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science · 1961 to 1969
The Soviet Union never publicly admitted it was racing the United States to the Moon. That hidden uncertainty may be exactly what pushed NASA's budget, and its resolve, as high as it went.
Facts drawn from NASA's official history office and Encyclopaedia Britannica; interpretive framing is labeled as modeled analysis.
The Soviet Union's 1957 Sputnik satellite and Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight as the first human in space shocked American political leadership, and President Kennedy responded in May 1961 with a speech to Congress committing the United States to landing a person on the Moon before the decade was out.
[VERIFIED] NASA's budget grew rapidly through the 1960s, peaking at around 4.4 percent of the total federal budget in fiscal year 1966, an extraordinary level of sustained resource commitment to a single civilian program, according to NASA's own historical budget records.