Original vintage 1964 Douglas Missile and Space Systems Division Cold War advert, highlighting the defense contractors effort with NASA's Apollo space missions - "To help put man on the moon, we're building both the S-IV and S-IVB stages of the Saturn moon rockets. The huge NASA/Douglas S-IVB will be responsible for injecting Apollo manned spacecraft into earth orbit for extensive testing. Later it will become the third stage of the Saturn V...go into orbit with the manned Apollo on its nose...restart its engine in space and send the U.S. astronauts on their way to the moon."
Dimensions: Approx. 8.25 inches wide by 11 inches high.
NASA's Apollo Space Program
The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo was conceived in 1960 during the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency in the form of Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in his address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.
Kennedy's goal was accomplished on the Apollo 11 mission, when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo Lunar Module (LM) on July 20, 1969, and walked on the lunar surface, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the command and service module (CSM), and all three landed safely on Earth in the Pacific Ocean on July 24. Approximately 650 million people worldwide watched this first landing on television. Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last, Apollo 17, in December 1972. During these six spaceflights, twelve people walked on the Moon.
Apollo ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first crewed flight in 1968, but encountered a major setback in 1967 when the Apollo 1 cabin fire killed the entire crew during a prelaunch test. After the first Moon landing, sufficient flight hardware remained for nine follow-on landings with a plan for extended lunar geological and astrophysical exploration.
Budget cuts forced the cancellation of three of these. Five of the remaining six missions achieved landings; but the Apollo 13 landing had to be aborted after an oxygen tank exploded enroute to the Moon, crippling the CSM. The crew barely managed a safe return to Earth by using the Lunar Module as a "lifeboat" on the return journey.
Apollo used the Saturn family of rockets as launch vehicles, which were also used for an Apollo Applications Program, which consisted of Skylab, a space station that supported three crewed missions in 1973–1974, and the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, a joint United States-Soviet Union low Earth orbit mission in 1975.
Apollo set several major human spaceflight milestones – Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to leave low Earth orbit and to orbit another celestial body, and Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land humans on one.
Overall, the Apollo program returned 842 pounds (382 kg) of lunar rocks and soil to Earth, greatly contributing to the understanding of the Moon's composition and geological history. The program laid the foundation for NASA's subsequent human spaceflight capability and funded construction of its Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center. Apollo also spurred advances in many areas of technology incidental to rocketry and human spaceflight, including avionics, telecommunications, and computers.
Following the end of the Apollo program, humans would not leave low Earth orbit until the Artemis II lunar flyby in 2026, as part of the Artemis program, established as a successor to Apollo in 2017. Artemis intends to return humans to the surface of the Moon no earlier than 2028.
The Douglas Aircraft Company
The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace and defense company that was based in Southern California. It was founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr., and merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas, where it operated as a division.
Separate from the obvious multiple military and civilian airframes, Douglas was a pioneer in related fields, such as ejection seats, air-to-air missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and air-to-surface missiles, launch rockets, bombs, and bomb racks.
The company was ready to enter the new missile business during the 1950s. Douglas moved from producing air-to-air rockets and missiles to entire missile systems under the 1956 Nike missile program and became the main contractor for the Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile program and the Thor ballistic missile program. Douglas also earned contracts from NASA, most notably for designing the S-IVB stage of the Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets.
