The Academy of Aerospace and Engineering at GHAMAS
SUMMER READING
Entering 9^th, 10^th,11^th, and 12^th Grade 2012-13 Academic Year

Dear Parents:

The summer reading assignment for AAE is intended to help your student be better prepared for the type of reading and writing he or she will encounter next year. It is imperative that your student completes their summer reading before the first day of school. Thank you for your support.

Assignment Overview

During the summer, students are required to read a text selected by their upcoming English teacher **All assignments must be typed and MLA formatted. **

Assignment – Incoming 9^th Grade: Students will be required to read Amelia Earhart and complete the attached assignment. Additionally, students will choose one text from the list of choice texts and complete 6 dialectical journals. There will be a total of two assignments handed in on the first day of school.

Assignment – Incoming 10^th Grade: Students will be required to read George Orwell’s 1984 and respond to a question pertaining to their thoughts, questions, a discussion of the characters, title, conflict and symbolism. This will be scored on the twelve-point rubric. Students will also be annotating the short story “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell and be prepared for a discussion on the text when school begins. There will be a total of two assignments due on the first day of school.

Assignment – Incoming 11^th AP Literature and World Literature : Students will read Apollo 13 by James Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger as well as “The Voyages of Apollo,” by NASA’s Chief Historian, Steven J. Dick and President John F. Kennedy’s address and write a paper considering how American Ingenuity played a critical role in the successful completion of the aborted Apollo mission. Students will also learn selected literary terms for a test the first week of school. World Literature students only will read Oedipus Rex and be ready to read the sequel to it upon returning to class.

Assignment – Incoming 12^th Grade College and Creative Writing and AP Language and Composition: Students will read Apollo 13 by James Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger as well as “The Voyages of Apollo,” by NASA’s Chief Historian, Steven J. Dick and President John F. Kennedy’s address and write a paper considering how American Ingenuity played a critical role in the successful completion of the aborted Apollo mission.

Due Dates:

August 29, 2011 or the first day of school

SELECTIONS

ENTERING GRADE: 9
You must read the required text These books should all be available for purchase at your local Barnes & Noble bookstore or online via Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Most of these books should also be available for borrowing at your local public library.
American Literature
Required Text for answering questions- Amelia Earhart Biography	Choose 1 of the following texts for your required reading assignment with dialectical journals. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Walden by Henry David Thoreau Einstein’s Dreams by Allen Lightman Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

ENTERING GRADE: 10
You must read the required texts This book should all be available for purchase at your local Barnes & Noble bookstore or online via Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Most of these books should also be available for borrowing at your local public library. The short story is available to printed out online.
Power of Voice
Required Text - 1984 by George Orwell “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell	.

ENTERING GRADE: 11
You must read the required text These books should all be available for purchase at your local Barnes & Noble bookstore or online via Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Most of these books should also be available for borrowing at your local public library.
AP Literature	World Literature
Required Text Apollo 13 by James Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger Literary Terms packet (Exam first week of class)	Required Text Oedipus Rex by Sophocles Apollo 13 by James Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger Literary Terms packet (quizzes throughout first weeks of school)

ENTERING GRADE: 12

You must read the required text and one additional text.

These books should all be available for purchase at your local Barnes & Noble bookstore or online via Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Most of these books should also be available for borrowing at your local public library.

AP Language and Composition

Required Text

Apollo 13 by James Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger

ENTERING GRADE: 12

You must read the required text and one additional text.

College and Creative Writing

Required Text

Apollo 13 by James Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger

Assignment incoming 9^th Grade –

For the Amelia Earhart book, entitled The Fun of it, students will answer the following questions in a paragraph response: These responses must be typed and MLA formatted.

1) How did the different occupations or jobs that Amelia Earhart had impact her life and the choices that she made, especially in terms of her ultimately becoming a woman pilot?

2) Earhart gives details about the contributions made by different women in aviation. Name five of these women and describe the contributions that they made to aviation.

3) How does Earhart envision the past, present, and the future of aviation?

4) What is Earhart’s view on gender equality in the aviation world?

