Preparing for a Lunar Landing

To Nixon, “the most exciting event of the first year of my presidency came in July 1969 when an American became the first man to walk on the moon.” Not only was the historic Apollo 11 mission to the Moon personally exciting to the president, it also provided him an ideal vehicle to promote many of the themes he hoped would characterize his time in the White House, par­ticularly America’s global leadership. In addition, by linking himself closely with the message left on the Moon—“We came in peace for all mankind”— Richard Nixon could portray himself as a peacemaker, eager to reduce the tensions that had led to conflict among nations in the years since World War II. To Nixon, the American spirit, as exemplified by the Apollo missions to the moon, was “the most important psychological weapon that could be used in building the generation of peace.” Nixon had decided that the lunar landing “was (a) a necessary shot in the arm to the American body politic, (b) a lift to the spirit of a war-weary people, (c) a boost for technology that was being unfairly derided by environmentalists—and (d), (e), and (f)—that he was going to be an enthusiastic part of it.”3

Project Apollo had in fact been intended from its 1961 approval by President Kennedy to be a large-scale effort in “soft power,” sending a peace­ful but unmistakable signal to the world that the United States, not its Cold War rival the Soviet Union, possessed preeminent technological and organi­zational power, and that the American way of life provided an example other nations should admire and aspire to follow. In his May 25, 1961, address to a joint session of Congress in which he proposed setting as a national goal sending Americans to the Moon, Kennedy had said “if we are to win the battle for men’s minds, the dramatic achievements in space. . . should have made clear to us all. . . the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take.”4 Although he was extremely reluctant to acknowledge that the Apollo 11 mission would be the culmination of the pledge Kennedy had made eight years earlier, Richard Nixon agreed with Kennedy’s rationale for the lunar landing effort. Even after the dismal events of the 1960s—assas­sinations, urban riots, and seemingly endless U. S. involvement in a war in Southeast Asia—landing Americans on the Moon, thought Nixon, was an achievement that could help both communicate to the rest of the world an extremely positive image of U. S. leadership and power and restore national morale.