Before Apollo 11 landed on the moon and changed the course of history, the U.S. and Soviet Union battled for control of space in a Cold War clash that rocked the globe. A remnant of this struggle, Mercury-Atlas capsule #6, on permeant display in our Hall of Astronomy, still captures the gravity of that race to the stars in every scratch and dent scattered across its hull. What exactly did it take to send America’s first astronauts into orbit? A barrel-worth of flying monkeys, a few melting missiles, and all the brainpower of an oft-forgotten engineer in Houston.

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