Ninety-four years ago, in an editorial about Robert Goddard's rocket experiments, the New York Times stated that using rockets to travel into space would be impossible.
Thirty-seven years later, the Soviet Union proved the New York Times wrong by launching the first artificial satellites, Sputnik, into orbit, kicking off the "space race" between the United States and the U.S.S.R.
It was only four years later, in 1961, that Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to travel into space and also the first person to orbit the Earth. In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to do so.
In 1965, Alexey Leonov became the first person to leave his spacecraft and having nothing but a spacesuit between his skin and the desolate vacuum of space.
In the background of this, the United States was actively working to go to the stars, too, but often were behind the Soviet milestones. Alan Shepard went into space less than a month after Gagarin to be the first American, but it wasn't until nearly a year later, in February of 1962, that John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
In September of 1962, President Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University in which he promised that the United States would send a person to the Moon, in words that still echo today:
"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
In 1967, NASA developed the Saturn V rocket with aims to send an Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. The Saturn V was the most powerful rocket ever built - and still is. Today, the most powerful rocket currently in development is SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. Powerful as it is, when its development is complete, it still won't be as powerful as the Saturn V.
In 1968, Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders became the first people to leave Earth's orbit. The Apollo 8 spacecraft left the bonds of Earth, orbited the Moon, and then returned to Earth.
Then, on July 17, 1969, a Saturn V rocket took off from Cape Canaveral with Apollo 11 on top and three astronauts: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Over the next three days, the Apollo spacecraft made its way to the Moon. Armstrong and Aldrin entered the Lunar Module, separated from the Command Module, and began the descent to the Lunar surface.
The landing overwhelmed the computers of the Lunar module - too much was happening at once for them to manage - so Neil Armstrong personally guided the Lunar module to a safe landing on the Sea of Tranquility. He landed without much margin for error - the ship had less than 30 seconds worth of fuel left when the "Eagle" landed.
A few hours later, Armstrong, with nearly half a billion people on Earth watching, became the first human being to set foot on another world.
"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," he said.
Aldrin joined him shortly thereafter. The two astronauts spent their time on the Lunar surface collecting rock and soil samples. They left behind an American flag, a plaque commemorating the journey, and a patch that honored Virgil Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee, the three NASA astronauts who had lost their lives in the Apollo 1 accident.
The two then returned to the Lunar module and lifted off the surface of the Moon, and docked with the Command module in Lunar orbit. The spacecraft then fired its rockets and made the three day journey back to Earth. The three astronauts safely splashed down in the ocean on July 24, 1969.
After Apollo 11, NASA sent six more missions to the Moon and five of them made it safely. (Apollo 13, as you probably know, had a spacecraft malfunction and returned to Earth without landing on the Moon.) The last people to set foot on the Moon were Apollo 17's Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in December of 1972. No person has been there since.
Things are looking up for a return trip to the Moon. Although NASA is currently focused on manned missions to an asteroid and a manned mission to Mars, the Chinese government is actively working on a manned moon mission. They've already landed a robotic rover on the Moon and are currently on track with their goal to put a human being on the Moon by the mid-2020s. Other countries considering a manned moon mission include Japan, India, and the European Space Agency.
There are also commercial space companies that are setting their sights on the Moon. Space Adventures, the space tourist company that helped get Dennis Tito, Anousheh Ansari, and others into orbit, has booked two passengers for a Lunar mission aimed to launch in 2017 or 2018. The tickets for the trip are $150 million apiece.
Another company looking to return people to the Moon is Golden Spike Company, which is aiming to send passengers to the Moon starting in 2020. Flights on Golden Spike will cost $750 million per person. The company is staffed with several folks who used to work on NASA missions and has a plan built around current technological capabilities. But will a private company really beat China or Europe to the Moon?
It seems we'll have to wait a few years to find out.
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You can watch some highlights of the Apollo 11 mission in this video from NASA below:
