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Show Ha Ik on the moon will finally realize man's oldest dream: by Dave Chudwin and Marvin Rubenstein College Press Service CAPE KENNEDY, Fla. For better or worse we have left for fe moon. The machines have been perfected, the men have been trained, the money has been spent. It is a voyage dreamed' of for thousands ol years. Tantalizingly close, at least in cosmic terms, the moon fascinated mankind for as long as we can remember. Our language and literature are replete with references to fe bright beacon of the night. As early as 160 A.D. Lucian of Gimf wrote of a flight to the moon. Hundreds of years later Dumas, Yen; Voltaire, and Poe told tales of lunar travel. But the stories were jiti Goddard, Hermann Oberth and Konstantin Tsiolgovsky independent!; that. It was not until early in the Twentieth Century that Rote: laid the foundation for space travel. As is often the case, it took a war to get the young science of rocS etry on its feet. With Hitler's blessing Wernher von Braun and 16 compatriots of the German Society for Space Travel set up shop Peenemunde and developed the V-2 rocket. The rockets' devastate effect on London made sure missilery would never be ignored aga After World War H von Braun and his group surrendered to & Americans, coming here to form the nucleus of what is now mr space effort. A different kind of war brought rocketry and space travel to bis status. Cold War rivalries with Russia led to the development of W missiles to carry newly developed nuclear warheads. The Eisenl administration, however, placed low priority on the use of these i siles for space travel. A small military program was given W funds to eventually launch a grapefruit-size satellite into eartbo ' The turning point came on Oct. 4, 1957 when Russia launcW first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, an event called a "tec Pearl Harbor" by Sen. Stuart Symington. The result was public Congressional investigations, and a viable space program. tional Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNASA) was es July 29", 1958 to peacefuDy explore space. Eisenhower, reluctantly moving under public Pres'veLB: Project Mercury to orbit a man around the earth and the ae f of 1.5 million pound thrust rocket. More ambitious proposa , a night to the moon, were rejected. Soon after, John F. came president and almost immediately was beset by tive Bay of Pigs invasion sent national prestige to a lowF Then, on April 12, 1961, the Russians launched mm& put garin into immortality as the first human to travel in In a series of conferences Kennedy decided the U.S. rn Soviet superiority in space. Accepting recommendations space program, Kennedy went before Congress on asked that America put men on the moon and return tiiem before the end of the decade. imprest 11 "No single space project in this period will be ore oI spate," mankind, or more important for the long-range explor he said. Now eight years and $24 billion later, Astron plisfcjs-strong, plisfcjs-strong, Michael Collins and Edwin (Buzz) Aldnn are that goal. While some back on earth debate the wisa there is no doubt mankind will never be the same. |