severely tested just four months later with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. But the event that truly rattled America happened one week prior. The Soviets shocked the United States once again by sending the first man into space on April 12, 1961. He was cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, and his Vostok spacecraft not only ventured into outer space,

it orbited the Earth. As the crowds go wild over the first man to conquer space, Major Gagarin's initial function is a long red-carpeted walk to the platform, where Khrushchev greets him. Just as Sputnik had triggered the formation of NASA, Gagarin's flight propelled Kennedy into action. The president was in desperate need of a reset. He had to show the nation vision and resolve.

So Kennedy called a meeting with Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who was also the chairman of the National Aeronautic Space Council. He asked Johnson if the U.S. was in any position to beat the Soviets at anything in the space race. Johnson conferred with NASA and came back to say a moonshot was possible. Three weeks after Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space, Kennedy made a historic speech that committed the U.S. to putting a man on the moon.

The speech also launched another project in motion, an eight-year marketing campaign to sell Project Apollo not only to Congress, but to the entire nation. Don't go away. We'll be right back. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative, and that's where Felix comes in. Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals is here losing weight is about more than diet and exercise it can also be about our genetics

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that sentiment. For the problems are not all solved, and the battles are not all won. And we stand today on the edge of a new frontier. Kennedy's campaign platform suggested his youth and vitality would lead America into a new era, an era that seemed light years away from the grandfatherly President Eisenhower. The space program became the centerpiece of his new frontier vision because it encompassed optimism, it advanced science and technology,

it defined the future, it called upon the American values of courage, sacrifice, and independence, and above all, it was a crisp demarcation point between old and new. As author James L. Kaufman points out in his superbly researched book entitled Selling Outer Space,

human beings are storytelling animals. We find purpose and guidance through the understanding stories provide. Among the most important stories in the U.S. is the myth of the old frontier. America has relied heavily on the frontier for its mythic identity. The conquest of the western wilderness

is a story that celebrates the rugged, independent hero who ultimately tamed the land and improved his way of life. That heroic storyline holds much resonance for Americans. So, when Kennedy pointed to space as the newest frontier,

it gave Americans a way to attach meaning to space exploration. The moonshot, JFK said, also had beneficial byproducts. It would deliver across-the-board scientific advances that would be felt by every American in their schools, in their businesses, and right in their own homes. There was also another aspect of the frontier narrative that would give the goal its urgency. It placed a premium on being first.

The second strategy Kennedy used to market the importance of sending a man to the moon was fear. In order to persuade Congress to approve massive expenditures, Kennedy framed the argument by saying dramatic results in space meant nothing less than world leadership. Acutely aware of image, he explained that supremacy in space would influence the other nations of the world who were deciding whether to align themselves with the U.S. or the USSR. Furthermore, America could not permit the Soviets to dominate space with hostile intentions. For the eyes of the world now look into space,

and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom. Vice President Johnson put an even finer point on it, saying that America couldn't afford to let the Soviets drop bombs on them from space, like kids dropping rocks on cars from a freeway overpass. Congress actually didn't need much convincing because no other event had a greater influence on them or caused more panic than the Soviet surprise orbit of the Earth. President Kennedy asked Congress to commit to a five-year plan, beginning with the approval

of a $1.7 billion NASA budget in 1961, which Congress happily did. NASA was savvy when it came to wooing Congress. It cleverly scheduled John Glenn's historic 1962 orbit of the Earth one week before congressional hearings for NASA's 1963 budget. Moving toward altitude 100 miles and speed 17,500 miles an hour for a planned space flight that will take Colonel John Glenn around the world in 90 minutes. When ground control told Glenn his heat shield was malfunctioning and that he might burn up during re-entry, Glenn accepted the news with stoic calmness.

When he managed to land safely, he became an instant national hero, a fact not lost on Congress. Just a few hours before that same budget bill was ready for a vote, NASA scheduled Scott Carpenter's launch. After watching Carpenter rocket towards the heavens, the House approved a $3.7 billion budget with a vote of 343 to 0. Reporters compared the flights

to Columbus and Magellan. It was clear the press was embracing Kennedy's New Frontier adventure theme wholeheartedly because it offered them two irresistible elements, conflict in the form

of the Soviets and the astronauts as rugged heroes. But when it came time to renew the Life magazine contract, the New York Times slammed the deal, saying the astronauts should not be reaping personal benefits at the taxpayers' expense. Kennedy was aware of the criticism, so John Glenn asked to see the president personally.

