Hi Everyone:

In 1961 John Kennedy announced that we needed to go to the moon. In my opinion this is one of the most important decisions in history and assures that Kennedy was one of the most important people who ever lived. Am I right?

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Mason,

The question sounds a bit provocative, and I get the feeling you're just trying to spark discussion rather than present your personal POV.

It's a bit simplistic to say the moon decision makes Kennedy one of the most important people in history, as these things are never decided by one person alone. And the focus on going to the moon as an individual event is slightly myopic, context is important.

I wonder if the technology and tangible benefits to society which came from the space race are somehow exceptional compared to other technologies developed in the general framework of the arms race (obviously the assumption here is that the space race was nothing more than an extension of military competition between the US and USSR)? If they are, then there's a case for saying that the decision to go to the moon was monumental for reasons beyond sheer propaganda, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to say.

By the same token, we could say that Khrushchev is as important as Kennedy. Hard to imagine the US going for the moon at that time in the absence of fierce Soviet military competition and the ruskies did get up into orbit first - it takes two to tango and all that. So how can we say one was more important than the other?

Did we really go to the moon?

One thing that is perplexing is why no country hasn't gone back to the moon and just declare it their own territory. If I was in charge of North Korea, that would be #1 on my to do list.

Why are they spending billions on nuclear weapons that probably won't be used when they can create unbelievable pride by saying they own the moon and planting flags all over. PR win of epic proportions.

Earth people would go nuts. UN resolutions galore. Attention.

Did we really go to the moon?

Yes. Next?..

I am 99.99% certain we did go to the moon.

Does that make me a moon-landing hoaxer?

I think it was an incredible feat in 1969 and I am surprised that no country or private entity hasn't tried to colonize it, or at least put another flag on there in 40 years.

Building a nuke is way easier than going to the moon.

Yes. Agree.

Just surprised that no attempt has even been made in 40+ years by any country or private entity. Or groups of countries and entities.

The Chinese have landed on the moon, while India, Japan and Europe all have lunar orbiters. None of those were manned, but why would you want to take humans up there? Humans require more room than their size, large amounts of oxygen, a very narrow temperature range, are very sensitive to radiation and most importantly it is considered very poor form to just leave them up there, so you'll have to make the ship able to return to earth.

The age of manned spaceflight (beyond LEO) seems to be over as a result of advances in technology.

A bit more costlier but not easier. Fifty thousand humans were smart enough to do it in the sixties if they had the money. As opposed to a few hundred physicists in the thirties and forties.

Most all space-faring countries are parties of the "Outer Space Treaty" which prohibits appropriating celestial bodies.

North Korea is not a signatory, but a manned space program to the Moon for purposes of setting up a colony is probably just a wee bit ambitious.

Not to mention, North Korea's economy is weak enough as it is, even before the notion of setting up a colony with virtually no economic upside, just a sinkhole of money. Not real sure that China is interested in bankrolling that kind of project for a client state that it basically gives money to so it won't starve and just be quiet.

Kennedy announced in a speech we were going to the moon, however he did not do any of the work. His family paid massive taxes to help fund the mission. Kennedy imho was a average-poor president. 1. Bay of Pigs 2. Public Sector Unions 3. Almost got us in a nuclear war without the cool hand of some Russian sub operator it was adverted. Some rich guy should send the family of that sub operator a $ million. 4. Started operations in Vietnam.

Kennedy and his brother were great war heroes. There is a television show "Strange Inheritances" and it showed Kennedy went out of his way to write a letter to the family of a war comrade who died in the war. Also meet with them.

The total number of people who worked on the US project to build the bomb was more than one hundred thousand (mostly highly skilled construction workers). There were installations all over the country (oakridge, argonn, hanford, etc.) involved in the project. The well known scientists were concentrated in Los Alamos (where there were several thousand people wokring on it), but the whole project was much larger. The ability to get some of the very best scientists in the world to work on it was highly context dependent - it just happened that many of them were refugees from the nazis. Going to the moon did not require such high end talent, but from an engineering perspective was probably a more difficult enterprise, the same way building an intercontinental missile to deliver the bomb was technically more difficult than building the bomb.

IMO space exploration is a waste of money. I find it interesting from a scientific POV but I think there are more important places for government to spend money.

Money is better spent on education, social safety nets, medical care, rehabilitation programs etc.

There are significant hunger and poverty concerns in the US (I am not even mentioning the rest of the world) so why not invest in long term solutions to those problems?

I am not a hater of NASA or the space programs I think they are really interesting and all but there are more pressing issues very close to home.

PS. I think Kennedy was great but it has nothing to do with his approval for going to the moon. Whether or not he would have followed through with it I give him credit for pledging to get out of Vietnam amidst much criticism from his contemporaries.

I would like to read about this Russian sub captain.
what should I look up on wiki/google?

thanks.

Hi riverboatking:

If you ever watch the show Secrets of the Dead which runs on PBS, they recently had a show on the Cuban Missle Crisis and Vasili Arkhipov who stopped the firing of the nuclear torpedoes. Here's a link to the whole show:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/the-...l-episode/905/

and it's an incredible story.

Best wishes,
Mason

awesome thanks for the link!

that was really interesting.
so basically crimson tide was based on this eh?

Initiating the waste of $500B on a pointless endeavor is likely not the key qualification for historical importance.

This is buying into a story line. Ike was behind the space program as well, but it just happened that the progression of history placed JFK in the white house at the right moment for the Moon pitch, and his fans have sold the story so much over the past 50 years we as a country falsely think the space program was all his idea.

This is an American success, JFK had not that much to do with it, about the same amount as many other politicians.

Space exploration has often been used as a proxy competition for geopolitical rivalries such as the Cold War. The early era of space exploration was driven by a "Space Race" between the Soviet Union and the United States. The launch of the first man-made object to orbit the Earth, the USSR's Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957, and the first Moon landing by the American Apollo 11 craft on 20 July 1969

I can see how there would be a lot of people for and a lot of people against space exploration. Some fear of the unknown and some thinking that it could be the biggest advancement ever.

italicized text from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_exploration

I believe the development of the F1 engines for the first stage of the Saturn V started in 1958, so they were definitely thinking about the moon in the Eisenhower era.