Humphrey and NASA

Vice President Humphrey praises NASA's "spacemanship" in letter to astronaut Schirra.

Today is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Hubert H. Humphrey. If you don’t remember him, Humphrey was Vice President under Lyndon Johnson. He also nearly won the presidency in 1968—but was beaten by a tiny margin by Richard M. Nixon. (How different would history have been if he had won?)

In any case, an Op-Ed piece in today’s New York Times drew my attention to this largely forgotten occasion. And my thoughts turned to Humphrey and NASA.

It’s hard to know what Humphrey would have done had he become president. Nixon cut back on the space agency, and funded the earth-orbit bound (and very dangerous) space shuttle program. The later planned moonlandings were cancelled.

Johnson was a big fan of space, and aided the Apollo program. But this doesn’t clarify’s Humphrey’s position. Hubert was too loyal to question LBJ publicly. He was allegedly less hawkish on Vietnam than his boss. I don’t know if he agreed with Johnson on space policy or not.

But Humprey was jovial. And he took some interest in space. I have, hanging on my wall, an original letter by Humprey to astronaut Wally Schirra regarding the completion of the Gemini program. In the letter, Humphrey congratulates Schirra and his colleagues on their “spacemanship”…whatever that means.

There’s also an anecdote about Humphrey in Schirra’s book. Visiting the space center, Humphrey went into a Gemini simulator with Schirra, and promptly took a nap. Upon awakening, he asked Schirra about the vehicle and talked “knowledgeably” to the press upon exiting.

Would Humphrey have done better things with NASA had he won in 1968? I don’t know. But i suspect that he couldn’t have done worse.