For me, the greatest achievement of the 20th century was that of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on and exploring the moon. President John F. Kennedy, in a speech made on May 25, 1961, set the goal of landing men on the moon and returning them to earth by the end of the decade.
I recall as a young child sitting enthralled in front of the television through the many Mercury and Gemini missions. Mercury manned missions began 20 days before the Kennedy speech using a Resdstone 3 rocket, the capsule named Freedom 7. The Mercury missions lasted a little over 2 years, culminating with Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7), May 15-16, 1963 carrying Gordon Cooper, Jr. Approximately one year later NASA began Project Gemini with 2 unmanned missions. In 1964, after 3 days in space, Gemini 1 was intentionally destroyed during re-entry. In 1965, Gemini 2’s main purpose was to test the heat shield and the mission lasted 18 minutes. There were 10 additional manned flights whose purposes were to test various theories/procedures for later use during the Apollo missions. These missions took place from April 1964 to November 1966.
As NASA transitioned over to Apollo missions tragedy struck. On Jan. 27, 1967, Apollo 204 was on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy during a preflight test. The mission was to be the first crewed flight of Apollo, and was scheduled to launch Feb. 21, 1967. Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee lost their lives when a fire swept through the command module, or CM.
Below are 2 interesting recordings regarding this incident. Both are quite lengthy and rather dry, perhaps technical to a degree.
There were 4 preparatory Apollo missions that led up to the culmination of the Apollo program. These missions allowed astronauts to practice the procedures that would be used during future Apollo missions. The culmination occurred with Apollo 11, manned by Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, in 5 separate instances.
- 16 July 1969 launch from Cape Kennedy
- 20 July 1969 completion of the lunar landing
- 20 July 1969 Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon
- 21 July 1969 Armstrong and Aldrin depart the moon and link with Collins in Columbia orbiting the moon
- 24 July 1969 Splashdown in the Pacific and recovery by the USS Hornet
Below is a small video compilation of the above instances.
The below video is a lengthy bit of 16 mm on board film taken from the trip. Film is shot from the Lunar Module, as well as the Extra Vehicular Activity on the moon.
Brief report from Walter Cronkite as Armstrong descends the ladder to the moon.
“To Walk On The Moon” by Barry T Horst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
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