President Eisenhower receives a report asking him to evaluate the option of a lunar exploration program. The requested budget is $26–38 billion. Some in the Oval Office comment that requests to visit other planets would follow. These are the months when Gary Powers is on trial in the USSR and the first successes of the Corona spy satellites arrive. Eisenhower has a speech prepared in which he calls for the end of the American space program after the Mercury missions. In reality, he never delivers it. In his end-of-term address, however, he simply states that it must be determined whether continuing missions beyond the Mercury missions is worthwhile.
