Originally posted by FreeMason
Ugh anyone who thinks we DIDN'T GO TO THE MOON RAISE YOUR HAND!
Ok all those with their hands up...are IDIOTS!
Democratic Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson described this launching of Sputnik in 1957 as "a second Pearl Harbor" in its effect on America (Krige 82).
Since the end of World War II, Americans felt technologically superior to the rest of the world, and they used this as a bargaining chip and a sense of security.
Until 1957, most of the West thought of Russia as a backward nation, which was far behind the Americans in the technology race. The launching of Sputnik forced all of America to realize that the Soviets were not technologically inferior, and could be more advanced than the West.
Sputnik impressed most of the world so much that some began to believe that communism could rival American capitalism. At the time, America and the Soviet Union were both trying to persuade third world countries that their economic system, either capitalism or socialism, was better. Sputnik proved to the world that the Soviets could compete with the Americans and gave a concrete example of how much advancement Russian communism had accomplished.
After the launch of Sputnik, Americans were shocked that the Communists were ahead in the technology race and they wanted to dedicate more money and effort into regaining the lead. Sputnik caused a great sense of fear in America.
Some American scientists believed that the Russians could send a man to the moon in just a few years after the launch of Sputnik. In fact, just 2 years after Sputnik I, the Russians sent the first spacecraft to the moon. The fight for national pride and to restore America as the technological leader of the world fueled the space race.
The United States needed to win the space race not only to spread Democracy but to show the rest of the world that we are more advanced than the Communists. It also would demonstrate to the world that the United States was the country you should be investing in. What better way to show that to the world then to put a man on the moon. At the time our rockets were less reliable than the Russians and most scientists at the time thought it would be impossible to go to the moon. President Kennedy’s said in his Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort “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.”
America had no choice but to win. Considering the importance to win the space race, I think it would have been likely that the government would fake the landing and not risk everything on an impossible pipe dream. It would have been irresponsible of the US government not to fake the Moon Landing.
