doubleofive said:

xhonzi said:

Is there a link between Nixon winning in 1960 and not entering the space race?
Yes, I'm imagining without JFK's Moon Speech to inspire America, it just kind of falls by the wayside. I'm thinking maybe NASA is still functional and has most of the technology to at least get an empty rocket into orbit, but never got the funding for actual astronauts. The public doesn't know this, and can assume we've been secretly studying all this for years, and just now releasing the information to the public. Claim some of the nuke tests were actually secret space tests, etc.

Capricorn One, I'll have to rent that. Sounds good in general.

This sounds like a fun idea. And to have Nixon being the one to pursue a more dishonest course of 'getting to the moon' makes sense.

More context from NASA:

While Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, he only flew on a short suborbital flight instead of orbiting the Earth, as Gagarin had done. In addition, the Bay of Pigs fiasco in mid-April put unquantifiable pressure on Kennedy. He wanted to announce a program that the U.S. had a strong chance at achieving before the Soviet Union. After consulting with Vice President Johnson, NASA Administrator James Webb, and other officials, he concluded that landing an American on the Moon would be a very challenging technological feat, but an area of space exploration in which the U.S. actually had a potential lead. Thus the cold war is the primary contextual lens through which many historians now view Kennedy's speech.

So even the absence of the Bay of Pigs could mean less political pressure and strategic importance for actually going to the moon.