JFK’s 1961 Speech Led Space Exploration to New Heights

JFK’s 1961 Speech Led Space Exploration to New Heights lead image
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(ISNS) -- Fifty years ago, on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy told a joint session of Congress 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.”
His vision became NASA’s Apollo program
Kennedy’s call to action was viewed as a largely geopolitical maneuver, intended to achieve U.S. supremacy in rocketry and space travel at a time when the Soviet Union had gained a huge head start by launching Sputnik 1
Whether Apollo had a strong scientific purpose at first or not, the president’s speech “was tremendously influential,” said retired astronomer William E. Howard, who served in military, academic, and intelligence organizations. "[It] inspired a lot of people to go into science.”
Richard Vondrak
Scientific objectives were established at the outset for the Apollo Project, although many scientists doubted that the missions would be worth the expense. The late Robert Jastrow, a nuclear physicist who led early NASA lunar science planning, wrote in his book “Journey to the Stars
Prior to Apollo, scientists were divided about the nature of the moon, said G. Jeffrey Taylor
Urey’s view was adopted by NASA’s Jastrow, who contended that the lunar surface should be explored as the “Rosetta Stone of the solar system.” If the moon had formed cold as Urey claimed, there were no volcanoes to erupt and disturb the surface, no forces to fold the crust and throw up mountains, and, since there is no liquid water nor any wind, no erosion to alter the landscape. All of those effects obliterated the original surface of the Earth over geologic time, leaving no trace of its original condition. So if Apollo could collect rocks from the lunar surface, they supposedly would reveal the nature of moon when it formed, and perhaps what the newborn Earth was like as well.
But Urey and Jastrow were wrong. Lunar soil gathered by the first men on the moon, Neil Armstrong
The molten rock layer extended down at least 60 miles, perhaps a great deal deeper. In this “magma ocean” layer, the original moon rock was destroyed and new minerals crystallized as magma cooled. This created the light, white rock, which rose to the top as denser rock sank into the depths of the moon. Any trace of the primordial lunar surface was destroyed. Later, large asteroids collided with the moon at intervals, creating huge impact basins and weakening the crust where, even later, dark lava would well up from the still hot lunar interior. This made the dark, flat lunar maria or seas such as the Sea of Tranquility
Taylor said that Apollo solved the mystery of how the moon’s surface formed and “revolutionized our whole view of the solar system.”
A half century after Kennedy initiated the Apollo program, scientists are still studying the moon, currently with robotic spacecraft. During Apollo, astronauts circling the moon in a command module discovered a puzzling sight, moon dust rising well above the lunar surface, although there is no wind to loft it. Vondrak, now the project scientist for NASA’s lunar reconnaissance orbiter, said that the orbiter will gather new data on the strange dust phenomenon this summer.
Meanwhile, politicians, engineers, scientists and astronauts disagree about what NASA
“We should use the moon of Mars, Phobos to assemble a base,” said Aldrin, pausing in a busy week of appearances at events marking the anniversary. That base could be installed afterward on the surface of Mars.
Some experts favor returning to the moon as a stepping stone for a human voyage to Mars and back, but those plans have bogged down due to inadequate funding. Others call for a journey to an asteroid.
Many scientists, as in Jastrow’s day, prefer for NASA to concentrate on robotic exploration.
John C. Brandt
ISNS contributing writer Stephen P. Maran is the author of Astronomy for Dummies