[Throwawayaerlei]

The big thing that's missing from this discussion is the primary reason for the US manned space mission program and it's ultimate goal per JFK in 1961, 4 months into his presidency, of "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

The previous president Eisenhower allowed the Soviets to get ahead of us starting with Sputnik to avoid them whining forever about overflights of others' territory. To the point Wernher von Braun's team had to put ballast in their rocket payloads to make sure they wouldn't "accidentally" put something into orbit.

This resulted a massive shock in the US which you can see in for example a whole bunch of science education programs spawned after Sputnik, and to the rest of the world put into doubt our technological superiority. After the Soviets were the first to put a man in orbit a month before JFK's speech and a few weeks before our first manned suborbital fight, the next spectacle was obviously a manned moon mission. Which we had a chance to beat them at although back in 1961 that was no sure thing.

This would also fit in with the JFK campaign's fictitious "missile gap" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap