50 years ago on July 16, 1969 at 9:32 A.M., the world’s mightiest rocket, NASA’s 281-foot Saturn V, lifted three astronauts, a command module, service module, and lunar landing module into a 115-mile high circular orbit above Planet Earth. One and a half orbits later (following an exhaustive systems check by the crew), the rocket’s third stage ignited and propelled Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins into a “translunar trajectory” that would carry them into the moon’s gravitational embrace.

Apollo 11’s journey had begun…and America’s “race to the moon” was four days away from crossing the finish line in a “giant leap for mankind.”

But how did the race begin?

Kennedy and the Cold War

It had been a bad week for newly elected President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The Soviet Union, our arch-nemesis in the post-war world order, had sent the first human into space on April 12, 1961 — yet another in a series of cosmic firsts by the Russians going back to the launch of Sputnik during the Eisenhower administration. Three days later, Kennedy suffered the humiliation of the “Bay of Pigs” — a failed U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Cuba’s communist government under Fidel Castro. Kennedy needed a win.

Looking back half a century at what inspired America to go to the Moon, the more appealing narrative might be that it was the natural outgrowth of human curiosity about not only our world, but the worlds that lie beyond it. There is, no doubt, an element of truth to this understanding of America’s impetus to explore space. Ingenuity, wonder, and the desire to look beyond the current horizon seems to be baked into the DNA of homo sapiens. But unless we understand the Cold War realities of life of mid-20th Century America, we will miss the true historical context of one of the most massive undertakings in our country’s history, and the political calculations that it entailed.

Part of America’s Cold War mentality in the ‘60s was shaped by a battle for hearts and minds. After the defeat of fascism in World War II, global power and prestige resided in two opposing camps: the liberal democracies of the Capitalist West, under the umbrella of Pax Americana, and the command economy and socialist ideology of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact minions. For those countries who considered themselves “free agents”, both camps appealed to their loyalties based on the inherent superiorities of their systems — which were manifest in part by their scientific and technological prowess. Russia had caught up with America as a nuclear power, and as its successive achievements in outer space demonstrated, it had surpassed America in developing rockets.

Kennedy, as ardent a cold warrior as any Republican, had campaigned against Richard Nixon in part on a perceived “missile gap” with the Soviet Union. He had famously chided his rival during one of their televised debates for telling Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that although the Soviet Union was ahead of the United States in boosters, we were ahead of them in consumer appliances. Looking straight at Nixon, Kennedy forcefully made the point that he’d rather the U.S. led in boosters, not washing machines.

Whatever the reality of “the missile gap,” there was no doubt that Russian booster technology was putting ever larger payloads into space — payloads that in the paranoia of American public perception, fueled by political rhetoric, could just as easily be warheads as satellites. Having won the election in 1960, Kennedy was now feeling hard pressed to respond to this concern. He could focus on America’s strategic military capability and stay out of “the space race,” he could continue to play catch up with the Russians, even as they seemed to be pulling further ahead, or he could leap frog them by landing an American on the Moon. Kennedy chose to do what any good CEO would: he delegated.

Johnson’s Task

In mid-April 1961, Kennedy tasked his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, with answering a series of questions he had posed in a 12-sentence memo regarding the feasibility and advisability of manned lunar exploration. Following a week of research and meetings, Johnson came back to his boss with a five-page reply that concluded that putting an American on the Moon was “not only an achievement of great propaganda value, but…essential as an objective whether or not we are first.” He also counseled urgency, otherwise, “we will not be able to catch up, let alone assume leadership.”

Before exciting the imagination and competitive zeal of the American people with his now famous speech at Rice University, during which he stated the goal of landing a human on the Moon and bringing him back safely before the end of the decade, Kennedy took his pitch to the body that would have to fund it: Congress. During a rare personal address to a joint session of Congress, Kennedy laid out 21 specific proposals for countering the Soviet Union. The last of these, some 30 minutes into a 5,800 word speech, was space exploration, which Kennedy declared as, “not merely a race.” He went on to explain, “We go to space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.” America, the world’s beacon of freedom, would only succeed if “every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.”

It was a good pitch, and it elicited that rarest of political responses these days: bipartisan support. After all, neither Democrats or Republicans wanted to see the hammer and sickle impressed upon the lunar surface. The race was on, and we were in it to win it.

Second Thoughts

Ironically, the man who inspired America to shoot for the stars was to have his own serious misgivings about the endeavor before an assassin’s bullet ended his time in office. Tape recordings of Oval Office conversations reveal that Kennedy was fundamentally more concerned with domestic priorities than space exploration, going so far as to say, “I have no interest in space.” Ironically, Khrushchev’s son remembers his father expressing a similar sentiment.

As Kennedy eyed his re-election prospects, he began to reassess the political liabilities of the Moon Race. He was concerned that his opponents would seize on its cost versus its dividends, and that it might ultimately be perceived as a “publicity stunt” both by Congress and the American taxpayer. He was concerned as well that the Cold War promise he made at Rice University might end up taking resources away from cherished social programs. And then there was the looming specter of communism in Southeast Asia — most notably in a little country with a bloody past known as Vietnam.

Kennedy’s passion for the American space program may have waned, but it periodically waxed during visits to NASA. At one of these, America’s foremost rocket scientist (and former Nazi), Werner von Braun, treated the President to a test firing of a single booster engine of the Saturn V rocket that would put an American flag on the Moon. Kennedy was visibly impressed with the massive display, and a subsequent visit to NASA headquarters in Houston was to be his last stop during a November 1963 trip that culminated in Dallas and a date with immortality.

Johnson Stays the Course

One can only speculate how JFK might have campaigned on the subject of American space exploration had the tragedy of November 22, 1963 not occurred. As it was, Lyndon Johnson, the man whose reply to a 12-sentence memo had helped decide Kennedy’s mind on the importance of winning the space race, took up the torch and carried it with zeal. Part of Johnson’s motivation may have been his commitment to continuing the legacy of a martyred President. Part of it may also have been his own personal conviction that, true to his 5-page reply to that memo, America’s global prestige and prowess demanded that we play a prominent, if not leading, role in the exploration of space. Whatever the motivations, Johnson remained steadfast in meeting the timetable Kennedy had asked NASA to deliver on, and he made sure the Apollo program had the funding it needed to do so. It’s no wonder that just as Cape Canaveral was renamed Cape Kennedy, NASA’s Texas headquarters was eventually renamed the Johnson Space Center.

Had Johnson decided to seek a second term in office, he might have been the President who phoned Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on the Moon’s surface and congratulated them on their historic achievement. He likely would have invoked the name of a beloved and murdered president. As it was, events in the little country of Vietnam and the backlash and divisiveness they were to cause among the body politic led to his decision not to seek re-election, and the honor of occupying the White House when America won the Moon Race 50 years ago went to one Richard Milhous Nixon — the man Kennedy had once accused of promoting washing machines over booster rockets in America’s quest for global preeminence and the stars.