APOLLO 11 – PAVING THE WAY – Part 1
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged the American people in his address to Congress. This challenge issued a commitment to the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth before the decade ended. This had a lot to do with the fact that the American space efforts were far behind those of the Soviet Union. In order to narrow the Russian lead, it would take billions of dollars in tax money, the courage of many astronauts, and the intelligence and hard labor of hundreds of scientists and engineers. The greatest achievement of the space age had finally become a reality when eight years after Kennedy’s speech, when the first human being set foot on the moon.
The space age began October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union rocketed into orbit around the earth a satellite that weighed 184 pounds and was the size of a beach ball. But only a month later, the Russians launched another artificial satellite. It weighed 1,120 pounds, and had a small passenger–a dog named Laika. Scientists all over the world were stunned as the two satellites were speeding in endless loops far above the earth. Expecting the space prestige to go to the United States, no one actually expected that the Soviet Union would lead mankind into the space age.
During this time, American scientists were busy working on several projects designated to fire a satellite into earth orbit. However, several problems, including failure to ignite or exploding into huge balls of fire while on the launching paid, proved extremely frustrating. Finally in 1958, the United States put an artificial satellite into orbit–it weighed a mere thirty-one pounds. Future American Satellites were small compared to the huge ones fired by Russia, with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev jeering at the United States by saying, “You send up oranges while we send up tons.” The United States and the Soviet Union were from then on engaged in a contest called “The Space Race”.
Many people, including world leaders, were of the mind that whichever political system led mankind into space, that system would simultaneously dominate life on this earth. At the beginning, the Russians took all the glory and fame with the Russian scientists launching a space probe that crashed into the moon in 1959. Several weeks later, another Russian space probe circled the moon and took pictures of it which had never been seen by human beings. In 1961, Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, became the first man in space. A loss of prestige would be disastrous for America if the Soviet Union were to land men on the moon before United States. Many experts predicted this would happen in the race to the moon.
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Mission History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
