Half a century ago, astronauts got on top of a really big rocket and sent a tiny little capsule on a 384,000 km trip to the moon and back. And they were able to do it because a lot of extremely smart and dedicated people pushed engineering and chemistry to the limits in order to create a 36-story tower of carefully-controlled space fire powerful enough to escape Earth’s gravity. I went to NASA in Houston to talk to astronaut Don Pettit about how they did it, and if we’ll be able to do it again.