Word: apollos
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Like so much else at NASA, the selection of the moon-landing crew seemed totally routine. Indeed, when the crew was selected in January, there was no assurance that Apollo 11 would make the first moon landing. Apollo 10 was then still a candidate for the mission; there was also the distinct possibility that if problems developed, the attempt would be postponed until Apollo 12, 13 or even 14. "There isn't any big magic selection that goes on for each mission," says Slayton, whose crew recommendations have never been overruled. "It is like every squadron of fighter pilots...
After graduating from Wapakoneta High School, Armstrong won a Navy scholarship to Purdue, the alma mater of three other astronauts (Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee, both of whom died in the Apollo launch-pad fire of Jan. 27, 1967, and Eugene Ceroan, a member of the Apollo 10 crew). Called to service in Korea at the end of his sophomore year, Armstrong earned a reputation as a hot pilot and three Air Medals in 78 combat missions. Returning to Purdue, he collected his degree in aeronautical engineering, and a wife, the former Janet E. Shearon of Evanston...
...Apollo 11 crew has been in full-time training since January, spending 12-hr. days often seven days a week going over and over the 294-page flight plan, rehearsing every move they will make in flight simulators, checking and re-checking the command module and lunar module. They practiced a single maneuver?the powered descent to the lunar surface?at least 150 times. Flight Surgeon Berry was seriously concerned about their grueling schedule. He feared that the men might become so tired that their resistance to disease would be dangerously low and that they would catch...
...committed the U.S. to landing men on the moon before the end of this decade, virtually none of the equipment capable of making the half-million-mile journey existed. Now, eight years later, a great spaceship made of more than 15 million parts is poised for the flight. If Apollo 11 completes its momentous mission, Kennedy's pledge will have been redeemed with five months to spare-a remarkable accomplishment. It is all the more remarkable for the fact that man did not actually enter the space age until twelve years ago, when the Russians launched Sputnik...
...space program was truly embryonic when Kennedy, on May 25, 1961, set a lunar landing as the nation's goal. Only two months earlier, he had decided to put off a decision on whether to go ahead with the Apollo program. Then came Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight, the first ever made by man. Two days after the Soviet breakthrough, Kennedy convened the nation's top space experts at the White House. "If somebody can just tell me how to catch up," he said. "There is nothing more important...