America's Greatest Projects - Apollo Project - Part 1

In America's Greatest Projects - Apollo Project - Part 1 , you'll learn ...

• Why the U.S. needed the Apollo project to stay ahead of the Soviet Union in the “Space Race”
• Details of the fatal fire in the Command Service Module of Apollo 1
• The events and achievements of those American men and women who worked on the Apollo Project and solved the major hurdles of placing a man on the Moon and assuring his safe return
• The engineering design innovations necessary to prepare astronauts to leave the Earth's gravitational field for lengthy periods of time and to explore well beyond the Earth

Overview

Credit: 4 PDH

Length: 52 pages

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 at 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 this idea 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 1960’s proved to be a technological masterpiece which 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 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 of 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.