Apollo 11 and the Moon Landing
Luke Huffman
APUSH Period 6
May 8, 2016
Apollo 11 's flight is one of the most significant achievements in history, not only for the United States of America but the world. Apollo 11 would make history by having a man land and walk on the moon. The United States was involved in a competition to be the first nation to send a man into space with the Soviet Union. After the Soviets first accomplished that, it became apparent that the primary goal of the "Space Race" would be to land a man on the moon first.
The Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States began when the Soviet Union launched a satellite into the earth’s orbit, called Sputnik, on October
The pilot of Gemini 10, Collins spent near an hour and a half outside of the craft on a spacewalk and became the first person to meet another spacecraft in orbit ("Apollo 11 Mission").
Apollo 11 was launched into space on the morning of July 16, 1969, at 9:32 a.m. by a Saturn 5 rocket from Launch Pad 39A. People lined the highway and crowded the beaches near the launch site. Also, millions, including President Richard Nixon watched the event on live television. NASA had been preparing for this mission for almost a decade, and now three men were safely entering the atmosphere on their way to the moon (“Apollo 11 Mission”). After traveling in space for nearly three days to reach the Moon, Apollo 11 rounded the Moon and entered lunar orbit on July 19, 1969, at 5:21 p.m. On the thirteenth orbit around the moon, the crew prepared for the lunar descent. The selected landing site, The Sea of Tranquility, was a relatively flat and smooth surface near the Moon 's
The Hornet then left for Hawaii to deliver the Command Module and Mobile Quarantine Facility. On August 10, 1969, the astronauts left quarantine after nearly three weeks (Barbree).
After the Apollo 11 astronauts had been released from quarantine, they were received ticker-tape parades in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles on August 13, 1969. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins were presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a state dinner held in Los Angeles that same night (Barbree).
The August 13th celebration was followed by a 45-day "Giant Leap" tour that saw the astronauts visit twenty-five foreign countries and met with prominent world leaders. Several nations honored the Apollo 11 astronauts. Later that year, the astronauts went to Capitol Hill and presented Congress with United States Flags that had been with them on the moon. Not only did the Apollo 11 landing and Moonwalk mark a turning point in history that ended the space race, it also lead to technology advancements in rocketry, avionics, telecommunications, and computers. The world would never be the same after the Apollo 11 mission. The United States would become known as a superpower around the world and the lives of future generations would changed be
“On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon. Just little kids at the time, my brother and I watched history in the making.
The Space Race was a 20th century competition between the soviet union And the United States for supremacy in spaceflight ability. The launch date for apollo 13 was originally in March of 1970 but later the launch date switched to april. During one of the countdown demonstrations the Kennedy Space Center encountered problems with the oxygen tanks in the service module. When the apollo 13 mission took off their main goal was to land in the Fra Mauro area on the moon. An explosion in one of the oxygen tanks crippled the spacecraft during the flight and the crew were forced to orbit the moon and return to earth without landing. The Apollo 13 mission was launched on April 11th in the year 1970. For the first few days of the flight the crew ran into a couple minor accidents, but Apollo 13 was looking like the smoothest flight of the program. They aborted the mission after 56 hours of flight due to an explosion in the oxygen tanks. “At 5 ½ minutes after liftoff John Swigert, Fred Haise and James Lovell felt a little vibration then the center engine of the S-II stage shut down two minutes early. This caused the remaining 4 engines to burn 34 seconds longer than planned, and the S-IVB third stage had to burn nine seconds longer to put Apollo 13 in orbit.” (nasa.gov) At 55 hours and 46 minutes the crew was finishing a live tv broadcast showing how well they were doing and how they comfortably lived.
...ause it was the mission that NASA was able to put the first man up onto the moon. Neil Armstrong was the pilot of the Apollo 11 flight. There was a special shuttle that was attached to the spaceship; it was called the Eagle. The Eagle was designed to transport some crew members down to the moon. Armstrong was responsible for driving and landing the shuttle safely down to the moon. While on his way down to the moon, Armstrong realized that he was starting to run out of fuel. Thankfully, Armstrong did have enough to land on the moon and make it back up to the spaceship. When the Eagle was leaving the spaceship for the first time up in space, it wasn't completely depressurized so there was something like a gas bubble come from the shuttle as it was on its way to the moon. The gas bubble moved the shuttle off course and the Eagle actually landed four miles off course.
Apollo 8, launched on 21 December 1968 – this was the second successful mission and the first to reach the surface of the moon. The crew was led by Neil A. Armstrong, returned safely to earth.
On July 16, 1969 the space ship Apollo 11 left from Kennedy Space Center en route to the moon. The crew consisted of Neil A. Armstrong, the commander; Edwin E. Aldrin, the jr. lunar module pilot; and Michael Collins, the commander module pilot...
...e Pacific Ocean. Among the accomplishment of the Apollo 11 mission included gathering a collection of lunar surface samples that were brought back to Earth, conducting a series of lunar experiments and an extensive evaluation of the space suits worn by astronauts, in an attempt to improve it for missions soon to follow. The largest stride achieved by the mission is its completion of the Apollo Program’s initial goal, to establish dominance of technology and intellect over foreign countries, and overwhelm the Soviet Union in the Space Race.
