H.R. No. 2210
R E S O L U T I O N
WHEREAS, On July 20, 2019, people in Texas, across the
nation, and around the world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of
the historic Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, and this occasion
provides a fitting opportunity to pay tribute to the creation of
NASA and to all 17 missions of the Apollo program; and
WHEREAS, Because our nation had fallen behind Europe in
aircraft technology by the start of World War I in 1914, Congress
created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in March
1915, and for the next four decades, NACA conducted aeronautical
research that directly influenced the successful growth of the
American aerospace industry; by the 1950s, NACA engineers were
already thinking about the technology necessary to send men into
space, including a worldwide tracking network, dual controls to
give pilots greater autonomy over their craft, and heat shields for
reentry into the atmosphere; and
WHEREAS, Despite these efforts, the Soviet Union was first
into space, launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957; in response,
our nation built on the earlier work of NACA and created the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which opened for
business on October 1, 1958; NASA scrambled to quickly get the
U.S. space program up to speed, and the urgency of the situation was
made clear on April 12, 1961, when a Soviet astronaut became both
the first man in space and the first man to orbit the Earth; less
than a month later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space
during a short suborbital flight on May 5, 1961; and
WHEREAS, With the U.S. under tremendous pressure to catch and
overtake the Soviet Union in the "space race," President John
F. Kennedy sought a boldly ambitious project; he addressed a
special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, declaring that
"this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before
this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him
safely to Earth"; and
WHEREAS, President Kennedy expanded on this declaration in a
famous speech at Rice University in Houston on September 12, 1962,
when he stated, "this State of Texas, this country of the United
States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to
look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved
forward--and so will space. . . . But why, some say, the moon? Why
choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest
mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play
Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in
this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but
because they are hard"; and
WHEREAS, Building on the success of NASA's first two manned
spaceflight programs, Mercury and Gemini, the scientists,
engineers, and technicians of the Apollo program began to develop
and build the necessary technology to carry out the lunar mission
and to train the brave astronauts who would make the journey; much
of the training was based at what is now the Johnson Space Center in
Houston, which was also the home of the NASA mission control center;
and
WHEREAS, The dangers inherent in spaceflight were lost on no
one, and they became all the more apparent when the first scheduled
manned mission, Apollo 1, ended in tragedy; astronauts Virgil "Gus"
Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire
during a training simulation on the launch pad on January 27, 1967;
the disaster caused NASA to reevaluate all aspects of the
spacecraft and the program, but the Apollo administrators,
technicians, and astronauts quickly rallied; between October 1968
and May 1969, four manned missions were successfully completed to
conduct various trial runs in space, and the flight of Apollo 8
during Christmas 1968 became the first manned flight to orbit the
moon and return to Earth; and
WHEREAS, On July 16, 1969, the astronauts Neil Armstrong,
Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins of Apollo 11 lifted off from the
Kennedy Space Center aboard a Saturn V rocket; after traveling
240,000 miles through space, the conjoined Apollo command module
and the lunar lander, dubbed "the Eagle," went into orbit around the
moon on July 19; the following day, Armstrong and Aldrin left
Collins behind in the command module, entered the lander, and
descended toward the lunar surface; with only 30 seconds of fuel
remaining, Armstrong set the spacecraft down on the Sea of
Tranquility and coolly radioed the astronauts' status to mission
control: "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed";
and
WHEREAS, Six and a half hours later, as a television camera
beamed his image back to hundreds of millions of viewers on Earth,
Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon,
making his famous pronouncement, "That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind"; Aldrin followed a few minutes later,
and together the two astronauts spent two and a half hours on the
lunar surface, taking photographs, collecting samples, and
planting an American flag; the following day, they returned to
their colleague in the command module, and on July 24, the three men
returned safely to Earth; and
WHEREAS, Following the triumph of the first lunar landing,
Americans returned to the moon six more times; one of the missions,
Apollo 13, became known as a "successful failure" when, after an
explosion on board crippled the command module, the ingenious
improvisation of engineers on the ground and the bravery and
determination of the crew allowed the astronauts to return safely
to Earth; in all, the United States landed 12 men on the moon
between the flights of Apollo 11 in July 1969 and Apollo 17 in
December 1972; nearly 60 years after President Kennedy's address to
Congress, the Russians have yet to land a single cosmonaut on the
moon; and
WHEREAS, Between October 2018 and December 2022, NASA is
marking the 50th anniversaries of the Apollo flights, and the
official logo of these milestone anniversaries depicts the arc of
Earth's horizon striking through the word Apollo against a star
field that recalls the collective effort of the 400,000 people who
worked on the program; three central stars symbolize the sacrifice
of the Apollo 1 astronauts, Grissom, White, and Chaffee; behind the
star field is a blue nebula that stands for NASA's bold plans for
the next half century of American space exploration, including a
return to the moon and manned missions to Mars; and
WHEREAS, The 17 missions of the Apollo program represent one
of the greatest scientific and engineering feats in history, and
they remain a testament to human imagination and ingenuity and to
the pioneering spirit of a great nation; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the 86th Texas
Legislature hereby commemorate the 17 missions of the Apollo
program on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first moon
landing in July 2019.
Price
______________________________
Speaker of the House
I certify that H.R. No. 2210 was adopted by the House on May
27, 2019, by a non-record vote.
______________________________
Chief Clerk of the House