Lyndon at the Launching Pad

After the Senate call-buzzers had stopped one noon last week, a visiting minister delivered a timely invocation. Prayed the Rev. Robert W. Olewiler of Washington's Grace Reformed Church: "Most gracious God, we thank Thee for the miracle of our conscious life by which we behold the wonders of the universe." Then up rose a Senator who had recently beheld the wonders of the universe with Washington's keenest political eye. As the opening order of business. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson moved consideration of a senatorial first step into space, to wit, his own resolution, establishing a Senate special committee on Astronautical and Space Exploration. Under Lyndon Johnson's sure hand the motion carried 78-1; Louisiana's Allen J. Ellender, who opposes all new committees on principle, saw no reason to make an exception for outer space.

In a breathless week, Ellender was only a neolithic holdout. Fired by Texan Johnson as he rocketed to stake a claim in space for the U.S. Congress and its Democratic majority, the members focused on space with the sense of urgency usually reserved for crop supports and rivers and harbors bills. Example: Johnson and a fellow Democrat, New Mexico's Clinton Anderson, were scanning the House bill that would give Defense Secretary McElroy authority for his Advanced Research Projects Agency. They decided that McElroy's franchise would be too broad. At Johnson's urging, Senate conferees, meeting with the House on the measure, pushed through a provision putting a one-year limit on McElroy's control over nonmilitary research and development.

To the White House. Lyndon Johnson began looking closely at the problems of space 2% months ago after listening to brush-browed Physicist Edward Teller (TIME, Dec. 9) testify before the Johnson Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee.

He registered a claim for the Democrats in his own "State of the Union" speech to a Democratic caucus last month: "If, out in space, there is the ultimate position . . . then our national goal and the goal of all free men must be to win and hold that position." Johnson began calling space conferences in his green-and-gold office off the Senate gallery. In between he dictated memos on the double, reread the Senate debates that preceded passage of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, setting up the Atomic Energy Commission and the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy.

Framing his resolution so that it would lay the groundwork for similar legislation on space agencies, he sounded out Democrats and Republicans alike for reaction. Last week, when G.O.P. leaders discovered what he had in mind, they hotfooted it to the White House, warned that Johnson was about to capture another popular issue just as he had captured defense preparedness.

To the Chair. The warnings flushed out the news that Presidential Adviser Killian was making a broad-gauge study of space administration problems for Ike. But this only boosted Johnson's thrust. At midweek he was ready with his resolution and two speeches supporting it. He introduced and spoke for his resolution one afternoon, got it considered and approved by the Rules Committee the same day. No sooner had the Rev. Mr. Olewiler sounded his "Amen" next day than Lyndon Johnson opened a brown manila folder, pulled out Speech No. 2, calling up the resolution and urging authorization of the space committee. He got his 78-to-1 vote that afternoon.

Under Senate custom, Johnson is due for the chairmanship of the space committee because he proposed it. He, Minority Leader Knowland and New Hampshire's Styles Bridges got together to fill the other twelve seats with some of the Senate's biggest names. For the Democrats: Georgia's Dick Russell, Rhode Island's Theodore Francis Green, Arkansas' John McClellan, New Mexico's Anderson, Missouri's Stuart Symington, Washington's Warren Magnuson. For the Republicans: Bridges, Iowa's Bourke Hickenlooper, Massachusetts' Leverett Saltonstall, Wisconsin's Alex Wiley, Ohio's John Bricker, South Dakota's Karl Mundt.

Behind them into space rode the rest of the U.S. Senate, dragging holdout Allen Ellender along.

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