Idag fick jag så beskedet, att jag passerat 40% av den totala sträckan i ”To the Moon”, och att ännu ett träd har planterats.

Då Ellie kommit hem till oss efter jobb, och efter att vi ätit, begav vi oss ut på en runda.

Ellie tyckte att en runda på ca: 7 km var bra, så jag planerade rutten i huvudet, sedan var vi på väg ut.

Vädret var behagligt varmt, solen var på väg ner och det blåste knappt. Något kyligare när vi var på väg hemåt igen.

Strax efter utförd runda, kom det ännu ett vykort från utmaningen.

Vi fick även besked om att vi passerat 60% av den totala sträckan, och att det plockats upp ytterligare 10-st plastflaskor från världshaven.

NASA begins the programme with two unmanned missions, Gemini I and II. The first tests the spacecraft’s structural integrity, as well as the Titan II launch vehicle, a repurposed ballistic missile adapted to launch the Gemini spacecraft. The second launch is focused on the safety of the crew. Thus, the tests are concerned with the rocket’s capability to resist an atmospheric re-entry as well as the integrity of its hull and life support systems.

The first manned mission of the project is Gemini III. On March 23 1965, Virgil Grisson and John Young orbit the Earth for almost five hours. This allows NASA to test their tracking equipment, as well as evaluate the onboard equipment operated by astronauts and the craft’s controls. NASA will launch nine more manned missions, each one inching them closer to the possibility of a spaceflight to the Moon. Then, as Gemini IV soars through the heavens, Ed White performs the USA’s first spacewalk.

On Gemini VIII, a young astronaut named Neil A. Armstrong, along with David Scott, makes his first spaceflight. This is a long flight of two weeks, aimed at performing the world’s first space docking, essential for the trip to the Moon. Armstrong expertly docks Gemini VIII with its docking target, the Agena, and begins an orbit around the Earth. Just as they pass around our planet, and out of communications range with the Houston Mission Control Centre, they begin to rapidly spin. At first, Armstrong believes that it’s the Agena that is causing the problem, so he shuts down the craft’s control system. The spinning increases, and the astronauts experience near-blackout conditions. In desperation, they detach the Agena, but this only makes the problem worse. 

As it turns out, one of Gemini’s capsule’s thrusters is malfunctioning. The craft is spinning like a top now, making one revolution per second. They must make an emergency landing. Engaging his re-entry system, Armstrong lands his craft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Gemini VIII’s mission is only a partial success, but Armstrong demonstrates his intelligence and acumen, keeping his head and improvising in a state of semi-consciousness and saving himself, his crewmate and the mission.

The final Gemini launch, Gemini XII, carries two important NASA heroes, Buzz Aldrin, who will be the second man on the Moon, and Jim Lovell, who will survive the disastrous Apollo 13 mission. On November 11th, the two astronauts spend almost four days in orbit, conducting spacewalks and other experiments. By the time they touch down on Earth, the bridge between Mercury and Apollo is complete, and the Moon missions can begin.

Gabriel är en bit före mig i denna utmaning, men vi har nu passerat 20% av den totala sträckan, och ännu vars ett träd har planterats!

With such a slim margin for error, rigorous tests must be carried out before sending a manned crew into orbit. Fears over the rockets’ safety are confirmed with the launch of the second test rocket, Kosmos 57, which receives an unauthorised radio signal from a launch station, causing the engine to fire up prematurely, and the craft to become destabilised, eventually spinning out of control and burning up. 

On the 12th October 1964, Voskhod 1 is launched. Korolev wishes to test how people of different backgrounds work together in the stressful and alien conditions of space flight. Thus, two of the cosmonauts are civilians: Konstantin Feoktistov is a flight engineer who worked Vostok programme and Boris Yegorov is a physician. Together with Vladimir Komarov, they begin the first space flight containing more than one cosmonaut.  

This is a highly dangerous mission, and to save mass, the crew are not equipped with ejector seats, an escape system or space suits. Fortunately, it is a success, and trio stay in space for just over an hour. During this time, Yegorov conducts tests on his fellow cosmonauts’ heart and pulse rates, muscle coordination, brainwaves and blood, in an attempt to understand the effects of space travel on human physiology. The cosmonauts are eager to stay in orbit, and though Korolev is tempted to allow them to continue their mission, eventually they are called down to Earth, where they land safely.

The final Voskhod mission is launched in March 1965 with the aim of performing humanity’s first spacewalk – where a cosmonaut would exit his craft and float in the vacuum of space. Two men, Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyayev, join the mission. After 90 minutes, Leonov enters the craft’s inflatable airlock and begins the spacewalk. Later, he would describe the magical feeling of floating in space where he ‘felt like a seagull with its wings outstretched, soaring high above the world’.

In keeping with Soviet secrecy, no one, not even the cosmonauts’ immediate family, knew about the spacewalk ahead of time. Leonov, in an article he wrote decades later, remembers his wife telling him of his father’s furious reaction to the stunt as he watched it live back on Earth.

