July 20, 1969: One Giant Leap For Mankind
It has been 50 years from when man first walked on the moon.
When John F. Kennedy became President of the United States in January 1961, many Americans perceived that the United States was losing the space race with the Soviet Union at the time.
Kennedy stood before Congress on May 25, 1961, and proposed that the US “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”.
In just under 10 years from Kennedy’s proposal on the 20th July 1969, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 they become the first two people to ever step foot on the Moon at a site they named Tranquility Base.
Neil Armstrong being the first person to step foot on the Moon famously said: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” and will go down as the most famous and well known saying in humankind.
A total of twelve men have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month period starting on the 20th July 1969 and ending in 1972.
One of the most other famous Moon missions was Apollo 13, that was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon.
The Apollo 13 craft was launched on April 11, 1970, from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later, crippling the service module. Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and the critical need to make makeshift repairs to the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17, 1970, six days after launch.
Most will know this mission from the 1995 Apollo 13 movie staring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris.
Many believe that no one ever walked on the Moon and all the landings were in fact faked by the US government, nevertheless people believe what they want to believe and mostly everyone on this earth believe that man walked on the Moon and will go back to revisit the Moon in the coming years.
NASA wants to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2024. What if we stayed and settled on the Moon this time?
