Why were NASA moon mission crews named after Apollo?
Asked by
pleiades (
6617)
January 1st, 2014
from iPhone
What’s the tie to the name Apollo? Did one of the directors love music? Or do they follow a theme of Greek Gods
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3 Answers
I’ll beat Gail to it and tell you it is Apollo. The answer is on this link under Background.
“The program was named after the Greek god of light, music, and the sun by NASA manager Abe Silverstein, who later said that “I was naming the spacecraft like I’d name my baby.”[1] Silverstein chose the name at home one evening, early in 1960, because he felt “Apollo riding his chariot across the Sun was appropriate to the grand scale of the proposed program.”[2] While NASA went ahead with planning for Apollo, funding for the program was far from certain given Eisenhower’s ambivalent attitude to manned spaceflight.”
Apollo.
To answer the question, “Apollo was more than just the sun god (actually it was he who drove the chariot of the sun across the skies), he was also the god of light and music.
Anyway, that is all irrelevant. The Apollo mission was named by NASA manager Abe Silverstein who later said that ‘I was naming the spacecraft like I’d name my baby.’ ”
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That is awesome info. For some reason the only thing I remember about Apollo is that he was the God of music forgot about the whole chariot thing. Thanks you two.
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