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An expert on the space race claims that John F. Kennedy originally wanted to associate with the Soviet Union to send a man to the moon, without letting him go. America is the first country to achieve this historic feat.
Historian John Logsdon, former member of the NASA Advisory Board and founder of the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University, told The Telegraph that Kennedy had met with Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev, just ten days after announcing his intention to send a mission to the moon. in the decade during his famous 1961 speech Moon Shot in Congress.
At the meeting, Kennedy apparently asked Khrushchev to work together to achieve this goal, but Khrushchev rejected it, paving the way for the big space race, according to Logsdon.
A historian said that John F. Kennedy (right) was serious when he asked Nikita Khrushchev (left) of the Soviet Union to join forces to send men to the moon in the years 1960.
Kennedy made his first offer only 10 days after his 1961 speech to Congress. Khrushchev declined the bid by launching the space race won by the United States in 1969 when the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon in 1969 (illustration)
Kennedy met Khrushchev and said, "Why do not we do it together? Khrushchev said no. I think Kennedy was serious about this initiative. Others think it was propaganda, "Logsdon told the newspaper.
Two years later, in September 1963, Kennedy again offered to join forces with the Soviet Union, this time in a speech at the United Nations.
The offer was made while the Apollo program was about to be canceled and that relations with the Soviet Union were improving as a result of the invasion of the Bay of Pigs and the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Logson suggested that the second attempt at collaboration was to reduce costs and tensions between the two superpowers.
In the seemingly forgotten speech of the United Nations, Kennedy said: "There is room for new cooperation, new joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space".
Kennedy also said, "Why should the first human flight on the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, when preparing for this type of expedition, duplicate research, construction and expenditure duplication?
Kennedy (at the podium) made his second opening to Khrushchev during a speech at the United Nations in September 1963, just two months before his assassination.
Historian John Logsdon (left) believes that Kennedy's invitation to associate with the Soviet Union was genuine. Logsdon wrote John F. Kennedy and the race to the moon (right)
"We should certainly ask ourselves whether scientists and astronauts in our two countries – and indeed the world – can not work together to conquer space, by sending a day on this moon this day, not the representatives of only one country to buy the representatives of all our countries.
According to Logsdon, Khrushchev did not officially respond to Kennedy's invitation. Kennedy is murdered two months later, in November 1963.
"I think Kennedy was serious about this offer," said Logsdon, adding that if Kennedy had not been killed and that "Khrushchev had said yes and stayed in power, would Apollo have become a business? cooperative?" Would he have continued to cooperate with the Soviet Union?
Logsdon told The Telegraph that he thought Kennedy would have wanted to work with the Soviet Union on Moon Shot.
"Could he have succeeded, given the likely political criticism of his initiative in the United States? We'll never know, he says.
The author Roger Launius, who wrote the legacy of Apollo: perspectives on the moon's landings, is of the same opinion as Logsdon.
"It is possible that only the Kennedy assassination on November 22 prevented a joint landing between the United States and the USSR," Launius told the Telegraph.
However, not everyone is convinced that the partnership offer was authentic.
However, others are less certain that Kennedy was serious in his work with the Soviets.
"I've heard that Kennedy had planned a mission with the USSR, but I do not know how much we can take it seriously," said Doug Millard, a journalist at the London Science Museum. , responsible for the exhibition "Cosmonauts: the birth of the space age".
In the end, the United States defeated the USSR and successfully landed men on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
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