In 1961, as competition between the USSR and the USA heated up in what was known as the Space Race, the Race for Space or the Race to the Moon, American President John F. Kennedy, two years before his untimely death at the hands of an assassin in Dallas, and increasingly worried by the progress having been made by the Communist regime with their lunar orbiters, flyby probes and landers, in comparison to the limited success seen by the US, made this speech:
"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. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior.
We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations—explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the Moon—if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there."
This led to the setting up of a space programme intended to allow NASA to create the conditions for sending crewed missions to the Moon, with the intention of humans eventually landing there. American humans of course. Thus was established the Apollo space programme.
Manned Missions
As this is not meant to be a history of that programme, but a list and information on vehicles that actually reached the Moon, whether they flew past it, orbited it or landed on it, I’m only going to concentrate on those missions which actually made it to the Moon, fulfilling those criteria. I must however make known my feelings here, that the only real reason the USA got to the Moon first was a case of “the end justifies the means” when they allowed Nazi scientist Werner von Braun, who had been responsible for Hitler’s “revenge weapons”, the V1 and V2 near the end of World War II, come to America and work for them rather than face trial at Nuremberg, as I believe he should have done.
How many innocent lives did this man’s weapons take, and how many died as a result of his implementation of the Nazi process of slave labour? Was he held accountable? Was he hell. His war record, in fact, was ignored and pushed to one side as long as America got what they wanted, and rather than be remembered as a war criminal and murderer, he now occupies a place in history as both “the father of rocketry” and the man who made it possible for humans to walk on the Moon. I think that’s a dark chapter in America’s history (not that it hasn’t got many of them anyway) that should not be forgotten.
I also understand, before anyone starts flag-waving, that had he somehow been spirited away by the Russians, they would have done the very same thing, and used his knowledge and expertise to get to the Moon before the Americans, also ignoring his war crimes. Generally, as humans, we fu
cking suck at morals and ethics, especially when national interests are involved.
A year after his historic speech promising to reach the goal of sending a man to the Moon, President Kennedy, in the state in which he would die a year later, reiterated and again justified and dedicated himself to this goal:
"There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon ... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too."
Let’s be perfectly blunt and honest here: when Kennedy says “mankind” he means “America”, and he could easily have answered the question by saying
“Because if we don’t, those Commie bastards will, and I’ll be damned if I’ll be the president on whose watch the Soviet Union got another one over on us, one we can never live down or overcome. Look people: they’re ahead of us. They got Sputnik into space, they sent a friggin’ dog into space, for Chrissakes! Then they went better with the first man in space and the first spacewalk! They got to the Moon before us. Do you really want them to tread those god-damned Commie jackboots all over its surface before we have a chance to? Come on people!” Or something similar. I think, really, that might have served to silence a lot of the dissenting voices raised against this enterprise, or at least made them look un-American. Oh well. One way or the other they went ahead anyway, and five years after his death, with his VP in the White House, and several test flights under their belt - and with the tragedy of the explosion of
Apollo 1 on the launch pad with the loss of life of all crewmembers behind them - that day was about to dawn.