The Apollo Moon Missions

July 16th, 1969. It’s a peaceful morning at Cape Canaveral with pleasant temperatures and little wind. All is calm. Suddenly, a tremendous roar shatters the morning as the crew of Apollo 11 blast off toward the moon, riding the biggest rocket ever created. Burning 20 tons of explosive fuel a second, it propels Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins into history. The spacecraft lands four days later on the moon. Millions watched as men took the first steps on a strange place 238,900 miles away, or 9 and ½ times around the earth. After placing America’s flag among the lunar rocks, the Apollo 11 crew lit their engines and headed for the small blue sphere we call home, splashing down safely in the ocean and completing Kennedy’s challenge as well as winning the space race to the moon. It took a monumental effort by the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) and billions of dollars to reach this point. The Apollo Missions’ accidents, successes, and space leadership have drastically changed America’s space program.

On the 25th of May, President Kennedy shocked the nation with his historical speech to put an American on the moon before the decade was out. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard!” Kennedy announced. In the rest of his speech he challenged the Nation’s smartest minds to build a rocket capable of lifting a man to the Moon and returning him safely to the earth. He also stressed that it would finally put America’s space program in front of the Soviets. The Russian’s had beat America not only to put a satellite in space, but a man too. Yuri Gagarin had orbited the earth just weeks before American astronaut Alan Shepard was sche...

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...A continues to look in to the future, building ever more complicated rockets and space vehicles, it is easy to see that the missions to come hold many new accomplishments and discoveries.

Works Cited

Aldrin, Buzz, and Ken Abraham. Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon. New York: Harmony, 2009. Print.

Book

Aldrin, Buzz, and Leonard David. Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2013. Print.

Book

"The Apollo Missions." NASA. NASA, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/index.html.

Website

Harland, David M. Exploring the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions. London: Springer, 1999. Print.

Book

When We Left Earth- The NASA Missions. Dir. Andrew Chaikin, Victoria Kohl, and Alan Bean. Perf. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. Discovery Channel, 2008. DVD.