Page 16 - Apollo Moonships

14 On bOard apOllO mOOnships
THE FIRST HUMANS WHO LEFT THE EARTH ORBIT
The crew of Apollo 8—James Lovell (left), Bill Anders (center), and the mission commander, Frank Borman—became the first men to travel beyond the
Earth orbit and circumnavigate the Moon. Lovell also flew to the moon as commander of the Apollo 13 mission.
THE MEN FOR THE MOON
The men selected to travel to the moon were chosen from
a total of 73 astronauts, some of whom have worked for the NASA Space Program since 1959. Of these men, 43 flew to space, including 29 on the lunar missions of the Apollo Program (four astronauts did it more than once). Between 1959 and 1962, NASA had only seven astronauts, all of them military
test pilots selected to participate in Project Mercury (see page 10). Nine other test pilots joined the group in 1962, while in 1963 another 14 did it. At that time, the pilot test requirement had been dropped, but a high educational level was required (5.6 years in college on average). The following generations of astronauts chosen from 1963 onwards also included qualified scientists (engineers, biologists, physicists, etc.), but only one of them, the geologist Harrison Schmitt, flew to the moon due to the cancellation of Apollo 18, 19, and 20 missions.
SATURN V FIRST FLIGHT
The Apollo 4 Earth-orbital unmanned mission was the first to use the brand new 363-foot-tall Saturn V rocket on November 9, 1967. The flight was programmed, among other things, to evaluate the structural integrity of the rocket and to verify the proper separation of its stages.
A NEW POWERFUL ROCKET
The trip to the moon required a new rocket, bigger than any other built before. The task of designing it was assigned to German engineer Wernher von Braun, who, during World War II, built the first ballistic missile for Germany. After the war, Von Braun emigrated to United States to design ballistic missiles for the U.S. Army, including the Redstone used to put the Mercury spaceships into space. In 1960, he became director of the Marshall Space Flight Center and began to work on the moon rocket, designing increasingly capable versions named C-1, C-2, C-3, and C-4. In 1962, Von Braun designed the C–5, a three-stage variant capable of carrying a payload of 45 tonne beyond the Earth orbit. The new launch vehicle, baptized Saturn V, made its first test flight in 1967 and its first manned flight in 1968, becoming the most powerful and largest operational rocket ever built.