President John F. Kennedy said winning the space race was “vital” to the United States. He believed that the race could be won by successfully landing men on the Moon. This closeup photo of the Moon was taken by Apollo 8 astronauts in December 1968.
Apollo 11’s “giant leap” was much more than a scientific triumph. The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a longrunning struggle known as the Cold War. Each nation viewed the other as a threat to its way of life. The United States believed in democracy and capitalism. The Soviet Union embraced communism and a government that ruled with an iron fist. In the arms race, both countries were building up powerful strike forces. Each had a force of nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the other’s cities.
The Cold War also spawned a more peaceful rivalry known as the space race. Eager to jump out in front, the Soviets assigned their best scientists to their program. The effort paid off with the launch of the first Earth satellite in 1957. In 1961, the gap widened even more when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly in Earth orbit. The American space program, forced to play catch-up, suffered a series of costly rocket mishaps. Stung by the failures, President John F. Kennedy decided that something had to be done—and soon.
The Moon, Kennedy’s advisers told him, was the big prize. Once an astronaut planted the Stars and Stripes on the Moon, they said, nothing else would matter.1 The president agreed. On May 25, 1961, he spoke to Congress about “urgent national needs.” Winning the space race is vital, he said, if “we are going to win the battle . . . between freedom and tyranny.” Kennedy called on the nation to “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.”2
The words struck a spark. Did the Soviets have a head start? That just made the race more exciting. Would the project cost billions of dollars? Not to worry—consumers spent that much on cigarettes and alcohol each year. Americans had once tamed an unknown continent. Now it was time to explore our nearest neighbor in space.
The task of putting a man on the Moon fell to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). On the day Kennedy spoke, NASA’s astronauts had logged only fifteen minutes in space. John Glenn’s ride to fame as the first American to orbit the Earth was ten months away. Rockets powerful enough to send a manned spaceship to the Moon were still on the drawing boards. Undaunted, NASA began work on a plan called the Apollo project.
President John F. Kennedy said winning the space race was “vital” to the United States. He believed that the race could be won by successfully landing men on the Moon. This closeup photo of the Moon was taken by Apollo 8 astronauts in December 1968.
The challenge was to build a spacecraft that could fly three astronauts to the Moon and back. The return trip was the big question mark. Somehow, the lander would have to carry enough fuel to take off from the Moon and make it back to Earth. The answer, the engineers decided, was to “ferry” two of the astronauts to the Moon’s surface. Later, they would fly their lunar module back to the orbiting mother ship for the ride home. This meant that the ships must rendezvous and dock in space. Learning how to perform that maneuver was assigned to the fledgling Gemini project.3
A crash program gave life to Apollo’s four components. Rocket experts built a giant Saturn V booster to provide the thrust. The spacecraft itself was designed in three modules. First came the cone-shaped command module (CM). Three astronauts would ride the CM into space and back to Earth. Next came the service module (SM). The SM would carry fuel, oxygen, electric generators, and its own rocket engine. Firing that engine would provide the thrust for the CM’s return trip. Finally, the lunar module (LM) would travel into space inside the Saturn V’s third stage. Once Moon orbit was achieved, the CM would retrieve the LM. Two astronauts then would fly it to the lunar surface and back.
To succeed, Apollo had to work flawlessly. Once in Earth orbit, the burn that would take Apollo to the Moon had to be timed perfectly. An even greater danger would come when the spacecraft slowed to drop into Moon orbit. If the maneuver failed, the astronauts would fly on into deep space, never to return.4 The LM also had to perform equally well. A rocket failure during descent or ascent would doom the two moonwalkers.
While engineers designed Apollo’s hardware, NASA picked the astronauts who would fly the spacecraft. Most were former test pilots, drawn by the challenge of flying the most complex vehicle ever built. During training, they spent much of their time in simulated spaceflights. The Apollo 11 team of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins logged two thousand hours in simulators. Actual flights in a lunar lander added realism—and real danger. During one training flight, Armstrong’s lunar lander exploded in a ball of fire. The quick-thinking pilot survived by triggering his ejection seat.5
The training covered every aspect of a moon flight. High-speed dives in Air Force transports gave the crews a brief sensation of zero gravity. Strapped sideways in a special rig, the men practiced “walking” in reduced gravity. Each week brought a new lesson. In the classroom, the astronauts learned the basics of Moon geology. Later, they were dropped off in the desert to practice survival skills. Learning to work in space suits turned into an endurance test. Wearing the bulky gear, they said, was like being inside a balloon.6
The Saturn V rocket provided the necessary thrust to launch the Apollo spacecraft into space. This photo shows the giant first stage of the Saturn V rocket at a NASA assembly facility.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, wearing pressurized space suits, practice their lunar surface activities at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The Apollo astronauts went through months of vigorous training as they prepared for their missions.
As 1967 dawned, Apollo was ready for its first flight. On January 27, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee strapped themselves into the Apollo 1 capsule. The task that day was to rehearse the launch countdown. Suddenly, Chaffee’s voice sounded on the intercom. “We’ve got a fire in the cockpit,” he called. Moments later, controllers heard him scream, “We’re burning up!” By the time rescue crews pried open the hatch, all three men were dead.7
As the nation mourned, NASA went back to the drawing board. Inspectors tore two Apollo capsules apart. They found a number of design faults and instances of shoddy workmanship. In the months that followed, engineers made over a thousand changes. Three unmanned flights in 1967 and 1968 proved that the fixes were working. The real test came in October 1968, when Apollo 7 carried its crew into Earth orbit. The flight ended two days later in a safe splashdown. Everyone at NASA breathed a sigh of relief.
In December 1968, Apollo 8 flew to the Moon and back. Two flights later, the Apollo 10 astronauts flew their LM to within 50,000 feet (15.2 kilometers) of the surface. That success put Apollo 11 in line to make the first Moon landing.
Neil Armstrong (left), Michael Collins (center), and Buzz Aldrin posed for this portrait prior to the launch of Apollo 11. All three were skilled pilots who were known for quick thinking and staying cool under stress.
The Apollo 11 crewmen seemed born to fly the Moon mission. Mission commander Neil Armstrong was a quiet man with superb piloting skills. No one, it seemed, had ever seen him get rattled. After flying in combat during the Korean War, the Ohio native worked as a test pilot. Flying in Gemini 8, his piloting skills saved his out-of-control capsule from almost certain disaster. On Moon landings, the mission commander was posted next to the hatch. That station gave Armstrong the honor of being the first man to set foot on the Moon.
Flying beside Armstrong was lunar module pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. Born in New Jersey, the West Point graduate was a brainy problem solver. After flying combat missions in Korea, he went on to earn a doctorate in aeronautics. A high point in his life came when he joined the astronaut corps. During his 1966 flight in Gemini 12, he set a record (later broken) for the longest spacewalk. In later years, people often spoke of Aldrin as “the second man on the Moon.” When that happened, he would smile and say, “We both landed at the same time.”8
The third seat in Apollo 11 went to command module pilot Michael Collins. While Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon, Collins would fly the CM as it orbited in space. Born in Italy, he attended West Point and went on to a career as an Air Force test pilot. As pilot on Gemini 10, he had honed his skills at docking maneuvers. During one of his two spacewalks, he had straddled a rocket stage and ridden it like a cowboy. During training, reporters asked him how he felt about missing the moonwalk. Collins smiled and shook his head. “I’m going ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the way there, and that suits me just fine,” he said.9