Main->Readings->5th Grade Readings->Human Spaceflight->Part 5
The two nations were taking the "space race" very seriously. It was almost as if we were fighting a war, not with weapons or bombs, but with spacecraft and achievements in space. The war would be "won," people felt, by the first nation to achieve the final goal. That goal was set by President John F. Kennedy. Soon after Gagarin's orbit and Alan B. Shepard's suborbital flight, President Kennedy said to Congress, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." He had committed the United States to winning the "space race" before 1970.
It didn't seem possible to work that fast, but people were caught up in the excitement of the idea. After that speech, all of NASA's missions and efforts were aimed at a Moon landing. The Mercury program and the Gemini program were seen as preparations for the Apollo program which would reach the Moon. They all had "go fever," a feeling which made them do whatever it took to make the program work, no matter how much effort it required.
When President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the mission did not lose energy. His successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, also supported the moon program.
Because of the excitement, the Apollo program to get a man to the Moon began with a terrible accident. On January 27, 1967, during a test on the launch pad, an electrical fire destroyed the first Apollo capsule and killed the three astronauts inside, Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee. NASA had been in such a hurry to get the Apollo program going that there were some design flaws in the capsule, and those flaws doomed the astronauts. The air inside was pure oxygen instead of a mixture, which made fire more deadly, and the hatch was very difficult to open, which made a quick escape impossible.
However, after the Apollo 1 disaster, NASA redesigned the spacecraft and got the program back on track. After Apollo 7, which made the first successful orbit of the Earth with the new capsule, there were a series of exciting Apollo missions, each one doing something we had never done before, each mission acting as a test for the next one.
Apollo 8 carried Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders from the Earth to the Moon and around the other side. Though they did not land on the Moon, they showed that an Apollo could reach the Moon and return.
So was the next mission a Moon landing? No, NASA had to make more tests. There wasn't enough power to land the whole Apollo capsule on the Moon and take off again, so the mission had two main pieces: a command module, which would stay in orbit around the Moon with one astronaut, and a lunar module (or LM), which would fly down to the Moon with two astronauts, land, take off, and meet up with the command module. Apollo 9, orbiting the Earth, practiced disconnecting and reconnecting the main pieces of the Apollo in space.
So was the next mission the real one? No, there were still more tests to come. Apollo 10 went to the Moon, orbited it, and disconnected the lunar module. The lunar module flew down to 8 miles above the Moon's surface, returned to the command module, and the astronauts on that mission (Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan) returned without having set foot on the Moon.
Then, finally, on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 was launched on top of a Saturn booster rocket. Michael Collins, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong were aboard. Four days later, on July 20, they were in orbit around the Moon. Collins piloted the command module (named "Columbia") in orbit while Aldrin and Armstrong, aboard the LM ("Eagle"), headed for the surface of the Moon. This was the real mission, the one for which all the tests had been conducted. What would happen now? Would the U.S. win the "space race" or would there be another tragedy?
Apollo 11 lift-off
Photo courtesy of NASA
NASA/KSC Newsroom Apollo 11 Anniversary Photograph Archives
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/captions/subjects/apollo11.htm
The whole United States and much of the rest of the world was watching the mission on television, which in itself was a new and exciting idea. Not only were we able to send human beings to the Moon, we could watch as if we were right there with them. No one had ever been able to do something like this before.
Some people thought the Moon's surface was not hard enough to land on. They thought it was made of "Moon dust," and the LM would sink beneath the surface. Others thought the surface would be too uneven, and the LM would tip over and break. Although the U.S. and U.S.S.R. had landed unmanned probes on the Moon, everything was still an unknown until the actual landing.
So everybody was waiting, holding their breath, as the astronauts so far away guided their tiny little craft to the Moon's surface. What we didn't know was that Mission Control had lost track of the LM's position for a short time and didn't know exactly where they were. Meanwhile, with the tiny rocket engines aboard the LM, Aldrin and Armstrong maneuvered to a gentle arrival.
"Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed," said Armstrong, and everybody watching television or listening on the radio heard it moments after he said it. Everybody cheered. Human beings were on the Moon.
But there was more to come. With their space suits on, Aldrin helped Armstrong back out the hatch and down a ladder. Meanwhile, a television camera on the outside of the Eagle filmed the whole thing. Armstrong paused on the ladder, reached his left foot down, testing the surface, then planted his left foot and joined it with his right. He had planned what he was going to say, because he knew everybody on Earth would remember it. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," he said.
Astronaut footprint on the Moon
Photo courtesy of NASA
NASA/KSC Newsroom Apollo 11 Anniversary Photograph Archives
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/captions/1999/apollo11/as11-40-5877.htm
Soon Aldrin joined him. On the Moon, which is smaller than the Earth, the gravity was less, and the men could run and jump easily in their heavy space suits. However, the Moon's gravity was not strong enough to hold on to an atmosphere, so they couldn't take their helmets or space-suits off. There wasn't any air to breathe.
The two astronauts planted an American flag, set up some measuring instruments, and collected rocks. Over their heads, Michael Collins orbited in the command module waiting for their return. Meanwhile, Mission Control tried to figure out exactly where they were. They had to get the mathematics of take-off exactly right in order to match the LM up with the command module in orbit. Finally, they thought they had the problem solved.
The LM didn't have enough fuel to carry itself, the space rocks, and the astronauts back into orbit, so there was one more solution to the problem of power for take-off. The LM left part of itself behind on the Moon, the bottom section.
On the bottom section was a metal plate, engraved with the words:
|
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH |
They blasted off and left the plate behind. The docking with Columbia was successful, and then they left one more thing behind in orbit to save fuel: the lunar module. The astronauts started back to Earth, their mission achieved.
Meanwhile, what was the Soviet Union doing? As it turned out, the U.S.S.R. was doing something different. Although their Zond 5 mission was actually the first to orbit the Moon and return, in September of 1968, and their Luna 16 and Luna 17 robot missions conducted important science research on the Moon, the U.S.S.R. never actually put a human being on the Moon. They chose not to try.
One reason was that the Soviet rocket design had problems which became impossible to correct, while our Saturn booster rocket had turned out to be very successful for us. Another reason was that arguments between major groups in the Soviet space program had slowed progress down. Also, the U.S.S.R. began to believe that it was not that important to put so much effort and expense into landing a human being on the Moon. It was as if they stepped out of the race before it was finished. So the United States may have won the space race, but it ended up the only one in the "race".
Once the Moon had been reached, the American public lost interest and the American government began to be less excited about spending money on space exploration. There were five more Apollo missions to the Moon, the last one in 1972, but funding was cancelled and other planned missions were never conducted. The American space program continued, but since 1972 no human being has set foot on the Moon.
Go on to Part 6: Back and Forth: The Space Shuttle
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This page last modified on August 15, 2002