Apollo 16
April 27, 1972
Apollo 16 splashed down today. Ten men have now walked on the Moon. Armstrong. Aldrin. Conrad. Bean. Shepard. Mitchell. Scott. Irwin. Young. Duke. I keep the list. One more mission. Apollo 17 will be the last. I don't want to think about that yet. Ten men. On the Moon.
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Apollo 14
February 9, 1971
Apollo 14 splashed down today. Eight men have now walked on the Moon. After Apollo 13, I needed this. After the near-disaster that shouldn't have been, the mission that recovered and continued, this feels like proof that the program is intact. Eight men. I keep counting them.
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Apollo 11
July 25, 1969
Apollo 11 splashed down safely on Thursday. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins are home. But last night I walked outside and looked up at the Moon, and it was different. It looked different. Not because anything had changed about the Moon. Because something had changed about me. About us. It's not…
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Apollo 8
December 21, 1968
Apollo 8 launched this morning and they are not going to Earth orbit. They are going to the Moon. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders are riding the Saturn V to lunar orbit. For the first time in history, human beings are leaving Earth to go to another world.…
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Mercury
September 12, 1962
President Kennedy spoke at Rice University today. "We choose to go to the Moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard." I read the whole speech in the paper. I read it twice. The neighbor Harold says it's still a waste of money. I told Harold the…
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Mercury
May 26, 1961
President Kennedy told Congress we're going to the Moon. Before the decade is out. That's 1969, eight years from now. The Moon. My neighbor Harold says it's a waste of money. I told Harold that people probably said the same thing about Columbus. Harold said Columbus didn't cost four billion…
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Space Race
May 25, 1961
The President of the United States stood up in Congress today and said we are going to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before 1970.
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