Quote:
Originally Posted by Cwocwoc
After Gagarin's space flight Kennedy immediately asked what America needed to do to catch up with the USSR. He gave NASA a high priority in terms of expenditure. The man on the moon stuff was aspirational at that time. He couldn't have known how many years it would actually take (but he did know that his second term would be over by 1968 !). However it did catch the public mood and it did happen obv. I am not qualified to judge what the full benefits of the Apollo program were so I'll pass on that.
The benefits were great even if you only measure it by the prestige (which is about the least important). But just thinking 100's of years into the future at a future historian looking back and asking what were America's best achievements for the world - The Moon Landing surely would be at the top of the list.
Humanity needs frontiers and an exploratory spirit, goals, and drives to be truly alive.