Race to the Moon: NASA and the Early Apollo Flights of the 1960s

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.

1.weightless a.无重量的, 失重的, 不重要的

例句：Man is weightless in space.
人在太空失重。

2.module n.组件, 模数

例句：My desk is my command module.
我的书桌就是我的主要工作场所。

3.lunar a.阴历的, 月的, 微亮的(指光)

例句：This lunar month has only 29 days. It is not a Dajin (a lunar month of 30 days).
这个月不是大尽，只有二十九天。

4.rejoin vt.使再结合, 再加入, 回答

例句：The policeman had to spend one month in training before being allowed to rejoin his unit.
这名警察在重返警队前需要接受一个月的培训。

1.President John Kennedy set the goal in a speech to Congress and the American people.

set a goal设定目标

例句：Many young people are torn between their ideals and reality and cannot set a goal for their future.
不少年轻人在理想与现实中交困，找不到自己的新坐标。

2.I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

commit to交付，把……投入

例句：I feel nervous when I commit myself on an important issue to many people.
我当着很多人，发表自己对重要问题的看法时会紧张。

3.But his flight gave Americans the feeling that the United States could pull ahead of the Soviet Union in the space race.

pull ahead of超前于，领先于

例句：The team have pull well ahead of the rest in the championship.
这个队在锦标赛中遥遥领先於其他各队。

4.Suddenly, fire broke out in the spacecraft.

break out突发, 爆发, 叫嚷, 倒空, 取出, 使作准备

例句：If atomic war were to break out, it would be disastrous for the whole world.
一旦发生核战争，整个地球将会陷入灾难。

阿波罗飞船由指令舱、服务舱和登月舱三部分组成，每次载三名宇航员，登月飞行结束后，返回地球的只有指令舱和三名宇航员。指令舱呈圆锥形，高3.23米，底面直径 3.1米，像一辆旅行汽车大小，发射重量约 5.9吨，返回地面时要丢弃辅助降落伞等物，这时重量只有 5.3吨。服务舱附在指令舱的下端，呈圆筒形，直径3.9米，高7.37米，舱重5.2吨，装上燃料和设备后重25吨。登月舱接于服务舱下面第三级火箭顶部的金属罩内，它分为下降段和上升段两部分，总长6.79米，四只底脚延伸时直径为9.45米，重4.1吨，如果包括燃料则重 14.7吨。下降段还装有考察月面的科学仪器，当上升段飞离月面时，下降段起发射架作用。

在载人登月的探索过程中,阿波罗1号至10号进行了多次不载人、载人的近地轨道飞行试验或登月预演。1969年7月16日，“阿波罗－11”号飞船经过长途跋涉，进入月球轨道，人类首次登月行动开始了。

go top

The Race to the Moon: Gemini 6 and 7 Meet High Above Earth in 1965 (09/6/30)
Race to the Moon: The Days of Project Gemini (09/6/23)
In Race to Space, the Winner Was a Russian (09/6/16)
Project Mercury: The US Space Program Begins (09/6/9)
Antarctica: A Scientific Laboratory Like No Other in the World (09/6/2)
Piracy Wave Hits Ships of All Flags Near Somalia's Coast (09/5/26)
Sleep Science: The Mystery of Dreams and Dreaming (09/5/19)
For Women, Science Is a World With and Without Limits (09/5/12)
Maya Lin's Works Are Her Answer to the Beauty of the Natural World (09/5/5)
Edwin Hubble Changed Our Ideas About the Universe (09/4/28)

