Apollo 10

Apollo 10 acted as the dry run for the Apollo 11 to land on the moon. The crew consisted of Thomas Stafford as the commander. John Young was the command module pilot, and Eugene Cernan was the lunar module pilot. Once in orbit around the moon, Cernan and Stafford took the lunar module to the moon and practiced the normal landing procedure that would be used by future Apollo missions. This LEM was never meant to actually land on the moon. If the astronauts had decided to land on the surface, the LEM didn't contain enough fuel in the ascent module, so they would have been stranded on the lunar surface. The LEM did come within 8.4 nautical miles of the lunar surface. After this run, the LEM docked with the command module again and headed back to Earth. Each crew member would return to space. Young and Cernan would both return to the moon while Stafford would command an Apollo-Soyuz mission.

With the path cleared, Apollo 11 could land on the moon.

Hermann Oberth

As a young boy, Hermann became interested in space and rocketry after reading the work of Jules Verne. Before adulthood, he would conceive of a multistage rocket, but it was purely theoretical. In 1919, he began to study physics and wrote a dissertation by 1922 titled By Rocket into Planetary Space and later expanded it into a 429 page volume Ways to Spaceflight which was published in 1929. His dissertation was rejected because it was deemed utopian, but he was granted his doctorate in 1923. In 1928 & 1929, Oberth worked on a film about space The Woman in the Moon. For the film, he designed and constructed a rocket which was launched before the premiere of the movie and also the main rocket in the film. Oberth fired his first liquid fueled rocket motor in 1929, but he did little with rockets until he began to work for Nazi Germany when he worked on the V-2 rockets. The rest of his work on rockets was limited, but he continued to write about space. In 1953, he wrote Man in Space. Then, in 1958, Oberth began to work in the United States for his former student, Wernher von Braun on rockets for NASA. Oberth finally retired in 1962, but he lived until 1989. Hermann Oberth is considered to be the last of the fathers of rocketry.

Robert H. Goddard

Many consider Goddard to be the father of modern rocketry, and his love of space came at an early age. At the age of 16, Goddard read H.G. Wells War of the Worlds, and his pursuit of space began. At the time, science was not fond of ideas concerning space travel, so Goddard worked largely in private. Goddard's first writings about rocketry occurred during his undergraduate career in the spring of 1908 and were jotted down in his journal. He stated that liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen could be used as a fuel. By 1913, he had calculated the mathematics of a rocket launch, and, one year later, Goddard applied for and received two patents. The first described a multi-stage rocket, and the second described a rocket fueled by gasoline and liquid nitrous oxide. In 1915, he showed that a rocket could work in a vacuum and actually proved that a rocket's performance actually decreases under atmospheric pressure. However, his most influential work was still to come.

In 1919, Goddard published his most influential work, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. In this, he discussed his previous research, theories of rocket flight, and future space travel. Before the end of the decade, he would discuss an ablative heat shield as well as photographing the moon, contacting distant civilizations using inscribed metal plates, solar energy use in space, and high energy ion propulsion. Goddard finally launched his first liquid fueled rocket on March 16, 1926 in Auburn, Massachusetts. The rocket only flew 41 feet into the air, but it showed that liquid propelled rockets were possible. Goddard continued rocket experiments until 1945. He moved to Roswell, New Mexico where 31 rockets were launched between 1930 and 1945. The highest altitude that he ever achieved was 9km on March 26th, 1937. Planes and other rockets could exceed this altitude, but his work is still influential as well as pivotal. It is no surprise that he is considered one of the fathers of rocketry.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

The first academic paper concerning rocketry was written by this man, and he added conceptually to space travel. Tsiolkovsky was a Russian scientist fascinated by space, but he was also a loner. As a hermit by choice most of his life, his work was largely ignored until after 1920. In 1903, he published The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices which calculated a horizontal escape velocity of 18,000 miles per hour to sustain a minimal orbit around the Earth. He also proposed a way to accomplish this. His idea was a multistage rocket fueled by the reaction of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Tsiolkovsky also proposed steering boosters, multi-stage boosters, space stations, and airlocks to exit spacecraft. He also proposed the very first idea for a space elevator. While almost no one would know who he is, his work has been invaluable to space travel. He is the first father of rocketry.

Aliens and My Short Story

For many years, I watched science fiction movies and didn't question the look of humanoid aliens. Then, I read a book by Carl Sagan, and it became clear that our idea of life was incredibly bias. It wasn't that hard to realize why television and movies depicted aliens like this. They were played by people, and it was a matter of being practical. However, Sagan's tale about aliens got me thinking, and, as an aspiring author, this influenced my first short story. A short tale of aliens visiting Earth in a search for intelligent life (no, it's not a satire, but that might be another idea).

Sagan's opinion about the destruction of mankind also influenced this tale about aliens visiting Earth. The aliens are far from humanoid and are, in fact, spheres who communicate by changing color and humming. It could be that this tale was also influenced by an episode of Futurama where Earth wars against balls (hehe).

While Sagan's tale of alien contact, titled simply "Contact" is ingenius, I wanted to show it from the alien perspective simply because I thought it would be cool. While the nature of the short story is bleak, "Alien Contact" is a meager ten pages of reading. I know that it can never compare to the work of Sagan, but I also can't ignore his impression on it.

Recommended reading and gratuitous self promotion below:

From the Earth to the Moon

My first real exposure to man's exploration of space started with "From the Earth to the Moon", a documentary produced by Ron Howard and Tom Hanks made for HBO. In ten parts, it documents man's effort to reach the moon in a ten year time frame. Throughout the mini-series, NASA experiences joy, anxiety, tradegy, and, eventually, triumph.

The mini-series begins with Kennedy's proclaimation that this country (the United States) will land a man on the moon before this decade is out. This speech was made in April of 1961 because a man had even flown into space. Then, the mini-series catalogues the Apollo 1 disaster, creation of the lunar module, the first landing on the moon and the last. It is a great documentary that is worth checking out.

This documentary was based on the book "A Man on the Moon" by Andrew Chaikin.