The next section focuses on the why. And the Why is, is very essential if you start a project without a clear why which can be irrational, it can be a full business case, there's good chances that people will not follow people engagement people are engaged in a project, when they really see the benefit that the project can have or the impact the project can have in the world and in the company themselves. And for that, I want to share a small story that you can see how important they why and how important the wide drives engagement of people and, and employees into a project. This story goes like this. This is in the call awards after the Second World War. There was no fights anymore.
Luckily, no more words, but there were still some competition between especially the US and USSR. Russia today, one of the big battles that we're fighting was going to the space who was going to bring the first man to this space and both were competing very closely, us and USSR and a couple of weeks before the US was about to launch the first manned mission to space, the Russian USSR and Yuri Gagarin in 1961. around April, back to space, Yuri Gagarin was on space and then back to Earth. So, of course, that created a lot of frustration in United States, how is that possible? We cannot lose that battle, one month after that event, and you can see the press clip here on the screen. JOHN F. Kennedy said to the public, to the Congress to the Senate office. We're going to be the first country who sends the first man to the moon.
And so very, very ambitious project. But one thing that JFK did amazingly well, he said, By the end of the 60, if he would have not mentioned by the end of this 60, these four words, we probably have never been in the moon yet. So you can see the power of deadlines. And you can see the power of having a strong vision, a very ambitious vision. But the point of the story I want to finish here about engagement and the power of why, in 1967, a group of about 30 journalists, they go to the NASA in Cape Canaveral to search to find out what's the project going on. Are we going to make it to the moon on time or not?
Nobody knew people were working very heavily on the project, but nobody knew. So the press goes to Florida. To check the status, and they have interviews with the president of the NASA, the VPS, the VP research at the end of the day, they're walking out of the buildings, they go through a computer lab and there's someone there cleaning the floor and they asked him, listen, what's your name? My name is Marcos. And what are you doing here, Marcos at this time, and he says to the 30 journalists, I'm helping to put the first man on the moon. The guy was just cleaning the floor.
But he was convinced that by just cleaning the floor, the scientists, people will come tomorrow and half a better place to achieve that dream happened. He felt part of the project. He felt part of that huge dream and he was completely engaged because he understood the why and he wanted to be part of it.