Introduction

I was born in 1947, just two years after the end of World War II, when most of the world still lay in ruins. For the first few years of my childhood, outer space adventures were the stuff of comic books and Buck Rogers movies. They belonged to the distant future, or so people thought at the time. But the future sometimes has a way of coming at us in a rush, and that is exactly what happened about a month before my tenth birthday. I’m old enough to remember the entire space program, all the way from its earliest days through every one of the moon landings and far beyond. So let’s begin our story at the beginning.

Sputnik

The Russians shocked the world on October 4, 1957 when they announced that they had launched a satellite into space. It was called Sputnik 1 (“sputnik” is the Russian word for “moon”) and, like the moon, it was in orbit around the Earth.

Sputnik wasn’t much of a satellite by modern standards. It was just a small metal ball about the size of a grapefruit with four antennae sticking out of it, and all it did was transmit a steady stream of radio beeps to let the world know that it was there. 

Less than a month later, on November 3, 1957, the Russians launched another satellite. Sputnik 2 was much bigger and heavier and it carried a little dog into orbit. The dog’s name was Laika (pronounced Like-uh). Once again, the world was shocked.

Today, we are used to seeing rockets launch satellites into space, but that was not the case in 1957. No one had ever put anything up into space before. Most people didn't even think it could be done, so when it finally did happen, the world looked up to the skies in amazement. And fear.

The Space Race Begins

In the 1950s, the Americans and Russians were locked in what was known as the Cold War. At the time, there was a real fear that it might lead to World War III. The Russians had atomic bombs and, because Sputnik proved that they also had powerful rockets, Americans were concerned that those rockets could be used to send those bombs to America.

America also had atomic bombs and rockets, but we didn’t have rockets powerful enough to launch satellites into space. The government decided that we needed to build new rockets to compete with these new Russian rockets.

Besides, America didn’t like being second best at anything. We wanted to be number one, so we decided to challenge the Russians to a space race. 

At first, America’s rockets were pretty embarrassing. Some fizzled out, some blew up on the launch pad, some fell over and blew up, some flew sideways and then blew up, and a few went far up into the sky before blowing up. The only thing they all had in common, it seemed, was that they all blew up. But after a while, the rocket engineers solved the problems. And before long, America was also launching rockets into space. 

In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected President and announced that America would send a man to the moon before the end of the decade. Ten days after he made that speech, America sent a chimpanzee named Ham into space. It was a sub-orbital flight, meaning that it did not even complete one orbit around the Earth. It just went up into space and came back down, landing in the ocean about 15 minutes later. The date was January 31, 1961.

Ham was quite a ham, as you can see from the picture. But his 15-minute flight told the Russians that the space race was on!

The First Man in Space

On April 12, 1961, the Russians launched the first man into space. His name was Yuri Gagarin and his spacecraft was called Vostok 1 (“vostok” is the Russian word for “east”). Gagarin’s flight lasted 108 minutes and allowed him to make one orbit before returning to Earth. I remember hearing about it on the radio and it was one of the most exciting things I had ever heard. The idea that a human being had actually left the Earth and ventured into space was almost too much to believe. I will never forget the feelings of wonder and excitement that I experienced on that day.

Project Mercury

On May 5, 1961, less than a month after Yuri Gagarin’s flight, the first American was launched into space. His name was Alan Shepard and his spacecraft was called Freedom 7. It was only a 15-minute sub-orbital flight, but it showed that America was catching up to the Russians.

Before the launch, Shepard had to sit in his capsule atop the rocket for about three hours while the people in charge worried about the weather. Finally, he got tired of waiting and said, “Let’s light this candle!” They soon did, sending Alan Shepard into space and into the history books.

On July 21, 1961, Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom piloted his Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft on America’s second manned sub-orbital flight. And on February 20, 1962, John Glenn orbited the Earth three times in his Friendship 7 spacecraft. There were three more manned Mercury flights after that and all were successful. 

