Conspiracy Claim: President John F. Kennedy caught NASA unaware with his sudden and unexpected announcement to Congress on May 21st 1961, that they were going to the moon before the end of the decade. Scrambling to catch up, they realised they could never make the deadline and beat the Soviets and so decided to fake the missions.

History Claim: In December 1958, NASA was given the spring of 1967 as an approximate date for completion of the Saturn booster. In January 1960, after a year of planning a moon attempt, the Saturn rocket was given priority Government funding and in July of 1960, NASA announced that after Mercury they were planning a three man Apollo program to attempt a moon landing before the end of 1970. This was almost a year prior to Kennedy's May, 1961, speech to Congress in which he gave his support and granted major funding for the venture.

Perhaps it is fitting to start with what really is the core reason the proponents of the hoax theory give for why it occurred. It is also fitting because it has to do with the beginnings of Apollo. However, did Apollo really begin in 1961 with Kennedy? To find the answer we have to go back in time.

The Pre-Space Age World.

The world was a very different place in the 1950's. The effects of World War II were still being felt. Communism had taken a dominating grip over the Eastern Bloc countries, and fear spread about the world that it would take over the Western World. The McCarthy trials had rocked the USA, the Korean War had been fought to a standstill and the Cold War between the USA and the USSR was well underway. Both sides had the bomb, and using teams of German scientists procured at the end of the war to bolster their own scientists, there was a move towards missiles that could strike into the very heart of the other country. In this the USSR were building the larger of the rockets. This was because the USA's weapons were smaller and thus required smaller rockets to carry them, and with the creation of the Strategic Air Command in 1946, they relied to a greater extent on their bomber fleets and air power should they need to deliver the bomb.

Soon, however, both sides were looking to space. This really isn't a surprise, the strategic gains from being in control of space were major and let's face it; mankind has been looking towards the stars since they looked up. A journey to the moon has facinated men for centuries and had featured prominently in early science fiction. Author H G Wells wrote the book, The First Men in the Moon and Jules Verne wrote Around the Moon while one of the first silent movies, the 1902 "La Voyage Dans La Lune" by Georges Méliès, portrayed the trip that Verne had described in another book, From the Earth to the Moon.

The Father of Apollo

Wernher von Braun, a man who was about to play a major part in the up coming events, had been dreaming of going into space since his boyhood in Germany. This dream became an intense interest in rockets, an interest that lead to his being brought into the German army, and to his development of the V2 rocket.

Despite his talents being used for war, Von Braun hadn't lost his dream for space, and in 1944 he was arrested by the SS for his unwillingness to work on weapons. He was only released when his Commander convinced them that he would indeed do Himmler's wishes. In 1945, with the Red Army approaching the Peenemunde Research Station, he and his staff fled, working their way through the front lines and surrendering to the Americans.

In the US, von Braun and his team become responsible for designing and building the US's growing nuclear missile compliment and in 1952 Braun became technical director of the US Army's Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA). He hadn't given up his dream of space and the moon though, and in 1953 he wrote the book Conquest of the Moon in which he detailed how to fly a rocket to the moon and return.

Wernher von Braun's major role in the moon race was to come to the fore at the end of the 1950's. After developing the Redstone missile for the Army, von Braun's goal of reaching space suffered a serious set back. For political reasons, his 1955 application to launch the USA's first satellite was rejected, that role being given to the Navy's Vanguard project. Late in 1955, Rocketdyne developed the S-3 rocket engine. This was sent to von Braun at ABMA who, with his team, was looking for an engine to power the Army's newest ballistic missile, the Jupiter. With this new engine they were able to complete the missile in 1956 before moving on to plan an improved and even larger version of the Jupiter missile, the Jupiter C, which was to also become known as the Juno. With the completion of the Juno, von Braun was once more able to look towards space as his new missile was more than able to reach an altitude suitable for launching a satellite. However politics still prevented it being used for this, and on October 4th, 1957, the Soviets succeeded in launching Sputnik I, thus beating the Americans into space. With the US shocked and a public worried about the Soviets dominating space, the US Senate reacted by starting to move on the creation of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). American politicians were finally taking the Space Race seriously, but right now it would that them nine months to get the NASA Bill past, they were falling behind

Yet the race had only just begun and von Braun had still to play his major part in it. With the political impediments gone due to Sputnik I, and the dramatic failure of the Vanguard launch attempts, von Braun's Juno rocket was finally given the go ahead to launch JPL's Explorer 1. Following that successful launch, he and his team at ABMA began work on designing an even larger version of the Juno rocket. Again Rocketdyne played a key part in von Braun's success. With the development of their H-1 engine, an improved version of the S-3D rocket engine which had powered the Juno missile, von Braun's team was able to cluster together eight of them as a way to find the 1.5 million pounds of thrust that was needed to lift their huge rocket. The Saturn I was now ready to make its appearance as the most important step yet in the race to the moon.

