July 1969. It’s a little over eight years since the flights of Gagarin and
Shepard, followed quickly by President Kennedy’s challenge to put a man
on the moon before the decade is out.
It is only seven months since NASA made a bold decision to send Apollo 8 all the
way to the moon on the first manned flight of the massive Saturn V rocket. Now,
on the morning of July 16, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and
Michael Collins sit atop another Saturn V at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy
Space Center. The three-stage 363-foot rocket will use its 7.5 million pounds of
thrust to propel them into space and into history.
