Apollo program

During Apollo, the United States invested $25 billion (in then-year dollars), in spending that peaked at over 4 percent of the national budget, to land people on the Moon and return them safely to Earth.

The NASA funding level represented 5.3 percent of the federal budget in 1965.

costing $25.4 billion (about $95 billion in 1990 dollars)

But tightening federal budgets and decisions made in the previous two years resulted in NASA curtailing its plan for 10 Apollo Moon landings.

Further budget limitations forced NASA to cancel two more missions in September 1970, making Apollo 17 the final lunar landing in December 1972.

Combined with clashes over the Vietnam War, the public’s attention increasingly turned away from the Apollo missions.

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.

if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957

The nation’s Moon landing program suffered a shocking setback on Jan. 27, 1967, with the deaths of Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee in a flash fire aboard their spacecraft during a ground test on the launch pad.

No evidence was discovered that suggested sabotage.

DETERMINATION: The test conditions were extremely hazardous.

The test was conducted with a 16.7 pounds per square inch absolute, 100-percent oxygen atmosphere.

With the completion of the Apollo 11 mission, the national objective of landing humans on the Moon and returning them safely to Earth before the end of the decade was accomplished.

The total time spent outside the LM was 2 hours 31 minutes 40 seconds;

the total distance traveled was about 3,300 feet (1 km); and the collected samples totaled 47.51 pounds (21.55 kg).

Apollo 11 was launched from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39, Pad A, at a Range Zero time of 13:32:00 GMT (09:32:00 a.m. EDT) on 16 July 1969.

followed by the red-line low-level fuel quantity light at 102:44:28, just 72 seconds before landing.

Here Men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.

The LM became the only source of sufficient electrical power and oxygen to permit a safe return to Earth, and led to the decision to abort the Apollo 13 mission.

It was the first mission to take humans to the vicinity of the Moon, a bold step forward in the development of a lunar landing capability.