It was on July 20th, 1969 that the thrilling words sped through 240,000 miles of space back to Earth - "Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed." The first men were on the Moon eight years after President John F. Kennedy had announced that the US should commit itself "before this decade is out, to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth." The US had beaten the Soviet Union in the race to the Moon.
But it had not looked that way in the early days as Moscow crowed over its successes in sending the first satellite into space called Sputnik and the first man to orbit the Earth, Yuri Gargarin. And even as Eagle with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin began its final descent to the surface of the Moon, there was near disaster as the landing craft hurtled past the planned arrival site, its computers flashed alarms and fuel almost ran out.
Thanks to Armstrong taking over the controls manually, he and Aldrin did not crash and stay marooned forever on the forbidding lunar landscape. Armstrong, a taciturn civilian test pilot, slightly fumbled his historic utterance as he stepped on the Moon's surface.
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." It was supposed to be "for a man".
President Richard Nixon called the astronauts from the White House to tell them "For every American, this is the proudest day of our lives." After they and the pilot of Apollo 11, Michael Collins, had returned to Earth, Nixon told them through the window of their quarantine trailer that, "This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation."
But as Nixon spoke to his men on the Moon, his aide, H.R. Haldeman, had a piece of paper in his pocket which would now not have to be given to the President. It was the speech he would make to the nation if Armstrong and Aldrin were doomed to stay and die on the Moon.
Discovered recently in the National Archives, the memo entitled In Event of Moon Disaster, begins: "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace. It ends saying: "For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."
Instead Americans looked up at the Moon with immense pride and the certainty that they belonged to the most powerful nation on earth which had conquered space in a surprisingly short time.
THE Apollo programme started with tragedy in January 1967 when three astronauts were trapped in Apollo 1 on top of the launching pad at Cape Canaveral on Florida's Atlantic coast, when fire broke out during routine tests. The fire revealed that the scientists and technicians of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had grown careless since it was set up a decade before by President Eisenhower.
The investigation into the fire resulted in a sweeping re-design of the space craft and, according to one of the principal engineers, the Moon landing would not have taken place when it did if the fire had not happened and forced the improvements.
The grisly end of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee, in Apollo 1, did not deter other astronauts who were longing to be chosen as the first men to fly to the Moon.
Immortalised in the Tom Wolfe book, The Right Stuff, the astronauts were originally chosen for the Mercury and Gemini space programmes which were precursors to the Apollo project to reach the Moon. Alan Shepard was the first American to fly in suborbital space in May 1961 for all of 15 minutes 22 seconds and John Glenn the first to orbit the earth in February 1962.
Glenn, the all-American hero who later became a senator, was not allowed to fly again on the orders of President Kennedy, it is said, in case he got killed. But Glenn became the oldest man in space when at 77 he was allowed join a mission of the space shuttle last year.
Shepard eventually made it to the Apollo programme and got to the Moon for the second landing. The initial screening tests and training were at first unbelievably rigorous. The psychological tests were especially feared such as write 20 answers to the question `Who am I?'
At first only experienced test pilots were chosen but gradually scientists and geologists were added. But most of the 29 Apollo astronauts were imbued with the fighting services macho spirit and they loved to drive the fastest cars and fly their own T-38 twin-engined jets to keep their piloting skills honed.
The rivalry among them was intense and there was huge elation and disappointment when the team for the next mission was announced. The most experienced pilot, Deke Slayton, was also the most disappointed when he was left off the Mercury and Apollo missions because of an irregular heart-beat. But his fellow astronauts made him the leader of the elite group.
The Americans would not have got to the Moon ahead of the Russians were it not for the German rocket scientist, Werner von Braun, whose V-2 flying bombs once terrorised London. Even in pre-war Germany he dreamed of using rockets to conquer space. When Germany surrendered the handsome von Braun offered his services to the US but it had little interest in a rocket programme until Russia was already developing one.
When he got the go-ahead as the US fell behind the space programme of its Cold War rival, von Braun was able to realise his dream of using his rockets to explore outer space. His work would culminate in the Saturn V, the largest launch vehicle ever produced and standing 363 feet high with the Apollo spacecraft attached.
The race to land a man on the Moon gripped the imaginations of Americans as they followed the progress of the Mercury and Gemini programmes which allowed the astronauts perfect their skills inspace. They and their families became household names thanks to exclusive contracts which they made with Life magazine.
Following President Kennedy's assassination, his successor Lyndon Johnson gave the space programme active support. In fact he is credited with first coming up with the idea of putting an American on the Moon when the Soviets had their early successes with Sputnik and Gargarin. Kennedy initially had not given the space programme, which was set up under his predecessor President Eisenhower, much attention as he was confronted by the Cuba Bay of Pigs crisis, but with Johnson's help he eventually reached for the Moon.
The fire on Apollo 1 was a huge setback. At the time, the US was getting more bogged down in Vietnam, the escalating costs of the $24 billion space programme were looking extravagant to a country where there was supposed to be a "War on Poverty." Was it really important to put a man on the Moon?
Werner von Braun argued forcibly that it was not just about getting to the Moon but opening a new frontier in space. Charles Lindbergh was not just trying to get to Paris, he was showing the world the potential for trans-oceanic travel in that epic flight in 1927, von Braun pointed out.
Lyndon Johnson gave the threatened Apollo programme the go-ahead. But he would no longer be President when the Moon mission was accomplished. There were only five more Moon landings after Apollo 11, the last in Apollo 17 in December 1972. The missions brought back 850 lbs of Moon rock which have revealed valuable secrets about its formation as a likely break-off from Earth itself.
The space programme has progressed to exciting explorations of the furthest reaches of our galaxy where manned flights are not feasible. That makes them less exciting compared with that unforgettable rendezvous of man and the Moon 30 years ago.
