This entire month has been earmarked to observe and celebrate this amazing achievement. If the major event pre-dates you, you may not appreciate why it was such an amazing fete or how it all came about. Here's a quick recap of the events that inspired it.
I was alive on the day President John F. Kennedy died. Although I don't remember the event clearly, I remember the aftermath.. I remember the grim expression on my teacher's face as she explained to her young students that the president of our country had been shot in Dallas. I remember a length of black ribbon being run around the edges of the American flag in our classroom. I remember a very solemn Walter Cronkite announcing the death of President John F. Kennedy on the evening news. But my biggest impressions of that day was the deep grief, sadness and fear in the eyes of all the adults I saw. I was too young to grasp the repercussion this moment would have in our Nation's history, but I knew our world would never be the same.
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| Photo credit: NASA |
He made that speech on September 12, 1962.
Because of his words, our country strived to make them happen, bent on doing the impossible...
Putting footprints on the Moon!
By the time the Apollo program had ended, it wasn't just one or two sets of human footprints in the dust of another world--there were twelve unique sets. And it happened over the course of three-and-one-half years and seven missions.
Looking back, some might think it wasn't that great of an achievement because, for the most part, it all came off so flawlessly.
But reaching the Moon was not easy or simple or without sacrifices. It was a monumental struggle and despite what now appears to be a lightning fast timeline--the way was filled with setbacks and tragedies and unknowns.
Here's a quick summary of the huge leaps forward that happened in those few, short years.
The Mercury Program: All the Right Stuff
When John F. Kennedy made his historic proclamation in a speech, the Mercury program was just underway and our nation had managed all of 20 minutes of spaceflight experience.
Think about that. Twenty minutes!
The Mercury Program involved six missions and lasted about two years, from May 1961 to May 1963, sending six members of the original Mercury Seven astronauts into space. Each mission was successful, but not without hazards, malfunctions and close calls. Alan Shepard's first flight answered critical questions about if humans would be able to survive--if they could breathe or swallow or perform basic tasks in orbit. No one was certain of the answer until he proved it could be done.
To boldy go, indeed!
These brave men climbed into a tiny capsule on top of a huge controlled explosion--rockets that they had, in fact, seen explode on the launch pad or shortly after takeoff again and again leading up to their missions, and they agreed to go anyway.
If you saw the movie Hidden Figures, you know that the math needed to calculate the flights trajectories hadn't even been invented yet! And the kind of technology that's at our fingertips today wouldn't be invented for decades to come. They had to figure it all out via slide rulers and chalkboards. They weren't even sure how to go about it.
They succeeded anyway.
The Gemini Missions: Partnerships in Space
The development of a newer, bigger rocket for the Gemini missions was not something that breathed confidence into the next band of pioneers into space. The truth is many of the initial tests were complete disasters, with those rockets also exploding. Despite the setbacks, the space program forged ahead.
On April 8, 1964 we launched the first Gemini mission, where American astronauts ventured into space in pairs. Twelve missions, which lasted until the final Gemini launch on November 11, 1966 (with Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin aboard), greatly expanded our capabilities in space.
Gemini saw the first space walk by astronaut Ed White on June 3, 1965 during the Gemini 4 mission. Astronaut White would later perish along with Mercury Seven astronaut Gus Grissom and astronaut Roger Chaffee in a launchpad test of the Apollo 1 capsule. It wouldn't be the last tragedy of our space program, but it would be the last in our bold quest to reach the Moon.
The Dawn of Apollo
As the Gemini program came to a close, the Apollo missions now took center stage. After the disaster that killed the three Apollo 1 astronauts on January 27, 1967, there were several unmanned Apollo launches before the first manned launch. That was Apollo 7. This mission called for orbiting the Earth but did not reach lunar orbit. Apollo 7 was launched on October 11, 1968, with just a little over a year left to reach the Moon before 1970, the goal set by the late JFK.
There were three missions -- Apollo 8, 9 and 10 -- beginning on December 21, 1968 and ending with the launch of Apollo 10--dubbed the "Moon Landing Dress Rehearsal"--that occurred from May 18th to the 26th, 1969. included achieving lunar orbit, and an uncrewed LEM deployment to a height of 50,000 feet over the lunar surface. But no landing.
At the successful close of the Apollo 10 mission, the clock was ticking down to a little less than six months remaining in the late President Kennedy's timeline...
Missions to the Moon: Footprints in Time
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| Photo credit NASA |
Like the death of President Kennedy, it was a "Where were you when..." moment in history. It's a moment that those of us who were alive to experience will never forget.
News anchor Walter Cronkite removed his glasses with an expression of unmasked awe about the events he was witnessing. We'd put a person on the Moon! And we'd done it in the time frame that JFK has proposed a scant seven years earlier...before the decade ended.
It was July 20, 1969. And yes, we'd all just witnessed a miracle.
The Moon Missions Spanned Only 3-1/2 Years!
An overview of the seven Moon missions and those who left footprints in time:
Apollo 11 - Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing July 21, 1969 at Tranquility Base
Apollo 12 - Pete Conrad and Alan Bean beginning November 19, 1969 landing near Surveyor 3 craft
Apollo 13 - Jim Lovell and his crew's Moon landing was scrubbed due to an oxygen tank explosion
Apollo 14 - Alan Shephard and Edgar Mitchell landed Februrary 5, 1971, Frau Mauro region
Apollo 15 - David Scott and James Irwin landed July 15, 1971 in Hadley Rille area
Apollo 16 - John Young and Charles Duke, April 21-23, 1972 on the lunar highlands
Apollo 17 - Gene Cernan and Jack Schmidt landed December 11, 1972, returning December 19th
In all, twelve men walked on the Moon, all inspired by one person's vision.
Though the future of space exploration is now looking brighter, we, as a species, will probably never again see the pinnacle of achievement we reached 50 years ago...
Because of the words of one great man.
The next time you look up at that great silver orb in the sky, think of the people who met the impossible challenge of getting us there.
Have a wonderful week!
It was a truly remarkable achievement. Maybe in our lifetime someone else will set foot on the Moon to make way for a mission to Mars. Techonology has advanced so far. The phone in your pocket has hundreds of times (at least) the computing power avaiable for the Apollo missions - and for Voyager, launched in 1977. We have the capability. What we need now is the will (and the funding).
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