Word: moone
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SPACE: Why We Went to the Moon...
...movies are simply another illustration of the hypocrisy and duplicity of American society. How many times have we chuckled at the ravings of Ralph Kramden, who, raising his fist near his wife's head, sputters, "One of these days, Alice. One of these days -- POW -- right to the moon"? How much money was grossed from films with titles such as How to Murder Your Wife? Is it only now, when the violent nature of a national sports hero is publicly disclosed, that we pretend revulsion at an epidemic that once caused us to laugh hysterically? Wake up, America...
...April 14, 1961 -- two days after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went into his triumphal orbit and three days before the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion -- Kennedy tilted back on the hind legs of a leather chair in the Cabinet Room and, I believe, decided to send Americans to the moon. I watched it happen in one of those unusual episodes when Kennedy opened a window on the inner White House for an outsider. Maybe he understood that, as astronomer Michael Hart wrote, the moon landing would "be forever remembered as one of the greatest achievements of the human race...
...answers were less than reassuring. NASA Director James Webb was not certain we could beat the Soviets to the moon. Chief NASA scientist Hugh Dryden thought it might take a program like the atom bomb's Manhattan Project and cost $40 billion. (The entire federal budget was then $98 billion.) Budget Director David Elliott Bell asked where the money would come from. Staff aide Ted Sorensen brought up the financial needs of earthly social programs. Science adviser Jerome Wiesner, sucking on a cold pipe, wasn't sure a manned lunar landing made good scientific sense...
...faded outside, and the lights over the South Lawn came on as the discussion wound down. "There's nothing more important," Kennedy said quietly as he got up to leave. But what of the final commitment to go for the moon? I asked as he left the room. "Wait here," he said, beckoning Sorensen to follow him into the Oval Office. A few minutes later, Sorensen came out. "We are going to the moon," he said. So simple. But the decision committed the greatest power on earth to the unknown...