After WW2, where did the idea of going to the moon came from?
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Ideas about traveling to the Moon predate World War 2, see Jules Verne’s Journey from the Earth to the Moon. However, what really sparked the space race was nuclear weapons. See, at some point in the 1950s, the US and USSR realized that nuclear weapons can be delivered via rockets. This led to a race to develop ever bigger rockets with ever larger ranges to send bigger bombs from further away.
This eventually led to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik 1 into orbit on October 4th, 1957. The US, not to be outdone, sent Explorer 1 to orbit just three months later, on January 31st, 1958. The Soviet Union had issued a challenge, and the US had accepted it. The race was on.
And it didn’t look good for the US.
January 2nd, 1959, Luna 1 becomes the first lunar flyby mission. Launched by the Soviets.
April 12th, 1961, Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in orbit. Launched by the Soviets.
These, aswell as many other successes by the Soviet Union, put the US under a lot of pressure. The Soviets, it seemed, had outpaced them technologically. So the US set a goal so ambitious, they weren’t sure if it was possible. Flying a man to the Moon and bringing him back before the end of the decade.
As for why the Soviet Union never flew to the Moon, quite frankly, political interest just wasn’t there. The US had already landed. They’d won the race. And the N1, the rocket that was supposed to bring a Soviet to the Moon, was in its infancy. Now that they could only shoot for second place, the Soviet Union decided that continuing its development was too expensive, and focused its space program on the construction of stations instead, which was well within its capabilities.
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