Wow, in the past no presidents pushed for NASA to launch under deadlines. Imagine telling them they need to get to the moon before the end of the decade. Unprecedented.

Good thing we have a large number of CRUD SaaS experts to tell us what's wrong with the space program

JFK set the goal 8 years out, not less than three to align with his presidential term to try to make himself look good. He also got a lot of feedback from NASA on the timelines of what was possible so the goal wasn't pulled out of thin air.

As someone who worked on Orion I find this comment section hilarious.

Challenger was pretty directly caused by the Reagan admin pressuring NASA to launch it too, so yes?

Politicians have pressured NASA for launches previously and it has killed astronauts.

JFK set a goal that NASA managed to meet, but it is kind of difficult to see it as a hard deadline considering JFK was dead for years before any of the Apollo launches took place.

But even assuming we do view it as a deadline, the Apollo 1 losses are a pretty good argument that maybe we shouldn't repeat that.

Re: JFK and the 60s, I think the experts were in charge and had the final say on launch decisions with buy-in from all parties. Space exploration is certainly not risk-free.

Then you had Challenger, when experts were not listened to, and people died when they shouldn't have.

I don't understand the hostility.