Origins of the Apollo Moon Missions
Introduction
The moon, like flight itself, had been a dream since people first gazed into the night sky. As our nearest celestial neighbor, the moon loomed as large in the sky as the daytime sun. But unlike the sun, which gave light, warmth and, indeed, life, the moon was a mystery. It punctured the night sky but it gave off only a minimal amount of light, and that light was cold and shadowy. Unlike the sun, the moon drifted in and out of fullness - disappearing completely every month. Ancient people attributed strange and powerful qualities to the moon, which is why we have words such as lunacy and lunatic in our language, both of which are derived from the French word, "lune" which means moon.
As people learned more about the moon, its appeal as a destination became greater. It is close, being a mere 240,000 miles from earth - a distance that, in the scheme of the universe, is a mere baby step away. If only we could break the bonds of earth, the moon almost seemed within reach.
Early Rockets
The Chinese developed rockets over 800 years ago. As the inventors of gunpowder, the Chinese were intrigued with the possibilities it presented. By filling tubes with gunpowder and attaching a fuse to it, the Chinese were able to create exotic celebratory fireworks and rudimentary weapons. These were certainly not the sophisticated machines we use today.
Rocketry did not advance dramatically in the 700 years following the Chinese discovery. Since the early rockets were powered by solid fuel (gunpowder, in the case of the early Chinese rockets) they were virtually impossible to control. After the solid fuel was lit, it was a case of - watch out! The fuel burned furiously until it was exhausted, and there was no way to control it. Unlike the liquid fueled rockets that began the space age, solid fuel rockets have no throttle; that is, no way to either increase or decrease the thrust of the engines. (The rockets the third and fourth grade Columbus Young Astronauts build and launch every year are examples of solid fuel engines.)
Robert Goddard
Although rockets powered with solid fuel were often used for military purposes, it was not until Robert Goddard launched the first liquid fueled rocket that there was now a chance to chase the elusive dream of going to space and then the moon.
On March 16, 1926, Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid fueled rocket. Although it only reached a height of 41 feet, it was a beginning.
Early Steps to Apollo
Robert Goddard's continuing success with liquid fueled rockets led him to believe that space flight was possible. Goddard, a brilliant physicist, recognized that airplanes, which are dependent on air for lift, would be worthless in the vacuum of space. And since solid fuel rockets are virtually uncontrollable, the only recourse would be with a rocket carrying liquid fuel.
World War II
Others picked up on Goddard's work, most notably German scientists led by Werner von Braun. Although mostly space dreamers like Goddard, they were recruited by the German military to create terror weapons in World War II. The most successful, and most terrible, of their creations was the V-2 rocket, the world's first ballistic missile used in war.
The V-2, using such Goddard innovations as a two fuel system (alcohol and liquid oxygen), gyroscopes for control and a sophisticated nozzle, was the first man made object larger than a bullet or artillery shell to go faster than the speed of sound. It was able to reach a height of up to 50 miles, making it impossible to defend against, but also coming tantalizingly close to the edge of space.
Post War America
Coming off its victory in World War II, the United States was a rich, happy country that had saved the world. Indeed, America had won the war with conventional weapons such as airplanes and tanks, and had not had to resort to "wonder" weapons like Germany's V-2 rocket. The war was over and there was very little need to be concerned with weapons or rockets.
The United States had scooped up Werner von Braun and his team of rocket scientists, along with about 100 captured V-2 rockets. And although von Braun labored on his rockets in the deserts of New Mexico, there was very little interest in rockets or space flight. The United States was rich, comfortable and on top of the world.
All that changed on October 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite.
The Cold War
After winning World War II, the United States emerged as a world power with unprecedented wealth and potential. But its World War II ally, the Soviet Union (Russia) had also come out of the war as a world power. A clash seemed inevitable.
The United States and the Soviet Union had been suspicious of each other since the forming of the Soviet Union in 1917. With two vastly different forms of government (democratic republic in the United States and communism in the Soviet Union) and vastly different cultures, the two countries were historically distrustful of each other. But whereas they put aside their differences in World War II to defeat the common threat of Nazi Germany, once the war ended, the temporary friendship quickly eroded. And what had been mere mistrust before World War II was quickly turning into potentially direct hostility after the war.
When the United States ended World War II by dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, it was the only nation to possess such a powerful weapon. A few years later, however, the Soviets were also in possession of the bomb and the hostility that the United States and the Soviet Union felt for each other was now in danger of turning into a world-engulfing holocaust of nuclear war.
The threat of all out nuclear war was somewhat lessened by the fact that the only known way to drop an atomic bomb was from an airplane and the Soviet Union did not have an airplane capable of traveling as far as the United States. The great distance between the two countries seemed like a natural safeguard to avoiding thermonuclear war.