After he returned to Earth, I remember John Glenn grinning from ear to ear and saying that it was a “fireball of a ride!” It certainly was. On re-entry into the atmosphere, his capsule got so hot that it would have burnt up if not for its heat shield. And even with the heat shield in place, he could see the flames flying all around him. Then a parachute opened and the capsule splashed down into the ocean. He was home again and safe.

Shepard, Grissom, and Glenn were three of the seven men selected for Project Mercury, the first of three programs that would eventually put men on the moon. They flew into space in small, cone-shaped space capsules that were only big enough for one person. The earliest flights were unmanned and used the Redstone rocket, but the manned flights used the more powerful Atlas booster rocket. 

Project Gemini

The purpose of Project Gemini was to practice some of the skills that would be needed to get to the moon, such as "docking" and "space walking". Docking was the process of gently bringing two spacecraft together and connecting them so that the astronauts could go from one to the other without having to go out into space. Space walking meant climbing out of the spacecraft wearing a space suit while connected by a tether to keep the astronaut from floating off into space. A space walk might be needed to do repairs to the spacecraft.

The astronauts from Project Mercury stayed on for Project Gemini and nine new astronauts were added. The Gemini spacecraft was a two-man capsule.

There were two unmanned Gemini flights, followed by ten manned flights in 1965 and 1966. Gemini 4 astronaut Ed White did the first space walk on June 3, 1965. Gemini 8 proved that space docking could be done successfully. And Gemini 12 astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin proved that useful work could be done during a space walk without exhausting the astronaut.

Working in space is a lot harder than working on Earth. For example, when you turn a wrench in space to loosen a bolt, you might find yourself being turned in a circle instead of the bolt!

Project Apollo

Finally, it was time for Project Apollo. If all went well, this project would put a man on the moon. Apollo missions used a three-man crew, a three-part spacecraft, and three versions of the three-stage Saturn rocket. The early Apollo missions used the Saturn 1 and Saturn 1B rockets, but the ones that went to the moon required the Saturn 5, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.

By this time, the Russians were so far behind that they had already dropped out of the moon race, but the Americans continued on. Today, we remember Project Apollo as a great success, but it didn't start out that way. The first manned mission, Apollo I, ended in disaster even before it began.

Remember Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, the second American in space at the beginning of Project Mercury? He was one of three astronauts selected for that first Apollo mission. The other two were Ed White and Roger Chaffee. On January 27, 1967, the three-man crew was training for the mission, sitting in their capsule at the top of the Saturn rocket. Suddenly, a flash fire swept through the cabin and killed all three of them.

The tragedy shut down the project for most of 1967 as investigators tried to figure out what went wrong. Some people wanted to end the space program, saying that it was too dangerous to continue, but most people wanted to keep it going. Finally, in November of 1967, after the engineers had fixed the problems, Project Apollo continued.

The first Apollo mission to leave Earth orbit was Apollo 8. It orbited the moon ten times in 20 hours, then returned to Earth. For the first time in human history, they were able to take pictures of the "dark side" of the moon. It was called that because no one had ever seen it before. The moon rotates on its axis at a speed that keeps the same side facing the Earth at all times.

Here is one of those photographs. It shows more craters but fewer of the dark spots (ancient lava flows or "seas") that we see on the side that faces the Earth.

The Apollo 9 mission tested the Lunar Module (LM), the part of the spacecraft that would land on the moon in later missions, as well as the rendezvous and docking procedures that would be needed to re-connect with the Command Module (CM) for the return to Earth.

Apollo 10 was the "dress rehearsal" for the moon landing. It flew to the moon and did just about everything that would be done on the next mission except for landing on the moon. The LM descended to within 8.4 nautical miles of the surface of the moon, then returned to rendezvous and dock with the Command Module for the return to Earth. I remember thinking at the time that if they were going to get that close, why not just land the darn thing? I'll bet the astronauts - Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan - were thinking the same thing!