For the second novel that they select, students will complete a dialectical journal. There should be a minimum of six entries as students should respond to all the "codes" at least once (more than once if they do more entries).

Dialectical Journals

The term “Dialectic” means “the art or practice of arriving at the truth by using conversation involving question and answer.” Think of your dialectical journal as a series of conversations with the texts we read during this course. The process is meant to help you develop a better understanding of the texts we read. Use your journal to incorporate your personal responses to the texts, your ideas about the themes we cover and our class discussions. You will find that it is a useful way to process what you’re reading, prepare yourself for group discussion, and gather textual evidence for your Literary Analysis assignments.

Procedure:

As you read, choose passages that stand out to you and record them in the left-hand column of a T-chart (ALWAYS include page numbers).
In the right column, write your response to the text (ideas/insights, questions, reflections, and comments on each passage)
If you choose, you can label your responses using the following codes:

(Q) Question – ask about something in the passage that is unclear
(C) Connect – make a connection to your life, the world, or another text
(P) Predict – anticipate what will occur based on what’s in the passage
(CL) Clarify – answer earlier questions or confirm/disaffirm a prediction
(R) Reflect – think deeply about what the passage means in a broad sense – not just to the characters in the story. What conclusions can you draw about the world, about human nature, or just the way things work?
(E) Evaluate - make a judgment about the character(s), their actions, or what the author is trying to say

Complete journal entries for at least two passages each week. You can earn up to 25 points per week for your journals.

Sample Dialectical Journal entry: THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O’Brien

Passages from the text	Pg#s	Comments & Questions
“-they carried like freight trains; they carried it on their backs and shoulders-and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry”.	Pg 2	(R) O’brien chooses to end the first section of the novel with this sentence. He provides excellent visual details of what each solider in Vietnam would carry for day-to-day fighting. He makes you feel the physical weight of what soldiers have to carry for simple survival. When you combine the emotional weight of loved ones at home, the fear of death, and the responsibility for the men you fight with, with this physical weight, you start to understand what soldiers in Vietnam dealt with every day. This quote sums up the confusion that the men felt about the reasons they were fighting the war, and how they clung to the only certainty - things they had to carry - in a confusing world where normal rules were suspended.

Choosing Passages from the Text:

Look for quotes that seem significant, powerful, thought provoking or puzzling. For example, you might record:

Effective &/or creative use of stylistic or literary devices
Passages that remind you of your own life or something you’ve seen before
Structural shifts or turns in the plot
A passage that makes you realize something you hadn’t seen before
Examples of patterns: recurring images, ideas, colors, symbols or motifs.
Passages with confusing language or unfamiliar vocabulary
Events you find surprising or confusing
Passages that illustrate a particular character or setting

Responding To the Text:

You can respond to the text in a variety of ways. The most important thing to remember is that your observations should be specific and detailed. You can write as much as you want for each entry. You can use looseleaf paper for your journals or download the template from the Author Study page on the ESA web site.

Basic Responses

Raise questions about the beliefs and values implied in the text
Give your personal reactions to the passage
Discuss the words, ideas, or actions of the author or character(s)
Tell what it reminds you of from your own experiences
Write about what it makes you think or feel
Agree or disagree with a character or the author

Sample Sentence Starters:

I really don’t understand this because…

I really dislike/like this idea because…

I think the author is trying to say that…

This passage reminds me of a time in my life when…

If I were (name of character) at this point I would…

This part doesn’t make sense because…

This character reminds me of (name of person) because…

Higher Level Responses

Analyze the text for use of literary devices (tone, structure, style, imagery, conflict, symbolism, theme, irony etc.)
Make connections between different characters or events in the text
Make connections to a different text or world event
Discuss the words, ideas, or actions of the author or character(s)
Consider an event or description from the perspective of a different character
Analyze a passage and its relationship to the story as a whole

Assignment incoming 10^th Grade - CAPT Prompt Question #1

Forming Understanding of 1984 by George Orwell

(1) What are your thoughts and questions about the story? You might reflect upon the characters, their problems, the title and symbolism in the text.

