NASA and the Early Apollo Flights of the 1960s
28 August, 2012
Astronaut Walter Schirra, Jr. was Apollo 7 Commander.
BARBARA KLEIN: I'm Barbara Klein.
STEVE EMBER: And I'm Steve Ember with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. The nineteen sixties were exciting times in space exploration. Today look back at the first flights of the Apollo program designed to land humans on the moon.
(MUSIC)
BARBARA KLEIN: The decision to go to the moon was made in May, nineteen sixty-one. President John Kennedy set the goal in a speech to Congress and the American people.
JOHN KENNEDY: "I believe that 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 the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long range exploration of space. And none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. "
STEVE EMBER: At the time President Kennedy first spoke about landing humans on the moon, the Soviet space program seemed far ahead. The Soviet Union had put the first satellite into Earth orbit. A Soviet spacecraft was the first to land instruments on the moon. And a Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, was the first man in space.
The United States had sent an astronaut of its own into space for the first time in nineteen sixty-one. Alan Shepard made only a fifteen-minute flight in the little one-man Mercury spacecraft. But his flight gave Americans the feeling that the United States could pull ahead of the Soviet Union in the space race.
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