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50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landings recall great contributions of San Diego’s aerospace industry

Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. posed for a photograph beside the U.S. flag placed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1968. Aldrin and fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong spent nearly three hours walking on the moon, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs. In all, 12 Americans walked on the moon from 1969 to 1972.
Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. posed for a photograph beside the U.S. flag placed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1968. Aldrin and fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong spent nearly three hours walking on the moon, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs. In all, 12 Americans walked on the moon from 1969 to 1972.
(NASA)
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It was a moment of anxiety and suspense, fear and exhilaration. And, in the end, astonishment and pride.

Fifty years ago this weekend — at 1:17 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on July 20, 1969 — Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon when their fragile spacecraft Eagle gently touched down as hundreds of millions of people watched on live television.

“Houston. Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong said in his understated way of talking.

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At NASA’s Mission Control, fellow astronaut Charlie Duke leaned into a mic and said, “We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

A roar went up, and not just at NASA centers. There was wild joy across San Diego County, which has played a pivotal role in America’s manned space program from the beginning. The region also has been a big contributor in every major program since Apollo, a story whose latest chapter will be written today.

A spacecraft is scheduled to head for the International Space Station with life science experiments from UC San Diego and the nearby Aspen Neuroscience that will be processed by the station’s crew.

This story is a deeply familiar one to Francis French, a San Diego space historian and author whose books chronicle the early years of manned space flight, notably Project Apollo.

“Pilots such as Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, who left the first and the last footprints on the moon, talked of how vital San Diego was to teaching them the piloting skills they needed to later become astronauts,” French said.

“The first rockets that launched Americans into orbit were designed and built right here in San Diego. Many Apollo spacecraft, returning from the moon, first touched land again in San Diego, where they were made safe for further travel.

“And how many high schools can claim to have one future astronaut among their students, never mind three — as Grossmont High can? This city’s unique mix of military training, science and technology excellence, and precision manufacturing means San Diego not only contributed to the early years of space exploration, it also continues to do so.

“I have a strong suspicion the first person to go to Mars will have studied in San Diego — in fact, I think I even know who she is.”

The Union-Tribune has put together an abbreviated timeline of San Diego’s involvement in manned space flight with help from French and the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

FROM SAN DIEGO TO THE MOON — AND BEYOND

1955: San Diego’s Convair Division of General Dynamics began producing the Atlas rocket, which became the country’s first operational intercontinental missile four years later. Test facilities were established at Point Loma and Sycamore Canyon in Scripps Ranch, and a $40 million Atlas plant was constructed on Kearny Mesa.

Convair also developed a version of Atlas to launch space vehicles. In 1958, one of these rockets placed the nation’s first communications satellites into space. The satellite broadcast President Eisenhower’s Christmas message back to Earth.

“Through the marvels of scientific advance, my voice is coming to you from a satellite circling in outer space,” Eisenhower said. “My message is a simple one. Through this unique means, I convey to you and all mankind, America’s wish for peace on earth and good will to men everywhere.”

1957: On Oct. 4, the Soviet Union launched the first human-made satellite into space, deepening the Cold War and eventually leading to the U.S.-Soviet moon race.

1959: In April, NASA chose seven astronauts for Project Mercury, the country’s first manned space program. The so-called “Original Seven” were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton.

Six of the seven Mercury astronauts arrived in San Diego that September to study construction of the Atlas missile. Two were former San Diego area residents: Schirra (Del Mar) and Cooper (La Mesa).

1961-63: San Diego’s Convair ensured that the project soared, producing Mercury Atlas rockets that were used in manned and unmanned flight.

In November 1961, Enos the chimpanzee flew into space aboard one of the rockets and later splashed down in the Atlantic, where he was recovered.

A short time later, the Atlas rocket that would carry Glenn into orbit was loaded onto a cargo plane at Miramar Naval Air Station for transport to Cape Canaveral. ]

In February 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, flying in the Friendship 7 spacecraft. A tracking system built by San Diego’s Cubic Corp. helped NASA monitor the event.

Mercury Atlas rockets were later used to launch Carpenter, Schirra and Cooper on separate missions into space, helping the U.S. make up ground in the space race.

A team of San Diego-based Navy frogmen aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kearsarge helped retrieve Schirra and his Sigma 7 spacecraft out of the Pacific Ocean. The flight was closely tracked by the astronaut’s parents, Walter Sr. and Florence Leach Schirra, from their Point Loma home.

Also in 1961, Convair began producing the Centaur rocket booster stage that helped launch numerous satellites into space. Variations of the Centaur are still in use today.

