Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon(6)



On April 12, 1961, less than three months after Kennedy’s inauguration, tracking stations controlled by American intelligence picked up the flight of a Soviet spaceship and detected something startling inside. Minutes later, the Soviet government announced that they’d put the first man into space—whom they called a cosmonaut, or “universe sailor.” And he’d already made a complete orbit around Earth.

For the first time, a man had broken the bonds of his home planet. Yet as the twenty-seven-year-old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin whirled around the globe, few knew the extent to which the Soviets had rushed the mission, the myriad risks they’d taken, or the critical tests they’d skipped.

Near the 108-minute flight’s end, after reentering the atmosphere, Gagarin’s spaceship began spinning uncontrollably and plummeted toward Earth. He managed to eject and parachute down, unharmed but almost two hundred miles off course. He landed in a field near the tiny village of Smelovka, east of the Volga River in southern Russia, where he was discovered by a woman and a little girl. The girl ran away, startled by the sight of this alien being who had dropped from the sky, but Gagarin waved his arms and called out, “I’m one of yours, a Soviet, don’t be afraid.” He struggled to walk in his space suit but managed to reach the girl and reveal an incredible truth—he had just come from outer space.

In 1945, the Soviet Union had lain in ruins. Now, sixteen years later, it had put the first man into orbit around Earth. Gagarin was given a parade in Red Square, an event as big as or bigger than the one held to celebrate the end of World War II. People cried in the streets and hung pictures of the cosmonaut in their homes.



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Gagarin’s flight dealt an even bigger blow to the United States than did Sputnik. “We are behind,” Kennedy admitted at a press conference. Soviet propaganda rained down from Moscow extolling the virtues of Communism and the superiority of Soviet science and technology, and it was hard to argue with any of it—the Soviets continued to do everything first, and biggest, in space. And that meant that no matter what Khrushchev claimed about wanting peace, the Soviets were building their advantage in war.

Kennedy needed to strike back. He asked his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, to find a long-term challenge that NASA might undertake, one that would allow sufficient time for the space agency to catch up to the Soviets, but one that was so difficult, and so spectacular, it could put America ahead in space for good. Kennedy needed something epic, and he needed to announce it soon.

Just days after Gagarin returned from his trip, a group of about fifteen hundred Cuban exiles trained and armed by the Central Intelligence Agency launched a failed invasion of Soviet-backed socialist Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy, who’d approved the mission and then withdrawn his support, was devastated by the failure, knowing the damage it would cause to his reputation and that of the United States. “All my life I’ve known better than to depend on the experts,” he told Theodore Sorensen, his adviser and speechwriter. “How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?” To Khrushchev, the answer was simple: The young American president was indecisive and weak.

Three weeks after Gagarin journeyed around the globe, Alan Shepard flew the inaugural Mercury mission. The former Navy test pilot became the first American in space. The fifteen-minute solo flight inspired ticker tape parades, but facts couldn’t be ignored: The astronaut had simply gone up and down, while the cosmonaut had made it into orbit—a significant difference in terms of the technology required. As always, the Soviets were far ahead, and with each victory they made a statement to the world, not just about the superiority of their political system and way of life, but about the future.

On May 25, 1961, just a month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy addressed a special joint session of Congress on “urgent national needs.” He warned that a battle was being waged around the world between freedom and tyranny, one in which achievement in space could prove decisive.

Then he threw down a gauntlet.

“I believe 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. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

The room stood silent. The United States hadn’t even put a man into orbit around Earth; now the president was committing the country to landing astronauts on the Moon, and on an eight-and-a-half year deadline, no less. Even if NASA knew how to fly a man to the Moon—and it did not—it lacked the infrastructure, industry, manpower, and technology required to do it. And yet the president stood there insisting it would be done. And soon.

The stakes could hardly have been higher. If America fell short, its failure could not be denied or buried. It would be proof that the nation couldn’t do what its leader said was most important, that its greatest minds had failed, that it might not be the world’s best hope for the future. It would weaken morale at NASA. And it would embolden the Soviet Union, a nation that wouldn’t hesitate to exploit an American embarrassment for propaganda, or press a military advantage.

And yet…

If NASA could meet Kennedy’s deadline, it would be a statement—to the American people, the Soviets, and the world—that there was nothing the United States could not do if pushed hard enough, that even after losing round after round in the Space Race, falling behind in missiles and bombs, and suffering a humiliation like the Bay of Pigs, the United States could rise in a way no other nation could rise and pull off a miracle. And that’s what Congress seemed to hear as Kennedy kept talking and their applause began to build: that landing a man on the Moon and bringing him back safely might be the single greatest scientific and technological challenge mankind had ever faced, but doing it by the end of the decade was impossible, and it was only by attempting something impossible that a nation could truly know who it was.

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