A local anesthetic is specifically designed to not render the patient unconscious. A "local" which, as Randal describes, would knock Dante out, would in fact be a general anesthetic.
Dante says that when JFK promised to put a man on the moon in 10 years, "nobody had started working on the space program at that point." In reality, JFK made his promise on May 25, 1961. NASA became operational on October 1, 1958, and sent Alan Shepherd into space on May 5, 1961.