86R37262 ST-D
 
  By: Price 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.