America's Greatest Projects and Their Engineers - VIII - Part 1

This online engineering PDH course chronicles the events and achievements of those American men and women who worked on the Apollo Project and solved the major hurdles between placing a man in space and placing a man on the Moon and assuring his safe return.

 

The major goal of the Apollo program when it was first conceived in 1960 was to stay ahead of the Soviet Union in the “Space Race.” Many in NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) believed that placing three American astronauts in a spacecraft to orbit the Earth would achieve this goal. In the spring of 1961 President John Kennedy was given the idea that placing an American astronaut on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth would surely give the U. S. a substantial lead over the Soviets. Over the next several months NASA’s administration and engineering corps developed various plans for doing what President Kennedy had suggested by the end of the decade. In the meantime, NASA realized that a “bridge” program would be necessary between Mercury and Apollo. They created the second phase of America’s space flight program, Project Gemini.

 

The decade of the 1960’s proved to be a technological masterpiece which the world had never seen before and may not see again in our lifetime. This course is a synopsis of the magnificent efforts of the many talented personnel in American management and the engineering and construction industries, as well as the many American astronauts who risked their very lives in order to make Kennedy’s words a reality.

 

This 6 PDH online course is applicable to engineers who are interested in learning about the engineering and design efforts required to provide the equipment and the technology to prepare astronauts to leave the Earth's gravitational field for lengthy periods of time, and to explore well beyond the Earth.