He told JFK that the exclusive life contract was important because it kept their families safe from an onslaught of press invasions and it gave them the security of life insurance. Kennedy agreed, the contract was renewed, and the NASA marketing machine breathed a sigh of relief. New year, new me. Season is here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight

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at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. If. operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. In 1963, the first real opposition to the space program was voiced. Critics pushed for cheaper unmanned flights. Others asked if the fantastical cost would take away from Department of Defense budgets. Scientists questioned the technological benefits of a moon landing.

Hearing the pushback, NASA jumped into marketing mode. It began sending NASA officials and astronauts out on speaking tours to promote the remarkable technology being developed and why it demanded manned space travel. It created Space Mobile, a museum on wheels that crisscrossed the nation. It sent out films to television networks. The press also supported the call for manned space flights, not just because they bought into Kennedy's frontier theme. They knew astronauts sold more magazines,

newspapers, and rating points. NASA could also recruit the president to help when the critics got too loud. In mid-1963, JFK went on a tour of space facilities to call attention to the program and made this speech at one of the stops. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. It was one of Kennedy's most forceful speeches. Yet, privately,

Kennedy was fretting about the mounting costs. While the bravado of the moonshot solved his immediate public relations problem, the fiscal reality was beginning to sink in. The ballooning NASA costs were, in his words, wrecking his budgets. So, in September of 1963, Kennedy shocked Washington with a speech to the United Nations by proposing a joint U.S.-Soviet moon expedition.

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, a further joint effort in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. Congress was stunned. In one fell swoop, Kennedy seemed to completely reverse his administration's reason for beating the Soviets to the moon. Without the appeal to national security, Congress would have cut the budget in half.

As James Kaufman points out, that deep-seated fear of Soviet space domination even explained the lack of partisanship in the committee. Both parties had voted enthusiastically for space budgets. It was the primary reason Congress was urging NASA not just to go to the moon, but hurry to the moon. The Soviets never replied to Kennedy's invitation. The Congress subcommittee cut $600 million from the 1963 budget, which many believe was its way of punishing Kennedy for suggesting the Soviet partnership. But in spite of that admonishment, Congress still approved a whopping $5.1 billion budget.

With the mounting press criticism, the sudden lack of faith from Congress, and NASA looking to him to right the ship, Kennedy went back out on the road to resell the moonshot. With one eye on the upcoming 1964 election, Kennedy went to Cape Canaveral and other southern space facilities to promote and call renewed attention to the goal of being the first nation to land a man on the moon. That trip would eventually take him to Dallas. The story of selling the moon is one of vision, courage, ingenuity, and groundbreaking technology.

But it's also a story of marketing. Without the tremendous public relations campaigns and the massive marketing, without the overwhelming buy-in of the press, NASA and its achievements would have been unthinkable. When President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, the idea of a joint Soviet partnership died with him. From that point on, Congress never again questioned the wisdom of sending a man to the moon. Even in spite of its eventual $23 billion price tag,

which translates to $172 billion in today's dollars, it was, appropriately, an astronomical sum. From the shock of Sputnik in 1957 to the public's acceptance of national security mixed with the notion of space as the next frontier, the trajectory for the big trip

was firmly in place by 1963. In part two next week, we pick up our story with the Apollo astronauts, the great tragedy that would result in a total rethink of the Apollo program, and the culmination of the space race when Neil Armstrong climbs down the ladder. We'll also explore the astounding level of advertising that orbited around Apollo,

selling everything from frozen foods to toys to Tang, and why it was easy for marketers to promise the moon when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. Under the Influence was recorded at Pirate Toronto. Series producer, Debbie O'Reilly.

Sound engineer, Keith Ullman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Follow me on Twitter at Terry O'Influence. You can find this podcast in our archives wherever you listen to the show. See you next week for part two. spacewalking of Canadian spacewalkers. It's a beautiful book. It's hardcover. It's full color. And it's about only three Canadians to put on spacesuits and step outside. It's in bookstores now.

You should check it out.