PROJECT APOLLO BY CLARENCE A. ROBINSON, JR. Photos courtesy of NASA
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ABOVE: A briefing is given by Maj. Rocco Petrone to President John F. Kennedy during a tour of Blockhouse 34 at the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex. OPPOSITE PAGE: Astronaut John W. Young, commander of the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission, jumps up from the lunar surface as he salutes the U.S. flag at the Descartes landing site during the first Apollo 16 extravehicular activity (EVA-1). Astronaut Charles M. Duke, Jr., lunar module pilot, took this picture. The lunar module (LM) Orion is on the left. The Lunar Roving Vehicle is parked beside the LM. The object behind Young, in the shade of the LM, is the far ultraviolet camera/spectrograph. Stone Mountain dominates the background in this lunar scene.
APOLLO 1 Jan. 27, 1967
APOLLO 7 Oct. 11-12, 1968
Launch vehicle: Saturn IB Crew: Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II, Roger B. Chaffee. All three astronauts died in a command module fire on the launch pad during a launch simulation at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA suspended Saturn IB launches for almost a year to redesign the Apollo command module.
Launch vehicle: Saturn IB Crew: Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Donn F. Eisele, R. Walter Cunningham. 10 days, 20 hours, 163 Earth orbits. First manned command and service module (CSM) operations in the lunar landing program. First live TV transmission from manned spacecraft.
26 APOLLO 11 I 50 YEARS
n 1961, the United States was in a position of weakness in spaceflight by comparison to the Soviet Union. However, President John F. Kennedy had no intention of allowing the nation to remain mired in the existing situation. After months of careful study and quietly working with the best technical minds in the country, the president was about to reveal his decision. The last part of the president’s “Urgent National Needs” speech, delivered to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, called for an all-out American effort to alter current circumstances. He called for a firm promise for a new course of action over an extended period of time. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. … This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material, and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where we are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization, and discipline, which have not always characterized our research and development efforts.” In summing up this initiative, Kennedy requested “every scientist, engineer, serviceman, technician, contractor, and civil servant to personally pledge that the nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in this exciting adventure of space.” He knew the risks involved; nevertheless, Kennedy was willing to commit the nation’s resources to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the civil space program. Thus, Project Apollo was born. Even before taking office, Kennedy called upon Jerome B. Wiesner from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to head an ad hoc committee. This group concluded that the issue of national prestige was too great to relinquish it to Soviet leadership in space, and that the United States would have to enter the field in a significant way. But it was a dicey enterprise. What if the Soviets were to beat us to the punch? They already had twice twisted our tail in space, starting with Sputnik and the dawn of the Space Age.
APOLLO 8 Dec. 21-27, 1968 Launch vehicle: Saturn V Crew: Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., William A. Anders. 6 days, 3 hours. In lunar orbit 20 hours, 10 orbits. First manned lunar orbital mission. Support facilities tested. Photographs taken of Earth and Moon. Live TV broadcasts.
APOLLO 9 March 3-13, 1969 Launch vehicle: Saturn V Crew: James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, Russell L. Schweickart. 10 days, 1 hour, 152 orbits. First manned flight of all lunar hardware in Earth orbit. Human reactions to space and weightlessness tested. First manned flight of lunar module (LM)