A. In a one page typed response, you must address each part of this 6 part question: 1 question you had after reading the text; 1 culminating thought about the text; a brief discussion of what type of character this is (round, flat, static, dynamic) and why; discuss what type of conflict this is (man vs. man, man vs. self, man vs. nature, man vs. society etc); discuss why the title has that name; and a major symbol in the text-(hint-the title is not a symbol).

This typed page must be MLA formatted

(2) Students must also print out a copy of “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell and bring it to class fully annotated for an in-class discussion of the text.

A. Things to annotate for include: tone, mood, conflict, foreshadowing, theme, motif, antithesis, symbolism, identifying the protagonist and antagonist and characterization of each including whether they are round, flat, static or dynamic characters, point of view, anything unique about the author’s style, use of metaphor, simile, imagery, personification, and irony.

Incoming 10^th Grade - Response to Literature Rubric

Each score category contains a range of student responses that reflect the descriptions given below.

Score Point 6

The response demonstrates:

· a basic understanding of the whole story; interpretation is perceptive and richly supported with examples from the text

· an exceptional ability to reflect, revise, reshape, and/or deepen initial understanding

· perceptive associations/connections between the text, other texts, and/or outside experiences; supports these connections with examples from the text

· perceptive judgments about the literary quality of the text; supports these judgments with examples from the text, other texts, and/or outside experiences

Score Point 5

The response demonstrates:

· a basic understanding of whole text; interpretation is thoughtful and well supported with examples from the text

· an acceptable ability to reflect, revise, reshape, and/or deepen initial understanding

· associations/connections between the text, other texts, and/or outside experience; generally supports these connections with examples from the text

· thoughtful judgments about the literary quality of the text, generally supports these judgments with examples from the text, other texts, and/or outside experiences

Score Point 4

The response demonstrates:

· a basic understanding of the whole text; a plausible interpretation is supported with some examples from the text

· some ability to reflect, revise, reshape, and/or deepen initial understanding

· some associations/connections between the text, other texts, and/or outside experience, may not be supported with examples from the text

· some judgments about the literary quality of the text; lacks depth and/or is not generally supported with examples from the text, other texts, and/or outside experiences

Score Point 3

The response demonstrates:

· some understanding of portions of the text or text as a whole; interpretation lacks insight and/or support from the text

· limited ability to reflect, revise, reshape, and/or deepen initial understanding

· an association/connection between the text, other texts, and/or outside experience, superficial, lacks depth and/or support

· judgments about the literary quality of the text; tends to be formulaic and/or lacks examples from the text, other texts, and/or outside experiences

Score Point 2

The response demonstrates:

· a literal or superficial understanding of portions of the text or the text as a whole

· little or no ability to reflect, revise, reshape, and/or deepen initial understanding

· difficulty in making or supporting an association/connection between the text, other texts, and/or outside experiences

· superficial or emotional judgments about the literary quality of the text or no support with examples from the text other texts, and/or outside experiences

Score Point 1

The response demonstrates:

· limited understanding and/or serious misunderstanding of portions of the text or the text as a whole

· little or no ability to reflect, revise, reshape, and/or deepen initial understanding

· no meaningful associations/connections between the text, other texts, and/or outside experiences

· no awareness of the literary quality of the text

Assignment incoming 11^th Grade – AP course and World Literature

Welcome to an extremely rewarding and challenging English course. The purpose of this letter is to explain your summer reading responsibilities. These assignments are designed to give you a jump start on the task at hand, preparing you for college writing assignments and for some of you, the AP exam in May, 2013.

This summer, AP Literature and World Literature students have a two-part assignment:

Part 1:

This year, the summer reading assignments at The Academy of Aerospace & Engineering will reflect our Magnet Theme. To that end, AP Literature students will be reading Apollo 13, by James Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger as well as “The Voyages of Apollo,” by NASA's Chief Historian, Steven J. Dick and President John F. Kennedy’s address at Rice University, Houston, Texas, concerning the nation's efforts in space exploration. In his speech, the President discusses the necessity for the United States to become an international leader in space exploration and famously states, "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."

