Very few people could name all 24 astronauts who flew to the moon on an Apollo mission, let alone the five Apollo astronauts whose missions didn’t even take them that far, but Apollo 11 was not some one of a kind event that took place in a vacuum (although it technically did), nor was it the end of the story, by a long shot.
Before getting to the moon was a possibility, countless things had to first be tested and proven; orbital rendezvous, extravehicular activity in a spacesuit, long-duration spaceflight to show the human body could endure zero-G for days or weeks at a time, and finally a field test of the two spacecraft that the astronauts would use: the Apollo command and service module (CSM) and the Apollo lunar module (LM, pronounces “LEM”, a holdover from when it was called the Lunar Excursion Module).
With the exception of the latter two, most of those objectives were accomplished during the Gemini program, where all but one of the future Apollo commanders first got practical experience in spaceflight (the other, Alan Shepard, was a veteran of the preceding Mercury program).
The first actual spaceflight of the Apollo command module was to be crewed by Mercury and Gemini veteran Gus Grissom, Gemini veteran Ed White, and rookie Roger Chaffee, on a mission then-informally known as Apollo 1. Even most casual history buffs know what happened next. Quite simply the spacecraft as it was was not a good spacecraft. It was wrought with a host of problems and design flaws that came from both NASA and the contractor rushing it through in an attempt to beat both the Russians and an arbitrary deadline. This culminated in a fire during a simple test when the pressure inside the spacecraft made opening the inward-swinging impossible for the astronauts to open it and escape. The one positive result of the deaths of these three men was it finally forced everyone involved to go back to the drawing board and address the many problems with the spacecraft design once and for all.
Ultimately, responsibility of flying the first manned Apollo mission fell to yet another Mercury and Gemini veteran, Wally Schirra, along with two rookies Donn Eislie and Walt Cunningham. The mission’s main objective of testing the CSM was successful but doesn’t seem to be remembered as a particularly pleasant experience by anyone involved. While every Apollo commander would have high standards, Schirra was supposedly particularly demanding of both contractors and NASA personnel. On top of that, the crew suffered colds during mission, making them irritable and sometimes flat out refusing instructions from mission control. Schirra had already announced his retirement from NASA following the mission, so there was very little NASA could do to discipline him afterwards, but it killed any slim change that Eislie and Cunningham (neither of whom were rated particularly high among the astronaut corps to begin with) would ever fly in space again.
The original mission schedule after that consisted of a test flight of the LM in low earth orbit on Apollo 8, then in high earth orbit on Apollo 9. Delays in the development of the LM led to some changes however. While a test flight of the LM in low orbit was still important, it was decided to send the former Apollo 9 crew into space first, without a LM, and fly around the moon. This honor would go to Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders. Flying to the moon, orbiting it for a day, and then returning during the week of Christmas, 1968, it was one of the few positive events in an infamously turbulent year. Months later, the LM proved itself to be worth the wait on Apollo 9 as Jim McDivitt and Rusty Schweikhart flew it successfully in earth orbit, while Dave Scott observed from the command module. (His chance to fly a LM of his own would come later).
Later that spring, the most collectively experienced Apollo team of Tom Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan would take both spacecraft to the lunar orbit. In what was essentially a “dress rehearsal” for an actual landing, Stafford and Cernan took their LM within 50,000 feet of the surface, before detaching the descent stage in a simulated abort and returning, while Young became the first person to orbit the moon alone. It’s worth noting that their LM (named “Snoopy” to the CSM’s “Charlie Brown”) is the only LM to go into space that remains intact to this day. It was left in a solar orbit, where it remains, rather than smashed into a million pieces on the lunar surface or incinerated upon reentry of earth’s atmosphere.
Apollo 11’s main objective was simply a successful landing and return, but Apollo 12 (crewed by Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and Alan Bean) demanded something more precise. Their landing site in November was in a region called the Ocean of Storms near Surveyor-3, a probe that had touched down two and a half years prior. Although never receiving the acclaim that 11 had, they successfully explored the surface and removed sections of the probe to return to earth. There were also a few less serious incidents, such as Bean ruining any chance of TV viewers seeing color footage from the moon when he accidentally wrecked the camera by pointing it at the sun, or Conrad and Bean discovering that their backup crew had secretly included a few shots of Playboy models among the pages of their wrist-mounted checklists.
The fateful voyage of Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise on Apollo 13 is almost as well known as Apollo 11 and therefore doesn’t need much explaining here. It’s a pity because Lovell had come to be quite enthusiastic about scientific discovery and surely would’ve done great work in that area on the surface.
The next successful mission, Apollo 14, was commanded by Alan Shepard, the first American in space, who had been sidelined due to an inner-ear ailment for nearly a decade, joined by Stu Roosa and Edgar Mitchell. The mission (which finally showed audiences color TV on the surface) at the Fra Mauro Highlands (13’s intended landing site) is best remembered for Shepard hitting a few golf balls on the surface and Mitchell’s private ESP experiments.
After several successful missions (and knowing that budget cuts would soon bring the program to an end), NASA authorized more ambitious missions, starting with Apollo 15. Crewed by Dave Scott, Al Worden, and Jim Irwin, the mission had longer EVA’s, a greater emphasis on science, and even a car, known as the lunar rover, allowing the astronauts to explore Hadley-Rille a greater distance. Despite later being marred by a scandal of the astronauts taking postal covers to the surface, which were later sold at high prices, the crew greatly advanced our understanding the moon. It ended with Scott dropping a hammer and feather at the time, a symbolic test confirming Galileo’s theory about objects falling at the same speed in a vacuum.
The next mission, Apollo 16, crewed by John Young, Ken Mattingly, and Charlie Duke, would explore the Descartes Highlands. It was an overdue experience for Mattingly, who had missed out on flying on Apollo 13 due to an ultimately-unfounded measles scare, and a poignant one for Duke, who had served in Mission Control as CAPCOM (speaking directly to the astronauts) during the Apollo 11 landing.
The final manned lunar landing in history to date took place at Taurus-LIttrow on December 11, 1972. Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, and Harrison Schmitt crewed the longest lunar mission. Over three lunar excursions, Cernan and Schmitt (a geologist and the only scientist, rather than a pilot, to go to the moon) took photos, collected rocks, and made the absolute most of their time on the surface. The final excursion ended with Cernan making the following statement:
...as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long into the future - I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. "Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."
Despite the hardware and software of the day being downright primitive by today’s standards, no serious attempt has been made by the US or any other nation to send humans to the moon, Mars, or any other celestial body. The few who did are now in their eighties and nineties and slowly, but steadily leaving us.
The Apollo program was far more than one astronaut or one mission. It was a marathon, not only to meet a deadline imposed by an ambitious president who didn’t live to see it, not only to beat the Russians, but to push the boundaries of our understanding of the universe we live in.
Here’s hoping we return that particular frontier soon.