The Space Race - Part 2: Why The Moon?

In The Space Race - Part 1: Background and Early Years, the factors that led to and shaped the Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s were examined. This hub will look at why, after completing just a single manned space flight in 1961, the US made the announcement that they would put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. This was a bold decision, but one with serious consequences for mankind's long-term presence in space.

By 1961, some thought that the Space Race was over, and the Soviet Union had won. They had launched the first satellite, put the first human being into space, and clearly had superior rocket technology. US President Kennedy, however, was unwilling to cede such a political and military Cold War victory to the Soviets. In 1961, Kennedy put the US back in the Space Race. He did this by simply moving the finish line.

The reality was that the US could not catch up with the Soviets in the short-term. A long-term goal, however, one that was beyond even the capacity of existing Soviet rockets, might give the US a chance to catch up and even pull ahead. On May 25, 1961, before a joint session of Congress, President Kennedy challenged the US to "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."

This was a daring move. At the time, America had flown only one manned space mission. Freedom 7 had carried Alan Shepard on a sub-orbital trajectory that lasted only 15 minutes and 28 seconds from launch to splashdown. The US had not yet even put a man in orbit when - for political reasons - they decided to make the Moon the primary focus of their space efforts. In response, the Soviet Union, anxious to demonstrate the superiority of their technology and communist political system, would obviously try to get there first. For no good reason other than Cold War politics, the Space Race was now a race to the Moon.

The Moon landings were truly a triumph of technology and the human spirit, and may have even made sense in the political environment of 1961. In terms of their effect on mankind's long-term presence in space, however, they were a mistake. The early years of the space program would have taken a very different path, had the motivation been scientific or exploratory, rather than political.

A better decision might have been to build a space station in earth orbit first, creating a permanent manned presence in space by the late 1960s. In addition to being used for scientific observations of Earth, this station could have served as a construction and launch platform for deep-space missions. This was the original vision of Werner Von Braun, America's leading rocket scientist, and many other experts of the time. It would have made deep space exploration easier and less costly, because flights launched from an orbiting platform could be smaller and use less fuel. It would have taken longer to get to the Moon this way, but overall this plan would have provided greater long-term benefit.

But NASA's goal in the 1960s was simply to go to the Moon, and do it quickly. This led to a lack of long-term planning. Project Apollo became a scattering of individual, short-duration missions to different areas of the Moon. Each mission was self-contained, carrying with it everything the mission required. There was no attempt to utilize or build on equipment left behind by previous missions.

There were six successful manned lunar landings between 1969 and 1972. Had they all landed in the same area and built upon what had been left by previous missions, they might have created a small lunar base, or at least a collection of equipment that could be used by future explorers.

Apollo met its goal of landing a man on the Moon admirably, but with little thought as to what would come next. The sad reality is that Apollo left behind nothing of value for future missions. This short-sightedness partially explains the floundering of NASA and the US space program in the decades following Project Apollo, and it continues to haunt NASA even today.

For more than a decade, the world's two superpowers invested staggering amounts of time and money on separate projects, each attempting to reach exactly the same goal, a goal that hindsight reveals made little sense. What might have been achieved had they pooled their knowledge and resources and worked toward goals that made sense in the long term? Sadly, political realities meant that such cooperation could not have been.

Still, the Moon has always held a special appeal, and the anxieties associated with the Cold War were indeed powerful motivators. Perhaps, in a decade filled with war and social upheaval, the US public would not have supported a long-term, expensive space program if the goal hadn't been beating the Soviet Union to the Moon. The Space Race may have been short-sighted and wasteful, but the amazing truth is that without it, large-scale ventures into space may not have happened for a very long time.