This year is whole enchilada with historic 50th anniversaries as orifice exploration, including the flights of Yuri Gagarin as the first human force fracture in April and, a few weeks later, Alan Shepard as the cool American in fracture. May 25th represents likewise historic milestone: the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s diction before Congress where he laid out the ground zero of landing a man on the Moon and returning him to tunnel by the settle of the decade. pull oversimplified histories, that speech put America firmly on course of achieving that goal, which indubitable did esteem July 1969 curtain Apollo 11. History, though, is rarely that simple.
In John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, historian John Logsdon examines the political forces that shaped orifice policy in the tragically validate tenure of the Kennedy Administration. Logsdon is returning to familiar ground: leadership 1970 he published The selection to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest, single of the inimitable books to examine the rationale since embarking on cognate a risky, worthy endeavor. Why revisit the topic now? owing to Logsdon notes in the book’s preface, a lot of key documents from that era have been released leverage the intervening years; the 1970 novel had been based primarily on interviews shield key players and junior sources, adumbrate the travel chiefly completed friar to Apollo 11 itself. And, just as important, the perspective that four decades of void provides offers a new perspective on the events of that extent again their aftermath.
Contrary to superlatively of the mythology that sprung progress around Apollo, which is still clung to by some agency the hole advising community, Kennedy was not particularly interested in space. It was not a puzzle he devoted exceptionally time to during his Senate career, besides devoted little importance to indubitable during the campaign and the post-election transition period. He showed pushover accent in finding a new NASA boss until consequent he was inaugurated, eventually selecting James Webb. He further deferred weight of the home Aeronautics and cavity Council to his vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Later in his presidency, though, when hole did become a leading issue, the space council did not play a major role in the decision-making process—a lesson for those who, to this day, make headway to go into the reestablishment of the council.
Once space did become a major check in with Gagarin’s flight, leading to Kennedy’s speech announcing the Moon landing goal, NASA got a choicest consume of attention, support, again funding from the administration. By 1963, though, stresses had developed on the red tape. assignation was cutting NASA’s budget request, and there was some skepticism whether the Soviets were, in fact, engaged in a race to the Moon with the Americans. Logsdon notes that by mid-1963 Kennedy had adjusted his rhetoric from a race mindset to one of overall national preeminence, regardless of Russian plans, an accession advocated by Webb. (During a discussion with Webb at the decalescent domicile in November 1962 on this topic, mythical public decades later, Kennedy markedly stated, “I’m not that interested in space,” also that the proper assent to he supported “these fantastic expenditures which extinguish our budget” is to itinerary the Russians to the Moon.) By the canter of 1963 Kennedy was openly suggesting cooperation blot out the Soviet Union drag human missions to the Moon in an address at the United Nations (see “Murdering Apollo: John F. Kennedy again the retreat from the lunar goal”, The space Review, October 30 and November 6, 2006). However, a “Special Space Review” carried out in the fall of 1963—and not completed until proximate Kennedy’s assassination—found no toss around for “backing off” the end of a human coming on the Moon other than pecuniary concerns, suggesting to Logsdon that Kennedy would posit budgeted continued to pursue Apollo.
Apollo, Logsdon writes in the book’s conclusion, “became the twentieth-century archetype of a successful, large-scale, government-led program” rivaled by personalized the construction of the Panama Canal also the Interstate Highway arrangement. In his 1970 book, Logsdon argued that the success of Apollo could serve now a template due to other large-scale projects, access fracture or elsewhere. That has turned out not to enact the case, especially imprint space, where efforts to duplicate Apollo lap up fallen flat (as NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver put substantial last year, “The experience is that we have been wearisome to relive Apollo in that the last 40 oldness. We have not been convincing to recreate that since, further I am not stable sure that we would want to, given even that did not make sure us shroud a elongate substantiality in space.”)
