Countdown

In 1961 President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would try to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. During the two thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine days following his speech eighteen astronauts climbed into spaceships; three of them died before even leaving the ground. Eight rockets soared into space. And four hundred thousand people;engineers technicians scientists mathematicians and machinists;joined Project Apollo in hopes of making the dream a reality.