Apollo: To the Moon

NASA worked on building the Apollo program even while the Mercury and Gemini missions were still flying. Even after a terrible disaster during a simulated launch test of Apollo 1, NASA stayed on target to meet Kennedy’s deadline. Although there were rumors that the Soviet space program was also in the race to the Moon, we now know that the Soviet designers were not progressing fast enough to win. Step by step, the first Apollo missions—unmanned as well as manned—proved that the complicated hardware worked.

Finally, on July 16, 1969, all was ready. The mission was called Apollo 11, and the astronauts were Neil Armstrong, “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins. At the top of the 363-foot (111-m) moon rocket was an escape rocket that could lift the Command Module to safety if something went wrong during the launch. Then, came the Command Module itself, about the size of a walk-in closet. Most of the Command Module’s fuel and supplies were behind it in a Service Module. Below that, the Lunar Module was stored, with its spindly legs folded, inside a tapered shroud. All of this weighed less than 2% of the whole moon rocket. Apollo 11 rode on top of a Saturn V with almost 6,600,000 pounds (3,000,000 kg) of fuel inside. It thundered through the clear blue sky over the coast of Florida. 

 
While on the way to the Moon, the Command Module and Service Module turned around and linked nose to nose with the Lunar Module. Three days later, the astronauts were in orbit around the Moon. They spent a few hours checking out their systems. Then, Armstrong and Aldrin climbed into the Lunar Module and rode it down to the surface, standing at the controls and looking out the window at the drab, gray ground. On July 20, 1969, humans first set foot on another body in space. With television cameras beaming their moonwalk back home, Armstrong and Aldrin planted a U.S. flag, set up an experiment to measure moonquakes, gathered 48 pounds (22 kg) of rock samples, took dozens of pictures, and talked to President Richard Nixon from Washington. After spending less than a day on the Moon, they blasted off, rejoined Collins in the Command Module, and flew safely home.

NASA planned to continue the Apollo project with at least six more moon missions. All except Apollo 13 made it to the Moon’s surface. In a way, Apollo 13 was successful, too, because, after a small explosion blew open their Service Module, NASA engineers figured out how to get the astronauts back alive. Despite the successes, the U.S. government stopped funding Apollo, and equipment for the seventh, eighth, and ninth moon missions was used for other projects.