Apollo: The Race To The Moon

by Catherine Bly Cox

Eight years and eight weeks later, Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder of the lunar module Eagle onto the Sea of Tranquility. This is the story of what happened in between, and something of what went before and came after. It is not a history, but the tale of a few of the people of Apollo. Some of them held high positions; some worked in the trenches. A few were in the public eye; the rest were not. They have in common that they remained on the ground (for this is not a story about the astronauts) and that each played a part, large or small, in putting men on the moon and returning them safely to earth. These few must stand for all the others, for Apollo was an epic, and epics must be captured in miniature.

Kennedy told him to wait, and disappeared into the Oval Office with Sorensen while Sidey looked over his notes in the secretary’s nook that connects the Cabinet Room with the Oval Office. After a few minutes Sorensen emerged. “ We’re going to the moon,” Sorensen said.

Among the people of Apollo, it is known simply as the Fire, needing no other label. Twenty years later, after a visitor had questioned him about it, the Fire would still keep Don Arabian from getting to sleep until three in the morning, turning the data over in his mind, trying to make all the pieces fit. Marty Cioffoletti’s voice would still tighten when he remembered having to listen to the tape of the crew’s voices again and again. Some of the men who had been on the consoles would still be unable to talk about it, stopping in mid-sentence. The history of Apollo is divided into two eras, Before the Fire and After the Fire.

HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND