“Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.”

Air Canada says it has accepted 2300 reservations for flights to the Moon in the past 5 days.
– Cape Canaveral, July 24th, 1969, in the morning news report to the crew of Apollo 11.

After the successful launch, journey and lunar landing, Apollo 11 safely touched down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24th, 1969, the final successful note to one of the greatest adventures in human history. Apollo 11 was the touchstone of the entire space program, and on that day, the three astronauts on board, and the entire NASA workforce fulfilled President John F. Kennedy’s mandate that had been issued eight years ago. Man had landed on the moon, and returned safely to earth, with five months to spare. Between 1969 and 1972, NASA sent six additional missions to the moon, one of which ultimately failed. On December 14th, 1972, Astronaut Gene Cernan became the last human being to set foot on the moon.

In the thirty-seven years since we last stepped on another worldly body, we have yet to break out of lunar orbit, despite the fantastic momentum that had been built up in the years preceding the Apollo program, and bringing the constant question: When will we return?

There are two major reasons for the lack of further lunar missions, one folding into the other. The first is the very nature of Kennedy’s mandate. We would go to the moon, land there and return safely by the end of the decade. As far as a mission goes, it translates well into the American public – there is a where and a when, and that was it. Following the Apollo 11 mission, public interest in the lunar missions waned to the point where major news networks refused to air the crew’s broadcast during Apollo 13. Far fewer people took interest in the later missions, and the planned missions for Apollo 18, 19 and 20 were scrapped, despite having the hardware, crews and support staff in place.

This lack of interest, and extra hardware moved NASA to a different direction. In 1972, preliminary funding for the Space Shuttle orbiter was announced, and in 1973, Skylab, the US’s first space station, was launched, the result of the Apollo Applications Program, which was designed to modify Apollo hardware to fit other uses. With the launch of Skylab, and the move towards orbital shuttles, NASA transitioned from an agency designed to break barriers and explore new ground (figuratively) to one that was designed towards scientific endeavor and research. This mode of thinking provides an impossible environment for the planning of the types of missions that lunar or even eventually, Martian missions require.

Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were carried out in a highly logical, stepping-stones manner that allowed us to reach the moon. Unfortunately, it did not allow for us to continue returning to the moon after the initial missions were carried out. An Apollo-type program is needed for our eventual return – new rockets are under construction, as well as a new lander and spacecraft, with the intention to return to the lunar surface by 2019 with the Orion 15 mission.

What is lacking is the proper environment in which space travel and lunar missions can thrive. We reached the moon because we were attempting to beat the Russians to the surface, ending the Space Race readily. It was competition, with a sense of national pride and honor at stake that allowed for the massive budget and organization that allowed NASA to go to the moon. Now, with things such as healthcare, terrorism and other major national issues crowding the legislative agenda, there is little desire to go to the moon, it would seem, as there are pressing matters here on earth to do.

I’m often skeptical of such assertions. While yes, a lunar mission is a costly affair, (the Apollo project cost $135 billion, adjusted), the current war in Iraq has cost $669 Billion dollars. That sort of money could easily be used to spend on health care, paying down the national debt and other notable things, but it is the projects such as this that make the United States what it is, and provides a reason for people to continue to imagine, and to provide something absolutely splendid for the country to point at and look upon with pride. Apollo was an absolutely stunning national achievement, one that makes everything that we do worth living for, and to defend.

We will return to the moon, and we will eventually travel to Mars, to Io, and Titan, whether brought there by NASA or by private enterprise, but it is within human nature to travel and to explore.

It Was Beautiful from Here, Tranquility

Hey Houston, that may have seemed like a very long final phase. The AUTO targeting was taking us right into a football-field size- football-field sized crater, with a large number of big boulders and rocks for about… one or two crater diameters around it, and it required a … in P66 and flying manually over the rock field to find a reasonably good area.
- Tranquility Base, minutes after the successful touchdown of the LM.

On July 20th, 1969, humanity took its first steps on a different world. Neil Armstrong’s iconic words still ring true today, as the moment represented an enormous step forward for humanity. Apollo represented the pinnacle of scientific, economic and philosophical achievement for what the human race was capable of, and has transformed the world that we live in.

Four days earlier, Apollo 11 blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center, and would reach the moon just days later, following the path that had been blazed before by Apollo 8 (which had been the first human spacecraft to escape earth orbit and circle the moon), and Apollo 10, which served as a dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 landing, with the Lunar Module coming within 8 miles of the surface of the moon, in May of 1969.

