Space Rocket History

After his death, Armstrong was described, in a statement released by the White House, as “among the greatest of American heroes—not just of his time, but of all time.”

Armstrong became more and more excited about the prospects of both the Apollo program and of investigating a new aeronautical environment.

When Neil was 2 years old his father took him to a flying event called the Cleveland Air Races. This could have been the beginning of Neil’s love for flying.

In space, Jim and Buzz began to wonder if everything had been shut down too soon. For 25 minutes, with one brief exception, they heard nothing from the ground. The Ascension Island tracking station had the wrong acquisition time, so … Continue reading →

Unfortunately Aldrin’s life became difficult shortly after he emerged from quarantine and began months of public appearances.

After Buzz graduated from Montclair High School in 1946, he turned down a full scholarship offer from the  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and went to the United States Military Academy at West Point.

The turning point for Michael Collins in his decision to become an astronaut was the Mercury Atlas 6 flight of John Glenn on February 20, 1962, and the thought of being able to circle the Earth in 90 minutes.

Julian Scheer wanted each crew member to spend at least a full day with each of the networks, and wire services, in locations selected by the media.

Armstrong eased Gemini VIII toward the target at a barely perceptible speed of 8 centimeters per second. Then Armstrong gleefully reported, “Flight, we are docked!” For a brief moment, the flight controllers in Houston did not realize they had really … Continue reading →

NASA officials used only 12 words to list the primary objectives of Apollo 11: 1-Perform a manned lunar landing and return. 2-Perform selenological inspection and sampling.

In February of 1969, the first launch of the Soviet Moon Rocket, the N-1, exploded.  By April, the Soviets still did not have a clear program of subsequent piloted Soyuz fights. In May, the Soviets watched the successful US lunar … Continue reading →

On July 3, 1969, the same month as the the Apollo 11 Moon landing, The Soviet Union made another secret attempt to fly their giant Moon rocket.

“Hey, Apollo – Houston, this is Apollo 10. Look, I know you ran some studies, but by golly, we can see Snoopy, and he isn’t too far away! He’s catching up with us. Can you talk to the FIDOS? He’s … Continue reading →

As the lunar module approached, Young saw it through his sextant at a distance of 259 kilometers. Stafford and Cernan got a radar lock on the command module shortly after the insertion burn and watched with interest as the instrument … Continue reading →

The abort system had two basic control modes, “attitude hold” and “automatic.” In automatic, the computer would take over the guidance and start looking for the command module, which was certainly not what the crew intended to do at that … Continue reading →