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5 End of the Program

Originally three additional lunar landing missions had been planned, as Apollos 18 through 20. In light of the drastically shrinking NASA budget and the decision not to produce a second batch of Saturn Vs, these missions were cancelled to make funds available for the development of the Space Shuttle, and to make their Apollo spacecraft and Saturn V launch vehicles available to the Skylab program. Only one of the Saturn Vs was actually used; the others became museum exhibits.

Another excerpt from Kennedy's Special Message to Congress:

"I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year.

"This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel.

"New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further--unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space." (Excerpt from "Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs")

6 Reasons for Apollo

The Apollo program was at least partly motivated by psycho-political considerations, in response to persistent perceptions of American inferiority in space technology vis-a-vis the Soviets, in the context of the Cold War. In this respect it succeeded brilliantly. In fact, American superiority in manned spaceflight was achieved in the precursory Gemini program, even before the first Apollo flight.

The Apollo program stimulated many areas of technology. The flight computer design used in both the lunar and command modules was, along with the Minuteman Missile System, the driving force behind early research into integrated circuits. The fuel cell developed for this program was the first practical fuel cell. Computer controlled machining ( CNC) was pioneered in fabricating Apollo structural components.

Many astronauts and cosmonauts have commented on the profound effects that seeing earth from space has had on them. One of the most important legacies of the Apollo program was the now-common, but not universal view of Earth as a fragile, small planet, captured in the photographs taken by the astronauts during the lunar missions. The most famous of these photographs, taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts, is " The Blue Marble." These photographs have also motivated many people toward environmentalism and space colonization.

7 Miscellaneous information

• The cost of the entire Apollo program: USD 25.4 billion -1969 Dollars (100-billion in 1994 Dollars). Total cost of to land on the moon in 1994 Dollars - $ 100-billion. See NASA Budget. (Includes Mercury, Gemini, Ranger, Surveyor, Lunar Orbitar, Apollo programs.) Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket cost alone, was about $ 63-billion 1994 Dollars (Apollo spacecraft cost $ 28-billion (CS/M $ 17-billion; LM $ 11-billion), Saturn I, IB, V costs about $ 35-billion 1994 dollars).
• Amount of moon material brought back by the Apollo program: 381.7 kg (841.5 lb)

8 Missions

The Apollo program used four types of launch vehicles:

• Little Joe II - unmanned suborbital launch escape system development.
• Saturn I - unmanned suborbital and orbital hardware development.
• Saturn IB - unmanned and manned earth orbit development and operational missions.
• Saturn V - unmanned and manned earth orbit and lunar missions.

Something to note with Apollo flights is that Marshall Space Flight Center who designed the Saturn rockets referred to the flights as Saturn-Apollo (SA) whereas Kennedy Space Center referred to the flights as Apollo-Saturn (AS). This is why the unmanned Saturn 1 flights are referred to as SA and the unmanned Saturn 1B are referred to as AS.

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Project ApolloFor other meanings, see Apollo (disambiguation). Project Apollo was a series of human spaceflight missions undertaken by the United States of America using the Apollo spacecraft, conducted during the years 1961- 1972. It was devoted to the goal of landing Project MercuryProject Mercury was the United States's first successful manned spaceflight program. It ran from 1959 through 1963 with the goal of putting a man in orbit around the Earth. Early planning and research was carried out by NACA, while the program was officia Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg PG was launched by Michael Hart in 1971 in order to provide a library, on what would later become the Internet, of free electronic versions (sometimes called e-texts) of physically existing books. The texts provided are mostly in the pub Project managementProject management is the ensemble of activities (such as tasks) concerned with successfully achieving a set of goals. This includes planning, scheduling and maintaining progress of the activities that comprise the project. Reduced to its simplest project Projective planeIn mathematics, a projective plane consists of a set of "lines" and a set of "points" with the following properties: #Given any two distinct points, there is exactly one line incident with both of them. Given any two distinct lines, there is exactly one p Project RunebergProject Runeberg is an initiative patterned after Project Gutenberg that publishes freely available electronic versions of books significant to the culture and history of the Nordic countries. The Project began archiving Nordic-language literature in Dece Project lifecycle Project Mogul Project Pluto Project planning Projectile point Projectile Project Galactic Guide Project Vanguard Project Xanadu