President John Kennedy announced the Apollo manned lunar program on May 25, 1961, at a time when the Soviet Union seemed far ahead in Moon exploration. The USSR had crashed the first spacecraft into the Moon, and had taken the historic first photographs of the Moon's far side. The U.S. was a total failure at Moon shots -- nine straight attempts had blown up on the launch pad or malfunctioned in flight.

President Kennedy's key goal was making America the leader in Moon exploration by getting there first. Other goals, such as economic use of lunar resources or scientific knowledge, were secondary. NASA concentrated on winning the race. This led to several to mportant design decisions:

Throw-away spacecraft and rockets, because expendable hardware is less expensive and time-consuming to design than reusable equipment.

Moon expeditions based on the launch of a single rocket and spacecraft directly to the Moon, rather than launching several rockets and assembling a Moon expedition in Earth orbit.

Expendable rockets and the direct-to-the-Moon trajectory meant that every new mission was as expensive as the previous flight. Every rocket and spacecraft had to be bought fresh for each mission. A space station in Earth orbit could have functioned as a lunar base camp, providing a place to store trans-lunar spacecraft. However, such a base camp would have added several years to the Apollo schedule, risking a Soviet triumph.

Long before, the decision as to how to get to the moon was made, NASA launched its first Saturn Booster on October 27, 1960. Flight number SA-1 (Saturn Apollo-1) tested the Saturn I first stage launch vehicle with dummy upper stages to begin the quest to the Moon.