Sputnik put fear back in the headlines.
As the 183 pound basketball-shaped satellite circled the earth every 98 minutes, America was shaken to its core. Not only did the Soviets now have the ability to deliver atomic bombs to the shores of the United States, but they could do so from space, from which, like the V-2 rocket in World War II, there was no defense. Added to the immediate threat of destruction, was the national sense of humiliation that the supposedly backward Soviets had developed and perfected a technology that the United States barely understood. America was threatened as it had never been threatened before.
The threat increased dramatically the following month when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II, an 1100 pound satellite with the first living creature on board (a dog named Laika). Where some people might have dismissed the original Sputnik as merely an accidental Soviet success, Sputnik II proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Soviet Union's space program was real - and dangerous.
Although the threat to world existence through nuclear weapons was very real, the horror of it gave both the United States and the Soviet Union pause. When the first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the awesome power of nuclear weapons was not well known. But it soon became apparent how frightening these new bombs were: 100,000 people died in the blink of an eye, many of them vaporized by the atomic blast. The nuclear weapons that the United States and the Soviet Union had perfected by the time Sputnik was launched in 1957 were 20 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb and being the country to drop such a horrendous bomb became unthinkable.
Although the threat of atomic war was very real and never far from the minds of most people during the 1950's and 1960's, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union was willing to take such a dramatic course. There were times, of course, that such a holocaust seemed likely and even inevitable, but both countries began to compete with each other in safer areas.
The "war" of choice was to try to influence the rest of the world about the superiority of either the American way of life or the Soviet way of life. In some cases each of the superpowers tried to make friends with other countries. Sometimes persuasion worked and sometimes manipulation worked. All too often, the Soviet Union resorted to conventional military power (that is, without nuclear weapons) to bring countries into the Soviet sphere of influence. Such was the case when the USSR invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
This time in world history was dubbed, "The Cold War" because instead of shooting at each other, which would be considered "hot", the United States and Soviet Union tried to win world favor with other national programs. In this way the countries could show the superiority of their political systems without having to risk nuclear annihilation. One of the programs that the United States developed to convince the world that we were the "good guys" was the Peace Corps, where we sent dedicated volunteers to needy places to help them grow food, build hospitals, educate children, and do other worthy deeds.
But perhaps the most visible strategy to gain the world's acceptance was the space race.
The Space Race
The Space Race pitted the two world superpowers against each other. It began on the day the Soviet Union put Sputnik into space on October 4, 1957. The race to conquer space became the most visible and most publicized battlefield of the Cold War. As a battlefield, it was mostly peaceful, thus sticking to the basic idea of the Cold War where the hearts and minds of the world's people were the ultimate prizes. There was, however, always the menace that the country that dominated the heavens first would be able to rain nuclear weapons upon any part of the world.
The United States was taken by surprise. Despite some successes by Werner von Braun's team of German scientists, most Americans and their leaders were complacent about space. The wake up call of Sputnik forced us to contend with what was considered to be an insurmountable Soviet lead.
This was a race of firsts. The Soviets were the first to launch a satellite into space. They were the first to launch a living creature into space. In 1959, the Soviet Union launched the first man-made object to escape earth's orbit. Later in 1959, the Soviets successfully launched Luna II, which become the first man-made object to touch the moon.
While the Soviet Union was sprinting, the United States was hardly crawling. In a rush to catch up brought on by national embarrassment, humiliation and fear, the United States attempted to duplicate Sputnik's success, but was further humbled when its first space rocket crumbled and exploded on the launch pad before a nationwide television audience. The Space Race was clearly being won by Russia. The Cold War seemed destined to be won by the Soviet Union as well, since the world's people were increasingly impressed and awed by Soviet technology and power.
The decision was made to get an American into space quickly in order to trump the Soviet Union's insurmountable lead in the Space Race. Although many scientists and government leaders questioned the point of putting men at risk in space when machines in space could learn as much, the final decision to choose manned space flight was made in order to compete with the Soviet Union. The laurel of victory would certainly go to the nation that could put the first man in space.
The Space Race took a dramatic leap forward when Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. Yet again, the United States was running a poor second. America's space agency, NASA (the National Air and Space Administration), which had overcome many rocket failures had, at least, gotten into space, but Gagarin's flight was yet another setback.
It was not until May 5, 1961 when Alan Shepard became the first American in space that the United States could lift its head a bit higher. The Russian newspapers derided Shepard's flight as mere child's play in comparison to the Soviets' thunderous success with Gagarin. They were right. Shepard's Mercury capsule flew for only 15 minutes and did not have a great enough thrust to get into orbit, as had Gagarin's Vostok craft.
