When the Soviets launched the first man into space on April 12, 1961, the panic in the West rivaled that following the launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth. There was even concern that the Soviets were going to land men on the Moon in 1967 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Red Revolution. Could the US possibly be ready to head for the moon before that?
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said yes, but the Kennedy administration was in no way committed to going to the Moon. President John F. Kennedy had all but abandoned the space race at a press conference.
But in the light of certain embarrassing events, such as the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, Kennedy began to realize that surrendering the space race to the USSR carried a heavy political price. He sent a one-page memo to Vice President Lyndon Johnson reversing his position and asking what the United States could do to prove it was not second-best in space.
On May 25, 1961, Kennedy announced, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before the decade is out of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project of this period would be more impressive or more important to the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."
Kennedy's speech redirected the course of the Space Age. In terms of national commitment, it did for the US space program what Hitler's ambitions had done for the development of the V-2 rocket during World War II. Essentially, the President was openly challenging the Soviet Union.
NASA became a money pit. No price was too great to guarantee America's mastery of space. Kennedy's continued speeches on the subject had a way of making the undertaking more than science or politics -- it became a noble human endeavor, a moral necessity. And the underlying theme was that if any people would be successful in accomplishing such difficult and high-minded goals, those people were the Americans.
