"That is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Neil Armstrong's famous words that echoed from the moon. The Apollo program was aimed at landing a man and returning him back to Earth, but several other goals were also part of the program these included: to establish technology to meet other national interests in space, to carry out a program to study the surface of the moon, to put the United States in the lead of the space race, and to develop man's ability to work in the lunar environment. The Apollo spacecraft featured an arsenal of power that came from the Saturn IB rockets for Earth-orbital flights and the gigantic Saturn V for the lunar flights. The Apollo spacecraft was broken down into three man components: the Command Module, the Service Module, and the Lunar Module. The Command Module (CM) acted as the crew quarters and flight control section, while the Service Module (SM) provided the propulsion and support systems with the Lunar Module (LM) was the two-man ferry that went to the lunar surface, supported the crew while on the surface, and returned the crew to the Command and Service Modules (CSM). The Apollo program is well remember and written in the history books for the famous landing of Apollo 11 and the first steps of man walking on another world, but the program did not go along without its terrible and tragic hardships. On January 27, 1967, the three-man crew of AS-204, which was scheduled to be the first manned test launch of the Apollo program, experienced a fire in the Command Module while the were testing the systems on the pad. This event killed the crew as the fire quickly engulfed the spacecraft and the crew could not escape the the deadly smoke. This tragedy crippled the United Space space program and threaten to end the attempt to put a man on the moon. About an year later the program started up again, after many improvements were made to the vehicles, which included mixing the atmosphere and installing a fast opening safety hatch. The crew of Apollo 13 almost saw death as their cryogenic oxygen tank blew up and spewed all their vital cargo out into the vast of space and the crew used every resource to get their crippled spacecraft back to safety on the ground of Earth. Finally on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on an alien world as he climbed out and walked on the lunar surface. In many ways the Apollo program was the main drama of the decade as man scrambled to land on the moon and explore another world, while the other extreme of trying to save a crew that had the cards drawn against them.