July 20th, 1969. This day will always be remembered as the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Armstrong along with another astronaut were able to walk and take samples on the moon to bring back to United States to study. You might wonder why Neil Armstrong was chosen along with the other two men to be sent to the moon. Well, as I was researching Armstrong I learned about his life. In my paper I will be explaining on why he was sent to the moon while also talking about the life he lived.
Little did anyone know or expect this would be the most rewarding mission since 1961. Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins left from the Kennedy Space Center on the east coast of Florida on July 16,1969. Michael Collins was the command module pilot, Neil Armstrong was the mission commander, and Buzz Aldrin was the lunar module pilot. The Apollo 11 crew traveled 240,000 miles in just 72 hours, Apollo 11 entered into a lunar orbit on July 19,1696. Collins detached for the lunar module The mission was already ahead of schedule with Americans waiting to see what was going to happen next for their country. At 10:39 p.m., Armstrong, being televised, opened the hatch of the lunar module, and three minutes later Armstrong made history by putting his left foot of the moon’s powdery surface. When Armstrong stepped down from the last step from the spacecraft, all of America jumped for excitement and joy. Aldrin soon joined Armstrong 19 minutes later, and together they took photographs, then planted the United States flag. President Nixon was so very blessed and honored that he was able to witness America make history on July 24, 1969 along with all of the other Americans. Returning back to Earth
Exactly 75 hours and 50 minutes after blasting off from Earth, the crew of Apollo 11 entered lunar orbit, something only two crews before them had done. Every orbit brought the crew closer to their ultimate destination, the Sea of Tranquility, a flat surface near the Moon’s equator that would be lit by the Sun when the final approach began. On the 13th orbit of the Moon, Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins began their voyage into uncharted territory.
Kennedy was president on May 25, 1961, standing upon Congress to deliver a special message on “ urgent national needs.” During this message he asked for an additional $7 billion to $9 billion for the space program over a course of five years, saying that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” He settled upon this goal as a way of focusing and mobilizing the nation’s lagging space efforts. After a year Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom were the first to American’s to travel into space. On February 20, 1962, John Glenn Jr was the first American to orbit the Earth. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 launched to land on the moon carrying Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin Aldrin Jr. It was John F. Kennedy’s dream to land the first man on the moon, his dream came true but he never got to see
On July 16, 1969 we sent a man to the moon. And on July 21, 1969 he landed. President
Apollo 11, also known as the Moon landing, took place on July 20th, 1969.(“Apollo 11”) Or did it? It may sound like a joke but ever since “Bill Kaysing; a former aerospace technical writer kicked off the Moon landing conspiracy idea in 1975 with his self-published book, “We Never Went To The Moon.””(Villard), reports of incrimidating evidence have surfaced, claiming that the Apollo 11 moon landing was a hoax, compelling society to question the event, the evidence and the facts.
In support of these questions, many photographs released from the historic 1969 mission seem to be unreliable. There seems to be a stage light seen in the reflection of the astronaut's helmet, possible duplicate backdrops, layered cross-hairs, and the most mind boggling is the American flag “waving in the wind”. There were three astronauts on the space shuttle when it left Earth: Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Neil Armstrong had previously been on a space mission before. He piloted the first ever two spaceships to be docked in space, Gemini 8. Buzz Aldrin piloted Gemini 12 and while on the mission he took a two hour and twenty minute walk in space to prove that astronauts, outside of the spacecraft, could work efficiently. Michael Collins, the least popular of the three, piloted Gemini 10 and was the first person to ever meet another spacecraft in orbit. While Collins stayed in the Command Module Columbia, Armstrong and Buzz walked out of the Eagle onto the Moon. Since Armstrong was the commander of Apollo 11, he carried a 70 millimeter lunar surface camera and took most of the
“On July 16, 1969 the world watched in anticipation as three men were hurtled skyward in a rocket bound for the moon.” (news.nationalgeographic.com). This was the Apollo 11 spacecraft, the first successful manned mission to the moon. This mission was the product of the space race (race to see who would go into outer space first, against the Soviet Union). This goal was set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961 and he promised that we would be the first to step on the moon by the end of the decade. The Apollo 11 mission is often cited as the greatest achievement in human history. (news.nationalgeographic.com)
Neil Armstrong looked at it not only as a great triumph for America, but also for the human race when he said "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" on his first step on the moon (Dunbar). On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech about what he called "urgent national needs" at a stadium at Rice University in Houston, Texas (“NASA Moon Landing”). In that speech, he challenged America to "commit itself to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth by the end of the decade"(Schlager and Lauer). This became known as Kennedy's challenge and the idea was to outperform the Soviets. While the Soviets were off to a better start with the launch of Sputnik I, we soon rose to the challenge and accomplished our goal only eight years later on June 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin safely landed on the moon. With the great accomplishments of Apollo 11, America had bettered the Soviets and established superiority in space.