For thousands of years men believed that the Moon was so remote that it was inaccessible. When someone was told that she was in the moon, they meant that she was dreaming or thinking about an imaginary country. But in the 1960s, the Russians and the Americans almost waged war and wanted to show their strength in the eyes of the world. They then decided to embark on the conquest of the Moon. It was actually an excuse for them to build very powerful rockets and engines that could eventually be used by the military. The two superpowers therefore had no other interest in going there; the Russians and the Americans only wanted to get there first for prestige! In the early 1960s, the Russians were ahead of the American program because they were very familiar with robot technology and had invested a lot of money in this technology. The probe Luna 1 approached the Moon at 6500 km distance in 1959 and in 1966 the probe Luna 9 settled smoothly on the Moon. The crew of Apollo