May 25, 1961

Hey everyone,

The Apollo Program which proposed that a man be sent to the moon was conceived as early as the Eisenhower administration. However, it wasn't until May 25th, 1961 that this program began moving forward. On this date, Kennedy addressed congress. His statement was this "...I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish". This was just weeks after Alan Shepard had launched into space for fifteen minutes. The goal was bold, to say the least. Over the 8 years and more that followed, 400,000 people would work towards this goal and tens of billions would be spent on this endeavor. President Kennedy would publicly push this goal, especially in a speech made at Rice University on September 12, 1962. In this speech, Kennedy stated that "No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space" and "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". However, President Kennedy would not live to see this dream after succumbing to an assassin's bullet just fourteen months after this speech. Even after this death, Project Gemini would move towards this goal, and, by the beginning of 1967, the moon appeared to be a tangible goal. But, tragedy would stop it dead in its tracks.