Kennedy set the Moon goal in 1961, not at Rice in 1962

President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to a Moon landing on May 25, 1961, asking a joint session of Congress to land a man on the Moon and return him safely “before this decade is out.” That was not his famous “We choose to go to the Moon” speech, which came 16 months later.

The pledge sat in the ninth of ten sections of a 46-minute “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs,” most of which dealt with Cold War defense, foreign aid and civil defense. Kennedy did not pretend it would be cheap. He asked for a firm commitment costing $531 million in fiscal 1962 and an estimated $7 billion to $9 billion more over five years, and warned that going only halfway would be worse than not going at all.

“No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” — John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961

How the goal was chosen

The target came out of a five-week scramble. After Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth on April 12, 1961, Kennedy sent Vice President Lyndon Johnson a memo on April 20 asking whether the US could beat the Soviets with a space laboratory, a trip around the Moon, or a landing. Johnson polled NASA and military leaders and reported that “with a strong effort” the US “could conceivably” win. America’s only spaceflight so far was Alan Shepard’s 15-minute suborbital hop on May 5.

Kennedy restated the goal at Rice University on September 12, 1962, before a crowd of about 40,000, and that is the line most people remember. Apollo 11 met his deadline on July 20, 1969, with five months to spare.