We choose to go to the Moon

In July of 1958 the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was replaced with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) which was charged with taking over the role of all of the current non-strategic American space projects. NASA's first Administrator, T. Keith Glennan, set about gathering these groups under the NASA umbrella, including the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Wernher von Braun's team, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA.) They also gained NACA's research and development for what would become the Mercury Program, as well as the Army's Explorer satellites, the Navy's Vanguard missiles, and Air Force's F-1 rocket engine.

NASA knew that they were behind the Soviets and that if they did not catch up, they could lose the ability to have any control in space. The NACA mission to put a man into orbit had been approved at the same time NASA was created and so it was their future missions which had to be determined. A final study, done for the now defunct NACA, prompted the way. This study recommended that as the long term goal, they use manned flights to explore the solar system. This meant that when NASA took over in October 1958, they already had their basic plan. What they didn't have was a rocket to do it. Meetings with von Braun and his team in December of 1958, lead to further confirmation of NASA's plans when von Braun described how ABMA might play a leading role in America's national space program. The presentations given to NASA all had the theme of landing men on the moon and in the end AMBA offered a program for building a family of rockets for NASA, predicting that they should be ready by the spring of 1967.

Congress had also been seeking some consensus of what the nation should do in space. At the beginning of 1959, the House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration released a staff study, The Next Ten Years in Space. This report included a poll of the US aerospace community on the direction of America's space program in the 1960's. Prominent among the projected manned programs after Mercury, was to have flights around the Moon.

This lead to the starting of a number of NASA discussion groups. During the next year, groups at Goddard and Langley met and decided if they could get to the moon, and how long it would take to achieve it. It soon became obvious that there were two schools of thought on a plan of action. The argument was over whether they should attempt to go to the Moon immediately after Mercury, or to build a space station and travel to the Moon from there. Those who wanted to go directly to the moon began working on an ambitious plan, to launch a rocket from Earth, travel to and land on the Moon, then return safety to Earth. They believed that if funded, they could do this before the end of 1970. The second group wanted to concentrate on building a space station for the next decade, then go on to the Moon and beyond after 1970. By early 1960, however, it had been shown that not only was a trip to the moon indeed possible, but that with the rocket capable of doing it already being designed by ABMA, it was the best choice, and so on January 18th, 1960, President Eisenhower approved the Saturn Rocket and it was given the government's highest priority rating for development and hardware procurement. Six months later at the end of July, 1960, NASA held a conference with 1,300 representatives of the American Aerospace industry and the Government. On the first day of the conference, they released their plans. They had decided they were going to the Moon. Project Apollo was to follow the Mercury missions and it would be done by the end of 1970. The challenge to the Industry was simple. Come up with the best way to do it.

Kennedy's Speech to the Senate

On the 12th of April 1961 the US was shocked again. In the previous year NASA's programs had come under great threat. Apollo was in serious trouble of being cancelled by the new Democratic Administration and even Mercury was under threat. The launch of Vostok 1 and the circling of the Earth changed all of this. President John F. Kennedy went to his Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson, and tried find a way to regain American technological prestige through space flight. Less than a month later, on the 5th of May, the planned Mercury flight, Freedom 7, lifted off and Alan Shepard become the first American in space. Then just over two weeks later Kennedy stood before the US Senate where he stated...

Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Since early in my term, our efforts in space have been under review. With the advice of the Vice President, who is Chairman of the National Space Council, we have examined where we are strong and where we are not, where we may succeed and where we may not. Now it is time to take longer strides--time for a great new American enterprise--time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.

I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfilment.

Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines, which gives them many months of leadtime, and recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit this lead for some time to come in still more impressive successes, we nevertheless are required to make new efforts on our own. For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last. We take an additional risk by making it in full view of the world, but as shown by the feat of astronaut Shepard, this very risk enhances our stature when we are successful. But this is not merely a race. Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

I therefore ask the Congress, above and beyond the increases I have earlier requested for space activities, to provide the funds which are needed to meet the following national goals:

First, 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. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations--explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon--if we make this judgment affirmatively; it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

John F. Kennedy. 25th May, 1961.


Now with an understanding of the times and the projects, we can see that NASA was not surprised by Kennedy's announcement, nor were they having to meet a deadline imposed by Kennedy. Rather, Kennedy and Johnson looked at the reports that NASA had produced and saw that the agency truly believed that given the chance, they could land men on the moon and bring them back safety prior to the end of 1970. Spurred on by the Soviet's head start, Kennedy simply gave NASA the resources they already wanted to do missions they already had planned.

A year and a half later, Kennedy confirmed his commission to America and to NASA while he was at Rice University in Houston Texas.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the Office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48-story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous 8 years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year-a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman, and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, reentering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun almost as hot as it is here today-and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out, then we must be bold.

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the terms of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

John F. Kennedy. 12th September, 1962.


America was on its way to the Moon.

Of course, NASA might still have faked the missions to claim they beat the Soviets, but we can see that the first claim of the Hoax Proponents, that Kennedy dropped Apollo onto an unprepared NASA, just doesn't stand up to History.