Your assignment:

American athlete Bob Richards once said, “Ingenuity, plus courage, plus work, equals miracles.” Consider how American ingenuity played a critical role in the successful completion of the aborted Apollo 13 mission. In your paper, integrate details from the book, Apollo 13, “The Voyages of Apollo,” by NASA's Chief Historian, Steven J. Dick as well as John F. Kennedy’s address at Rice University.

Papers should:

Be between 500-750 words
Follow the MLA format, parenthetical citations & conventions of standard written English.
Indicate a clear thesis.
Provide clear and consistent support/evidence.
Offer appropriate, sequential organization; ideas linked with smooth and effective transitions.
Indicate a sophisticated, academic vocabulary.
Reflect editing attention to details, editing, grammar, punctuation, etc.

Typed papers are due on Friday, September 7^th.

Part 2:

Learn and study the designated literary terms. Students who have selected AP Literature will take a test on the selected literary terms during the first week of school. This first test will serve as a baseline for future literary term tests, please note, a solid understanding of these terms is necessary for the successful completion of this course.

I look forward to a working with you in AP Literature. Enjoy your summer vacation and come back to school refreshed and reinvigorated.

~ Ms. O’Donnell

Sodonnell@crec.org

Advanced Placement Literature & Composition:

Literary Terms for first exam

Alliteration

Allusion

Analogy

Anaphora

Anecdote

Antithesis

Apostrophe

Assonance

Ballad Meter

Blank Verse

Cacophony

Caesura

Catharsis

Conceit

Consonance

Couplet

Diction

Didactic Poem

Elegy

Enjambment

Extended Metaphor

Euphony

Foil

Free Verse

Hyperbole

Iambic pentameter

Imagery

Irony

Internal Rhyme

Litotes

Metaphor

Meter

Metonymy

Onomatopoeia

Oxymoron

Paradox

Parallelism

Personification

Poetic Foot

Pun

Refrain

Rhyme

Rhythm

Satire

Simile

Soliloquy

Sonnet

Symbol

Synecdoche

Syntax

Theme

Tone

Understatement

President John F. Kennedy
Houston, Texas
September 12, 1962
     President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:
     I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.
     I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.
     We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
     Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.
     No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half a century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.
     Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America¹s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
     This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
     So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, 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.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

     If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.
     Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
     Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.
     We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
     There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. 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, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
     It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.
     In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.
     Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.
     The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.
     Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.
     We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.
     To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.
     The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.
     And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.
     To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.
     I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute. [laughter]
     However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.
     I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.
     Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."
     Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
     Thank you.

The Voyages of Apollo

05.30.06

Editor's Note: This is the 20th in a series of essays on exploration by NASA's Chief Historian, Steven J. Dick.

No single essay can do justice to the events that took place between 1968 and 1972, four years that, as time passes, seem all the more remarkable for human history. During those years 24 men went to the Moon, three of them (Lovell, Cernan and Young) twice. Twelve of them orbited silently above the bleak lunar landscape, and three others were whipped around the Moon in a "free-return trajectory" in a desperate attempt to return to Earth after an explosion aboard their spacecraft. Twelve of the 24 lunar voyagers actually landed, spending in total some 300 hours on the surface, of which 80 hours were outside the lunar module with "boots on the ground" or actually driving around the spacecraft environs. These events seem incredible to us even now, as NASA makes plans to return humans to the Moon almost a half century later.

Astronaut Edwin E."Buzz" Aldrin Jr., Lunar Module pilot, is photographed during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity on the Moon. He has just deployed the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP). In the foreground is the Passive Seismic Experiment Package (PSEP); beyond it is the Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector (LR-3); in the center background is the United States flag; in the left background is the black and white lunar surface television camera; in the far right background is the Lunar Module "Eagle". Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Apollo 11 was the first lunar landing.

