Human spaceflight The US succeeded in developing the Saturn V rocket necessary to send the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, and sent Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders into 10 orbits around the Moon in Apollo 8 in December 1968. In July 1969, Apollo 11 accomplished Kennedy's goal by landing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon 21 July and returning them safely on 24 July along with Command Module pilot Michael Collins. A total of six Apollo missions landed 12 men to walk on the Moon through 1972, half of which drove electric powered vehicles on the surface. The
The First Men in the Moon direction. Nigel Kneale co-adapted the screenplay (with Jan Read) for the 1964 film version; it is reasonable to assume that Kneale's familiarity with the work may have inspired the idea of the Martian hives which feature so significantly in "Quatermass and the Pit", one of Kneale's most-admired creations. "The First Men in the Moon" has been adapted to film four times, and once prior to that as a mash-up Verne-Wells film: Soon after the publication of "The First Men in the Moon", Wells was accused by the Irish writer Robert Cromie of having stolen from his novel "A Plunge into