You remember back in July, I talked about the first (human) landing on the Moon. Well, today’s the anniversary of a special milestone in making that happen. As a bit of background, on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress a dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade. Kennedy’s decision was based on a number of political factors, and the timing of them. Kennedy felt great pressure to have the United States “catch up to and overtake” the Soviet Union in the “space race.”
The decision involved a lot of consideration before making it public and would require enormous human efforts and expenditures to make what became Project Apollo a reality by 1969. Only the construction of the Panama Canal in modern peacetime and the Manhattan Project in wartime were comparable in scope.
But back to today…… On September 12, 1962, Kennedy stood in front of a crowd of roughly 35,000 at Rice University and delivered his historic speech — he declared that by the end of the decade, the United States would land astronauts on the Moon. The Rice University speech — not the one to Congress back in May — galvanized public support, and led to government investment. The U.S. government committed approximately $25 billion to the program — the NASA funding comprised 4.4% of the national budget in 1966.
Just seven years after the speech, Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon and the world celebrated. It was a historic moment, but also a global victory for the U.S.
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