Kennedy and the Moonshot: How a President Sold America on the Moon

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, a small satellite that did little more than send a simple radio signal as it circled Earth. Its effect on the United States was enormous. If Soviet rockets could put an object in orbit, their rocket-carried nuclear missiles were probably better than anyone had thought — and space itself was now Soviet ground. In 1961, John F. Kennedy set out to change that, with a goal many doubted could be reached: to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

President Kennedy at Launch Complex 37, where a Saturn launch site was under construction, Cape Canaveral, September 11, 1962. Credit: Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

The Cold War in space

For more than a decade before Kennedy took office, the United States and the Soviet Union had competed in influence, ideology, technology and weapons without fighting each other directly. Both sides were building nuclear weapons, each able to kill thousands, and many people feared "mutually assured destruction" — that the use of even one would bring a retaliation capable of destroying civilization. New technology on one side deeply worried the other.

As a senator in 1958, Kennedy had warned of a "missile gap," but also of "Sputnik diplomacy": the Soviet Union's growing global influence through science and technology. Space appealed to him both as a way to counter that influence and as a way to rally Americans in a tense and dangerous time.

Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite placed in orbit around Earth, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union. Credit: NASA.

Kennedy takes charge

By January 1961, when Kennedy became president, the Soviets had sent a probe beyond Earth's gravity, sent probes to the Moon, and brought animals safely back from orbit — all world firsts. In April 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth. In May, Kennedy asked Congress to invest more in space, expanded NASA, and set the goal of a crewed mission to the Moon before the end of the 1960s.

"Now it is time to take longer strides — time for a great new American enterprise — time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth."
— Address to a joint session of Congress, May 25, 1961

Kennedy did not coin "moon shot." The phrase began in horse racing, much like "long shot"; its earliest known use for a mission to the Moon was in the Rotary Club's magazine, The Rotarian, in April 1949. Today "moonshot" also means any ambitious project that could have very significant results.

Kennedy worked closely with NASA's researchers and embraced other American achievements in space. On February 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.

President Kennedy and astronaut John Glenn look inside the Friendship 7 capsule. Credit: Cecil Stoughton, White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

A joint mission that never happened

At first the Moonshot was not to be American alone. In 1961 Kennedy proposed a joint Moon mission to the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev. His reasons are not clear: he may have thought cooperation was the surest way to get an American to the Moon given the Soviet lead, or hoped it would ease tensions. When the two leaders met in June 1961, Khrushchev turned it down, and after Kennedy's death no later administration took up the idea again.

Winning the public

Reaching the Moon took money and public support as well as technology. Some Americans feared it was impossible, or would cost so much that it was out of reach. Kennedy defended it as a victory for the country and a milestone for humanity, and spoke about it often. The most famous of those speeches was at Rice University:

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
— Address at Rice University, September 12, 1962

Many Americans wrote to the President to support the space race, which was becoming something of a national movement, and most remained supportive until Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Some 500 million people around the world watched on television.

Controversy

• Wernher von Braun. The rocket scientist at the center of much of NASA's work had been a Nazi Party member and a weapons researcher in Germany during World War II. Recruited by the United States to work on missiles, he later held a senior post at NASA.
• Cost. Some feared that money for space came at the expense of Americans in need. The day before the Apollo 11 launch, Ralph Abernathy of the Poor People's Campaign led hundreds of demonstrators calling for help for Americans facing hunger and poverty.
• Who got to go. Some pointed to the lack of diversity among astronauts, and Kennedy received letters urging that qualified people be included whatever their race or gender. Kennedy was deeply involved in both civil rights and space, but the two did not come together in his administration.

Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin beside the American flag on the Moon, July 20, 1969. Credit: NASA.

Legacy

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. A week later, on November 29, President Lyndon B. Johnson named NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center for him. NASA continued Moon missions into the 1970s. The space race renewed interest in science and mathematics education — part of the roots of today's focus on STEM — and forms of water purification, integrated circuits and fireproof materials trace back to Apollo. As Kennedy said of the Moon, "it will not be one man going to the moon ... it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there."

Sources

Based on "President John F. Kennedy and the Moonshot: Inspiration and Achievement," National Park Service (John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site), a work of the United States government in the public domain.