That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year – a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. It is for these reasons that I regard the decision, last year, to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our Universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. But it will be done. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space.
Sign in to manage your newsletter preferencesJust one week later, Kennedy suffered another defeat. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this programme a high national priority – even though I realise that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.Yuri Gagarin’s spaceflight on 12 April 1961 was a major embarrassment for President John F Kennedy, the White House’s new occupant. Although the killing was attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald (himself killed days later by Jack Ruby), many believe Kennedy’s assassination to have been the result of a conspiracy.Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it; and the Moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.
He had a charmed upbringing and graduated from Harvard in 1940 before serving in the US Naval Reserve during the Second World War.But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the Moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300-feet tall – the length of this football field – made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to Earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the Sun – almost as hot as it is here today – and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out – then we must be bold.We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. After narrowly avoiding a nuclear conflict as a result of 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis, he successfully negotiated the Limited Nuclear Test Ban treaty in 1963, which the US, USSR and Great Britain agreed to sign.Discover our latest special editions covering a range of fascinating topics from the latest scientific discoveries to the big ideas explained.Kennedy now turned to space as a means of bolstering his credibility. Some 40 of them were ‘made in the United States of America’ and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.Yet the vows of this nation can only be fulfilled if we in this nation are first and, therefore, we intend to be first. We choose to go to the moon. And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them.