When the Apollo 11 crew landed on the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, they stayed a little less than a day, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin traveled less than a half mile on foot. The last crew on Apollo 17 landed on the Taurus-Littrow highlands on December 11, 1972 and stayed for three days during which Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan traveled some 19 miles in the lunar roving vehicle. Though human footprints are well preserved at the six landing sites, and rover tracks surround three of them, not a step has been taken on the lunar surface since that time.

It is well known that geopolitics, in the form of international rivalry with the Soviet Union, propelled these first human voyages to the Moon. In the wake of Soviet successes in space, the Moon program began on May 25, 1961 with President Kennedy's declaration that the United States would land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth "before this decade is out." The larger objective was for the nation "to take a clearly leading role in space achievement which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth . . . No single space project in this period will be more exciting or more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." While the importance of the Apollo missions is still debated, the difficulty and the expense are widely recognized. At the peak of the Apollo era, during one of the most tumultuous decades in American history, NASA expenditures constituted almost 4% of the federal discretionary budget. Since that time NASA's budget has remained relatively steady at less than 1%.

"We are now in a test to see whether humans can be motivated by a journey of exploration rather than a race, by international cooperation rather than competition. History will be watching."

Eight years after President Kennedy's challenge the goal was met, but only after gargantuan efforts and funding resources unlikely ever to be seen again in the space program over such a short time span. Among those efforts was the construction of the Saturn V launch vehicle, led by the legendary Wernher von Braun at Marshall Space Flight Center, with Boeing, North American Aviation, and Douglas Aircraft Company as prime contractors for each of the Saturn stages. The Apollo spacecraft themselves – the 'chariots for Apollo' known more technically as the Command and Service Modules – were also the responsibility of North American Aviation. Hundreds of subcontractors, thousands of engineers, tens of thousands of workers and many unsung heroes played their roles in sending Americans to the Moon. The Saturn V was composed of 3 million parts, the CSM 2 million, the Lunar Module 1 million. As Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins put it, "All 6 million worked, nearly all the time."

Nor was it only a matter of building complex hardware and writing novel software for computers than now seem primitive but performed (mostly) magnificently. It was also a question of managing the largest technological system ever devised, as Administrator James Webb and his deputies Hugh Dryden and Bob Seamans sought to ensure high performance, reliability, and safety. In his book The Secret of Apollo Stephen Johnson has argued that a new approach known as systems management, originating from the Air Force's ICBM efforts, played a key role in the success of Apollo. Indeed, despite the tragic fire that killed three astronauts in their capsule during the Apollo 1 ground test in 1967, all the Apollo astronauts were returned safely to Earth, even with the harrowing experience of Apollo 13.

An extraordinary lunar panorama at Station 4 (Shorty Crater) showing Geologist-Astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt working at the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) during the second Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA-2) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. This is the area where Schmitt first spotted a mysterious orange soil. Shorty Crater is to the right. The peak in the center background is Family Mountain. A portion of South Massif is on the horizon at the left edge. Apollo 17 was the last voyage of Apollo.

Was it all worth it? The Apollo program has been criticized for being driven by politics, dominated by engineers, and deaf to science; after all, the only scientist who traveled to the Moon was Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17, the last voyage. What, in the end, did Apollo achieve? Aside from its geopolitical goals, and despite the clear backseat status of science, a considerable amount of science was in fact returned from the Moon. As Donald Beattie has described in his book Taking Science to the Moon, almost 5,000 pounds of experimental equipment were landed on the Moon, including the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) on each of the last five Apollo missions. 840 pounds of lunar material were returned and analyzed. 65 miles were traversed on foot or in the lunar rover in support of field geology and geophysical studies. And during the last three missions detailed data were collected from the orbiting command and service modules. The overall result is a much better understanding of the nature and origin of the Moon and its relation to Earth. The top ten science discoveries from the Apollo missions, as ranked by the office of the curator for planetary materials at NASA's Johnson Space Center, are found at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/science/lunar10.html