Upon reaching the moon on July 19th, Astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were able to observe their landing site, and on July 20th, Armstrong and Aldrin boarded the Lunar Module and separated from the Command Module, Columbia. After an inspection to make sure there was no damage. With this separation, a burst of air in the tunnel pushed the LM off a bit faster than calculated, which was noted by the crew. As the Eagle descended to the Lunar Surface, problems arose, with the computer becoming overloaded with information. The alarms were silenced, and the craft continued its landing. Because of the air burst, the Eagle was pushed off course, and as Armstrong looked outside, he could see that the computers that were guiding the ship in were bringing the lander towards a large boulder field. He took control of the ship and set a course that brought the ship flying over the landscape, with Aldrin calling out altitudes. Finding a spot, they landed with 25 seconds of fuel left in the tanks. The Eagle had landed.

The mission called for a five hour sleep period, but this was skipped, as the astronauts felt that they would be unable to sleep. After a long preparation period, Armstrong exited the landed and descended the ladder. A television camera captured his decent, with an audience of over 600 million people on Earth watching his first steps down onto the Lunar surface. With one step, Armstrong changed the world.

After landing, Armstrong grabbed a rock sample, and was soon after joined by Aldrin, who then planted the American flag on the surface and spoke with President Richard Nixon from the White House. From there, the astronauts collected rock samples, deployed scientific instruments for a total EVA time of two and a half hours. After their experiments and samples were deployed and collected, the astronauts reentered the spacecraft, slept and lifted off from the moon, for a total duration of over twenty-one hours. They rejoined the CM and by July 24th, they had returned home.

The Apollo mission was the fulfillment of decades of work in rocketry and spaceflight experiments, and was propelled along by the advent of the Cold War and subsequent arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. For this reason, the Apollo segment of the US Spaceflight programs was probably more detrimental for the prospects of long term spaceflight than had it happened under other circumstances. President John F. Kennedy had stated in 1961 that the US would land on the moon by the end of the decade. With Apollo 11, that was accomplished, and the subsequent lunar landings gained far less attention, and the program was ultimately scrapped, and the entire focus of NASA shifted from an exploration mode to scientific one, as demonstrated by the Skylab program and later on, the Space Shuttle.

Apollo 11 remains one of the most dramatic elements of human spaceflight history, surpassing Yuri Gagarin’s historic entry into space, Alan Shepherd’s followup, and the numerous achievements that made up the space race. For a brief moment, the entire world was united as we stepped on the moon for the first time, 40 years ago. In a recent documentary, In The Shadow of the Moon (not to be confused with the wonderful book by the same title), astronaut Michael Collins noted that people around the world often said “We did it.” Not “You Americans did it.” What the United States had accomplished was extraordinary, surpassing borders and politics. There is no modern equivalent, I think, that we will ever see in our lifetime.

I have my reservations about Apollo, especially when it comes to long term manned spaceflight, but for that one moment, with those words, Armstrong and Aldrin changed the world, which makes up for everything in such elegance and imagination. We have gone to the Moon, and I have to wonder, when will we return?

The Road to the Moon

“Many years ago the great British Explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.”
Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.” John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962, at Rice University

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first man made satellite, Sputnik 1,  into Earth’s orbit, signaling the beginning of a decade long race to Earth’s closest celestial body. The space race would continue on for another twelve years before the stated goal of reaching the moon was achieved on July 20th, 1969. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the lunar landings that changed the world, and makes for a good time to reflect on just how difficult the lunar landings were and just what it meant. Sputnik came at a time that was shattering to the American public – there had been much confidence in the progress that the nation was making, but that percieved lead was taken with the successes of the Soviet Union. The race to space had to be sped up, and the US was lagging far behind.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy laid down what seemed like an impossible goal for the nation: to reach the moon and land successfully before the end of the 1960s. At that point, the United State’s cumulative experience with human spaceflight was a mere fifteen minutes with Astronaut Alan Shepherd’s flight. In his speech to Congress in 1961, Kennedy linked the efforts in space to the the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, placing the efforts in space as a way to deter tyranny and dark nature of the Soviet Union. This was a feeling that was very much in fashion in the years following the launch of Sputnik. NASA administrators were asked before Congress if the Soviet Union would gain the ability to reach the moon before the United States, and if they would be able to color the surface red, as a constant reminder of the power of the Soviet Union. The race to the moon had become far more than mere scientific endeavor and exploration; it became a powerful tool and symbol of the might of both countries as they locked horns during the Cold War.

