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Author
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Topic: What if? Moon landing misses JFK deadline
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ASCAN1984
Member Posts: 1049
From: County Down, Nothern Ireland
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 06-16-2016 05:52 PM
   
Has it ever been discussed what would have happened if by an occurrence of some sort, e.g. a delay in the development of the Lunar Module, and Apollo failed to put a man on the moon by President Kennedy's goal, would the program have been cancelled? |
NukeGuy
Member Posts: 55
From: Irvine, CA USA
Registered: May 2014
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posted 06-17-2016 06:13 AM
Apollo was not cancelled after Apollo 1. I don't know how many more mishaps could have been allowed before cancellation. I suspect cancellation would be more tied to budget reasons than failure to meet the deadline. |
Fra Mauro
Member Posts: 1624
From: Bethpage, N.Y.
Registered: Jul 2002
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posted 06-17-2016 10:14 AM
Hardware delays would not have been a reason to cancel Apollo, especially with so much money already having been spent plus all the flight hardware that had been built. You could also argue, that 1970 was still within "this decade." Still, not meeting the deadline might have left us feeling that we failed. |
canyon42
Member Posts: 238
From: Ohio
Registered: Mar 2006
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posted 06-17-2016 11:33 AM
Yes, I've always wondered if anyone back then considered the "decade" question. Kennedy didn't say "by the end of the 1960s," he said "before this decade is out." Which technically was not until the end of December 31, 1970... |
Headshot
Member Posts: 891
From: Vancouver, WA, USA
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 06-17-2016 12:25 PM
Yes Kennedy and Sorensen (JFK's main speech writer) deliberately put the "...before this decade is out" reference in the speech to be ambiguous and giving them an out if the first landing took place in 1970. This is discussed in books by Roger D. Launius and John Logsdon. |
Paul78zephyr
Member Posts: 678
From: Hudson, MA
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted 06-29-2016 04:10 PM
quote:
Originally posted by canyon42:
Which technically was not until the end of December 31, 1970...
Discussed before: When did '...before this decade is out' end? |
schnappsicle
Member Posts: 396
From: Houston, TX, USA
Registered: Jan 2012
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posted 06-30-2016 07:31 AM
I for one would not have considered it a failure if we had not landed men on the lunar surface and returned them safely to the earth by midnight on December 31, 1970. The whole purpose of the goal was to take the world's eyes off of the Soviet Union's space achievements. Yea, it's great that you sent the first rocket around the world. It's also nice that you put the first human into space, but we're not really concentrating on such short term achievements. We're looking at the bigger picture here. We want to accomplish something that man has wanted to do ever since he first walked upon the earth.If Kennedy never made that speech, I believe we would have made it to the moon anyway. We were already committed to sending men into space. The next obvious step would have been to expand beyond low earth orbit. In other words, the moon. Obviously, it would have taken a few years longer to get there, but I fully believe we still would have gotten there without the goal. Personally, I take a lot of satisfaction in the fact that we did it at all. The fact that we did it in less than 7 years is just icing on the cake. What fills me with the most pride, however, is the fact that Neil Armstrong was the first person to accomplish the feat. He was the perfect man in the perfect place at the perfect time. Yes, getting there was great, but the fact that he accomplished it with such humility and grace makes me proud to be an American. |
Ronpur
Member Posts: 1220
From: Brandon, Fl
Registered: May 2012
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posted 06-30-2016 11:27 AM
Well, if the speech was May, 1961, I suppose they could have argued that the "10 years=Decade" would be over in 1971 if there was a delay. |
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