The Race to the Moon - The Beginnings of Apollo
A mere 16 days after Alan Shepard splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, President John Kennedy announced that the United States was shooting for the moon. In a speech before Congress, President Kennedy threw down the gauntlet, "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."
It was an audacious declaration. The United States was, by all measures, woefully far behind the Soviet Union in not only the Space Race, but in many aspects of the Cold War. Not only had the Soviet Union continued to beat the United States to every space first, but its communist domination of eastern Europe and most of Asia were a cause of grave concern in America. If the Space Race was the grandest stage of the Cold War, America continued to have egg on its face, while the USSR was winning all the Academy Awards.
But even as the Soviet Union continued to rack up firsts - the first man to spend an entire day in space, the first woman in space, the first two person crew, the first space walk - the United States was working hard to win the ultimate prize: the moon.
The plan was to get our feet wet with the Mercury Project. This was where the United States made its first flights into space. After Alan Shepard, America was able to crack earth's orbit with John Glenn's Friendship 7. Gordon Cooper finished the Mercury missions when he orbited the earth 20 times - still behind the Soviets, but showing signs of catching up.
While the Apollo design team was working on the strategy to gain the moon, the two-man Gemini Project made strides that would ultimately reveal the secrets necessary for a moon flight.
It had been decided that the most efficient way to get to the moon was to use a multi-stage rocket and two moon craft: a command module and a lunar module. Although sending one craft directly to the moon seemed like the most logical method, such a plan was way too risky. But a problem remained - how would two space craft dock? If that could not be done, a moon mission would be impossible. Gemini proved that docking could be done.
Suddenly, the United States had not only caught up in the Space Race, but was winning it. America's time in space creeped past Russia's and the intricacies of orbital mechanics and docking became second nature to American astronauts. The Soviet Union could not seem to crack the riddle behind docking and in the middle of the 1960's the Space Race was coming to an end, although nobody knew it at the time.
Apollo Staggers
The race was still being run at full speed. NASA was committed to President Kennedy's deadline for landing a man on the moon. Despite the very definite successes of the Gemini Project, Apollo was experiencing troubles. Although the launch vehicles for the moon missions, the Saturn 1 and Saturn V rockets, were on schedule and operational, the command module seemed thrown together and the lunar module was not even complete.
Then tragedy struck.
On January 27, 1967, in a routine test of communications, the Apollo 1 capsule suddenly ignited in an internal ball of flame. All three astronauts were killed, and with them, it seemed, so too was the dream of flying to the moon.
The problems were many. In its haste to beat the Soviet Union to the moon, the contractors building the various components of the Apollo mission were taking shortcuts that were proving dangerous, and, in the case of the Apollo 1 fire, fatal. It was discovered that the wiring in the Apollo 1 command module was shoddy and incomplete and that a spark from that wiring ignited the pure oxygen atmosphere in the capsule.
The fire that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee did not, however, kill the dream of going to the moon. Using the tragedy as a new starting point, NASA insisted on a total revamping of Apollo.
Apollo Flies
A year and a half after what became known as "The Fire", NASA was ready to try again. Apollo 7 lifted off on October 11, 1968 and was soon followed by Apollo 8, which circled the moon on Christmas of the same year.
With Apollo 8, the race to the moon had dramatically shifted to the United States. Not only did the United States succeed in having humans escape earth's gravity, but the three astronauts on board became the first humans to see the far (dark) side of the moon. At 25,000 miles per hour, they also became the fastest people in human history.
The successes of Apollo continued and the Soviet Union all but conceded the Space Race. Feeling more and more confident after the Fire, NASA was certain it could attain the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
The Eagle Lands
The Space Race officially ended with a dramatic American victory on July 20, 1969 when the lunar module, Eagle, landed on the moon. When Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the moon at 10:15 PM (EST), the dreams of hundreds of millions of earth dwellers throughout history were fulfilled - man had walked on the moon.
Apollo Continues
Getting to the moon without exploring it would have been an empty experience. Starting with Apollo 11 and going through the final mission, Apollo 17, there were 12 men who explored the moon's surface. Each mission investigated a different part of the moon and performed different experiments to try to determine the mystery of our nearest celestial neighbor - a neighbor that was no longer as mysterious or foreboding as it once had been.
The Dream Lives at Columbus
With the Columbus Magnet School Century Mission 2004, Return to Apollo, our dedicated fifth grade astronauts and mission controllers are taking a step back in history to re-live the glory that was Apollo. But whereas previous missions to the moon were the battlefields of the Cold War, the objective of our 24-hour simulated mission is to make history come alive. Join us on May 6, 2004, when command module, Kitty Hawk and lunar module, Dayton Flyer maintain the dream that has inspired people for millennia.
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