American Race to the Moon

The roots of America's plan to land a man on the moon can be found outside of the country. Although never directly mentioned in its official motto, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established as a direct result of the Soviet space program's successful launching of Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite, on October 4th, 1957. The U.S. Congress, worrying that the country was about to lose its technological edge over the rest of the world, demanded drastic action. Dwight D. Eisenhower, then president, waited only a few months before creating a new government agency responsible for all non-military activity in space. On July 29th, 1958, the president signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA. The outside world continued to have an effect. The technology initially used by NASA came in large part from the German rocket program of the Second World War. Wernher von Braun, who was recruited by the Americans at the end of the war, is today considered the father of the United States space program.
NASA began operations on October 1st, 1958, and was made up of four laboratories as well as about eight thousand employees from the already 43-year-old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The history of the new organization can be divided into various phases, each related to a specific program. The first experiments undertaken as part of Program Mercury were designed simply to discover if humans could actually survive a round-trip voyage into space. This involved the construction of 20 spacecraft, each large enough to hold one astronaut. On a very basic level, NASA needed to test what worked and what didn't. They made numerous unmanned launches, many of them resulting in explosions, as well as four separate launch attempts that included small creatures. The first was a small monkey. By 1961, NASA's Program Mercury successfully placed Alan Shepard into space, but for only fifteen minutes.
This milestone quickly led to the Apollo Project. The initial idea was to get a human close to the Moon, but not actually on it. There were too many unknowns about the surface of the Moon to plan a safe landing. On February 20th, 1962, John Glenn piloted the Friendship 7 for five hours in orbit around the Earth. NASA had finally learned how to get a human into space, and most importantly, keep him there. This was the crucial step necessary: they had created the ability to stay in space long enough to really figure out what to do there. The objectives of the mission changed drastically, however, when President John E Kennedy told the nation on May 25th, 1961, that America would instead focus on a manned mission to and from the Moon, and that these missions would be possible by the end of the decade.
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(A) Many people worried about the money that would be spent, feeling that it would be better used for other purposes. ■
(B) Others continued to see the program in relation to the rest of the world. ■
(C) They worried that NASA did not seem to have any valuable military use and openly questioned the idea of spending money on rockets that could not be used to defend the country. ■
(D) Kennedy managed to convince both sides of the project's benefits. He assured people that the mission would provide jobs and resources to different states throughout the country as well as specific advances in rocket technology. Kennedy stressed the value of dual-use technology, which could be used for both military and non- military purposes.
Instead of sending a person to space and back again, which required only one lift-off from Earth followed by a landing, the Apollo Project now entailed an Earth lift-off, followed by a landing on the Moon, another lift-off, and then a final Earth landing. The Gemini Program, therefore, was created to collect information and perfect techniques that would make the Apollo Project possible. Using a series of eleven orbital flights, NASA was able to show that humans could survive in space for days and that two separate vehicles could meet and join while in orbit. It took eight years and numerous attempts before NASA finally reached its goal. On July 20th, 1969, Buzz Aldrin and Nell Armstrong, members of the Apollo Project, became the first humans to walk on the surface of the Moon.