Apollo 13

Read about Apollo 12

After the success of Apollo 12, the lunar landing missions continued with Apollo 13 next on the list.  Originally, Alan Shepherd was supposed to act as commander for this mission, but NASA didn't feel he was ready for the job, so they pushed him back one mission.  The crew that took his place was James Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert.  They had been preparing to man Apollo 14.  Originally, Ken Mattingly was supposed to be the Command Module Pilot, but he was grounded after being exposed to German measles.  The mission was meant to land on the moon and explore the Fro Mauro formation, named after an 80-km wide crater in it.

However, two days into the flight, Swigert stirred an oxygen tank as was standard procedure which was soon followed by a loud noise.  As they would soon learn, one of their two oxygen tanks exploded, and the command module were leaking oxygen.  The explosion also resulted in fuel cells 1 and 3 shutting down in three minutes, and fuel cell number 2 was slowly drained over the next 130 minutes.  To survive, the lunar module was used as a lifeboat, but the return flight would be dangerous, cold, and full of ingenious problem solving.

Because the Apollo 13 crew was so close to the moon (approximately 200,000 miles from Earth), they orbited the moon instead of turning around to save fuel and construct a plan.  However, landing on the moon was now out of the question,so that plan was aborted.  Honestly, what follows is nothing short of amazing, and I can't do the story the justice that it deserves.  So, I'm going to recommend seeing the movie if you haven't.  Also, I recommend reading A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin and watching the mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon.

Apollo 12: Pete Conrad and Al Bean

Read about Apollo 11

The moon landing was never meant to be a one time thing. Many missions were slotted for the moon, and each mission advanced in complexity. The Apollo 11 astronauts had only spent a seven hours exploring the lunar surface. In later missions, the science portion of the mission would be expanded. Chosen for Apollo 12 were Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr.; as Commander, with Al Bean as the Lunar Module Pilot, and Richard Gordon, Jr. as the Command Module Pilot. This would be Bean's first spaceflight, and he would be walking on the moon. Conrad was an old pro with this being his third flight. This would be Gordon's second flight into space.

When their Saturn V launched, it was raining outside. At 36 seconds after launch, the rocket was hit by lightning. Then, it was hit again at 52 seconds. Still, the Saturn V continued to fly correctly. However, it caused the shutdown of the fuel cells and put the Command/Service Module (CSM( entirely on batteries. The screen in front of the crew lit up with red. Thankfully, John Aaron remembered this type of failure from an earlier test when the power supply failed in the CSM Signal Conditioning Equipment (SCE). The SCE is responsible for converting raw signals from the instruments into standard voltages for the spacecraft instrument displays and telemetry encoders. He told the astronauts to try "SCE to aux" which switched the power supply for the SCE to a backup power supply. However, it was fairly obscure. Most of the flight controllers didn't know it nor did Conrad. Thankfully, Bean did. He flipped the switch, and the warning lights went away. Aaron and Bean's actions saved the mission being aborted.

After this, they were on their way to the moon. They followed the standard procedure and arrived at the moon on November 19, 1969. Conrad and Bean would conduct two EVAs lasting a total of 7 hours and 45 minutes. When Conrad stepped off the LEM onto the lunar surface, his first words were "Whoopie! That may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" Another notable incident was with the television they brought with them. Al Bean accidentally pointed directly at the sun which broke the SEC tube. The camera didn't work after this this. They also visited the Surveyor 3 probe and collected moon rocks before leaving the lunar surface and docking with Gordon in the Command Module.

The crew headed back to Earth where they splashed down on November 24. During splashdown, Bean was hit in the head by a camera and was knocked temporarily unconscious. He suffered a mild concussion from the incident, but the rest of the trip was safe for the astronauts. To learn more about the Apollo program and this mission, I recommend watching From the Earth to the Moon and reading A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin.

Read about Apollo 13

Apollo 11: A Man on the Moon

Read about Apollo 10

Seven months earlier, Apollo 8 orbited the moon. On July 16th, Apollo 11 blasted off for the moon. This time, two of the three astronauts would step onto the surface of the moon. These men would become legends, and their names would be remembered forever in history. The only astronaut whose name may not be famaliar is that of the Command Module Pilot, Michael Collins. The Commander was, of course, Neil Armstrong, and the Lunar Module Pilot was Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. The life story of both of these men is quite interesting, and it deserves some discussion.

Buzz attended West Point and graduated from there in 1951 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Then, he fought in the Korean War as a fighter pilot. After the war, Buzz earned his Doctor of Science in astronautics. Then, he was selected in the third class of astronauts. His Apollo 11 mission would be his second space mission.

Neil flew combat missions during the Korean War as well. After the war, he attended college at Purdue where he received a degree in aeronautical engineering. After this, he became a test pilot and had a few mishaps, but he always escaped without serious injury. In 1961, he became part of the New Nine, the second class of astronauts. His first space mission was Gemini 8 were the vehicle began to spin out of control. The astronauts were seconds away from blacking out when Armstrong saved the mission by switching to the Reentry Control System to gain control of the spacecraft. Then, he commanded Gemini 11 which was successfully completed. While training for Apollo 11, Armstrong flew a Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) to help simulate landing in a real setting. The vehicle began banking and Armstong lost control. He then ejected, and, again, narrowly avoided disaster.


Once Apollo 11 took off for the moon, it had few problems. As they were landing, the LEM was ahead of its intended position by two seconds. Because Armstrong was worried about landing on unsafe terrain, he took manual control of the LEM and landed in a safe area in the crater known as the Sea of Tranquility on July 20th, 1969. The astronauts went for an EVA (extravehicular activity aka a walk) soon after landing. They only spent 2.5 hours on the surface. Then, they blasted off of the moon's surface and rendevoused with the Command Module. They went back to Earth, and the rest is history.

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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.