Fifty years ago: America went into space

[LongTomH]

From the LA Times: Alan Shepard: NASA's glory decade began with Alan Shepard's launch 50 years ago:

Reporting from Cape Canaveral, Fla.—
In early May 1961 — 50 years ago — the Cold War was at its hottest, and the United States needed a victory, an impressive one.

Three weeks earlier, on April 12, the Soviet Union had demonstrated its space and technology muscles by sending the first human into space. A week after that, the United States had suffered a humiliating defeat in the botched CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

And a week after that, President John F. Kennedy had received a memo from Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson with an audacious proposal: The only way the United States could win the space race was by beating the Soviets to the moon by the end of the decade.

Alan flew the Freedom 7 Mercury flight in 1961. He was diagnosed with an inner ear condition in 1964 which prevented him from flying until May 1969, after a corrective operation. When he went to the moon on Apollo 14, he was NASA's oldest astronaut at 47 years old.



Alan died of leukemia on July 21, 1998, the 29th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moonwalk.



Alan Shepard's statue at the US Astronaut Hall of Fame.

Here's to you Admiral Shepard, and all your colleagues of Project Mercury, Project Gemini and Project Apollo. It took a lot of courage to fit yourselves into those tiny capsules on top of rockets loaded with high-explosive fuel and fly.

[aquart]

1. Wow. Just as the Freedom Ride buses launched into the South.

What missions! What courage! What heroes!

[earthside]

2. Being a youngster ...

... during the space race, people like Alan Shepard and John Glenn were the big heroes of my formative years. Every launch of Mercury, Gemini and early Apollo was riveting -- everyone payed attention.

Frankly, I find it tragic and an overwhelming symbol of American decline that we have ended the shuttle program without a cutting edge technology replacement.

Thanks for the memory.

[WildEyedLiberal]

4. I agree.

Exploration for exploration's sake is one of the noblest pursuits of mankind. That we have effectively decided that is no longer a national priority speaks very poorly for us.

[msedano]

3. Vanguard I beeping in the surf

i remember the disaster of the first us attempt to launch a satellite, vanguard i. the rocket blew up, tossing the basketball sized sphere into the lapping shore. the thing was built at grand central rocket, redlands california when i was in junior high. don't remember if grand central built the satellite, but i recall a foto in the redlands daily facts of a local dentist doing work on the gold wrapper.

mvs

[Aristus]

5. I'm still amazed that we made it into space with technology from the 1960's.

It just seems so primitive today...

[Art_from_Ark]

10. To those of who who were alive in the '60s

the technology of the time seemed pretty far advanced. Heck, we even had TVs and radios and cars and jet airplanes and Space Food Sticks back then :)

[LiberalEsto]

6. Someone brought a tinny transistor radio

to our classroom and the teacher let us listen. I remember how excited we all felt.

[WinkyDink]

7. I loved Alan Shepard the most.

[WolverineDG]

8. And the computers used to send man to the moon

couldn't power a calculator today.

If that doesn't make you go :wow: nothing will.

dg

[elocs]

9. Those first space shots were when I was in grade school & they herded us all into the gym

to sit on the floor and watch the blastoff on a single black and white tv.

(On a side note, I got to work at that school a couple of years ago and it was something to see that gym as well as the classrooms I was in as a little kid. It was a nostalgic kick.)