NASA had been formed only a couple of years prior, in 1958, and instituted Project Mercury a year later, designed to bring a human into space and back again safely. This project was the first of three projects, with the overall intent on bringing people to space, and later, to the moon. Mercury was possibly one of the most popular projects that NASA ever undertook after Apollo. The general public was riveted to news of the astronauts. The Mercury 7 astronauts were instant celebrities upon their announcement, and even more so after the publication of Tom Wolfe’s book, The Right Stuff.

Mercury was the proving ground that saw the first American into space, Alan Shepherd, as well as the first American to orbit the Earth (John Glenn Jr, who would become the oldest man in space many years later) and the first US flight that would exceed 24 hours with Gordo Cooper. NASA proved with Mercury that humans could go to space, operate for an extended period of time, and then return safely. That was the first, and most crucial step that all American spaceflights have predicated on.

Mercury was only the first step. NASA proved that they could get into space, but with President Kennedy’s mandate to fly to the moon and land on it, a far more complicated project was in order. Gemini was born, and was put into place to test the more advanced methods that would be required in space for a mission as complicated as a lunar landing. A new group of astronauts were brought into the fold, with notable names such as Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and others – astronauts that would gain valuble spaceflight experience prior to being assigned to the upcoming Project Apollo.

Gemini tested a number of procedures and maneuvers that would be required for longer missions. Two crew members would fly each manned mission, rendezvous and docking maneuvers would be tested to link together the command module and landing module, Extra Vehicular Activity was accomplished for the first time by an American and numerous other scientific and practical procedures were tested out during these missions. Ten missions were undertaken between 1965 and 1966, with each mission adding on valuble experience to NASA’s plans for a lunar landing, and it brought the United States further along the race to catch up with the Soviet Union, as most of these accomplishments had already been completed successfully by Russia.

Project Apollo was the project that would bring mankind to the moon. Instituted in 1961, before Gemini, this project was the followup to Mercury, and would build upon the experience that NASA gained during Gemini to reach our nearest heavenly body. There are arguments for and against the effectiveness of the three projects. With the successful landing of Apollo 11, the mission was over, and the general public began to lose interest in the launches. However, within the confines of the space race that brewed between the United States and Russia, there was an artificial sense of urgency, with a huge push from their respective governments to reach the moon for no other purpose but to plant a flag on the moon, and leave the other to look up and see this as a powerful symbol of the other’s might. Apollo was to be one of the most complex projects ever undertaken at the time, but it was also the most specialized of the missions, with one end goal – to reach the moon, which would be accomplished on July 20th, 1969.

Many thanks to the fantastic site io9 for their link in!

Exploration vs. Scientific Modes of Spaceflight

Now that I’ve since finished my last seminar of classwork for my Master’s, I’ve begun to switch gears and begun work on my Capstone Paper, the final paper before I get my diploma, should I pass. I’m very excited to begin this mode of work, because I’ve gotten a topic that I’ve gotten really interested in – the Space Race. Originally, I’d intended on studying something with the comic book industry and the Second World War, but there’s a huge lack of sources. Since then, I’ve switched gears, and will be looking to the early days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, and the military roots and implications that the American space program represented to the United States during the Cold War. I’m still working to narrow down my sources, and will likely spend the weekend working through sources to get a comprehensive bibliography put together, along with a tighter thesis.

While talking with my program director earlier today, I came across a realization about the space program that I hadn’t realized or considered before – the current Space program will never, ever be as successful as the Mercury – Apollo era, for one simple reason – there is no certain, end all goal for the current plans for space travel. This is in no way trying to say that what we’re doing up there is useless, far from it. The difference between the two is that in 1961, President John F. Kennedy set an end goal for American space ambitions. Americans would reach the lunar surface by the end of the decade – an extraordinary declaration that left many at NASA and the nation stunned, as the cumulative United States spaceflight experience amounted to a mere 15 minutes with Alan Shepherd’s Freedom 7 flight earlier in the year.

