![]() citizen, led his rocket team in Huntsville, Alabama, and Florida. (See box.) Chief engineer Max Faget helped design the Apollo spacecraft, and flight operations director Chris Kraft basically invented the methods that would guide that spacecraft to the moon and back. Although the average age of the Apollo workforce was 27, the project’s leaders, most of them in their 40s and 50s, brought extensive experience in managing large-scale military and aeronautics developments. The NASA workforce doubled, and contractors working on Apollo increased fourfold. By 1965, NASA’s budget was almost 5% of all government spending. Apollo was assigned the highest government priority, and after Kennedy’s speech the NASA budget for fiscal year 1962 was increased by 89% over the previous year’s level, and another 101% the following year. technology-based project, surpassing the Panama Canal and the Manhattan Project. In the following weeks there was little congressional questioning of the wisdom of Kennedy’s proposal. Leaders of Congress were consulted in advance of Kennedy’s speech to make sure that they would approve funding for the mission. Kennedy backed up his words with a massive, warlike but peaceful, mobilization of financial and human resources. Kennedy accepted this advice and on May 25, 1961, addressed a joint session of Congress, saying, “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 Earth.” Motivator in chief and the Soviet Union would have to develop powerful new rockets, and the White House was told by Wernher von Braun that the country had an “excellent” chance of winning a rocket-building race. He asked his advisers to identify “a space program that promises dramatic results in which we could win.” The answer came back - “go to the moon.” The U.S. The Vatican newspaper characterized the achievement as a “universal good,” as Moscow claimed that it “embodied the genius of the Soviet people and the powerful force of socialism.” The Washington Post said the flight marked “a psychological victory of the first magnitude for the Soviet Union.” These reactions convinced Kennedy that he could not let the Soviet Union by default dominate outer space. ![]() ![]() His response was “no,” so he learned of Gagarin’s feat on the morning of April 12 and saw the Soviet Union being lauded. When Kennedy went to bed on the evening of April 11, he was told that the launch would likely happen overnight he was asked if he wanted to be woken if that indeed happened. Then the Soviet Union began preparations to launch MiG pilot Yuri Gagarin into orbit. Something that is often forgotten today is that Kennedy’s preference when he entered the White House in January 1961 was to work with the Soviet Union in space, with the aim of keeping it an arena for peaceful cooperation. The dissertation soon turned into a book published in 1970, “The Decision to Go to the Moon.” The manuscript was completed by mid-1969, and that was what earned me an invitation to view the launch.įor me, the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission has afforded an opportunity to tie together decades of research and thoughts about how the U.S. ![]() I had the good fortune of having access to many of Kennedy’s close associates. Kennedy’s 1961 decision to send Americans to the moon as a case study of foreign policy decision-making. In 1967, I decided to write my doctoral dissertation in political science using President John F. My involvement with Apollo began two years earlier. Nothing in my lifetime will compare to the combination of the physical experience of a Saturn V taking off plus knowing that I was experiencing history being made. Just over three hours later, at 9:32 a.m., I stood in the field in front of the press bleachers as the Saturn V carrying the Apollo 11 crew accelerated ever so slowly off of launch pad 39A. Eastern time, a door opened, and Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin exited the building and strolled past us - on their way to the moon. On the early morning of July 16, 1969, I was one of a small crowd standing outside the Operations Building at Kennedy Space Center. made what is arguably humanity’s greatest achievement. Space scholar John Logsdon has spent a good part of his career thinking about why and how this bold mission succeeded. The Apollo 11 moon landing still amazes, not just as a technological achievement but as a feat of political will by a democratic society. flag, with the lunar module on the left and Aldrin’s and Neil Armstrong’s footprints visible in the moon’s soil.Ĭredit: NASA Winning the moon race By John M.
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