THE CHALLENGE On May 25 1961 President John F mission His goal was to convince the country Kennedy walked into the halls of US Congress He had an important to go to the moon Kennedy wanted the United States to be a leader in space He wanted to set new goals for space exploration This meant seeking funding from Congress Kennedy’s biggest goal was to land a man on the moon during the 1960s and then bring him back This would be a huge task But the audience liked Kennedy’s message Congress approved the spending The quest for the moon had begun John F Kennedy’s speech encouraged NASA workers to make his vision of reaching the moon a reality
The Space Race The United States and the Soviet Union were in a heated competition It became known as the space race Each country wanted to prove it had better technology Rockets could lift spacecraft into orbit PERSPECTIVES HUMAN COMPUTERS Many black women worked as human computers at NASA They made calculations for space flights Then NASA purchased machine computers Women computers including Annie Easley learned how to program them They made important calculations for the Apollo program Easley said of the work Maybe we put time into something that we figured it won’t work But that was not a waste It was research The achievement made a statement about a country’s military because the same rockets could carry bombs Space technology was also military technology The space race had begun in October 1957 The Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite It was called Sputnik The spacecraft was
only the size of a beach ball But launching it was an impressive feat The United States worked hard to catch up It created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA in 1958 By 1961 the Soviet Union was still ahead Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space on April 12 US astronaut Alan Shepard flew weeks later His flight lasted just 15 minutes This was all the space experience NASA had when Kennedy made his bold challenge Shepard’s flight showed astronauts CIVIL RIGHTS President Kennedy’s vice president was Lyndon B Johnson who saw a connection between the space program and civil rights Many NASA facilities were in the South In the 1960s segregation and discrimination were severe in this part of the country Johnson felt this was partly because the region was so poor Johnson believed that going to the moon would create many skilled high paying jobs He hoped that improving the economy would help advance civil rights too
