HARRISON SCHMITT: JFK And the Moon Decision. One thing not mentioned here is that Kennedy deliberately set up the Moon race as a way of diverting Cold War competition to a comparatively peaceful arena. A long time ago, when he was president of MIT, I spoke with former Kennedy space adviser Jerome Wiesner about this, and he noted that purpose and said he thought it was very astute of Kennedy, even though he had not been a big advocate at the time.