![]() ![]() General Electric Company, the Douglas Aircraft Company, the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation and Space Technologies Laboratories Inc. General Dynamics/Astronautics teamed up with the Avco Corporation. ![]() Five bids for the Apollo spacecraft came back to NASA on October 11, 1961. As for the environment, NASA asked for an oxygen-nitrogen mixed gas atmosphere for the crew to mimic the air we breathe on Earth. The shape for Apollo, for example, had to be some kind of truncated cone like the Mercury spacecraft. The RFP, which was sent out on July 28, 1961, included certain design constraints. ![]() As it had done with the Mercury spacecraft, the space agency released a Call For Proposals to industry partners inviting them to bid on the contract to build that spacecraft. ![]() So why exactly did NASA design a spacecraft that was an explosion waiting to happen? (This is a question I get *a lot* so I hope this gives a full answer!) Not long after President Kennedy famously challenged America to a manned lunar landing by the end of the 1960s, NASA started figuring out how it was going to complete this daring mission, and one of the first things it needed was a spacecraft. There was plenty of electricity running through the spacecraft, lots of material that could be fuel and a 100 percent oxygen atmosphere under pressure. Apollo lunar missions had all three in spades. (Credit: NASA) Fire, as we know, needs three things: a source of heat, fuel and oxygen. Cernan in the Lunar Module Mission Simulator. ![]()
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