EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 6

W h y did w e g o t o t h e m oo n? taking men to the moon. Just as important, the U.S. space program and the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union spawned a new generation of engineers—men and women who overcame seemingly insurmountable challenges and helped NASA make a series of bold moves in order to meet Kennedy’s deadline for a lunar landing by the end of the 1960s. We tell the stories of some of those NASA engineers in this special edition, and we also hear from readers who were similarly inspired by Apollo. In his 2007 memoir, “Counselor,” JFK’s trusted advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen described for the first time the internal debates within the Kennedy administration that led to the decision to send Americans to the moon. Sorensen led the White House deliberations 6 EE Times | Apollo | July 20, 2009 that fleshed out the U.S. lunar initiative, and helped craft the words Kennedy used to sell the program to a skeptical Congress. Along with the peaceful conclusion of the Cuban missile crisis and the flourishing of civil rights, Sorensen ranked the exploration of outer space as a top achievement of the Kennedy administration. The ultimate success of the U.S. space program was driven by Cold War fears. “The possibility of the Soviet Union’s military occupation of space was a nightmare in the West,” Sorensen wrote. Soviet missiles designed to carry much heavier warheads gave Moscow a huge advantage in the space race, enabling it to launch the first man into orbit in April 1961. In the previous two years, American rockets had been blowing up regularly at Cape Canaveral. Two days after the orbital flight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, Sorensen met in his White House office with presidential science advisor Jerome Wiesner and deputy NASA administrator Hugh Dryden, along with budget and space experts. “Their consensus view was that the Soviet Union had been When told the Soviets were on track to beat the U.S. to the moon with an unmanned probe, Sorensen asked: ‘What about a manned vehicle?’

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Rosenthal-t.html?_r=2&ref=firstchapters

EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009

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