ANSWERS: 2
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Yes, it was! "We rocketed straight to the Astronauts category in the Yahoo! Directory. A visit to some of the sites in the category, as well as searches on "who has walked on the moon" and "men on the moon," helped us discover your answer. So far, only 12 human beings have set foot on the moon. And they've all been from the United States. Between 1969 and 1972, the United States launched the Apollo 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 missions to the moon. Of the 21 astronauts on these flights, only 12 actually touched the lunar surface. On each flight, one astronaut remained in the command module, while the other two astronauts landed on the moon. For example, in Apollo 11 -- the first lunar landing -- Michael Collins remained aboard while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. In addition, Apollo 13 never landed on the moon due to an accident. The crew of the ill-fated mission was forced to fly the capsule around the moon and return to Earth. The timeline on the very detailed Astronaut Connection site lists every significant event in the history of space exploration, from the launch of Sputnik in 1957 to the failure of the Mars Polar Lander in 1999. This site confirms that several countries in the world have space programs, but only the U.S. has sent humans to the moon. The former Soviet Union sent a number of cosmonauts into Earth orbit and launched a series of manned space stations that orbited the Earth. The Soviet lunar programs included 20 successful missions to the moon and several unmanned spacecraft landings. The Soviets created the first probe to impact the moon and achieved the first moon landing, but no cosmonauts have been sent to land on the moon. No country has tried to send humans past Earth orbit since the closing of the U.S. Apollo program. In the U.S., funding for the space program decreased as the political climate changed and the impetus for exploring the moon waned. Citing the lack of budget funding, NASA announced in 1998 that it was officially ending the costly projects aimed at sending humans to the moon. Currently, 16 nations are hard at work building the International Space Station, which will remain in Earth orbit. But news reports suggest that China is beefing up its space program with the intention of landing people on the moon. So we may have a different answer to your question in 10 to 20 years. " source: http://ask.yahoo.com/20021018.html
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I just wanted to add a little more to Answers101's answer. In the 1960's and 70's, there were only two countries that had the financial and technical resources to potentially place men on the Moon. Those two were the USA and the USSR. However, the USSR was never able to get its equivalent of the Saturn V rocket to work properly. Therefore, they were never able to land any people on the moon. They did attempt to upstage the Apollo 11 mission by sending an unmanned probe to the Moon with the intent of landing, grabbing a sample of lunar soil and then returning that sample to Earth. However, that probe crashed into the Moon rather than landing in a controlled manner. You can even see the probe flying over in the background of some of the shots of Armstrong and Collins on the Moon's surface.
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