In the 1960s, the United States space program and NASA were well underway. Although they still seemed to be falling behind the Soviets, money was flowing, and technicians and scientists from Cape Canaveral to Caltech continued to work overtime in the hope of winning the race to the Moon. Then the momentum seemed to shift. In one two-month period, four flawless manned Gemini missions were flown in orbit around Earth while Soviet cosmonauts stayed on the ground.
President John F. Kennedy set the stage for the manned space program by financing several impressive robotic explorers. Breakthroughs in miniaturization, microprocessing, robotics, and solar power enabled probes like the Rangers, Surveyors, Mariners, and Pioneers to scout the inner and outer solar system. Despite many early failures, NASA began to meet its goals with increasing success, unlike its Soviet counterparts. American satellites for surveillance, weather, and communication also increased the U.S. momentum into space. But it was the Saturn rocket, which rocket master Wernher von Braun had been working on since 1962, that helped the U.S. win the space race.
The Saturn rocket was 36 stories tall. It could generate nine million pounds of thrust and launch a 150-ton payload into orbit around the Moon -- despite being five times the size of anything that had ever flown before. Its bottom stage was so enormous it had to be shipped to the Cape Canaveral space port by barge. The Saturn performed flawlessly in eleven missions.
On July 16, 1969, with the Moon beckoning overhead, the Saturn V launched Apollo 11. Three days later, a breathless world looked on while Apollo's lunar module circled the Moon and its crew searched for a place to land. Not long afterwards, the first human beings stepped out of their spaceship and walked on the surface of an alien world.
