Apollo Missions

Objective: Student will be able to describe the details of the incremental achievements of the Apollo missions that culminated with the manned moon landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.

Yesterday we learned about the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States that erupted after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957.  We know that the U.S. won the race by landing on the moon.  The moon landing was absurdly complicated because it required an extremely complicated rocket to get the astronauts off of Earth and beyond its orbit, travel to the Moon, land on the moon, allow astronauts to walk on the moon, take off from the Moon, escape its orbit, travel to the Earth, and then reenter the atmosphere and land safely.  The Apollo missions, and the Gemini missions that preceded the Apollo program, allowed the U.S. to learn how to do all of these steps in an incremental fashion so that they could all be carried out at once on Apollo 11.  There were setbacks for both the US and the USSR.

In January of 1967, all three of the astronauts on an Apollo 1 pre-launch test were killed by a fire in their oxygen-saturated capsule on the launchpad. Click here to see a news report about this disaster.

The Russians knew that this setback would give them time to catch up to the Americans.  Later that year, however, the Soyuz 1 capsule lost control in space.  The cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, ended up crashing to the ground at 400 mph after the parachutes and retro rockets failed.  Warning: disturbing footage - you can click here to hear the last radio conversation with Komarov before he died in the crash.

Assignment: Research the Apollo missions to determine how the missions that preceded Apollo 11 allowed us to land on the moon and win the space race.

Here is a list of the Apollo missions, along with their descriptions. - http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html

NASA's Apollo Missions page: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/#.Uw9X2eNdVyw

A reading from Space Race (Cadbury 2006) about the Apollo 1 and Soyuz 1 disasters:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9gJuG8LlES1amFacVFsMnJnQkdvY3Z2QnlqRnFHS20xTGdZ/edit?usp=sharing

Images from the Apollo and Soyuz programs from Space Race (Collins 1999):
 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9gJuG8LlES1enhEdnQtRUVCUjBXdllGV3p4WEFCOEFzdVlj/edit?usp=sharing

A description of the missions and their impact from The Race For Space (Kuhn 2007):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9gJuG8LlES1cDNvZ1dYalV1RTFnd2tnNTB0clluU2JNMWVv/edit?usp=sharing

Quiz 6.2 Essay Assignment

As with last week, half of your quiz grade tomorrow will be based on an essay.  Explain what the space race was.  Explain who was involved, why they were involved, and what the outcome was.  Provide details about key figures, missions, accomplishments.  This essay requires a minimum of five paragraphs.  You must cite your sources in-text.

In-text citations

When you use information from a source within your writing, you must immediately cite that source.  Later in your paper, there is usually a works cited page that lets the reader know more information about your sources.  We will skip the works cited page because we are all using the same sources on this assignment.  Here is an example of how to use an in-text citation:

The Soviets encountered setbacks as well.  In 1967, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Kamarov crashed full-speed into the earth aboard Soyuz I, killing him instantly (Cadbury 2006).

 Here is a list of sources that we have used this week, along with an example of how to cite them:

Space Race by Deborah Cadbury, 2006: (Cadbury 2006)
The Race For Space by Betsy Kuhn, 2007: (Kuhn 2007)
Space Race: The US-USSR Competition to Reach the Moon, Martin J. Collins: (Collins 1999)

NASA's The Apollo Program 1963 - 1972 website by David R. Williams, 2013, at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html: (Williams 2013)

NASA's Apollo website by Jim Wilson, 2013, at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/#.Uw9jzeNdVyx: (Wilson 2013)

NOVA's Space Race Timeline website by Rima Chaddha, 2007, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/space-race-history.html: (Chaddha 2007)

TheSpaceRace.com's Timeline of Space Exploration website, 2009, at http://www.thespacerace.com/timeline/ (TheSpaceRace.com 2009)

PBS's Timeline: the Space Race website, 2005, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/moon/timeline/ (PBS 2005)

Russian Space Web's Sputnik website by Anatoly Zak, 2014 at http://www.russianspaceweb.com/sputnik.html (Zak 2014)

NASA's Sputnik: the fiftieth anniversary website by Steve Garber, 2007 at http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/ (Garber 2007)