In the 1960's the United States made a commitment to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade. A number of political factors affected Kennedy's decision and the timing of it. Kennedy felt great pressure to have the United States "catch up to and overtake" the Soviet Union in the "space race." Four years after the Sputnik shock of 1957, the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first human in space on April 12, 1961. The United States did not want the Soviets to claim the moon, also.
NASA had to overcome formidable obstacles to make this happen. Three consecutive programs were launched -- the Mercury Program, the Gemini Program and the Apollo Program. Each had specific goals to reach if the United States were to be able to land a man on the moon.
Books About the Space Program
- Bizony, Piers. The Space Shuttle: Celebrating Thirty Years of NASA’s First Space Plane. Minneapolis: MBI Pub. Co. and Zenith Press, 2011.
- Carpenter, M. Scott. We Seven. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2010.
- Chaikin, Andrew, and Tom Hanks. A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 2007.
- Harland, David M. How NASA Learned to Fly in Space: An Exciting Account of the Gemini Missions. Burlington, Ont.: Apogee Books, 2010.
- Houston, Rick. Wheels Stop: The Tragedies and Triumphs of the Space Shuttle Program, 1986-2011. 2013.
- Kranz, Gene. Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
- Lovell, Jim. Apollo 13. 1st Mariner Books ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
- Nelson, Craig. Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon. New York: Penguin Books, 2010.
- Roach, Mary. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
- United States. America in Space: NASA’s First Fifty Years. New York: Abrams, 2007.
- Weitekamp, Margaret A. Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America’s First Women in Space Program. Baltimore, Md. [u.a.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.