russians, and von braun s letter basically said, we can t beat them anywhere except to be the first on the moon. so that s what we committed to. reporter: may 25th, 1961 the president made a dramatic announcement before a joint session of congress. i believe that this nation should commit itself of achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. we didn t go to the moon to collect rocks. we went to the moon to stick the flag in the moon before the russians did. we didn t have the cold war would kennedy have had the same deal? no. to have something that would show america s ability to respond to a challenge as well as to do it in a full open and peaceful way, i think really did catch the imagination of the american people, and of the politicians at the time.
a man walked on the moon. apollo xvii astronauts in 1972. a number of the explorers who made that trip passed away. the rest of now in their late 70s, some 80ings, but the story they tell sounds like something out of the future, not the past. it s a story about how america with a combination of vision high-tech know-how, and good old-fashioned courage answered the challenge and achieved what is almost as unbelievable today as it was a half century ago. it was 1957 at the height of the cold war that the soviets launched a satellite named sputnik which orbited the earth at just over an hour and a half. the world may never be the same again. in 1957 when i was still in flight school, sputnik was launched. that s the beginning of the space age.