From that point forward, there was a clear point to work to, and the space missions that came afterwards followed a specific path to reach the moon. The Mercury missions were designed to get mankind to space and into orbit, the longest time in space amounting to just over a day, with Mercury 9. Project Gemini followed with a slate of missions that were designed to test space flight, where the first docking and EVA on the US’s part took place. Finally, the Apollo missions are most noted for the Apollo 11 mission that landed on the moon. This was the validation of the efforts of the US, but leading up to that saw other specialized missions that saw humanity to the moon and back, testing the Apollo hardware in each of its phases.

While reaching the moon was the most visible goal and most dramatic part of the space race, it is far from the most important aspect. The space race did a number of things, but everything was done with an overall goal in mind, one that was contested early on by mission planners who felt that we should skip the moon all together and head for the other planets. What the early missions provided was structure and essentially, building blocks that helped to bring the lunar landings from science fiction to reality.

Following the Apollo missions, there was a lull. The space shuttle program was approved, as well as Skylab, and the entire mission and focus for space shifted from an exploration model to one of scientific discovery. Skylab was essentially the turning point, utilizing leftovers from the Apollo missions for something new entirely. However, there has been no overarching goal for space since the Apollo years. The public has turned away from space and NASA’s efforts up there, I suspect because of a perceived lack of purpose. The Space Shuttle, while a wonderful machine, has not really full filled any sort of plan to reach the next inevitable stage, missions to Mars, beyond scientific experiments that require a zero-gravity environment, servicing space stations and satellites. The information gathered about living in space for extended periods of time has been incredibly helpful and will no doubt be utilized in a future mission, but these experiments were not expressly conducted for a martian mission.

Mars is the next logical step for future space flight missions beyond the International Space Station (which, looking at it, is a good goal that has brought together nations, but has largely failed to capture the public’s imagination like the Lunar landings did. Let’s face it, walking around on the moon is a lot cooler). What is required of the United States is a large, overarching series of missions that will begin to pave the way for heading to Mars. The technology is certainly there, as is the willpower, but what is needed the most is guidance from up on high. Kennedy’s statement in 1961 was a powerful catalyst that set everything in motion, and any further trips to Mars, and indeed, even the Moon, will require such a thing, but will also require a comparable plan.

Now is also the best time for such a project, when one thinks about it. At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA employed around four hundred thousand people, and that does not count the other multiple hundreds of thousands that would have worked in the defense and aerospace industries during that time designing, building and supporting the missions leading up to the space program. In a book that I’ve been reading, it was noted that not a single dollar was spent on the moon – it was spent on earth, and provided a massive boost to the economy during that time by supporting those industries. This is exactly what will be needed in the coming years, and I hope that with China and India beginning space programs of their own, this will provide an acute sense of urgency for US mission planners and policy makers to begin to really consider such an endeavour.

Virtuality Moves Up

Has anyone else heard about Virtuality? Fox picked it up for a TV series, and they will be releasing the pilot on June 26th, at 8:00 PM. I’ve been following the project for a little while now, and it’s certainly an interesting project, although it is in limbo as to whether it’ll actually become a series or not. Originally, this was slated to be released July 4th on Fox, and this move might indicate that they have a little more faith in it.

Here’s how the SciFi Wire described the show:

The crew of the Phaeton is approaching the go/no-go point of its epic 10-year journey through outer space. With the fate of Earth in the crew’s hands, the pressure is intense. The best bet for helping the crew members maintain their sanity is the cutting-edge virtual-reality technology installed on the ship. It’s the perfect stress reliever until they realize a glitch in the system has unleashed a virus onto the ship. Tensions mount as the crew decides how to contain the virus and complete their mission. Meanwhile, their lives are being taped for a reality show back on Earth.

It’s supposed to be quite good, and there are a number of possibilities for where the creators can go with the storyline. It looks like it’s got a fairly big cast, although there’s nobody that really jumps out at me for people that I recognize. I’m mainly interested in this because Ron Moore’s the guy who created it, and given his track record from Battlestar Galactica, there are undoubtably some high expectations for this from other SciFi fans. Plus, Peter Burg is directing the pilot, and I’ve generally been really impressed with his work.

What gets me more interested is that while there will undoubtably be Matrix and other sort of cyberpunk connections to this, I’m really excited that this seems to be a completely original show and story. This isn’t a remake, adaptation or inspired by sort of project, and I really hope that this’ll make it to the TV series stage because there are so few good space shows out there at the moment.