[ti:Race to the Moon: NASA and the Early Apollo Flights of the 1960s]
[ar:51VOA.COM]
[al:51VOA.COM]
[by:51VOA.COM]
[00:00.00](MUSIC)
[00:10.02]I'm Barbara Klein.
[00:11.88]And I'm Steve Ember with EXPLORATIONS 
[00:14.93]in VOA Special English. 
[00:18.60]The nineteen sixties were exciting times 
[00:22.39]in space exploration. 
[00:25.13]Today look back at the first flights of the 
[00:28.93]Apollo program designed to land humans on the moon.
[00:33.90](MUSIC)
[00:38.19]The decision to go to the moon was made in May, 
[00:42.42]nineteen sixty-one. 
[00:44.91]President John Kennedy set the goal in a speech 
[00:49.14]to Congress and the American people.
[00:52.50]JOHN KENNEDY: "I believe that this nation should 
[00:54.55]commit itself to achieving the goal, 
[00:57.29]before this decade is out, 
[00:59.53]of landing a man on the moon 
[01:01.46]and returning him safely to the Earth. 
[01:03.76]No single space project in this period will be 
[01:07.92]more impressive to mankind or more important 
[01:10.85]for the long range exploration of space. 
[01:13.65]And none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. "
[01:17.94]At the time President Kennedy first spoke 
[01:21.42]about landing humans on the moon, 
[01:24.22]the Soviet space program seemed far ahead. 
[01:28.89]The Soviet Union had put the first satellite into Earth orbit. 
[01:34.92]A Soviet spacecraft was the first 
[01:38.40]to land instruments on the moon. 
[01:41.39]And a Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, 
[01:46.06]was the first man in space.
[01:49.29]The United States had sent an astronaut 
[01:53.21]of its own into space 
[01:55.51]for the first time in nineteen sixty-one. 
[01:58.87]Alan Shepard made only a fifteen-minute flight 
[02:03.91]in the little one-man Mercury spacecraft. 
[02:07.89]But his flight gave Americans the feeling 
[02:11.56]that the United States could 
[02:14.23]pull ahead of the Soviet Union in the space race.
[02:18.59]There was great public support for 
[02:22.19]President Kennedy's moon landing goal. 
[02:25.49]And Congress was ready to spend the 
[02:28.54]thousands of millions of dollars 
[02:30.97]that a moon landing program would cost.
[02:34.57](MUSIC)
[02:44.96]Much happened in the months after America 
[02:48.26]decided to go to the moon. 
[02:51.06]New space flight centers were built. 
[02:54.60]Designs for launch rockets and spacecraft were agreed on. 
[02:59.64]And a new spaceflight program
[03:03.08] -- Project Gemini -- was begun. 
[03:06.25]Flights in the two-man Gemini spacecraft 
[03:10.48]tested the men, equipment and methods to be used 
[03:15.58]in the Apollo program to the moon. 
[03:18.57]Gemini let astronauts learn about the dangers of radiation 
[03:24.35]and the effects of being weightless during long flights. 
[03:29.82]Astronauts learned to move their spacecraft 
[03:33.68]into different orbits and to join with other spacecraft.
[03:39.84]While the Gemini program prepared astronauts 
[03:44.32]for Apollo flights, 
[03:46.68]NASA engineers were designing and building the Apollo spacecraft. 
[03:52.34]It was really two spacecraft. 
[03:56.20]One was a cone-shaped command module. 
[04:00.49]The astronauts would ride to the moon in the command module. 
[04:05.28]And they would return home in it. 
[04:08.70]The second craft was a moon-landing vehicle. 
[04:13.49]Two astronauts would ride in it 
[04:16.85]from the orbiting command module to the moon's surface. 
[04:21.27]Later, the landing vehicle would carry them 
[04:25.18]back to the command module for the return trip to Earth.
[04:30.10]Engineers also were working on a huge new rocket for Apollo. 
[04:37.87]It needed much more power than the rockets used to 
[04:42.60]launch the one-man Mercury and the two-man Gemini flights. 
[04:47.25]The Apollo rocket was called Saturn. 
[04:51.36]Two Saturn rocket systems were built. 
[04:55.71]One was the Saturn One-B. 
[04:59.57]It did not have enough power to reach the moon. 
[05:10.34]But it could launch Apollo spacecraft on test flights 
[05:15.15]around the Earth.The other was the Saturn Five. 
[05:20.87]It would be the one to launch astronauts to the moon. 
[05:25.91]Saturn One-B rockets launched six unmanned Apollo spacecraft. 
[05:33.68]The test flights showed that all the rocket engines 
[05:38.10]worked successfully. They also showed that the Apollo spacecraft 
[05:43.76]could survive the launch and could re-enter 
[05:47.86]Earth's atmosphere safely.
[05:50.85]By the end of nineteen sixty-six, 
[05:55.20]NASA officials considered the Apollo spacecraft 
[05:58.94]ready for test flights by astronauts. 
[06:02.54]Three astronauts were named for 
[06:05.65]the first manned Apollo test flight: 
[06:08.51]Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. 
[06:13.30]Four weeks before the flight, 
[06:16.17]the three men were in the command module 
[06:18.96]at Cape Kennedy, Florida. 
[06:21.45]They were testing equipment for the flight.
[06:25.19]Suddenly, fire broke out in the spacecraft. 
[06:29.29]When rescuers got the door open, 
[06:32.40]they found the flames had killed the three astronauts. 
[06:37.13]Grissom, White and Chaffee were the first Americans 
[06:41.48]to die in the space program.
[06:44.16](MUSIC)
[07:04.00]Engineers redesigned and rebuilt the Apollo command module. 
[07:09.60]They designed a new door that could be opened more quickly. 
[07:14.26]They improved the electrical wiring. 
