James Donovan - SHOOT FOR THE MOON: the space race and the extraordinary voyage of apollo 11

Cape Kennedy, July 16, 1969, 4:15 a.m.

The beastwhat some early missile men called a rocketstood on thelaunchpad, dozens of spotlights bathing its milky-white skin, hissing, groaning, gurgling, thick umbilical hoses pumping fuel into it, sheets of ice sliding down its sides from the super-chilled liquid oxygen inside, some of it boiling off in thick white clouds of breath, and looking as if it might shake off the arms of its gantry, rip itself from its moorings, and stalk off down the Florida coast.

Eight miles away, on the third floor of Kennedy Space Centers Building 24, Deke Slayton walked down the hall of the crew quarters and rapped on three doors. With each knock, he said cheerily, Its a beautiful day, and he meant it.

Raised on a farm, the unpretentious Slayton was fiercely protective of his chargespart den mother, part dictatorwhile at the same time envious of every one of them. A former World War II bomber pilot and test pilot and an original Mercury Seven astronaut, hed been made chief of NASAs astronaut office when a minor heart problem grounded him before he had a chance to fly a mission into space. Slayton understood better than anyone that to a certain extent, the mens fates were in his hands, since he selected the crew for each mission and could make or break their careers. He was scrupulously fair in his choicesfor the most part.

The men behind the three doors were astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. They constituted the crew of the Apollo 11 scheduled for launch that morning. In three hours, they would climb into a small chamber atop the 363-foot, three-stage Saturn V, the most powerful machine ever built, and blast off into space. A few days later, two of them would attempt to do something that had never been done before: pilot a small, fragile craft down to another world, 239,000 miles from Earth, and walk on its surface.

These three men and others, most of them culled from the ranks of the nations top test and fighter pilots, had committed their lives to this goal and worked tirelessly toward this moment.

When the American space program began, in 1958, no human had journeyed into the hostile environment of spacean airless, low-gravity vacuum with temperatures of extreme cold and intense heat that no living being could withstand. Without an artificial life-support system, a man would die instantly. Even with one, he might die; the effects of weightlessness, radiation, meteors, and the enormous forces accompanying launch and reentry were largely unknown. Each astronaut had trained for years to overcome these dangers and others.

Along the way they also spent thousands of hours learning how to use the machines that would carry them into space, machines far more sophisticated and complex than any previously invented, machines designed by a cadre of visionary scientists and engineers united by a dream of space travel, an insatiable curiosity, and the determination to make that dream come true. They all worked insanely long hours, often at the expense of their personal lives and relationships. Along with the four hundred thousand other men and women who actually built the machines, the astronauts devoted themselves to helping their country triumph against the Communist threat. At stake was not just supremacy in space but quite possibly Americas survival as a democracy.

They had not reached this point without major setbacks and great tragedies. Rockets exploded. Systems malfunctioned. Men died. The murder of a visionary president whose bold challenge had fired the program only reaffirmed their dedication to finishing the job.

But in October 1957, still flying high just a dozen years after their victory in World War II, Americans had no idea how a small metallic ball with a radio transmitter would change the world.