The first is technically true, though. There is very little new technology which would have to be developed to establish an outpost on the moon, it would just be ridiculously expensive to ship everything up there.
In 1959 I am not sure it was really true that there were no known technical barriers. I appreciate though the optimism of von Braun (whose report this essentially was) that there were no such barriers. In 1959 they still had a number of things to do just to get to the moon, and 52 years later we still have not established a base there.