Lunar landing

 


When President Kennedy asked Congress to appropriate money for a moon mission, we had “no rockets powerful enough, no computers portable enough, no spacesuits,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Americans also wondered why we would trouble ourselves with such a complex undertaking when we couldn’t manage the problems we had on Earth. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, the Cold War at full strength, and the Vietnam problem beginning to surface.

In his speech at Rice University, Sept. 12, 1962, President Kennedy announced: “We will reach the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard.”

The single-astronaut Mercury Mission was followed by the two-person Gemini, and when the third astronaut was added, it became Apollo. Americans questioned the program when Apollo 1 caught fire on the launch pad, killing its occupants: Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom and Ed White.

Apollo 8 circled the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, and the world was humbled by a photo taken of Earthrise by Frank Borman, the first ever taken of Earth and everyone on it!

The lunar module had been untested as the moon’s low-gravity and vacuum environment was unavailable on Earth. Would lunar soil be so thick that the spacecraft would sink out of sight? And the space suits, worn by Apollo 11’s astronauts in the first landing, had 21 layers, hand sewn, the work of Playtex Corporation, experts in clothing, that was “flexible as well as form-fitting.” Who would have guessed?

 

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