On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a special session of Congress that it was the goal of the United States of America to land a man on the moon and bring him safely home within the decade. At the time, many felt this was an unrealistic goal because much of the technical science and math were unknown. But we were in a space race and the Soviet Union was way ahead of the United States in both experience and space science, having been successful in both sending up the first space satellites and the first man and woman to orbit the earth. There were numerous challenges that the United States needed to overcome beyond the science if we were going to achieve this: the extraordinary cost ($25 billion, or $125 billion in today’s costs) and the need to marshal and focus public support and political will. It was indeed an ambitious goal, some might even say unrealistic. But what it really was, was visionary—leadership at its best.
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机译：1961年5月25日，约翰·肯尼迪（John F. Kennedy）总统在国会特别会议上宣布，美利坚合众国的目标是在十年之内将一个人登上月球并安全带回家。当时，许多人认为这是一个不切实际的目标，因为许多技术科学和数学尚不为人所知。但是我们参加了一场太空竞赛，在经验和空间科学上，苏联都领先于美国，成功地发射了第一颗太空卫星和第一批绕地球运行的男人和女人。如果要实现这一目标，美国需要克服科学以外的众多挑战：非凡的成本（250亿美元，或今天的成本1250亿美元），以及调集和集中公众支持和政治意愿的需要。这确实是一个雄心勃勃的目标，甚至有人说这是不现实的。但实际上，它是有远见的-领导力处于最佳状态。
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