Apollo 11: The First Spaceship on the Moon

"17 Steps to the Moon and Back: Anatomy of a Moonshot." Popular Mechanics. Popular Mechanics, 01 June 2009. Web. 02 May 2014.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” (Fleming). The Soviet Union had beat the United States into space. However, the U.S was the first man of the moon. John F. Kennedy wanted to beat the Soviet Union to the moon, since they beat the U.S into space. Apollo 11 was the first spacecraft to ever land on 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.

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The significance of the moon landing became a symbol for the American people of all their nation’s accomplishments. 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.

Sadly, Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, which was two years after his goal was announced. His death sparked a new fire as America worked as one to get a man to the moon, one step at at time. The two space programs that were involved in the Space Race were NASA, which stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Soviet Space Program. NASA was established by Dwight D. Eisenhower on July 29th, 1958. It funded and oversaw all the American space missions during the Space Race, and is still running today, which helps preserve the history NASA had.

3 Aug. 2012. “Terraforming of Mars.” Wikipedia. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. “Terraforming Deimos.” Terraformingwikia.com/deimos.

NASA, n.d. Web. 21 May 2014. Freudenrich, Ph.D. Craig. "How Space Shuttles Work."

The Soviet Union had begun the space race in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik I, an artificial satellite. After its launch, the U.S. Defense Department approved funding for a space satellite of their own. Buzz Aldrin stated in an interview with Engineering & Technology writers Nick Smith and Angela Schuster that America’s space race response was because they did not want to fall under the superiority of Russia. From there the United States and Soviet Union fought back and forth on who would reach the moon first. After Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, orbited the Earth once President Kennedy made his speech announcing his goal for the United States.