[07:17.75]And they used only materials that would not burn easily. 
[07:23.34]By November, nineteen sixty-seven, the moon launch rocket, 
[07:29.25]Saturn Five, was ready for a test flight. 
[07:33.61]It thundered into space perfectly, 
[07:37.15]pushing an unmanned Apollo spacecraft more than 
[07:41.26]eighteen thousand kilometers up into the atmosphere.
[07:46.05]The huge Saturn rocket, as tall as a thirty-six-floor building, 
[07:52.95]was the heaviest thing ever to leave Earth. 
[07:57.06]It weighed more than 
[07:58.99]two million seven hundred thousand kilograms. 
[08:02.78]The noise of its rockets was one of the loudest 
[08:06.76]man-made sounds ever created.
[08:10.43]At the end of the test flight, 
[08:12.92]the speed of the Apollo spacecraft was increased to 
[08:17.15]forty thousand kilometers an hour. 
[08:21.07]That was the speed of a spacecraft returning from the moon. 
[08:25.98]The spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere without damage. 
[08:31.89]Apollo flights Five and Six tested the moon-landing module 
[08:38.05]and the Saturn Five rocket.
[08:41.22]Astronauts first flew in the Apollo spacecraft in October, 
[08:47.69]nineteen sixty-eight. Apollo Seven astronauts Walter Schirra, 
[08:53.97]Walter Cunningham and Donn Eisele spent 
[08:58.45]eleven days orbiting the Earth. 
[09:01.62]They tested the spacecraft systems. And they broadcast, 
[09:05.04]for the first time, live television pictures of men in orbit. 
[09:14.91]Everything worked perfectly.
[09:17.45]The successful flight of Apollo Seven led NASA officials 
[09:24.42]to send the next flight, Apollo Eight, to the moon. 
[09:29.38]The launch was early on the morning of December twenty-first, 
[09:34.48]nineteen sixty-eight. 
[09:36.85]Millions of people were watching on television.
[09:40.50]Astronauts Frank Borman, 
[09:43.28]James Lovell and William Anders were 
[09:46.51]in the spacecraft at the top of the Saturn Five rocket. 
[09:51.10]NASA officials counted down the seconds: 
[09:54.95]five, four, three, two, one. 
[10:01.12]The mighty engines fired. 
[10:03.35]Slowly the giant rocket lifted off the Earth.
[10:09.26]Three hours later, NASA officials told the crew 
[10:14.91]that everything was "OK" for what they called TLI, 
[10:21.38]or trans-lunar injection. 
[10:25.07]This meant the Apollo Eight astronauts 
[10:28.41]could fire the rocket that would send them 
[10:31.54]from Earth orbit toward the moon. 
[10:35.22]Less than three days later, 
[10:37.30]Apollo Eight was orbiting the moon. 
[10:40.84]The American spacecraft was just one hundred ten kilometers 
[10:46.10]from its surface.On December twenty-fourth, 
[10:50.64]the astronauts made a television broadcast to Earth. 
[10:55.20]They described the moon's surface as a strange, gray, 
[11:00.96]lonely place. And, as they talked, people on Earth could 
[11:06.77]see pictures of the moon on their television sets.
[11:10.76]FRANK BORMAN: "And from the crew of Apollo Eight, 
[11:13.50]we close with good night, good luck, 
[11:19.51]a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, 
[11:23.55]all of you on the good Earth."
[11:26.18]Apollo Eight returned to Earth without problems. 
[11:30.53]It landed in the Pacific Ocean near a waiting ship.
[11:35.22](MUSIC)
[11:54.12]Apollo Eight showed that humans could travel to the moon 
[11:58.27]and return safely. 
[12:00.35]The next step was to test the lunar landing craft.
[12:03.62]That was the job of the astronauts of Apollo Nine: 
[12:07.91]James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell Schweickart. 
[12:12.87]They spent ten days in Earth orbit during March, 
[12:17.26]nineteen sixty-nine.
[12:19.33]During the flight, they separated the lunar lander 
[12:23.58]from the command module and flew it for eight hours. 
[12:28.88]They tested all its systems. 
[12:32.22]Then, they joined the two spacecraft together again, 
[12:36.92]just as astronauts would do after a moon landing.
[12:41.31]Engineers decided that after Apollo Nine, 
[12:45.56]one more test flight was needed. 
[12:49.25]They wanted to test the landing module near the moon. 
[12:54.15]So astronauts Tom Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan 
[13:00.32]did that during the flight of Apollo Ten.
[13:04.21]They reached the moon in May, nineteen sixty-nine. 
[13:11.59]Astronauts Stafford and Cernan entered the landing craft 
[13:16.09]and separated it from the command ship. 
[13:19.58]Stafford and Cernan flew the lander down to 
[13:23.67]only thirteen kilometers from the moon. 
[13:26.95]They described the moon during a radio and television broadcast. 
[13:32.42]"It is like wet clay," they said. 
[13:36.05]"Like a dry river bed in New Mexico or Arizona. 
[13:41.20]It is a beautiful sight."
[13:44.35]On May twenty-third, the lander rejoined the command module 
[13:50.36]one hundred kilometers above the moon. 
[13:53.34]Apollo Ten started for home. The final testing was done. 
[14:00.62]Apollo was ready to land on the moon. 
[14:04.32]That will be our story next week.
[14:08.10](MUSIC)
[14:15.94]This program was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano 
[14:19.83]and produced by Mario Ritter. I'm Barbara Klein.
[14:26.56]And I'm Steve Ember. You can find other programs 
[14:29.23]about the American space program at our web site, 51voa.com. 
[14:37.17]Join us again next week as we continue the story of 
[14:42.48]the Apollo space flights on EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.