President Kennedy commits the US to landing a man on the Moon
On this day · 25 May 1961
In a 1961 address to Congress, Kennedy pledged to land a man on the Moon and bring him home before the decade was out.
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before a joint session of Congress and made a promise the United States had no idea how to keep. Buried in a long speech on “urgent national needs,” he asked the nation to commit itself to a single, audacious goal.
“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.”
The timing was no accident. Six weeks earlier, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first human in space, and Alan Shepard’s May 5 flight had lasted barely fifteen minutes. The Cold War space race was a race the US was losing.
The pledge looked reckless. No American had yet orbited Earth, and the rockets, computers, and spacesuits required did not exist. Yet Apollo 11 delivered with months to spare: on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, honoring a promise made eight years earlier.
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