Skip to main content

"Houston, Tranquility Base Here. The Eagle has Landed."

Published Jul 03, 2019 by Josh Pherigo

The First Word

When the struts of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module met the powdery surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong marked the arrival with an eight-word message back home. 

“Houston,” Armstrong said. “Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.” 

The time was 3:17 p.m. at mission control – four days, six hours and forty-six minutes after liftoff and more than eight years after President John F. Kennedy first challenged America to aim for the moon. The Apollo 11 crew had traveled 240,000 miles from Earth aboard the most complex machine ever conceived – guided by the most sophisticated computers ever built and boosted by the most powerful rocket ever launched – only to come within 30 seconds of running out of fuel. 

“Roger, Tranquility. We copy you down,” came the reply from Charlie Duke in mission control. “You got a bunch of guys down here about to turn blue.” 

On Earth, more than half a billion people watched as the moon landing unfolded in real-time. For Americans, it was a staggering victory of science and technology, the fulfillment of a mammoth national effort to accomplish humanity’s greatest-ever journey. For Houstonians, it was personal. 

No city did more to put men on the moon, and no city took more pride in its accomplishment. 

At the executive committee meeting of the Houston Chamber of Commerce (predecessor to the Greater Houston Partnership) the morning after the landing, chamber president E. Clyde McGraw described the “extremely thrilling” events of that week and pointed out that a local newspaper columnist observed that “Houston” had been the first word spoken from the moon. 

“Every mission points up even more Houston’s close identification with the manned space program,” McGraw said.

As the center of gravity for the U.S. space program, the Manned Space Center (renamed Johnson Space Center in ’73) oversaw every facet of the planning, design, training and execution of the Apollo moon missions. It was, quite literally, at the center of a worldwide communications network designed specifically to control and monitor the moon missions. On the day of the Apollo 11 landing, a 2-million-mile web of underground and ocean-laid cables connected Houston to radar and antenna stations across the globe – an unprecedented feat at the time. 

From Houston, engineers helped invent the techniques and procedures necessary to make deep space flight possible, and mission planners tediously orchestrated the work of more than 20,000 NASA contractors across the country. At the height of its activity the Apollo program employed more than 500,000 Americans at an annual cost of $4 billion (equivalent to $32 billion today). The burden of managing that massive effort, keeping those moving parts aligned and on scheduled fell largely on the shoulders of Houston residents, as did the job of actually flying the missions. 

Fifty years after Apollo 11’s historic landing, no city has so emphatically embraced its lunar legacy like Houston. We named our sports teams and our theme parks after space iconography; worked NASA designs into our architecture and our community spaces, painted it in murals across our buildings; we adopted the nickname “Space City” with pride. But years before we could lay claim as the first word spoken from the moon, Houston was just one of 20 cities vying for a government construction project – the HQ2 of its day. 

Apollo 11 crew
The Apollo 11 crew. From left to right Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins.

Why Houston? 

By the fall of 1961, the U.S. had fallen badly behind the Soviets in the race for space supremacy. Though both nations had completed two manned missions apiece, NASA had yet to put an astronaut in orbit, a critical feat the Soviets achieved on the very first manned flight in April. Worse still: the short, parabolic arcs of NASA’s first two Mercury flights had lasted just 15 minutes each. America’s space program had less than half-an-hour of manned flight under its belt - fewer than 10 minutes in zero-gravity. The Soviets, on the other hand, had amassed a staggering 27 hours of flight time in their first two missions (it would take the U.S. another two years to accumulate that amount). 

President Kennedy had recognized early on that in the high-stakes context of the escalating Cold War, outer-space was the newest battlefield. That spring Kennedy had pushed Congress for a massive increase in space funding, deeming it a defensive necessity (NASA’s budget would double by ‘63 and quadruple by ‘65), and for the first time, Kennedy laid out his charge for the U.S. to achieve a moon landing “before the decade is out.” 

To get there, NASA would need a new, dedicated campus capable of housing the sprawling apparatus required to develop the science and techniques making a moon mission possible. That’s the charge NASA site selectors carried to Houston in late August 1961. Houston was one of at least 20 cities under consideration for the Manned Space Center, a $60 million facility ($480 million in today’s money) that would employ 3,000 government workers and serve as the lynchpin for the entire space program. The prospect of such an economic injection had local leaders salivating. 

