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The Mercury Project answered many of the basic questions about space flight. It has proven that is possible to build rockets that are strong enough to launch humans into space, and that they could survive there. The engineers gained much experience and learned about the difficulties of preparing a rocket. It also showed that a global communications network was necessary to make the missions more secure.
The program was so successful that the last scheduled mission could be canceled. President Kennedy announced in 1961 that the United States would reach the Moon before the end of the decade. By 1963 most of the Mercury engineers had already been working on NASA's other projects: Gemini and Apollo.
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