So why did anybody want to go to the moon anyway?
Cold War politics. Beginning with the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite in 1957, the United States and Russia engaged in a “space race” to see who could have control over the heavens first. The winner would (presumably) be better able to influence world policy, and the Americans were quick to paint it as a fight for democracy.
“I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon,” was a typical quote from President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Indeed, the military branches of the navy, army and air force was where the pool of nearly every Apollo astronaut eventually came from. The first seven American astronauts were selected in 1959 for the “Mercury” program to send men into space for a few hours, just to prove humans could thrive and survive in space.
The Russians ended up sending their first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, into space first in 1961 on a Vostok spacecraft. American Al Shepard kicked off the Mercury program a few weeks later, although his mission was only 15 minutes long while Gagarin stayed up for an orbit of over 100 minutes. The first American to reach orbit didn’t achieve that until 1962.
President John F. Kennedy identified the moon as the strategic direction of the United States space program shortly after Shepard’s flight. For the next half-decade, the Americans (with their Gemini program) and the Russians (with their Voshkod program) battled to reach milestones like the first spacewalk, the first rendezvous and the first docking in space.
The high price of speed was the occasional fatal accident, including the famous Apollo 1 and the lesser-known Soyuz 1. It also involved a certain amount of calculated risk, like switching around missions to send Apollo 8 to the moon several months earlier than planned. (This decision is well-documented in Andrew Chaikin’s excellent book, A Man on the Moon.)
Ironically, the first moon landing – Apollo 11 – featured a plaque saying the astronauts “came in peace for all mankind.” The July 20, 1969 event was hailed as a political victory for the United States at the time, but as decades passed the media and politicians praised it more as a scientific achievement.
More resources on the Apollo program:
