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Apollo 11 set new standard

President Kennedy's goal pushed U.S. to expand its ingenuity

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 20, 2009

WASHINGTON - The measure of what humanity can accomplish is a size 91/2 boot print.

It belongs to Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. It will stay on the moon for millions of years with nothing to wipe it away, serving as a testament to a can-do mankind.

What put man on the moon 40 years ago was an audacious and public effort that the world hasn't seen before or since. It required rocketry that hadn't been built, or even designed, in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy declared the challenge. It needed an advance in computerization that had not happened yet. NASA would have to learn how to dock separate spaceships, how to teach astronauts to walk in space, even how to keep them alive in space -- all tasks so difficult that experts weren't sure they were possible.

Forty years later, the moon landing is talked about as a generic human achievement, not an American one. But Apollo at the time was more about U.S. commitment and ingenuity.

Historian Douglas Brinkley called the Apollo program "the exemplary moment of America's we-can-do-anything attitude." After the moon landing, America got soft, he said, looking for the quick payoff of a lottery ticket instead of the sweat-equity of buckling down and doing something hard.

In years since, when America faces a challenge, leaders often look to the Apollo program for inspiration.

Those efforts recall May 25, 1961, when President Kennedy, fresh from a disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, announced that America would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade and return him safely home.

"I thought he was crazy," said Chris Kraft, when he heard Kennedy's speech.

Kraft was the head of Mission Control. He was the man responsible for guiding astronauts to orbit (which hadn't been done yet). Kraft first heard about a mission to the moon when Kennedy made the speech.

Less than three months later, Kraft was in the White House explaining to the president just how landing on the moon would be done. Kraft still didn't believe that it would work. "Too many unknowns," he said.

It was the Cold War, and Russian Yuri Gagarin had just become the first man in space.

Kennedy chose landing a man on the moon because experts told him it was the one space goal that was so distant and complicated at the time that the United States could catch up and pass the Soviet Union, Ted Sorensen, Kennedy's adviser, said.

The idea in a world where American capitalism was pitted against Soviet communism on a daily basis was "to prove to the world which system was best, which one was the future," Sorensen said.

And it cost money. The United States spent $25.4 billion on the Apollo program, which translates to nearly $150 billion in current dollars.

Years later, Armstrong called his first words on the moon "a pretty simple statement, talking about stepping off something."

But Armstrong wasn't merely talking about that small step of his. What came next was the big deal. It was, as he said on the moon 40 years ago, "a giant leap for mankind." It still is.