TITLE: Commemorating the 17 missions of the Apollo program on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing.

SUMMARY: Commemorating the 17 missions of the Apollo program on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing.

FULL TEXT:
WHEREAS, On July 20, 2019, people in Texas, across the nation, and around the world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, and this occasion provides a fitting opportunity to pay tribute to the creation of NASA and to all 17 missions of the Apollo program; and WHEREAS, Because our nation had fallen behind Europe in aircraft technology by the start of World War I in 1914, Congress created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in March 1915, and for the next four decades, NACA conducted aeronautical research that directly influenced the successful growth of the American aerospace industry; by the 1950s, NACA engineers were already thinking about the technology necessary to send men into space, including a worldwide tracking network, dual controls to give pilots greater autonomy over their craft, and heat shields for reentry into the atmosphere; and WHEREAS, Despite these efforts, the Soviet Union was first into space, launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957; in response, our nation built on the earlier work of NACA and created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which opened for business on October 1, 1958; NASA scrambled to quickly get the U.S. space program up to speed, and the urgency of the situation was made clear on April 12, 1961, when a Soviet astronaut became both the first man in space and the first man to orbit the Earth; less than a month later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space during a short suborbital flight on May 5, 1961; and WHEREAS, With the U.S. under tremendous pressure to catch and overtake the Soviet Union in the "space race," President John F. Kennedy sought a boldly ambitious project; he addressed a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, declaring 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 Earth"; and WHEREAS, President Kennedy expanded on this declaration in a famous speech at Rice University in Houston on September 12, 1962, when he stated, "this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space....But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"; and WHEREAS, Building on the success of NASA's first two manned spaceflight programs, Mercury and Gemini, the scientists, engineers, and technicians of the Apollo program began to develop and build the necessary technology to carry out the lunar mission and to train the brave astronauts who would make the journey; much of the training was based at what is now the Johnson Space Center in Houston, which was also the home of the NASA mission control center; and WHEREAS, The dangers inherent in spaceflight were lost on no one, and they became all the more apparent when the first scheduled manned mission, Apollo 1, ended in tragedy; astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire during a training simulation on the launch pad on January 27, 1967; the disaster caused NASA to reevaluate all aspects of the spacecraft and the program, but the Apollo administrators, technicians, and astronauts quickly rallied; between October 1968 and May 1969, four manned missions were successfully completed to conduct various trial runs in space, and the flight of Apollo 8 during Christmas 1968 became the first manned flight to orbit the moon and return to Earth; and WHEREAS, On July 16, 1969, the astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins of Apollo 11 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center aboard a Saturn Vrocket; after traveling 240,000 miles through space, the conjoined Apollo command module and the lunar lander, dubbed "the Eagle," went into orbit around the moon on July 19; the following day, Armstrong and Aldrin left Collins behind in the command module, entered the lander, and descended toward the lunar surface; with only 30 seconds of fuel remaining, Armstrong set the spacecraft down on the Sea of Tranquility and coolly radioed the astronauts' status to mission control: "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed"; and WHEREAS, Six and a half hours later, as a television camera beamed his image back to hundreds of millions of viewers on Earth, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon, making his famous pronouncement, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"; Aldrin followed a few minutes later, and together the two astronauts spent two and a half hours on the lunar surface, taking photographs, collecting samples, and planting an American flag; the following day, they returned to their colleague in the command module, and on July 24, the three men returned safely to Earth; and WHEREAS, Following the triumph of the first lunar landing, Americans returned to the moon six more times; one of the missions, Apollo 13, became known as a "successful failure" when, after an explosion on board crippled the command module, the ingenious improvisation of engineers on the ground and the bravery and determination of the crew allowed the astronauts to return safely to Earth; in all, the United States landed 12 men on the moon between the flights of Apollo 11 in July 1969 and Apollo 17 in December 1972; nearly 60 years after President Kennedy's address to Congress, the Russians have yet to land a single cosmonaut on the moon; and WHEREAS, Between October 2018 and December 2022, NASA is marking the 50th anniversaries of the Apollo flights, and the official logo of these milestone anniversaries depicts the arc of Earth's horizon striking through the word Apollo against a star field that recalls the collective effort of the 400,000 people who worked on the program; three central stars symbolize the sacrifice of the Apollo 1 astronauts, Grissom, White, and Chaffee; behind the star field is a blue nebula that stands for NASA's bold plans for the next half century of American space exploration, including a return to the moon and manned missions to Mars; and WHEREAS, The 17 missions of the Apollo program represent one of the greatest scientific and engineering feats in history, and they remain a testament to human imagination and ingenuity and to the pioneering spirit of a great nation; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the 86th Texas Legislature hereby commemorate the 17 missions of the Apollo program on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in July 2019. Price Speaker of the House I certify that H.R. No. 2210 was adopted by the House on May 27, 2019, by a non-record vote. Chief Clerk of the House