Presidential Visions for Space Exploration: From Ike to Trump [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]

Presidential Visions for Space Exploration: From Ike to Trump [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]

President Lyndon Johnson was instrumental in both ratcheting up and scaling back the United States’ space race with the Soviet Union.

As Senate majority leader in the late 1950s, he had helped raise the alarm regarding Sputnik, stressing that the satellite launch had intiated a race for “control of space.” Later, Kennedy put Johnson, his vice president, in personal charge of the nation’s space program. When Johnson became commander-in-chief after Kennedy’s assassination, he continued to support the goals of the Apollo program.

However, the high costs of Johnson’s Great Society programs and the Vietnam War forced the president to cut NASA’s budget. To avoid ceding control of space to the Soviets (as some historians have argued), his administration proposed a treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons in space and bar national sovereignty over celestial objects.

The result was 1967’s Outer Space Treaty (OST), which forms the basis of international space law to this day. The OST has been ratified by all of the major space-faring nations, including Russia and its forerunner, the Soviet Union.

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https://www.space.com/11751-nasa-american-presidential-visions-space-exploration.html Presidential Visions for Space Exploration: From Ike to Trump

[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Presidential Visions for Space Exploration: From Ike to Trump