Social impact of the apollo program

The authors of more general studies of space flight have on occasion tackled the subject of societal impact. Benjamin thinks it no coincidence that the first Earth Day on April 20, , occurred in the midst of the Apollo program; that one of the astronauts developed a new school of spiritualism while others have also been profoundly affected spiritually; or that people "should be drawn to an innovative model for the domestic economy sprung free from the American space program by NASA Administrator James Webb.

Others have demonstrated the complex relation of space goals to social, racial, and political themes. As NASA moves forward with its new vision for space exploration, understanding the societal impact of space flight may prove essential for sustaining its programs during the next fifty years. The passage quoted here is on page 6.

Bruce Mazlish, ed. NASA, What is the value of space exploration? IAA, More status reports and news releases or top stories. Home SpaceRef Business Advertising. Dick NASA's founding document, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of , specifically charged the new agency with eight objectives, including "the establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.

We accept all space related events in our calendar and all it takes is about 5 minutes for your to fill out the online event form. The young minds the average age of Apollo 11's mission control team was 28 who were put to work on Apollo were all recent graduates who had benefited from former president Eisenhower's National Defence Education Act, a massive capital investment in the US education system, started in the late 50s in response to Sputnik.

As progress in human space flight accelerated through the 60s, PhD intake at American universities, particularly in the field of physics, increased almost threefold. Apollo was making America cleverer. Nasa knew that its entire moonshot challenge would rely on one thing above all others — navigation.

So, within weeks of Kennedy's speech to Congress, they had appointed some of these bright new PhDs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT to work out how to make a soft landing on a moving target hurtling through space a quarter of a million miles from Earth. The prototype inertial guidance system they came up with could not be relied on completely and would need to be manually realigned during the flight. To assist the astronauts in this task, and to help them control the fly-by-wire systems in their new Apollo spacecraft, a small, lightweight computer was proposed by MIT.

In the early 60s computers still tended to take up entire rooms. If the boffins in Boston were going to miniaturise it enough to pack it into a modestly sized craft, they'd need some new technology, and they turned to an emerging invention called the integrated circuit. Fairchild Semiconductor was one of the few companies experimenting with these new micro-electronic components at the time; keen to help them perfect the performance of these novel miniature circuits, Nasa ordered one million of them.

The agency really needed only a few hundred for its Apollo programme, but, aware that they would be betting the lives of their astronauts on them, they were keen to make sure the manufacturers could make them has reliable as possible. Such a financial kickstart to a fledgling industry, coupled with the third great gift of Apollo — inspiration — would prove to be a powerful driver for social change in the decades that followed. In two employees from Fairchild would go on to found a new company called Intel.

Those graduating across the world in the 70s and 80s had watched Apollo's engineers dream the impossible and then build it. As an act of human ingenuity, Apollo made them giddy, intoxicated on admiration and inspiration. As William Bainbridge put it, in his book The Spaceflight Revolution , Apollo was "a grand attempt to reach beyond the world of mundane life and transcend the ordinary limits of human existence through accomplishment of the miraculous — a story of engineers who tried to reach the heavens".

And the generation that followed them took this philosophy and ran with it, harnessing the new Apollo-driven technologies of micro-electronics to wire up the modern world and reinvent society. Canadian-born space entrepreneur Bob Richards points out: "It was a great example of what can happen when human beings come focused on a big, bold goal and inspire not only themselves but the generation that comes after them.

Caught up in the wonder of it all, Jeff Bezos served for a year as president of this student group. The launch of this mission was supposed to take place on February 21, , but during a launch rehearsal of the mission, a fire broke out and the crew were killed. The videos associated with the mission cover recommendations from a review board on changes that needed to be made. Another unmanned mission, this Apollo mission was made to test the lunar module in a space environment prior to its use by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to reach the surface of the moon.

The first manned spacecraft Apollo mission since the failure of Apollo I, this mission's objective was to test the Command and Service Module. It was also the first mission to be broadcast to the public from space. The second human spaceflight mission put men into orbit around the Earth for the first time and recorded the fastest speeds that humans had ever travelled.

The principle objectives of the mission were to test navigation and midcourse corrections. The first test flight of the entire Apollo spacecraft. On this mission, the crew named the components of the ship. The "dress rehearsal" for the moon landing, this mission included all aspects of the lunar surface landing except walking on the moon. The crew shot films in orbit, and, thus, the first color images of the moon were broadcast to the world.

The mission that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon after a bumpy start. The first human spaceflight program and the first attempt by the United States to send a human to orbit the Earth. The Mercury program consisted of twenty unmanned test missions, six manned missions, seven astronauts, and two chimpanzees preparing for manned orbits.

The immediate predecessor to Project Apollo, which sought to land a man on the moon, the Gemini Program developed much of the technology that would be used in missions to come.

Have students create a virtual exhibit on one of the space programs that were developed in the United States in the s through the s. The website for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum provides a number of valuable research resources for students. Their Online Exhibition section features exhibits on the development of aerospace technology and on the Space Race.

Students can utilize the multi-media section for images and secondary source research material on all of the Apollo missions. This exhibit provides a general overview of the Space Race, showing developments in both the United States and the Soviet Union.

The site contains a topical index so that students can easily locate resources on their particular subject. The National Archives houses a number of digital collections related to space exploration.

This landing site provides an excellent timeline, as well as links to biographies of astronauts, finding aids for materials in presidential libraries, and other resources. This article in the Handbook of Texas provides a full history of the Johnson Space Center from the federal establishment of a national space program to present day. We can help you maximize your impact by helping developers get stuff done. Many developers look to our site as a place to deepen their knowledge.

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