Re:Simply Put (Score 1)

No, the leader who kicked it off was JFK.

If you want to give credit where credit is due, the man who started it all was Werner Von Braun with the support of four presidents starting with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

Kennedy gets a lot of credit for launching Apollo, but Eisenhower was responsible for starting the space program in the first place, and Von Braun made it possible.