Voices of Apollo

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, we continue to draw inspiration from this monumental event. It took over 400,000 people almost a decade to land two men on the Moon. It is estimated that 600,000,000 people across the globe tuned in to watch the Apollo 11 crew land on the Moon. Truly, this “moonshot” was on a global scale never seen before, with an international interest yet to be repeated. From the collaborative nature of the Apollo program, to memories of the historic event, to continual inspiration for future generations, we celebrate Apollo.  (image courtesy of NASA)

“I’ll tell you what was cool…you look at that impression on the Moon, we did that. You look at that footprint, everybody on our team had tears in their eyes. In the history of mankind, it was the first imprint on a foreign body, and we made it. That’s cool. That’s really cool. Stress was not the environment at all. It was not pressure, it was motivation. We’re going to do it, we’re a team. People did things as a team.” (image courtesy of NASA)

“I felt full of joy, and so empowered and grateful that in a small way, I was a part of this tremendous accomplishment for our country. My work on the NASA contract for the Apollo 11 project inspired me greatly...it continues to motivate me to be better and better in all that I do. That work taught me the meaning of possible! While in my prestigious laboratory at NBS, I was setting materials on fire in my fluorine calorimetry experiments for my controlled chemical reactions, civil rights protesters were setting things on fire in the streets!” 

John Wood was a planetary scientist at NASA who studied the lunar samples the Apollo 11 astronauts brought back from the Moon. This image shows astronaut and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin deploying two components of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP) on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (image courtesy of NASA). “It had been nearly two months since astronauts first stepped onto the lunar surface, and while the world was still enchanted, NASA had called scientists to get to work on an often-underappreciated aspect of the Apollo missions: samples. By then I had started a career aimed at studying extraterrestrial rocks (meteorites), so quite by accident I found myself ideally qualified for such research. My group studied and described 1,676 tiny (1-2 millimeters) rock fragments from the Apollo soil sample. We discovered an unexpected minor population of white fragments (anorthosite) mixed with abundant black fragments of the anticipated mare basalt, which we concluded must be samples of the light-colored lunar highlands that surround the mare basins.” 

Kerri Schoonyoung (granddaughter of the deceased Edward Fay) shares his story. “I recently discovered my grandfather, Edward (Ned) Fay, was recognized with several awards from NASA for his contribution to the space program. The discovery was a bit of a surprise to all of our family as his career did not start on a typical path. Following in his father’s footsteps, Ned graduated high school and began his career at the Waltham Watch (Co.) factory in the early 1900s. Ned left Waltham Watch to join MIT’s research lab, The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.  Most notable is his contribution to the Apollo Primary Guidance, Navigation and Control System.” 

“When my family and I were watching the Apollo 11 EVA live, my Sicilian grandfather began crying. We asked him what was wrong and he said he never thought he’d live long enough to see man fly to the Moon. He proceeded to tell us a story from when he and his father saw aviator Italo Balbo land his fleet of seaplanes in Lake Michigan for the 1933 Chicago Century of Progress World’s Fair. While they were walking back home, they were saying how remarkable it was that aircraft could fly across the ocean. My grandfather then told his father that someday men would fly to the Moon! His father replied that he was crazy and that would never happen. My grandfather was right and I’ll always remember his story.” In 1969, Onofrio Martorana had recently retired from working as a construction worker with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and was living with his wife in a bungalow in the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side.

Beth Moses previously worked with NASA as the assembly manager for the International Space Station and currently serves as the Virgin Galactic Chief Astronaut Instructor and Commercial Astronaut. Moses was the first female to make a spaceflight on a commercially launched vehicle.“I am a child of the Shuttle era but Apollo's blood runs true in me: Apollo astronauts invented the practices that Space Shuttle and Space Station astronauts taught me, which qualified me to serve as an astronaut on Virgin Galactic's test flight VF01.  I learned from Apollo, Shuttle, and Station experts how best to perform human-in-the-loop testing in extreme environments and ultimately performed the first cabin test on SpaceShipTwo.”   (image courtesy of Virgin Galactic)

Going to the Moon was more than a techno-scientific endeavor fueled by Cold War politics. At once a megalomaniac, meticulous, and trailblazing event, the Moon landing is certain to have struck something deep in every single person who partook in it — from those who maneuvered the political front lines, to the astronauts themselves; from the multitude of often overlooked experts and workers who tackled challenges and tiny details, to the members of the public who experienced the event as a mixture of dream and drama. Whether people go back to the Moon or not, we are certain to continue to go back to this historic moment in search of inspiration. Let us take the opportunity to ask what could be different, and what could be better, as the human venture into outer space evolves in ways that might well surprise us again. (image courtesy of Chicago History Museum)