On May 25, 1961 President Kennedy Announced I Believe This Nation Sh

On May 25, 1961 President Kennedy announced: ?I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.? In pursuit of this goal, it was considered necessary to conduct several unmanned test flights and supporting programs, including the Mercury, Gemini, Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter. The Mercury program aimed at meeting the Soviet challenge and putting American astronauts into orbit around the earth. The Mecury-Redstone launched the first U.S. astronaut into space on May 5, 1961. Alan Shepard spent about 15 minutes in space during a sub-orbital mission aboard the Mercury capsule ?Freedom 7.? Gus Grissom followed in his Mercury craft, the ?Liberty Bell,? on an identical mission shortly after. Since the Redstone was only ?one-staged?, it did not have the propulsive power to put two astronauts in space on the same mission. The Mecury-Atlas launch vehicle was a ?one-and-a-half? stage vehicle which used an ultra-light-weight structure to reduce the lift-off weight of the rocket. Even with this development, it can barely make it into a low-altitude Earth orbit. This modified vehicle launched John Glenn in his ?Friendship 7? capsule into three Earth orbits on February 20, 1962. He was followed by astronauts Scott Carpenter, Walter Schirra, and Gordon Cooper in Mercury missions of somewhat longer duration. The Gemini program was the next major space activity. Its two-stage design permitted two men to ride into space together so that they could conduct ?extra vehicular activities?, or EVA's. On June 3, 1965, Ed White took a daring step out of the Gemini 4 capsule into space. There he somersaulted, floated lazily on his back, pirouetted, and stood grinning like a kid on Gemini's titanium hull for 21 minutes. The Gemini capsule was also designed to use fuel cells, which is one of the first technologies required for lunar landing. The Ranger series was the first American unmanned spacecraft to land on the Moon. The idea was that the spacecraft were going to fly straight into the Moon and would be destroyed on impact, so the pictures had to be sent back as quickly as they were taken. The first few Ranger shots (August, 1961 - October, 1962) failed for a variety of reasons, not all connected with the spacecraft itself. However, Ranger 4 did reach the Moon on April 26, 1962, being the first American spacecraft to do so. The Surveyor series was very successful in obtaining information about the lunar surface. Surveyor 1 lifted from Cape Kennedy on May 30, 1966 with textbook precision. It was the first flight of a space probe, and the first operational use of the liquid-hydrogen fueled booster. It eased itself on the Moon using gentle blasts from three small liquid-fueled vernier rockets, under the control of a computer which was kept informed of height and velocity by the onboard radar. The Surveyor carried solar cells, generating electricity from sunlight, so it was able to transmit thousands of superb photographs before the Sun set and the long lunar night began. Even then, it survived the low temperatures and revived at dawn, giving the experimenters an extra bonus. On August 10, 1966, the United States launched the Lunar Orbiter 1. Orbiter's mission was primarily photographic. Orbiter 1 functioned superbly, producing the first high-definition pictures of the lunar Farside. Later, Orbiters did even better, producing a portfolio of lunar photographs. These photographs were of great importance, because the Rangers and Surveyors had begun to give the impression that the Moon was a somewhat dull, flat, and uninteresting place. But now the image was beginning to emerge of a world with landscapes as dramatic as any on Earth. The next step in reaching President Kennedy's goal was the Apollo program, which required an entirely new launch vehicle, the Saturn. On January 27, 1967, during a ground test of the Apollo spacecraft, fire broke out in the three-man command module. Because of the pressurized pure-oxygen atmosphere inside the spacecraft, a flash fire engulfed and killed the three astronauts: Grissom, White, and Commander Chaffee. As a result of this tragedy, the Apollo program was delayed more than a year while a major review of vehicle design and materials was accomplished. In October 1968, the first manned Apollo flight was launched by a Saturn IB booster. Astronauts Shirra, Cunningham, and Eisele circled the Earth for 163 orbits, checking spacecraft performance, photographing the Earth, and transmitting television pictures. In December 1968, Apollo 8, a landmark flight, carrying astronauts