Houston Chamber of Commerce President P. H. Robinson, who met with NASA’s site selection team during their visit, promised that the Chamber was “available to furnish whatever assistance needed,” as the evaluators did their work. NASA’s specific requirements for the new site included the nearby presence of a large and skilled labor force, access to deepwater transportation routes and a nearby airport, reasonable local building costs, a reliable electric and communications grid, and the availability of temporary office space to house NASA staff while the manned space center was under construction. 

The space agency was in a hurry, and they didn’t have to wait long. 

On Tuesday, September 19, 1961, three weeks after the Houston site visit, NASA administrator James Webb announced that a cattle pasture near the farming town of Clear Lake, 25 miles southeast of downtown Houston would become the permanent site of NASA’s manned space center – home to mission control and the nation’s astronaut corps. NASA officials said the Houston region and the site itself - a 1,300-acre section of land mostly owned by Rice University - met each of the agency’s 14 requirements, beating out competing cities like Corpus Christi and San Diego. 

It helped that Houston had a couple of political aces up its sleeve. Legendary local businessman and LBJ loyalist George R. Brown, whose construction firm Brown and Root would eventually build much of the Manned Space Center, took an active interest in the direction of the space program from its infancy. When Kennedy, in the spring of ‘61, asked Vice President Johnson to recommend a course forward for the space program – an effort that generated the moonshot goal  –  Brown was one of only a handful of civilians invited to participate in a closed-door strategy session in Washington. As the chair of Rice University’s board of regents, he facilitated the deal that would provide land for the Space Center. Humble Oil Company (now ExxonMobil) had donated 1,000 acres to Rice years before for the express purpose of serving as a space research center. Rice, in turn, simply donated the land to NASA. 

The other leading force in Houston’s corner was Texas Congressman Albert Thomas. As chair of the appropriations committee, the powerful congressman is credited with steering the selection toward Houston. Taking a hands-on approach, he personally hosted the NASA site selectors around Houston during their August fact-finding mission, later assuring Chamber president Robinson that Houston had a “good chance” of winning the bid.  The morning of the announcement, it was Thomas who first phoned Robinson with the good news. 

Upon hearing the news, the chamber execs were fired up. Straight away, the chamber’s vice president Marvin Hurley ordered “1,000 copies of material related to Houston” airmailed to NASA headquarters in Virginia for distribution to the relocating employees, according to the minutes of the executive committee meeting that day. 

The October edition of Houston magazine, a publication of the Chamber, trumpeted the arrival of the forthcoming “Space Lab” which it said would include “an enormous domed structure, which can contain a space capsule one-third as tall as the San Jacinto Monument.” The facility’s 3,000 employees, the article said, would draw a payroll more than $17 million per year ($136 million today), not counting the many outside firms supporting NASA’s work.  

Within weeks, the first wave of NASA employees had already arrived, setting up temporary headquarters in offices around the city. And more were on their way.

Learn how Houston continues to develop new paths of innovation and get details on the Houston Spaceport, which will be the largest urban spaceport of its kind. 

