No one could forget hearing about Sputnik I being launched. Everyone realized that there being a satellite orbiting the Earth made them felt unsafe, as if being watched all the time. And not much later would Sputnik II be launched as well. This installed a nervous tension in all people in America. The people couldn’t sleep due to fear of a nuclear war at all times. They always felt the need to look over their shoulders. The Apollo Program tried responding to the challenges sent by the Soviets. Led by the NASA team on the ground 10 previous flights attempted and reaching partial to full Earth orbit ( History.com ). These people working on Apollo wanted to make the people of America feel safe once again. “What needs to be different?” Samuel …show more content…
We only get there and sit there.” “You’re right, David. So how do we achieve that?” After almost two weeks of talking and planning, the design for a lunar lander had taken shape. Crew members had to attempted various tests with the lander in simulated situations. Flipping over, softening the landing, and launching were all required to be learned by everyone on the crew. The selection process for who would go on the 11th flight whittled out the smartest and best fit through an assortment of extreme physical and psychological tests. At the end the three that came out on top were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Each crew member assigned to a the mission received specific training for his individual part of that mission. Neil Armstrong assigned as Commander with responsibility for the overall conduct of the flight operations, Michael Collins was the Command Module Pilot for the Command Module systems, and Edward “Buzz” Aldrin became the Lunar Module Pilot for the Lunar Excursion Module …show more content…
Seeing behind the surface of our home planet beginning to shrink away from you as you plunder further into the unknown. On the morning of Sunday July 20th, the three crew members were woken up after a seemingly restless night’s sleep. Aldrin and Armstrong climbed through the tunnel connecting the Command Module to the lunar lander and entered the spaceship named The Eagle. For Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, life would soon become much more curious than that. With the flick of a switch, Collins detached The Eagle from the mother ship Columbia and the journey to the surface of the moon had begun. In order to hit their landing sight, Armstrong and Aldrin would have to begin their descent 16 minutes from the time they rounded the far side of the Moon. The ground crew had only minutes to determine if all the systems checked out. It wasn’t a lot of time, and to make matters even more critical, the vital communication link between Earth and the spaceship was breaking up. The lunar landing was becoming exactly what no one wanted, dramatic. Along with all the timings having to be exactly precise, it was hard to give off commands and run through the final systems check before