APOLLO AND SKYLAB PROGRAMS

Moon Walks and Moon Rocks

After millions watched the first Moon walks in 1969 with amazement and the near-fatal Apollo 13 accident with anxiety, lunar landings began occurring with such regularity and precision they became almost commonplace. In 1971 and 1972 there were two landings a year, each nearly a carbon copy of the other. With the Command Module orbiting overhead, the crew landed a Lunar Excursion Module (or LEM, but constantly being renamed: Eagle, Falcon, Challenger) on the Moon's surface. Each landing was a memorable moment for the public-relations specialists. The Apollo 14 mission included Alan Shepard lightheartedly hitting a golf ball on the Moon. On the Apollo 15 landing David Scott demonstrated the effects of zero atmosphere by dropping a hammer and a feather at the same time. Astronaut James Irwin kept the camera rolling as both struck the Moon's surface at the same time. Each mission brought back bigger bags of Moon rocks, generating tremendous public excitement and enabling scientists to learn more about the composition of the Moon. The metallic composition of the lunar surface turned out to be significantly different from Earth's, encouraging fresh speculation about the origins of the two bodies.

Cars in Space

A nation obsessed with cars could hardly expect its proud representatives to arrive in space without one. Beginning with the Apollo 15 mission, the crews tooled around in a Lunar Rover, sort of a jeep with a big umbrella in front. Wrote astronaut Michael Collins, "The battery-powered Rover was an ingenious machine. Even its birth amazed me. The astronaut pulled a lanyard on the side of the Lunar Module, and, like a newborn giraffe, the Rover plopped to the ground and unfolded. It could do about 11 mph, downhill."

The Race to Beat the Soviet Union

The force driving this passion for space travel was, of course, the Cold War. Ever since the Soviet Sputnik /had beaten the Americans into space in 1957, the "race for space" was on. Each side was concerned about the potential military advantage the other might gain through superiority in space. Early in the 1970s it seemed the U.S. advantage was in Moon landings, and the Soviets excelled in extended stays in space.

Space Stations

The Cold War context made cooperation between Americans and Soviets in space doubly remarkable. The first U.S. space station, Skylab, began orbiting the Earth in May 1973 as still another competitive U.S. effort. It was designed for astronomical observation and to study the effects of weightlessness, with an eye toward the possibility of a permanent human presence in space. Over the next several months nine astronauts in three crews and separate missions spent twenty-eight, fifty-nine, and eighty-four days in space. Now Americans were setting the space endurance records. But then the Cold War abated somewhat. In the summer of 1975 a joint space station was constructed by docking Apollo and Soyuz modules. Soyuz, the Soviet equivalent of the Apollo program, had been designed as the precursor to a program that would launch inhabited Earth-orbiting space stations and perhaps, in the distant future, lead to colonization of the Moon or Mars. After the successful docking of the two nations' spacecrafts, Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev sent a hopeful message that read, "One can say that the Soyuz/Apollo is a forerunner of future international orbital stations." It was the final Apollo mission.

Sources:

Michael Collins, Liftoff: The Story of America's Adventure in Space (New York: Grove, 1988);

Alexander Hellemans and Bryan Bunch, The Timetable of Science (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988);

Phil Patton, Made in USA: The Secret Histories of the Things That Made America (New York: Penguin, 1992);

SALYUT: Soviet Steps Toward Permanent Human Presence in Space—A Technological Memorandum (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, December 1983).