JFK’s Bold Declaration in 1962

MICHAEL COLLINS → He was very clear in his mandate to land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth by the end of the decade. So, there was no doubt about what we were going to do and when we were supposed to do it. Now, the “how” was up to us—and that’s what we spent a decade working very hard at: to achieve the first lunar landing before the end of the decade. Just as he said.

CHARLIE DUKE → When Kennedy made the announcement, “We’re going to put a man on the moon in 1970.” I shook my head, “There’s just no way. We’ve got 15 minutes in space with Alan Shepard’s flight, and he’s committing us to the moon? What a bold statement.” I was incredulous. How were we going to do that? But the country pitched in. By the time I got to MIT the next year, MIT was building Apollo guidance and navigation systems. I got to work on it. I met some astronauts through that work, and I’d never seen anybody so enthusiastic and so positive that we were going to do this. So. I began to get that excitement. Maybe I could do that job. “Yeah, we’re going to pull this off. We’re going to do this.”

RUSSELL SCHWEICKART → It was an extremely intense period of time. But we were very focused on meeting that JFK goal. And so, in some sense it was a single-minded effort. We were certainly not unaware of what was going on in the country—and in the world. But JFK’s goal was a very, very personal thing. And, I can only really speak for myself. I would say, having said that, it was clearly a very shared goal. But, for me, it was partly a national commitment.