1962: On Sept. 17, NASA formally kicked off the second phase of manned space flight by announcing nine more astronauts. As Mercury was still underway, the agency was expanding to two-person crews, helping NASA build the experience it would need to send men to the moon.

The “New Nine” were Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, Jim McDivitt, Elliot See, Tom Stafford, Ed White and John Young. Conrad and Young were Navy officers stationed at Miramar Naval Air Station.

1963: On Oct. 18, NASA named more astronauts, including David Scott, whose parents lived in La Jolla, Bill Anders, whose parents lived in La Mesa, and Gene Cernan, a former Miramar pilot.

1965: On Aug. 29, Cooper, the commanding pilot of Gemini 5, spoke by radio to Cmdr. Scott Carpenter in Sealab 2, stationed 205 feet beneath the ocean off La Jolla. It was the first conversation between an astronaut and an aquanaut.

SeaLab was one of three underwater habitats that were used to help explore living in isolation, research that was crucial to manned spaced travel.

1966: In June, the perils of manned flight repeatedly surfaced during the flight of Gemini 9A, which was piloted by Cernan. He and commander Thomas Stafford made several failed attempts to dock with an unmanned spacecraft, a skill that NASA needed to perfect for missions to the moon.

Cernan also made a spacewalk that nearly ended in tragedy. The face plate of his helmet fogged over and he had to grope his way back into the capsule.

1966-68: Atlas-Centaur rockets produced by Convair-General Dynamics launched seven unmanned Surveyor spacecraft, five of which successfully landed on the moon. These were the first American spacecraft to land there. They were chiefly used to look for safe places for the Apollo astronauts to land.

San Diego’s Ryan Aeronautical Co.’s Electronics and Space Systems Division provided the landing radar for Surveyor, and later for the Apollo moon landings.

1967: On March 20, Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong arrived in San Diego to test Ryan’s radar system for lunar landing vehicles. Armstrong and William Anderson, Ryan’s chief engineering test pilot, flight-tested the radar system in a helicopter, flying over a 600-foot course at the Ramona drag strip.

This Dec. 24, 1968, file photo made available by NASA shows the Earth behind the surface of the moon during the Apollo 8 mission.
This Dec. 24, 1968, file photo made available by NASA shows the Earth behind the surface of the moon during the Apollo 8 mission.
(William Anders / NASA)

1968: On Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 astronauts Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell became the first humans to orbit the moon. Anders, a graduate of Grossmont High School in La Mesa, took the first in a series of photos of the earth as seen from the moon, including a famous shot that became known as “Earthrise.”

“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this apparition and thought, wow, look at that,” Anders told the Union-Tribune in December 2018, during a visit to the San Diego Air & Space Museum. .”

1971: On Aug. 7, the San Diego-based amphibious assault ship Okinawa was used to recover the crew of Apollo 15 for the ocean..

1972: On December 13, Cernan became the last person to walk on the moon during the mission of Apollo 17.

At that moment, he said, “I’m on the surface; and, 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.

1973: On June 22, after a 28-day spaceflight, the crew of the Skylab 2 mission splashed down in the Pacific about 800 miles southwest of San Diego and 6.5 miles from the recovery ship, the carrier Ticonderoga. Two days after splashdown, as Ticonderoga sailed into San Diego, a helicopter carried the crew and their flight surgeon to meet President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev at the Western White House in San Clemente.

1974: After a successful 84-day mission, the crew of the third and final manned Skylab mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, 176 miles southwest of San Diego. Nearly 3,000 people turned out at North Island to welcome astronauts Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson, and William Pogue on Feb. 10.

This period of the 1970s was also important for San Diego’s General Dynamics, which made the shuttles Enterprise and Columbia.

1983: On June 18, astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space during a mission aboard shuttle Challenger.

“I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that’s when I got my first view of Earth,” Ride told an interviewer. “Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.”

The following year, Ride traveled into space a second time aboard Challenger. The orbiter carried seven astronauts, which at the time was the largest crew ever to go into space.

After her NASA career, Ride joined the faculty at UC San Diego, raising the visibility of the physics department. She also founded Sally Ride Science, a La Jolla-based educational organization that focuses on teaching STEM to young girls. The university’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography later named its newest research ship after Ride.

1986: The shuttle Challenger disintegrated during take-off, killing teacher Christa McAuliffe and six other astronauts. La Jolla teacher Gloria McMillan, who had been in competition to become the first teacher in space, witnessed the tragedy.

