Very nice, very well written.

I'd argue that Eisenhower got the ball moving before Kennedy arrived when he paired Wernher von Braun up with Walt Disney to popularize space travel.

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After the set of Collier's articles Von Braun visited Eisenhower to sell his ideas and Ike got fairly excited he called up Disney and arranged a meeting between Braun & Disney and a tour of Cape Canaveral. Ike called on Disney to promote space exploration. (Disney had a good promotional relationship with the US government since slightly before WWII) and so the Disney shorts were made and released - both as 35mm shorts and tv segments for the Mickey Mouse Club:

Man and Satellites
Man and Space
Man on the Moon
Mars and Beyond

The US space program took off and the rest is history. Kennedy gets all the credit because of his speech, but really Walt Disney and Braun - are the ones that got us up to the moon. Had Disney lived long enough to see the moon landing (he died in 1966) he would surely have pushed us even further into space by making more movies, more rides and bolder ones!

The Mission to Mars ride at Disneyland pre-conditioned folks for their very real future in outer space. It was awesome, I remember listening to young kids get seriously excited - others a bit scared - about going to MARS! (Some young ones clearly did not understand it was a ride - and the displays of rocket achievements on the wait in...made it seem even more real.)

The death of Walt Disney was perhaps the biggest blow to manned space, followed by Braun's cancer and death a decade later.

Literally - no one in the Disney organization has the slightest clue now. Neither does anyone in management at NASA. Walt can never be replaced - but hopefully someone with some real vision and talent for SELLING manned space to the PUBLIC again comes along soon.*

SDAI-Tech1

*For starters I'd put those Aussies on the US payroll in a heartbeat.