;p&gt;Apollo 11 effectively ended the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race&quot; title=&quot;Space Race&quot;&gt;Space Race&lt;/a&gt; and fulfilled a national goal proposed in 1961 by the late U.S. President &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy&quot; title=&quot;John F. Kennedy&quot;&gt;John F. Kennedy&lt;/a&gt; in a speech before the United States Congress:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;[...] before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and ret