Six weeks after Gagarin’s space flight, President John Kennedy proclaimed: 'I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.' That proclamation has earned Kennedy praise as a space visionary, though in private Kennedy confessed that he was 'not very interested in space'.

Prof DeGroot explores how and why the reluctant space policies of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations were replaced by a new space paradigm which measured the virility of a nation by its ability to land a man on the moon.

Prof Gerard DeGroot presented his paper to the RAeS Space Group Conference, Yuri Gagarin’s legacy, 50 years on: securing the vision for the next half century. The event was held on 16 March 2011, the session was chaired by Pat Norris FRAeS and the podcast was edited by Eur Ing Mike Stanberry FRAeS.