Moon machines - Apollo 8

JFK started it all, the Russians were quite content to keep putting up into orbit round canisters that beeped. So they were both in the race to get a man into orbit it was just that the Russians possibly thought taking more risks with their Astronauts lives. Yuri Gagarin was a really brave man to go up into orbit with technology where it was. Alan Shepherd had to settle for being the second man in space due to the fact that Von Braun wanted a another test flight of the rocket due to problems with the Mercury-Redstone engine. If they had known the Russians were close to launching they would have dropped the test flight and taken the risk. The computers on the Apollo missions were no more powerful than a Pocket Calculator and today's mobile phones are more powerful.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Courage is found in unlikely places.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try. Dolly Parton
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/brave.html

 

You're wrong!

Georges Melies (France 1902) was the first one to get a man in space.

 

John Glenn was the first American to orbit, before him Alan Shepard was the first American into space. At that point the Russians were winning the space race. Amazing times to live through and follow, at the time I never thought about it being a race between two superpowers, it was just fascinating that men were going into space in rockets.

 

Yes but you also mustn't forget the country of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick whose space programme in 1963 built a manned spaceship to the moon. It was shown in the film 'The Mouse on the Moon' and was the sequel to the 'Mouse Who Roared'.

David Kossoff was the scientist who invented and built the spaceship.

Both films were good with David being the only main character in both. Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg, William Hartnell and Leo McKern in the first and Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Bernard Cribbens, Terry Thomas, June Ritchie and John Le Mesurier in the second.