Course Description
The major goal of the Apollo program when it was first conceived in 1960 was to stay ahead of the Soviet Union in the “Space Race.” Many in NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) believed that placing three American astronauts in a spacecraft to orbit the Earth would achieve this goal. In the spring of 1961, President John Kennedy was given the idea that placing an American astronaut on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth would surely give the U. S. a substantial lead over the Soviets. When he postulated that as an American challenge to a joint meeting of Congress in May of 1961, the U.S. had just sent the first astronaut into space less than one month earlier. Only then did NASA give a lunar landing serious consideration. At the time the Mercury Project had been well underway, but would not have given America the lead in the Space Race over the Soviet Union regarding manned space flight. Over the next several months NASA’s administration and engineering corps developed various plans for doing what President Kennedy had suggested by the end of the decade. In the meantime, NASA realized that a “bridge” program would be necessary between Mercury and Apollo. They created the second phase of America’s space flight program, Project Gemini. The decade of the 1960s proved to be a technological masterpiece that the world had never seen before, and may not see again in our lifetime.
This course is a synopsis of the magnificent efforts of the many talented personnel in American management and the engineering and construction industries, as well as the many American astronauts who risked their very lives in order to make Kennedy’s words a reality. This course chronicles the events and achievements of those American men and women who worked on the Apollo Project and solved the major hurdles between placing a man in space and placing a man on the Moon and assuring his safe return. They had the responsibility for placing the first three American astronauts into outer space in preparation for a lunar landing. This course describes the engineering and design efforts necessary to provide the equipment and the technology to prepare our astronauts to leave the Earth's gravitational field for lengthy periods of time and to explore well beyond the Earth. This is the seventh in a series of Twentieth-Century projects in which engineers overcame major technological challenges and were at the forefront of engineering innovation.
Learning Objectives
1. Why Project Gemini was necessary once a lunar landing became the only option.
2. How the NASA team handled the pressure of the challenge by President Kennedy.
3. The sequence of events for developing the Saturn V rocket.
4. Learn how the U.S. designed and developed a three-man spacecraft.
5. How each step in the program had significance toward achieving the goal of the U.S.
6. Learn about the training and experience of the astronauts and engineers.
7. Understand each Apollo mission and why every flight was critical for a lunar landing.
Prerequisites:
There are no special prerequisites for this course.
