The Development of a Moon Rocket

The idea of sending a human being to the Moon goes back thousands of years, but no one took it seriously, even just a short  while before Kennedy’s speech. NASA had a vague plan, code named Apollo, as a starting point. Wernher von Braun’s team was working on a rocket called the Saturn V (where the “V” is the Roman numeral “5,” not a letter) that would be 10 times more powerful than anything yet built. NASA now asked: Could the Saturn V be used for a moon shot?

Science fiction writers had long imagined a rocket that could lift off from Earth, go directly to the Moon, land, and come back. But that would mean taking the entire weight of the fuel tanks all the way there, even after they were mostly empty! Not even the Saturn V could lift a manned spaceship to the Moon like that. So, to save weight, fuel, and money, the engineers came up with a mission plan called Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). The trick was to take a second, lightweight craft to the Moon and leave it there. That way the main ship, called the Command Module, wouldn’t have to lift itself off the surface of the Moon. The lander, or Lunar Module (LM), wouldn’t need to be strong enough to make a fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere. Only two astronauts would venture to the surface of the Moon, leaving their shipmate in the Command Module to orbit the Moon and wait for their return.