[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 17, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H5921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  CELEBRATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LAUNCH OF THE ``APOLLO 11''

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Mrs. Fletcher) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. FLETCHER. Mr. Speaker, this week we celebrate the 50th 
anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, the spacecraft that sent 
Americans to the Moon.
  On September 12, 1962, before a crowd of 40,000 spectators at Rice 
University in Houston, President John F. Kennedy announced the 
ambitious goal of sending Americans to the Moon before the end of the 
decade.
  On July 20, 1969, we got there. Neil Armstrong became the first human 
to set foot on the surface of the Moon, and 19 minutes later Buzz 
Aldrin became the second.
  More than 600 million people around the world watched Armstrong take 
his first step live on television. The first words they heard on the 
Moon were ``Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,'' 
followed by the observation, ``That's one small step for man, one giant 
leap for mankind.''
  As a native Houstonian and the Representative of Texas' Seventh 
Congressional District, these historic words are seared in my mind. The 
Apollo 11 mission was more than just an amazing technological 
advancement, it brought Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs 
together toward a common goal and a common purpose. It made people a 
part of something bigger than themselves, perhaps bigger than they had 
ever imagined.
  More than 400,000 Americans worked to make the Apollo 11 mission a 
success, many of them based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. 
From the support crew to the flight directors at mission control, to 
the space suit designers, to the human computers, engineers, and 
scientists who designed and built the hardware and software, to the 
custodial staff who worked in the building to make sure that they had a 
place to work, and to every small job in between, Apollo 11 was the 
result of a historic collaboration across our country.
  The resounding success of the Apollo program served to captivate the 
world's attention and cemented America's status as a leader in 
scientific discovery and technological innovation, and it taught us 
what we as Americans can do, what we can accomplish when we work 
together toward a common goal. What we learned from this mission is 
that, when we do that, even the sky is not the limit.

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