Ground Control to Major Tom

On Monday, STS-125, the last space shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to replace gyroscopes, batteries and to install two new cameras to outfit the aging satellite for the last time, making it the most powerful in its history. I’ve talked about space before, and I find it utterly facinating. Hubble itself has had a long and varied history when it comes to space, from a blotched lense to the historic repair mission, not to mention the thousands of beautiful pictures that it’s captured over its long life.

The current mission is one that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now. A couple months ago, I wrote an article for io9, titled Stalking NASA, which was a laundry list of ways in which someone can follow up on NASA’s activities via social networking sites. What they have been doing with this launch is really highlighting the mission. In the leadup to the launch, there was numerous updates from a number of twitter feeds for Space Shuttle Atlantis, a couple of the astronauts, NASA and a couple other lines. Facebook had a number of status updates for the specific pages for the mission, and almost the entire mission has been broadcast live online.

I’m really digging the ability to watch this stuff live. Whether it’s watching Atlantis docking with Hubble to watching the astronauts work (in some cases, watching from THEIR view) has been absolutely fantastic. You almost get a feeling that you’re right there with them in space. The images are absolutely stunning, and I really hope that this’ll attract more interest to the space program.

Man, I want to go to space.

Happy Birthday Hubble

Today is the 19th birthday of the Hubble Telescope, which was launched into a high orbit on this day in 1990 by Space Shuttle Discovery. The Satellite has remained one of the most important installations to have been launched. The images that have been taken have helped to vastly increase our knowledge of the surrounding universe, and take some of the most beautiful sights from all over.

The Hubble Space Telescope was an important project for NASA, which was still reeling from the destruction of the Challenger orbiter just four years earlier after faulty parts and negligence contributed to the deaths of the crew members. NASA’s public image was tarnished from the accident, and hopes were riding high on the successes of Hubble. The launch, STS-031, brought the Hubble 380 miles up, the second highest orbit, and twice that of the Shuttle’s normal range.

After it’s deployment on April 25th, scientists found that the images that they recieved weren’t as sharp as they’d thought. The primary lense in the telescope was incorrectly built, 2.3 micrometers out of the correct shape. NASA’s image was once again tarnished, and scientists worked quickly to devise a solution. This was aided by the design of the Hubble, which was the only satellite that could be serviced in orbit. The first of four servicing missions brought up a sort of add-on that allowed for Hubble’s vision to be corrected. The mission was an overwhelming success (except that the astronauts couldn’t get one of the doors closed, and had to ratchet it shut). Five spacewalks were performed, and with the new images from the telescope, the public image of the agency rebounded. Three additional Servicing Missions were conducted, one in 1997, 1999 and 2002, each of which upgraded equipment or repaired faulty parts.

The last mission is scheduled later next month, STS-125, which will install a new camera and spectrograph and repair several other instruments that have failed. Following this mission, the Telescope will continue its life through to 2013, and it will be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope at that time.

Hubble’s website. Follow it on twitter.

“These, Ladies and Gentlemen, are the nation’s Mercury Astronauts.”

Fifty Years ago, American received seven extraordinary men with a press conference just a year after the creation of NASA.

The announcement came at a pivotal time in spaceflight history, and unlike the Russian Space Program, which kept their Cosmonauts identities a secret, NASA started off their program with much press and public interest. The seven men, Scott Carpenter, Gordo Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepherd, and Deke Slayton, were turned into instant celebrities.

Spaceflight was perceived very differently at that point. For this announcement, nobody knew if it was even possible to send a person to space. The Mercury Program was designed to see if mankind could survive the journey into space and return safely, part of a larger agenda to bring the United States to the Moon, as outlined a couple years later by President John F. Kennedy.

Each of these pilots were graduates of Navel Test Pilot School, and underwent rigorous tests to reach the Press Conference. Of the original 69 who applied to the program, only the seven made it through. Six would fly the Mercury missions, before the program was phased out to the Gemini Program, which was designed to see if humans could build hardware that would work in space, and to see if we could live for longer durations. Apollo, the third program, would utilize the experience and knowledge gained during the prior two programs to reach and explore the surface of the moon, which was accomplished ten years later, in 1969 by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

In January of 1961, Alan Sheperd became the first American into space, just weeks after Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin accomplished the same feat. He would later go on to command the Apollo 14 mission, and would walk on the moon. The other six astronauts would reach space, although Deke Slayton would only take part in the Apollo-Soyuz mission more than a decade later, grounded because of a heart problem.