1989: Michael McCulley, a San Diego-born Navy test pilot, guided the shuttle Atlantis into Earth orbit, where his crew sent the Galileo spacecraft on a historic mission to Jupiter. Galileo became the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and to send a science probe into its atmosphere. It also was the first spacecraft to fly by an asteroid, and it gathered data that suggests that a liquid ocean exists beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Astronaut Ellen Ochoa, who graduated from Grossmont High School and San Diego State University, earned a master of science degree and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She is shown in a photo taken in January 1992.
(Cindy Lubke Romero /The San Diego Union-Tribune)

1993: On April 21, San Diego State University graduate Ellen Ochoa began a history-making career, becoming the first Hispanic woman in space. Ochoa shot into orbit aboard shuttle Discovery and helped her crew mates study how the sun interacts with earth’s atmosphere.

It was the first of four shuttle missions for Ochoa, who attended Grossmont High School in La Mesa.

In late 2012, Ochoa was named administrator of Johnson Space Center in Houston, becoming the first Hispanic director of JSC, the center of Mission Control and the heart of US manned space flight.

“I certainly owe a debt of gratitude to many women who came before me, and men who supported and championed them,” Ochoa told the National Women’s History Museum.

1993: James Newman, a physicist who graduated from La Jolla High School, flew the first of four space shuttle missions he would make during his career. Newman did everything from help with the earliest construction on the International Space Station to upgrading the Hubble Space Telescope. He also performed six space walks.

1994: Dr. Jerry Linenger, who did his surgical training at Balboa Naval Hospital San Diego and served on the UC San Diego faculty, began the first of two space missions, one which would prove to be life threatening.

In September, he was a mission specialist aboard shuttle Discovery, which used space-based lasers for the first time to study changes in Earth’s climate.

Then in 1997, Linenger rode shuttle Atlantis to the Russian space station Mir, becoming one of the handful of Americans who participated in the Shuttle-Mir program. It was a multi-nation effort to learn how to live in space. Shuttle-Mir also was meant to be a predecessor to the International Space Station. Mir was an aging, decrepit outpost prone to system failures.

About a month after Linenger arrived, a fire broke out, spewing smoke and molten metal. Access became blocked to one of the two escape capsules, raising the prospect that half of the six-person crew would have to be left behind if things got worse.

Linenger provided medical attention to the crew and helped fight the fire, which burned itself out. Scientists said the incident clarified that the possibility of a disaster fire in space was no longer an abstract idea.

Some things went well during the mission. Linenger became the first American to do a spacewalk from a foreign space station, and he carried out dozens of medical experiments, notably on sleep and physiology.

1998: La Mesa native Rick Sturckow piloted shuttle Endeavour during the first ISS assembly mission, becoming the third Grossmont High School graduate to fly in space. He also was on the crew of shuttle Discovery in 2001, commanded shuttle Atlantis in 2007, and was on shuttle Discovery in 2009 when it delivered the multi-purpose logistics module Leonardo to ISS.

He later became a pilot for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and, in 2018, co-piloted one of the company’s planes to the edge of space.

2003: On Feb. 1, San Diego-born astronaut William McCool and his six crewmates were killed when the space shuttle Columbia went into a spin and disintegrated during re-entry. McCool, the shuttle’s pilot, unsuccessfully attempted to bring Columbia out of the spin. The tragedy occurred at the end of a nearly 16-day science mission in earth orbit.

2008: San Diego native Stanley Love served as a mission specialist aboard shuttle Atlantis, which carried the European Space Agency’s Columbus Laboratory to the International Space Station. Love performed two spacewalks to help prepare the laboratory for installation.

2009: The original Apollo 9 capsule was placed on permanent display at the San Diego Air & Space Museum

2009: UC San Diego graduate Megan McArthur flew into space aboard shuttle Atlantis and used the orbiter’s robotic arm to retrieve the Hubble Space Telescope and place the instruments in the shuttle’s cargo bay for its final servicing.

2016: Kate Rubins, a UC San Diego graduate, spent four months aboard the International Space Station, where she largely did life science research. She became the first person to sequence DNA in space.

2017: In January, NASA choose three engineers who were educated in San Diego for astronaut training. They are: Jonny Kim, a University of San Diego graduate who became a Navy SEAL; Matthew Dominick, a University of San Diego graduate who became a Navy fighter pilot; and Robb Kulin, a UC San Diego graduate who later joined SpaceX as an engineer. Kulin eventually dropped out of the astronaut program.

2019: Jessica Meir, a UC San Diego Scripps graduate, is scheduled to fly to the space station for a 6-month mission in September.

Sources: San Diego Air & Space Museum; Francis French; NASA

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