Sixty-four years ago today, on May 25, 1961 (April 11, 1961), the United States made its first manned spaceflight. On May 25, following the success of the United States' first manned spaceflight, U.S. Naval Academy graduate Sherbard asked Congress to approve a plan to send a man to the moon. He said that "a program to land on the moon, expected to cost $70 to $9 billion," would allow us to "grasp the future of humanity," and insisted that the United States "must lead in aerospace." Kennedy's proposal came 20 days after the successful flight. Navy Lt. Col. Alan Shepherd Jr., 37, became the first American to go into space on a 15-minute flight 115 miles above the ground. During the flight, which took off from Cape Canaveral at 10:34 a.m. on May 5 aboard the Freedom 7 spacecraft carried by a Redstone rocket, Shepherd exclaimed in amazement: "What a beautiful view!" "Everything is normal," a rocket engineer's term for "everything is excellent." At 10:49 a.m., Shepherd landed in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off the Bahamas, 302 miles from Cape Canaveral. A Marine Corps Maruliter fished him out and sent him to the USS Chamberlain, where doctors said he was in "very good" condition without any ill effects. Although Shebard did not fly as far as Yuri Gagarin, the first Soviet to enter the sky, and his spaceship was only one-fourth the speed of Gagarin's spaceship, he did small rocket ignition tests on his spaceship in space, an achievement the Soviets have not yet said they have mastered.