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The seed was sown in July 1960. With the first man in space almost a year old and the Mercury program with another three years to run, NASA's Space Working Group (NST) has launched an ambitious task: a rather large and complex spacecraft. enough to carry three astronauts in orbit around the Earth.
He should, if necessary, be able to perform an even more impressive feat: fly over the Moon in orbit and launch a landing gear that would allow humanity to walk on another celestial body for the first time.
Launched as a historic fanfare in May 1961, the Apollo program became Nasa's most famous project – a multi-billion dollar industrial and logistic epic, involving hundreds of thousands of workers and, ultimately, 33 selected astronauts to give up the comfort of the only house of humanity.
Next month marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo's greatest triumph: the landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. Starting this week, BBC Future will mark the half century since this outstanding achievement through 50 different figures that will illustrate the scope and ambition of the Apollo program.
This will take everything from the money that astronauts have been paid to the number of workers who have helped make the operation possible; from the distance traveled on the Moon to the number of women participating in the Launch Control program while Armstrong and Aldrin had left the Earth on behalf of all humanity.
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