HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - The picture ran in newspapers around America the following day: a beaming Dr. Wernher von Braun carried on the shoulders of a cheering crowd in Huntsville to celebrate the safe return of Apollo 11 July 24, 1969. You can see the video below.
It was a big crowd and a big day for the city. City leaders had asked businesses to close for the celebration, and many did. Thousands streamed downtown to hear and see von Braun, and leftover July 4 fireworks exploded around the city.
It was finally time to celebrate. Like every Apollo mission, nobody working for NASA had relaxed until the command module's parachutes opened over the Pacific Ocean. Seeing those parachutes meant the capsule had hit the atmosphere at the precise angle to avoid burning up. It also meant the capsule wouldn't crash full speed into the sea.
America had done it
America had done it - sent humans to the surface of the moon and returned them safely. It had cost an estimated $25 billion in 1960s dollars, but when von Braun stepped up to the microphone outside the Madison County Courthouse, his optimism was boundless.
"The moon is just a commuter flight," von Braun said, according to accounts in the next day's Huntsville Times. "Unmanned probes will pass Mars on July 28 and Aug. 5 to show before the end of the month more than we have ever known about the surface of that planet. If the pictures are interesting enough, I believe there will be a commitment for a manned flight to Mars in a year."
Forty-five years later, unmanned probes have landed on Mars. One of them - the famous Curiosity rover - is roaming the planet today. But humans haven't gone to Mars yet, and they don't have the capability today to go back to the moon.
NASA keeps trying. It is building a new rocket in a giant assembly complex outside New Orleans, and it is building a new crew capsule. The capsule has a name - Orion - but the rocket still needs one. It's called the Space Launch System now, but a better name and perhaps a contest to find that name seem likely.
Von Braun wanted humanity to have the ability to leave this planet because he believed it was the key to survival and growth. After Apollo 11 landed, he said humans were now "immortal."
Today's word is 'pioneer'
Today's NASA leaders use the word "pioneer" to describe their approach to the challenge of Mars. They want humans to live there, not just visit, and they have a plan. It involves long stays on the space station to learn more about what space does to the human body, and it means grabbing an asteroid and parking it near the moon where astronauts can practice approaching and manipulating it.
NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot, third from left, poses with NASA interns at a space celebration in Huntsville, Ala., on July 18, 2014. From left, Kaitlin Perdue, Jonathan Bonebrake, Lightfoot, NASA intern coordinator Mona Miller, Adam Kimberlin and Erin Kimberlin. (Lee Roop/lroop@al.com)
t's not sexy, but NASA says the plan has two benefits: It actually helps develop the equipment and skills needed for Mars, and it's affordable. The space station is already in place and will be for another decade.
At a celebration of Apollo 11 in Huntsville last weekend, NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot stood under a Saturn V at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and spoke about the future and the past. NASA still has the will to explore, he said, and the rocket it is building can take America or America and its international partners back to deep space.
Always financial challenges
But there are financial challenges. Von Braun never faced them until he'd reached the moon, but they eventually killed Apollo and they've killed or delayed everything since. Lightfoot went to Washington from the job of director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, where he presided over a brutal downsizing after President Obama canceled NASA's Constellation rocket program in 2010. Several thousand people lost their jobs in Huntsville alone, and Lightfoot said it was like the brutal downsizing following the end of Apollo.
"In Washington, there's no shortage of people telling us what we should do," Lightfoot said of the next step in space. "And there are lots of ways to do it. But we have to pick a path and stick with, sustain it. Quit starting and stopping. That's what's hurting us. We've got challenges, but we've also go the will. Let's keep the journey going. Let's get to Mars."