“Why is he acting like a juvenile delinquent?” he shouted at the TV, “everyone else can complete their mission properly, inside the spacecraft. What is he doing clambering about outside? Somebody must tell him to get back inside immediately. He must be punished for this.”

Mr. Leonov is right to be worried. As his son finished his 12-minute spacewalk, he realises that, as there is no atmospheric pressure, the oxygen in his spacesuit has caused it to stiffen, making it impossible to re-enter the airlock. With just a few minutes of life support remaining, Leonov must think quickly. He realises that the only way to re-enter is to gradually let oxygen out of his spacesuit, making it looser and more pliable. Leonov painstakingly lets oxygen out of its valve, saving himself by jettisoning the very thing keeping him alive. Luckily, it works, and little by little, he squeezes himself back into the airlock. Then, like a contortionist, he must curl himself into a ball, spin around (an almost impossible manoeuvre in such a tight space) and seal its doors shut. 

The craft itself barely makes it back to Earth. The cosmonauts miss their intended landing site by over 200 miles (321 km), touching down in the middle of a forest in the Ural Mountains. Leonov suffers from a severe heatstroke, but is alive. The pair sit underneath the towering Siberian pines waiting to be picked up by their comrades.

The live transmission was cut by the Soviet authorities as soon as it looked like Leonov was in difficulty, and none would know of the cosmonaut’s near-death experience until years later. What was known as Leonov and Belyayev arrived safely back in Moscow, however, was that a human being could survive in space without suffering hallucinations, exhaustion or losing consciousness. This is a discovery with wide-ranging implications, and the Voskhod flights proved invaluable for mankind’s understanding of the science and practicalities of space travel, proving that longer-term space travel, such as that needed to travel to the Moon, was possible.

Måndag morgon och man vaknar till detta i maillådan!

The Soviet reaction to Kennedy’s ‘To the Moon’ speech is muted, and their leader, Nikita Khrushchev, at first declines to comment.  After all, the Soviets are naturally reluctant to play the Space Race on US terms; the nation, for example, never publicly states a desire to travel to the Moon. The Soviets instead focus on their own priorities – rocket technology and space flight.

In June 1963, Valentina Tereshkova takes off in the Vostok 6 rocket and becomes the first woman in space. Communists regard gender equality as a fundamental part of the liberation of the working class. The Soviets took this seriously, enshrining gender equality in their constitution way back in 1918, at a time when even a woman’s right to vote was seen as a radical idea in most of the Western world. Tereshkova’s solo mission is therefore a symbolic fulfilment of one of the USSR’s core aims – the liberation of women from rigid gender roles.

It is also a great propaganda victory over the Americans. In the 1960s, the US was beset with a series of social problems, especially racial discrimination and gender inequality. Women’s dreams went unrealised, many were condemned to a life of domestic drudgery, and those who did enter the workforce battled a culture of sexism, patronising paternalist attitudes and sexual harassment (though let’s not take the Soviet argument too literally here, as whilst sexism was societally taboo, many Soviet women were still expected to fulfill their traditional role as homemakers as well as working).

Additionally, Mercury 13, a group of privately trained female astronauts who had demonstrated their competence numerous times, were denied entry into NASA’s space programme simply due to their gender. With Tereshkova’s flight, the USSR undercuts the USA’s claim to be a nation that values freedom and self-actualisation, showing the rest of the world that, if you’re a woman and you have big dreams, perhaps it’s better to be a Soviet than an American. 

The Soviets continue their lead in rocket technology and space flight. But then, as autumn approaches, Kennedy does the unimaginable: he extends a hand out to the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. He proposes that the US and the USSR work together and establish a joint lunar programme. Americans and Soviets will explore the stars hand in hand, working to achieve the loftiest goal in humanity’s history.

Kennedy’s proposal is made in a climate of relaxing tensions after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Soviets placed nuclear missiles on nearby Cuba and the world came a hair’s-breadth from annihilation. Diplomacy, not war, averts disaster, and afterwards a partial nuclear test ban treaty is agreed, banning all nuclear tests apart from underground. Additionally, a hotline between the Soviet General Secretary and the American President is established, allowing the leaders of the two superpowers direct communication for the first time.

This is one of history’s great what-ifs. Perhaps this was the first step in the end of the Cold War. Perhaps the bloody and destructive American foreign policy of anticommunism would ramp down, and the Vietnam War would come to an early end. Perhaps, without a seemingly all-powerful enemy, the paranoid and totalitarian Soviet system would open up and allow its citizens the space, freedom and trust to question their leaders.  

We will never know. JFK is assassinated in Dallas, Texas, just a month after the proposal. Lee Harvey-Oswald’s bullet cuts short not just a good man’s life, but also any hope of a collaborative lunar project and a softening of US-Soviet relations. Now, Lyndon B. Johnson, bullish and aggressive, enters the White House. He will pursue a harder line against the USSR, intensify the US’s war against the Vietnamese communists and continue the Space Race as a zero-sum ideological battle.