The humiliating defeat of the US-sponsored mission in Cuba came at a very inopportune time for Kennedy. Now three months into his presidency, he was yet to assert his authority on the international stage. Particularly humiliating was that the Soviets seemed to be taking the lead in the ‘space race’.
Following the success of the Sputnik programme, which had seen the USSR send the first satellite into orbit in 1957, Kennedy saw that America could better her rival by being the first to launch a man into space. But it wasn’t to be. On 12 April 1961, just five days prior to the ill-fated Cuban invasion, the Soviet cosmonaut, Lt Yuri Gagarin, became the first man to successfully orbit the earth, beating the US astronaut, Alan Shepard, by just three weeks. When Shepard did enter space on 5 May, he fell well short of Gagarin’s achievements, reaching a height of only 115 miles.
NASA astronaut Alan Shepard
So acute was American discomfiture at the success of the Soviet space programme that Kennedy felt compelled to take drastic action. On 25 May, he announced an extra $7 billion in funding to NASA, and said that, before the end of the decade, an American would walk on the moon. This bold pledge would soon be made a reality, but, cruelly, not in his lifetime.
President Kennedy announcing the Apollo Space Programme, 25 May 1961