The seven men are sadly underrepresented and rather unknown when it comes to World and American History – people tend to only remember Neil Armstrong, and while his accomplishments are nothing short of incredible, these men did more. They showed humanity that our long-held dreams of reaching space were not only possible, they were dreams that were reachable, and that we would return to the edge of our world time and time again. Like explorers of old, they broke barriers and ventured into the unknown to discover something new, to prove that there were no boundaries that could hold back humanity and that we would touch the sky.

You can see the original press conference here, here and here.

They slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God

Twenty two years ago today, the Challenger Space Shuttle, designation STS-51-L, broke apart shortly after launch, due to a cracked O-Ring in the right solid rocket booster, costing the lives of the seven crew members on board the orbiter.

The Challenger was the second orbiter to be put into service for NASA, following Columbia, in April of 1983. The shuttle was slightly different than the Columbia, having been constructed based off of a test platform (to save costs), and integrated some new technologies that had not been used earlier. It was also lighter, which allowed it to carry a larger payload than its predecessor. Over the three years of its life, the shuttle flew nine successful missions.

The excitement for this mission was part of a move from NASA to try an invigorate the agency’s image, and to do so, they selected a school teacher, Christa McAuliffe, to participate in the mission, who would broadcast lessons down to the classroom from orbit. The rest of the mission called for a satellite deployment to study the Halley Comet, as well as several other scientific experiments.

The mission failed because of what has been alleged as gross negligence on the part of the Agency, in their haste to maintain a launch schedule. On the launch day, temperatures around launch site had dropped to just under freezing. The launch had already been delayed a couple of times due to equipment problems and poor weather. The sub-freezing temperatures are thought to have caused one of the o-rings, leaking fuel and ultimately destroying the orbiter.

As congress discovered, this was an accident that could have been prevented. Had the mission commanders not pushed to maintain an unreasonable schedule, listened to weather reports and what technicians told them about problems with the O-Rings, the seven astronauts, “Dick” Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith Resnik,  Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe, would likely be alive today.

“We lost the crew”

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the Apollo 1 tragedy that claimed the lives of three of the most promising astronauts in America’s manned space program, and likely set the Lunar landing of Apollo 11 back a year. Ironically, it was not a mission that claimed the lives of the three astronauts, but a routine test leading up to the mission, which was set to launch sometime in the first quarter of the year.

By 1967, the American Space program was well underway, with both the Mercury and Gemini missions completed, which had yielded valuable information for the next stage of space exploration. The Mercury program had been designed to see if humans could go to space and return safely, with twenty unmanned flights, followed by six manned flights by the first American astronauts. Astronaut Alan Shepherd was the first to pilot Freedom 7, and was the first American in space, just months after Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight in April of 1961.

But there were others in that group – Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton and Gus Grissom. They were the Mercury 7, selected in 1959 to great public interest.

Mercury was followed by the Project Gemini, which was designed to evaluate whether humans, now that we could reach space, could exist in it, and travel out to the moon. Ten missions were launched, each testing various aspects of a future moon mission. NASA discovered that they could rendezvous one space craft with another, that EVAs were possible and more. Each flight added valuable knowledge to what we knew about spaceflight.

Members of the Mercury 7 reappeared – Grissom and Schirra both commanded missions, and new, well known astronauts went into space, including Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell, Mike Collins, familiar names who would be associated with the next major space project, Apollo.

Apollo is the project that is known far and above the others. There, we learned to go to the moon and did so, six times. It was also the project that had the most disastrous problems – most would point to Apollo 13, when an explosion crippled the spacecraft, aborting the mission and leaving the crew to almost perish in space.

The first Apollo mission ended in tragedy. On January 27th, 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were conducting a routine test of the cockpit when an electrical short sparked a fire in the pure oxygen environment within the capsule. The crew was unable to open the cockpit door, and within minutes, died of smoke inhalation. There was nothing the ground crew could do to save the crew. The fire pushed the Apollo program back, and prompted a redesign of the capsule after an intensive and critical study of the problem.

It was an unfortunate tragedy, one that could have very well been averted. But, as NASA has done, the incident was investigated, and the program went underway, and it will continue to do so. This goes to show that spaceflight is dangerous, that it requires precision, care and caution. In the end, we reached the moon. But we should not forget those who never saw us reach it.