But, with the hindsight of history, how real was the driving force – the race with the Soviets? In his definite study Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974, Asif Siddiqi finds that there was indeed a Soviet quest for the Moon, but that it was lukewarm and failed dismally. "The road to failure began almost as soon as Gagarin had floated down in his parachute" in 1961, Siddiqi wrote. Nikita Khrushchev hardly took note of Kennedy's 1961 proclamation, and only sanctioned a piloted lunar landing program in 1964, the year he was ousted. The military, he writes, was more interested in missiles than the Moon, and amidst rivalries, organizational chaos and a shoestring budget, the Soviet effort led to crushing failures. During 1969-72, while Americans were landing on the Moon, the Soviet N1 rocket that was supposed to have beaten those Americans saw four catastrophic failures. Two of them failed in the months immediately preceding the Apollo 11 landing. The Soviet unmanned lunar program had more success. After failing in an attempt in February, 1969 – five months before Apollo 11 – they did land two Lunokhod ("Moon walker") rovers in 1970 and 1973. The Lunokhods returned more than 100,000 images and undertook numerous soil analyses. Although a triumph in their own right, they were completely overshadowed by the American manned landings. The Soviets never came close to landing humans – and still have not. In the wake of losing their half-hearted Moon race, the Soviets turned to space stations, an endeavor in which they excelled.

No one would have guessed in 1972 that almost a half century would pass before there was even the possibility that humans would return to the Moon. Though the Russians would manage several more lunar robotic missions, including a lunar sample return in 1976, it would be more than twenty years before Americans would return to the Moon even with a robotic emissary, the Clementine spacecraft, in 1995. Lunar Prospector followed in 1998, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is on schedule to launch in 2008, intended as a vanguard to human missions now being planned by 2018.

How will history judge the voyages of Apollo? Pulitzer Prize historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a special assistant to President Kennedy, ventured one opinion when he wrote in 2004 "It has been almost a third of a century since human beings took a step on the Moon — rather as if no intrepid mariner had bothered after 1492 to follow up on Christopher Columbus. Yet 500 years from now (if humans have not blown up the planet), the 20th century will be remembered, if at all, as the century in which man began the exploration of space." Although an historian of politics and world affairs, Schlesinger did not rank war in the century's top ten events. Wars come and go and affect many people, but the first venture into space happens only once, and holds infinite promise.

On the other hand there are some, historians among them, who think the Apollo program was time and money misspent, and that analogies to Columbus are misplaced. In reviewing Andrew Chaikin's book A Man on the Moon in the New York Times Review of Books, historian of technology Alex Roland called Chaikin's retelling of the Apollo story "the great American legend of the late 20^th century," replete with heroic astronauts and epic tales. Eschewing Apollo's role in exploration, and pointing to the lack of science on the missions, he downplayed the significance of the voyages of Apollo.

Critics are entitled to their opinions, but in my view the Apollo voyages were an accomplishment of mythic proportions, justifying mythic retellings. Although historians generally are not in the business of foretelling the future, in this case I have no qualms in predicting that, the longer our perspective grows, history will side with Mr. Schlesinger. Similarly, in the long view of history, the success or failure of NASA's current attempt to return humans to the Moon, go on to Mars and spread throughout the solar system will be judged accordingly. We are now in a test to see whether humans can be motivated by a journey of exploration rather than a race, by international cooperation rather than competition. History will be watching.

Ms. O'Donnell's A.P. Lit. Block A

Monday, July 2, 2012

AP scores are released! Please let me know how you did!

Monday, June 18, 2012

Final Exams- College Essay Portfolios

2012-2013 AA&E Summer Reading (All Grades and levels)

Assignment incoming 9^th Grade –

Assignment incoming 10^th Grade - CAPT Prompt Question #1

Monday, July 2, 2012

AP scores are released! Please let me know how you did!

Monday, June 18, 2012

Final Exams- College Essay Portfolios

2012-2013 AA&E Summer Reading (All Grades and levels)

Assignment incoming 9th Grade –

Assignment incoming 10th Grade - CAPT Prompt Question #1

Assignment incoming 9^th Grade –

Assignment incoming 10^th Grade - CAPT Prompt Question #1