History records that the Chinese were the first to invent the rocket, back in the 1200s under the Song Dynasty. But the Americans were the first to perfect it, with Robert Goddard kicking off the modern era of rocketry in the 1910s and 1920s, and the German military further refining the technology in the crucible of World War II. But the spectacular highlight of the rocket era was the Apollo 11 mission, when three Americans rode the largest rocket ever built by the US to the moon. On the morning of July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and Michael Collins laid on their backs in Columbia, the command module that topped the Saturn V rocket SA-506 that was to take them from their terrestrial confines into lunar orbit. On July 20th, 1969—40 years ago today—Armstrong and Aldrin descended from lunar orbit to the moon's surface in the Eagle lunar module and became the first two humans to ever set foot on another celestial body.

I believe that this nation 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.

The moon has always played a large role in civilization. A rock carving found in Ireland, dating to around 3000BC is believed to be the first known human depiction of the moon. Often playing the mythological counterpart to the Sun, a number of ancient and prehistoric cultures viewed the moon as a deity to be worshiped. The Greeks, specifically Anaxagoras, were the first to correctly hypothesize the nature of the moon as a large spherical rock—although this was also how Anaxagoras described the Sun. The idea of humans making the voyage from the Earth to the Moon is known to exist in ancient Indian myths, and is found in written form first in 120 AD in the manuscript titled True Histories, written by a Syrian named Lucian.

Because the ancients lacked the ability to even fly over the surface of the Earth, any trips to other heavenly bodies were purely in the realm of fantasy. And though powered human flight was not technologically achievable until the Wright brother's historic flight in Kitty Hawk, NC, it did not stop authors and wonderers from dreaming of what may lie beyond the Earthly sphere and await us elsewhere in the heavens. Leaving the Earth was a little closer after Orville and Wilbur's historic flight, but only just a little—the flight traveled for a total of 120 feet and attained an altitude of about 10 feet above sea level.

Modern rocketry

Robert Goddard with the first liquid-fueled rocket. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

While many focused on advancing the theory and engineering of airplanes and powered flight, others were thinking about the use of rockets for travel through the cosmos. As would be the case for the several decades following the achievement at Kitty Hawk, the major work in the field came out of Russia. In 1903, the same year as the Wright brother's flight, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian mathematics teacher, published The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices, in which he derived the basic theory and principles of rocket science. His work was unknown outside of Russia, and it was the American Robert Goddard who made the fundamental leap to the era of modern rocketry. Goddard changed the core propulsion technique from the solid engine-propelled rockets of antiquity to a liquid propulsion system where the exhaust gases were forced through a De Laval nozzle. The first modern liquid-fueled rocket was launched by Goddard in 1926 in Massachusetts.

In the 1930s, advances in engine designs were made, rocket cars were built and raced, and the first rocket-powered plane was flown. Work in Russia, Austria, Germany, and the United States advanced the hobby to a science. One of the most important amateur groups was the German Verein f?r Raumschiffahrt—the German Rocket Society. This group launched its first liquid-fuel-based rocket four years after its inception in 1931. As Germany's war machine ramped up in the 1930s, a trio of members from this group were recruited to work for the Wermacht, most notably among them Wernher von Braun.

Over the course of World War II, German rocket scientists built a series of increasingly larger rockets. This work culminated in the design and production of the V-2 rocket—the first man-made object to achieve sub-orbital space flight. During the course of the war, the Germans launched about 3,000 V-2s at Allied military and civilian targets. While not accurate enough for specific strikes against military targets, the V-2 was leaps and bounds beyond the Allies' capabilities in this area.

Given the advanced state of the German rocket program, rounding up rocket scientists and capturing equipment became a key objective for Allied forces shortly after VE day. The United States' Operation Paperclip was one of the most successful of these operations, and the US recruited a number of high-level scientists (including Wernher von Braun) and a number of complete and incomplete V-2 rockets. These weapons of war would be taken back to the US and used as research and test vehicles. The V-2 and related technology brought back from Germany allowed von Braun and other German and US researchers to design and construct the Redstone missile—the booster that took Alan Shepard into a sub-orbital flight in 1961, making him the first American in space.

While Operation Paperclip may have brought a large number of top German rocket specialists to the US, it was the USSR who would routinely make headlines by being the first to achieve a number of major space exploration advancements—often catching the US with its pants down. In 1957, as part of the International Geophysical Year, the USSR launched the first ever artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. Launched atop an R-7 missile—the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)—Sputnik orbited the planet emitting signals at 20.005 and 40.002 MHz, signals that anyone in the world with an amateur radio could listen in on.

Space race

The launch of Sputnik marked the unofficial start of the space race between the US and the USSR. Named as an analogy for the nuclear arms race between the two countries, the space race became a point of pride and indirect competition in the escalating Cold War. The urgency for the US to actually enter the space race increased when, a month after the launch of Sputnik 1, the USSR launched Sputnik 2, which carried scientific equipment along with the first living creature to be put into orbit—a dog named Laika. Coupled with the very public failure of Vanguard TV3, the US desperately needed to get out of the starting block in the race. The US finally got off the ground with the launch of Explorer 1 in February of 1958.

After an exchange in various satellite launches between the US and the USSR over the next two years, the USSR once again stunned the world with the launch of Vostok 1, and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human to ever visit space on April 12, 1961. The US again found itself playing catch-up—Gagarin had spent 108 minutes in orbit, US astronauts had spent none. Less than one month later, on May 5, 1961, US astronaut Alan Shepard, aboard Freedom 7, became the first American in space. While Freedom 7 was the first manned Mercury mission, it did not get Shepard into orbit. The suborbital flight lasted a total of 16 minutes.

Twenty days later, President Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress where he laid out his challenge to them and to the people of America. "First, I believe that this nation 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. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." At the time of President Kennedy's challenge, the American space program had a sum total of 16 minutes in space, it had never put a man in orbit, had never seen an astronaut get out of a spacecraft, and had no spacecraft capable of even getting close to the moon. To meet this challenge, American scientists, engineers, and workers had just under nine years to invent, test, and deploy technology that had not yet even been given serious thought.

Over the next five and a half years, one of the most rapid paces of technological development in history occurred. Projects Mercury and Gemini cleared a number of technological hurdles—spacewalks, multi-man spacecraft, rendezvous and docking of craft in orbit, and long-duration flights—even though the USSR had accomplished many of these first. To get to the moon would require the power of the massive Saturn rocket boosters—rockets developed at the Marshall Spaceflight Center headed up by Wernher von Braun. America's space program proceeded uninhibited until the tragedy on the launch pad during a routine test for the Apollo 1 mission. A fire in the command module on January 27, 1967 took the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, and threatened to derail the US' goal of reaching the moon by the end of the decade.

After 20 months of investigation and a re-design of the command module, Apollo 7 demonstrated that Apollo technology was ready for the next big leap. Just before Christmas of 1968, Apollo 8 put three American Astronauts into lunar orbit, officially leapfrogging the Russians in space achievements. Apollo 9 proved that the lunar module could indeed fly in space, if only in Earth orbit. Apollo 10 would take and fly the lunar module in actual lunar orbit. During that flight, commander Tom Stafford and lunar module pilot Eugene Cernan would fly their lunar module, Snoopy, to within an altitude of 8.4 nautical miles of the lunar surface.