Related News

Economic Development

How Amazon's Strategic Procurement Drives Inclusive Growth

11/25/24
Amazon’s leadership in supplier diversity has positioned the corporation for success while driving inclusive economic growth. Kennedy Oates, Partnership Board Member and Vice President of Global Procurement at Amazon, shared insights and best practices at the Greater Houston Partnership’s One Houston Together Fall Chief Procurement Officers (CPO) Convening.  Oates discussed how Amazon has grown its supplier diversity efforts by ensuring the value proposition of advancing supplier diversity and inclusion throughout our supply chain is communicated at every level. According to Amazon’s 2023 Sustainability Report, the company’s global supplier diversity and inclusion (SD&I) program is estimated to have supported over 30,000 U.S. jobs and generated approximately $2.8 billion in wages, earned from Amazon’s certified U.S. tier 1 supplier diversity spend. In 2023, Amazon was inducted to the Billion Dollar Roundtable, a nonprofit organization comprised of U.S. corporations that each spend $1 billion or more annually on a tier 1 basis with diverse suppliers. These diverse-owned businesses include majority owners identifying as minorities, women, veterans, disabled, and LGBTQ.  Oates stated that achieving this milestone required a deliberate approach, built on a clear vision, a targeted strategy, and an empowered team dedicated to executing these goals. By embedding supplier diversity into Amazon’s core procurement practices, they’ve fostered a sustainable and inclusive growth model that supports the company’s goals and the success of diverse suppliers. Key Takeaways from CPO Convening Supplier Diversity as a Strategic Value Proposition Oates emphasized the importance of viewing supplier diversity as more than just an initiative—highlighting the long-term value diverse suppliers bring to a company and its surrounding communities. Through its global SD&I strategy, Amazon measures impact through jobs supported, wages earned, and economic output generated. “Given our reach and scale, Amazon has a greater responsibility.” – Kennedy Oates, VP of Global Procurement, Amazon Vision-Driven Goals with Clear Strategies For Amazon, supplier diversity goes beyond statements. Oates stressed the importance of crafting a well-defined vision, supported by actionable strategies to advance supplier diversity objectives. He also noted that internal teams should have collaborative discussions on supplier diversity across the entire business rather than in silos.   Partnering with Companies at Every Level “Every large company was once small.” – Kennedy Oates, VP of Global Procurement, Amazon Amazon is redefining procurement by challenging the perception that only large companies can serve large corporations. Its approach embraces partnerships with businesses of all sizes, embedding supplier diversity as a core element of its supply chain. This creates a positive ripple effect that brings opportunities to underrepresented companies. To learn more about the Partnership’s Supplier Diversity workstream, contact LaTanya Flix.
Read More
Digital Technology

California Startup Incubator Plug and Play to Expand in Sugar Land

11/25/24
Plug and Play, an acclaimed startup incubator and accelerator based in Silicon Valley, Calif., has announced plans for a new location in Sugar Land, focusing on solutions for the future of smart cities.   Plug and Play accelerated more than 2,700 startups globally in 2023, through work to connect entrepreneurs and startups with valuable resources to help their ideas succeed. The organization is three-pronged, with accelerator programs to help startups, a corporate innovation division for established companies, and venture capital to fund promising enterprises.   Representatives from the Sugar Land Office of Economic Development attended the announcement for the new location at Plug and Play’s November 2024 Silicon Valley Summit.   “We are excited to welcome Plug and Play to Sugar Land,” Mayor of Sugar Land Joe Zimmerman said. “This investment will help us connect with corporate contacts and experts in startups and businesses that would take us many years to reach on our own. It allows us to create a presence, attract investments and jobs to the city, and hopefully become a base of operations for some of these high-growth companies.”  The new location, to be located in Sugar Land Town Square, will officially launch in February or March 2025, with around 15 startups and 4 full-time employee equivalents. The approaches toward smart cities will include startups that focus on energy, health, transportation and mobility.  The Partnership’s trade missions to California in 2022 and 2023 included visits to Plug and Play’s headquarters, fostering discussion on potential for growth in Greater Houston. These visits and continued conversations helped build momentum that led to last week’s announcement for the investment in Sugar Land. “The Partnership is excited for the announcement of Plug and Play’s investment in the Houston region,” Greater Houston Partnership SVP of Economic Development Craig Rhodes said. “Houston’s innovation ecosystem seeks solutions in key industries of energy efficiency, life sciences, aerospace and transportation, and we are pleased to welcome Plug and Play to the Greater Houston area to accelerate these emerging technologies”  The new location underscores the region’s growing innovation ecosystem, seeing substantive growth not only in Houston proper with impactful incubators such as the Ion or Greentown Labs, but also around the region, with industry-specific accelerators like Halliburton Labs on the North Beltway and the Alexandria Center for Advanced Technology in The Woodlands.  For more on Houston’s innovation ecosystem, visit our Innovation and Startups page. 
Read More

Related Events

Economic Development

Regions featuring San Jacinto College Center For Petrochemical, Energy, and Technology

Join the Partnership for an Exclusive Experience at the San Jacinto College Center for Petrochemical, Energy, and Technology! Discover why the San Jacinto College Center for Petrochemical,…

Learn More
Learn More
Executive Partners