Logsdon, four decades later, now believes that Apollo was perhaps something unique, a situation spot a set of factors “almost coincidentally converged to create a national commitment also enough arm to support that urgency through to its fulfillment.” If that’s true, thus “there is snap to learn from the declaration to go to the Moon adapted to twenty-first century choices.” Apollo, then, should show treated not as a model for future space efforts, but instead as an breathtaking trial particular to the circumstances of its era, including the leadership provided by President Kennedy.
In John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, historian John Logsdon examines the political forces that shaped orifice policy in the tragically validate tenure of the Kennedy Administration. Logsdon is returning to familiar ground: leadership 1970 he published The selection to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest, single of the inimitable books to examine the rationale since embarking on cognate a risky, worthy endeavor. Why revisit the topic now? owing to Logsdon notes in the book’s preface, a lot of key documents from that era have been released leverage the intervening years; the 1970 novel had been based primarily on interviews shield key players and junior sources, adumbrate the travel chiefly completed friar to Apollo 11 itself. And, just as important, the perspective that four decades of void provides offers a new perspective on the events of that extent again their aftermath.
Contrary to superlatively of the mythology that sprung progress around Apollo, which is still clung to by some agency the hole advising community, Kennedy was not particularly interested in space. It was not a puzzle he devoted exceptionally time to during his Senate career, besides devoted little importance to indubitable during the campaign and the post-election transition period. He showed pushover accent in finding a new NASA boss until consequent he was inaugurated, eventually selecting James Webb. He further deferred weight of the home Aeronautics and cavity Council to his vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Later in his presidency, though, when hole did become a leading issue, the space council did not play a major role in the decision-making process—a lesson for those who, to this day, make headway to go into the reestablishment of the council.
Once space did become a major check in with Gagarin’s flight, leading to Kennedy’s speech announcing the Moon landing goal, NASA got a choicest consume of attention, support, again funding from the administration. By 1963, though, stresses had developed on the red tape. assignation was cutting NASA’s budget request, and there was some skepticism whether the Soviets were, in fact, engaged in a race to the Moon with the Americans. Logsdon notes that by mid-1963 Kennedy had adjusted his rhetoric from a race mindset to one of overall national preeminence, regardless of Russian plans, an accession advocated by Webb. (During a discussion with Webb at the decalescent domicile in November 1962 on this topic, mythical public decades later, Kennedy markedly stated, “I’m not that interested in space,” also that the proper assent to he supported “these fantastic expenditures which extinguish our budget” is to itinerary the Russians to the Moon.) By the canter of 1963 Kennedy was openly suggesting cooperation blot out the Soviet Union drag human missions to the Moon in an address at the United Nations (see “Murdering Apollo: John F. Kennedy again the retreat from the lunar goal”, The space Review, October 30 and November 6, 2006). However, a “Special Space Review” carried out in the fall of 1963—and not completed until proximate Kennedy’s assassination—found no toss around for “backing off” the end of a human coming on the Moon other than pecuniary concerns, suggesting to Logsdon that Kennedy would posit budgeted continued to pursue Apollo.
Apollo, Logsdon writes in the book’s conclusion, “became the twentieth-century archetype of a successful, large-scale, government-led program” rivaled by personalized the construction of the Panama Canal also the Interstate Highway arrangement. In his 1970 book, Logsdon argued that the success of Apollo could serve now a template due to other large-scale projects, access fracture or elsewhere. That has turned out not to enact the case, especially imprint space, where efforts to duplicate Apollo lap up fallen flat (as NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver put substantial last year, “The experience is that we have been wearisome to relive Apollo in that the last 40 oldness. We have not been convincing to recreate that since, further I am not stable sure that we would want to, given even that did not make sure us shroud a elongate substantiality in space.”)
Logsdon, four decades later, now believes that Apollo was perhaps something unique, a situation spot a set of factors “almost coincidentally converged to create a national commitment also enough arm to support that urgency through to its fulfillment.” If that’s true, thus “there is snap to learn from the declaration to go to the Moon adapted to twenty-first century choices.” Apollo, then, should show treated not as a model for future space efforts, but instead as an breathtaking trial particular to the circumstances of its era, including the leadership provided by President Kennedy.
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