EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 7

W h y did w e g o t o t h e m oo n? required to develop larger rocket thrust for their strategic arsenal years earlier, when the United States had already developed lighter thermonuclear weapons,” Sorensen recalls. That had given the Soviets a seemingly insurmountable lead in the space race. Sorensen pressed the experts on how the United States could catch up and compete with the Soviets in space. Again, the experts cited the Soviet lead in rocket thrust, which could eventually allow them to send an unmanned probe to the moon. “What about a manned vehicle?” Sorensen asked. Such a “far off” project would require that the United States quickly close the rocket-thrust gap while achieving an unheard-of number of scientific and engineering advances. Nevertheless, Sorensen says he saw an opening. 7 EE Times | Apollo | July 20, 2009 Sorensen recalls wondering if the idea was ‘crazy’ “That ray of hope, after all the previous pessimistic answers, caught my immediate attention,” he wrote. “I believe it was at this meeting that we first discussed the possibility of sending a man to the moon.” As for the initially skeptical president, “He immediately sensed that the possibility of putting a man on the moon could galvanize public support for the exploration of space as one of the great human adventures of the twentieth century,” Sorensen asserts. “ ‘Get it staffed out’,” JFK told Sorensen. Six weeks later, JFK addressed a joint session of Congress to sell a U.S. moon landing. Sorensen said he later recalled gazing up at the moon, wondering if the idea of a lunar landing was “crazy,” whether it would be worth the billions of dollars such a program would cost and whether those funds might be better spent on combating the planet’s ills. But it was extremely doubtful that Congress would have approved funding for new social programs, and it would have rejected a less ambitious U.S. space program, JFK’s aide concluded. “The ‘moon shot’ was the making of America’s superiority in space” and of “all scientific, diplomatic and national security benefits that

EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009

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