Man and Space: US Space Race Documentary - Part 2 (1961)

1961 www.amazon.com Watch the full film: thefilmarchived.blogspot.com On April 20, 1961, about one week after Gagarin's flight, United States President John F. Kennedy sent a memo to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, asking Johnson to look into the status of America's space program, and into programs that could offer NASA the opportunity to catch up. Johnson responded about one week later, concluding that the US needed to do much more to reach a position of leadership, and recommending that a manned moon landing was far enough in the future that it was likely the United States would achieve it first. On May 25, Kennedy announced his support for the Apollo program in an address to a special joint session of Congress: "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." He began forming a policy of justification for the Space Race as a vital national security front in the Cold War, which he expressed to the public in his famous September 12, 1962 speech at Rice Stadium where he stated: "The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines. ... For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for ...



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