July 16, 1969. It's a peaceful morning at Cape Canaveral with pleasant temperatures and little wind. Everything is calm. Suddenly, a huge roar shatters the morning as the Apollo 11 crew blasts off to the Moon, aboard the largest rocket ever created. Burning 20 tons of explosive fuel per second, it propelled Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into history. The spacecraft lands on the Moon four days later. Millions watched as men took their first steps in a strange place 238,900 miles away, or 9 1/2 times around the earth. After placing the American flag among the lunar rocks, the Apollo 11 crew fired up their engines and headed toward the little blue sphere we call home, docking safely in the ocean and completing Kennedy's challenge as well as winning the space race to the moon. It took a monumental effort by the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) and billions of dollars to get to this point. The accidents, successes, and space leadership of the Apollo missions radically changed the U.S. space program. On May 25, President Kennedy shocked the nation with his historic speech aimed at sending an American to the Moon before the end of the decade. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard! » » Kennedy announced. In the rest of his speech, he challenged the nation's smartest minds to build a rocket capable of lifting a man to the Moon and returning him safely to Earth. He also emphasized that this would finally put the U.S. space program ahead of the Soviets. The Russians had beaten America not only to sending a satellite into space, but also a man. Yuri Gagarin had circled the Earth just weeks before American astronaut Alan Shepard was sent...... middle of paper ......A continues to look to the future, building ever more complicated rockets and space vehicles, it is easy to see that the upcoming missions contain many new achievements and discoveries. Works Cited Aldrin, Buzz and Ken Abraham. Magnificent Desolation: The long journey home from the Moon. New York: Harmony, 2009. Print.Book Aldrin, Buzz and Leonard David. Mission to Mars: my vision of space exploration. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2013. Print.Book “The Apollo Missions.” NASA. NASA, nd Web. April 15, 2014. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/index.html.Website Harland, David M. Exploring the Moon: The Apollo Expeditions. London: Springer, 1999. Print.Book When We Left Earth – NASA's Missions. Real. Andrew Chaikin, Victoria Kohl and Alan Bean. Perf. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. Discovery Channel, 2008. DVD.