Race to the Moon

Race to the Moon — page 3
MOON DREAMS By 1961 the first object first animal and first human into orbit had all been sent by the Soviet Union National pride led US leaders to up the stakes and bid to be first to the Moon MOONSTRUCK On May 5 1961 Alan Shepard took a 15 minute sub-orbital hop in his Mercury capsule He became the world’s second man into space and the US’s first astronaut Five months earlier US President John F Kennedy had been elected partly on a promise of delivering American superiority over the Soviets in space exploration A US Moon mission Apollo was penciled in to follow the Mercury program But little had been done Kennedy believed the US would catch up and overtake the Soviets given enough time He recognized that Apollo was ambitious enough to fit the bill All we knew of the Moon was through telescope observations like this map from 1886 The rotation of the Moon is synchronized with Earth’s rotation meaning the far side is never visible Jules Verne’s 1865 science fantasy novel From the Earth to the Moon imagined astronauts flying to the Moon in a projectile fired from a huge cannon The idea of landing on another world seemed fantastical in the 1950s the stuff of science fiction not technological fact Every stage from launch rockets to landing vehicles would be invented from scratch JOHN GLENN was the first American to ORBIT EARTH on February 20 1962 Kennedy addressed Congress on May 25 1961 He stated his administration’s goal of landing a man on the Moon by the end of 1969 Kennedy would not live to see it happen but his bold commitment underpinned the whole Apollo project 06