Shoot for the Moon_Donovan summary

Thanks to Wernher von Braun – an ex-Nazi rocket scientist brought to the US at the end of WWII – the US already had a rocket booster called the Mercury-Redstone. This was powerful enough to send a human into suborbital flight – which meant reaching outer space, but not completing a full orbit around Earth.

But the Soviets, at this point, had an even more powerful rocket, the Sputnik-PS. This allowed a spacecraft sitting atop the rocket to achieve full orbit around Earth. And on November 3, 1957, the USSR achieved another space first: a stray dog named Laika became the first living animal sent into orbit.

It’s hard to comprehend just how much preparation goes into spaceflight missions – especially those with a crew. For every minute spent in space, an untold number of hours is spent on the ground calculating, designing, building, testing and simulating. And the Mercury was the project on which these procedures began.

After modeling on basic computers and countless heat, drop, spin-tunnel and wind-tunnel tests, the design for the cone-shaped, blunt-nosed Mercury capsule was finished. It had a light but strong titanium outer layer, and a thick heat-resistant aluminum shield designed to burn away during reentry to Earth. At 21,000 feet it would deploy a parachute to stabilize its descent, and another at 10,000 feet to slow it down for landing.

Even with the recruitment of the Mercury Seven, the first tests were not made with humans, but with animals.

The first primate to fly on a Mercury flight was Sam, a rhesus macaque, who flew 53 miles up on December 4, 1959, to test the capsule’s emergency escape system. He was safely recovered from the Pacific Ocean. The last nonhuman Mercury mission flew on November 29, 1961, when a chimpanzee named Enos successfully spent three hours in space, also surviving.

Even with the last few scheduled Mercury missions not yet completed, NASA began its new Gemini program – after all, they needed to catch up to the Soviets! Far from being just an extension of Mercury, Gemini, with its huge changes, became a completely different beast.

One of the biggest – and visible – improvements in the Gemini project was the use of the powerful Titan II rocket. Boasting 430,000 pounds of thrust, this booster would allow Gemini’s astronauts to achieve orbital spaceflight. 

There were twelve Gemini missions overall, each specifically designed to test equipment and gradually increase the knowledge needed to put a human on the moon.

The first manned Gemini mission, Gemini 3, blasted off on March 23, 1963. Its objective was to test the new spacecraft’s maneuverability, with the crew using rockets to change the ship’s orbit. It was also the last mission to be controlled from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station; from then on, mission control was shifted to Houston, Texas. 

Although NASA had been working on the Apollo program during much of Gemini, they required a much more powerful booster than Gemini’s Titan II missile.

Thankfully, von Braun’s NASA team had been working on this for years. These new super-boosters would become the Saturn family of rockets. The most important, and the only rocket to transport humans to the moon, was Saturn V. This super heavy-lift rocket weighed 50 times more than the early Mercury boosters, packed 7.9 million pounds of thrust and came in 60 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. To this day, it remains the tallest, heaviest and most powerful rocket ever used. 

After a hiatus of nine months while safety recommendations were implemented, manned spaceflight started again.

Like the Gemini missions, Apollo missions 4-10 gradually became more ambitious, and each was designed to test specific procedures essential for a moon landing.

After breakfast on July 16, the astronauts headed to the suit room. They installed their urine-collection devices and fitted their oxygen supplies and spacesuits, locking their plastic bubble helmets into place. 

Next, they took an elevator up the huge launch tower, and crossed a bridge into the Apollo spacecraft. Ground crew began buckling them in, and the astronauts spent a couple of hours preparing the capsule for launch.

At 5:21 p.m. on July 19, Apollo 11 arrived at the moon.

Entering lunar orbit, Aldrin and Armstrong spent the next few hours checking the lunar module, named Eagle. Then they ate dinner and got some rest.

Aldrin and Armstrong began preparing for the moonwalk. It took over three hours to suit up, ready their equipment and depressurize the cabin, but at 9:39 p.m. they pulled open the hatch.

Grabbing the outside ladder, Armstrong lowered himself down. Halfway, he activated a TV camera and installed it on Eagle. These black-and-white images would be broadcast live to over 530 million people.