I think after orbiting for a while and looking at the surface, I think the natural tendency is to want to experience it, to go down there and touch it. I started thinking about the Apollo astronauts who orbited the moon and didn’t land – that must have been agonizing!
I can still remember them wheeling the black and white TV sets into our classroom at school so we could watch the men landing on the Moon, and that obviously had a huge impact. I later found out those people flying Apollo were ex-military test pilots, so I decided to join the Air Force and become a test pilot.
Playing the Hammersmith Apollo was pretty special.
If it’s Saturday night, and you’re sitting on your couch watching ‘Showtime at the Apollo,’ then you’re not a man’s man.
I have a grandson who’s both really interested in art and all things mechanical, so I think he’ll get a huge kick out of ‘Apollo 13’ someday. And I think my granddaughters will enjoy ‘Splash.’
I began skating in the official practice venue of the 2002 Games. It was a huge Olympic atmosphere with Apollo Ohno sitting on the wall every day when I walked into the rink. That was really cool and very inspiring to see.
I was at the Apollo Theater all the time, skipping school, and I worked in a barbershop. That’s how I started with doo-wop. Now I’ve come full circle. I did all kinds of music. I used to work on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.
I remember watching `Apollo’ with my other grandma – I have so many grandmas – and seeing these young girls sing… I knew in that moment that I wanted to sing.
I spent most of my youth in Manchester, in clubs and football grounds and the Manchester Apollo.
I owe much of my success to Seann Walsh. He kept recommending me for Live At The Apollo until eventually the producers offered me a gig.
I started out in the Apollo Theater. That’s where I got my start. I won Amateur Night four weeks in a row.
As a former Apollo astronaut, I think it’s safe to say that SpaceX and the other commercial developers embody the 21st century version of the Apollo frontier spirit.
It’s true that Apollo 10’s lander was overweight. Late in the craft’s development, it became clear that its ballooning weight was endangering the whole mission.
The Apollo programme of the 1960s had some weight problems, too; in particular, the lunar lander needed some fairly drastic weight-reduction work.
If you think of the Apollo capsule coming into Earth with a parachute, the Mars atmosphere is just so thin, you’ve got to find some way of slowing yourself down really rapidly.
In Congress, I am a strong supporter of the New Apollo Energy Act. This plan would help to establish our energy independence, create jobs, and provide cleaner, reliable, and more affordable energy.
Kennedy had made a mess in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He had to do something to look good. The Apollo program of going to the Moon was quite a goal.
I think the people who experienced the Apollo missions came away from that experience wondering to themselves, ‘When can we get a chance to experience spaceflight?’ I’ve heard that many, many times: that people got into a new career field hoping that they would be able to experience spaceflight.
It was Apollo 8 that first showed us the tiny blue marble of Earth floating in the void of space, one of the great psychological shifts in human history. From out there, we can both appreciate and begin to solve the problems of our world in ways unavailable to us otherwise.
The Apollo seats 3,600 people: I could hear them making a huge noise for Milton Jones and Lee Mack. If the audience doesn’t make the same amount of noise for you, you feel like you’ve failed.
The Orion capsule uses an escape system quite like that of the Apollo spacecraft in the 1960s and 70s: an ‘escape tower’ containing a solid-fuel rocket that will pull it up and away from Ares I in a pinch.
Basically, Apollo was more of a mediator between Zeus in Olympus and Perseus on Earth. He played much more of an active role.
When I was 12, I saw the Apollo moon landings, and I thought that was really fantastic and exciting and thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’
Sure, there were hopes that Constellation’s systems could later be adapted to support more ambitious goals. But Apollo had those hopes, too. It didn’t work in 1970, and it wasn’t going to work in 2020.
There’s no doubt who was a leader in space after the Apollo Program. Nobody came close to us. And our education system, in science, technology, engineering and math, was at the top of the world. It’s no longer there. We’re descending rather rapidly.
I like acting for now. But after seeing Apollo 13, what I really want to do is to be an astronaut. I’m dying to go to a space camp next summer!
Innovation is what America does best. Whether it is the Apollo Project to the moon, developing the most advanced defense technologies available, the rise of the Internet or the latest advancements in biomedical gene therapies, our nation leads the world in transformative innovations.
We certainly would not be here, living and working on the International Space Station without the commitment and dedication of all the folks who worked the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Programs as well as the Russian Space Program.
There was a lot of risk taken in the Mercury and Apollo eras, and we don’t take those risks anymore. We’ve designed the systems to eliminate risk, which makes it take forever and cost too much money.
We need Big Ideas, as we are in a time of small people, and as Kennedy showed with Apollo, doing something grand in space is the biggest. At a time of huge national doubt and fear of losing our leadership as a nation to others, it focused us, gave us something positive and inspired a generation.
I was working as a flight director on the Gemini IX mission, and it seemed almost overnight I was picking up the responsibilities for the Apollo Program.
I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory.
The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.
The best space movie in my view is ‘Apollo 13.’ That’s just the way it happened.
Our mission on Apollo 14 was to be the first to do science on the moon, so we had to be careful about getting everything in during the allotted time.
I cycled on a crew assignment as the backup commander on Apollo 16 and would have flown Apollo 19 on a return mission to the moon. However, the last few missions of the Apollo Program were canceled for budgetary reasons. So I lost my second opportunity to land on the moon.
The Apollo generation wasn’t a historical fluke. It was the predictable result of what happens when a free nation actually decides on something and goes for it. We can do it again, do it better, and do it for keeps this time. But we must decide: Will America, as a nation, support the settlement of space?
When I first played New York, it was with James Brown at the Apollo, and I was playing in a band under the name The Valentinos. I remember Sam Cooke saying, ‘I want you to go in there with James Brown. I couldn’t be as hard on you as James Brown would be.’ But we came out marching like soldiers.
I want manned spaceflight, not just back to the Moon, but beyond that. And I want my daughters and my son to have their own July 20, 1969, to remember. Apollo 11 didn’t give us wings; it only showed us how far the wings we had would take us.
For some time, I thought Apollo 13 was a failure. I was disappointed I didn’t get to land on the moon. But actually, it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.
I was eight years old when I saw the Apollo moon landing in 1969. I was riveted.
Exploring Mars is a far different venture from Apollo expeditions to the moon; it necessitates leaving our home planet on lengthy missions with a constrained return capability.
During one of the Apollo missions, I saw Walter Cronkite showing off the flight plan. It just mesmerized me. All this detail! That’s what I wanted.
The basic story for Golden Spike is that we discovered a way to create do-it-yourself Apollo programs for other countries.
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