ABSTRACT
President Kennedy's Moon speech to Congress in 1961 unmistakably evoked an image of an American transcendental state; Kennedy's vision for human exploration of the Moon appeared lifted straight from the pages of the Collier's series 'Man Will Conquer Space Soon (MCS)'. The race to the Moon offered America a level playing field in space exploration. Kennedy and Johnson were not the first to regard the Moon as an important stepping stone for control of the Earth. Importantly, the Moon could become the focus of an American project of national aggrandizement because it helped reproduce motifs familiar to accounts of the American West. Crucially in this regard, the Moon offers a landscape. Cashmere explains how the Moon's cyclical transformation has long been associated across numerous spiritual mythologies with rebirth. The flight of Apollo 8, the second human mission of the Apollo program, is especially significant in understanding the problematic of America as the transcendental state.
