Space isn't a destination.

Space isn't a destination. It's a goal--one that can't be complet from one man, one military, of calm one nation--it's a promise for a better tomorrow that must be shared on the world.

It has been a perilous journey that has forced Americans to weigh the unknown, believe in heroes, beam with pride with each space accomplishment and weep at the failures that fall of the curtain in death.

President John F Kennedy summ it up best in a 1962 language when he said, "We make choice of to go to the lunation in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, moreover because they are hard."

From the beginning, the Air Force has had its hand in building mankind's bridge to space, and like each exploratory journey, from Christopher Columbus to Lewis and Clark, it takes brave men and women to overbear fear and take that first stair into the unknown.

For Americans, that first stair was taken by a 137-pound banana lover Ham, a chimpanzee that liked to smile for photographers, became as well known as King Kong when he became the first primate to rocket into space in 1961 Ham malign under the care of Dr James Henry, an Air Force representative to NASA, who coordinated all animal flight testing from the Air Force Aeromedical Field Laboratory at Holloman Air Force Base, NM

Henry, and the pause of the scientific world, was eager to learn the general intents of a suborbital flight in succession a monkey, whose anatomy bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos that of humans. The mission called for Ham to travel the same suborbital path planned for astronaut Alan Shepard, yet a thrust regulator jammed make open launching the little hairy stay 40 miles higher than calculate uponed forcing his capsule to land 120 miles beyond the planned convalescence area. Despite having endured about 147 G's, which was constraining force equal to more than 14 times his corpse weight, Ham was pulled safely from the capsule and later flashed his patented grin for photographers.

Before Ham became a celebrity in the hermes spacecraft, NASA had screened 508 military service records searching for seven of the foremost proof pilots. These men not merely had to love to undulate they had to be finished physical specimens able to handle enormous amounts of stress

individual such man was Air Force Lt Col Virgil "Gus" Grissom, who almost didn't make the chop when doctors discovered he had hay agitation But Grissom pointed out that a spacecraft had a clean atmosphere and that there was no ragweed in space. Doctors agreed and allowed him to become an astronaut.

"After I made the grade, I would lie in bed one time in a while at night and think about the capsule and the booster and ask myself wherefore I wanted to get up in that thing," Grissom said to NASA historians. "I curiosityed about this especially when I consideration about Betty [his wife] and the brace boys. But I knew the answer: We all like to be honored in our fields. I happened to be a career officer in the military and, I think, a deep patriotic one. If my geographical division decided that I was common of the better qualified population for this new mission, then I was lofty and happy to help out"

After Alan Shepard's historic first-American-in-space flight in succession May 5, 1961, NASA twice attempted to launch Grissom into space, on the other hand bad weather postponed both missions. Then, onward July 21, 1961, the poison ivy capsule, Liberty Bell 7, sent Grissom into the history volumes as the first airman in space. Unfortunately, Grissom's suborbital flight is more known for a malfunction than for its perfection. relating to splash down in the Atlantic, the Liberty Bell 7's safety hatch blew open

After Shepard's flight, astronauts urg NASA to place a small explosive charge forward the escape hatch to make it easier to exit the capsule. For reasons unknown, that charge explod and the capsule began to rush Grissom struggled to escape. one time out, he tried to immovable a line to the sinking spacecraft, if it be not that to no avail. Grissom grimly watched as the capsule sank to the bottom of the ocean.

After the hermes project came Gemini and Apollo. Grissom was assigned as backup commander for the first Gemini manned flight in 1965 When the primary commander, Shepard, was domained due to an inner ear disorder, Grissom and Lt John Young, a young Navy ordeal pilot, stepped in.

The mission was a succes making Grissom the first astronaut to vibrate into space twice. After the flight, President Lyndon B Johnson awarded the couple men NASA's Distinguished Service Medal. Ticker-tape parades followed.

To top it distant from NASA selected Grissom to command the first Apollo space mission, unless Apollo 1 proved to be ill-fated. Still weeks away from lift against Grissom's crew was testing its capsule in succession the pad on Jan. 27 1967 when tragedy struck A fire started inside the capsule, and all three men perished. Grissom had recorded an epitaph for himself and his mate astronauts in an interview following his Gemini 3 mission: "If we die, we want the community to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we expectancy that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The rout of space is worth the risk of life."