Abstract
The May 1961 decision to send men to the Moon was made at least in part for short-term political reasons. President John F. Kennedy wanted to restore his ratings following several weeks of relentlessly bad press, and the promise of a Moon landing seemed the best way to get the media and the public back on his side.
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Notes
- 1.
About 100,000 more out of a total of 68.8 million votes cast, a margin of about one sixth of one percent. As an example of the claims of fraud, Fannin County in Texas had 4,895 registered voters but recorded 6,138 votes cast, of which three quarters were for Kennedy. There were reports of Republican voter fraud, too, so in the end the election result was broadly supported.
- 2.
In 1958 the Soviets had 6 unpublicized launch failures and only one success, while the United States had ten failed launches and seven successes. The “score” should have been recognized as U. S. 7, Soviets 1, but because of the lack of information about the Soviet failures plus the media’s tendency to highlight disasters over successes, the public perception was U. S. 10 failures, Soviets 1 success.
- 3.
A small number of U. S.-supplied planes did bomb Cuban airfields on April 16th.
- 4.
Ike’s enthusiasm for reconnaissance satellites was due to the lack of knowledge in the West about the secretive Soviet Union’s military capabilities, and the fear of a surprise attack such as the Japanese had sprung on America less than 20 years earlier. The Sputnik and then Gagarin surprises strengthened the argument for better knowledge about Soviet rocketry that would be (and eventually was) provided by reconnaissance satellites.
- 5.
Humans need oxygen, water, food, heat, 8 hours sleep, etc. Machines need some electricity. Machines were getting smaller as the electronic revolution took off; men weren’t.
- 6.
An audio recording of the speech and a transcript are available at https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHA-032.aspx.
References
Murray, C & Cox, C B, Apollo: The Race to the Moon, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1989.
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Norris, P. (2019). Why Did the United States Send Men to the Moon in the 1960s?. In: Returning People to the Moon After Apollo. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14915-4_1
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