Apollo 11: People Are Still Asking This Question
every single person on Earth who had access to a TV set and that would be about 600 million of us watch the blurry almost surreal image of Neil Armstrong's stepping live onto the surface of the Moon but after Apollo 11 returned to Earth we got an entirely different view of those first historic moments in part four of what we saw we'll give you the sharp full color view of that one small step from a perspective that no one has shared before we'll watch how One race against the Soviets ended with a win and the one against the U.S Congress resulted in a defeat so join us for the Journey of Apollo 11 the seven Apollo missions that followed and Decades of disappointments crowned at last with a new hope we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing not because they are easy but because they are hard [Music] [Music] 32 minutes past the hour lift up on Apollo 11. Tranquility we copy you on the ground you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue we're breathing again thanks a lot you're looking good here the uh vehicle is surprisingly free of any degrees floating around it's very clean we strength in here do a pretty good job of pulling my pants down right here we haven't quite got that before the 50 million TV audience yet there have been a lot of great stage entrances in history but I'm pretty sure that the one made by Neil Armstrong seen by over 600 million people live on TV is not one that's going to be surpassed anytime soon so after a final check of helmets visors gloves life support packs tools cameras and all the rest all of it within the space of a decent sized standard bedroom closet Aldrin began to depressurize the eagle there were no seats in the limb when America landed on the moon we landed on our feet by God we did it six times so now try to imagine two very fit men in their late 30s jammed into that closet and each of them are wearing suits they're not too far away from the one used by the guy playing the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters just bending over enough to open the small hatch down at knee level between the two standing positions it was kind of a major effort now what was about to happen next was in my opinion the Pinnacle of human history that descent down the ladder is so iconic it's so untarnishable it can't be ruined which kind of makes me feel a little better because frankly when we think of men from planet Earth First setting foot upon the surface of another world you want to believe that Neil Armstrong eyes on a far Horizon stepped manfully out of the darkness of the limb he surveyed the landscape hands on his hips perhaps nodded and then walked down the golden staircase it kind of makes me feel a little crummy to be the one to point out that when Armstrong Aldrin and the 10 Americans to follow first emerged from their lunar module they did so on their knees crawling going backwards and moving very very slowly okay Houston I'm on the porch Roger nail okay everything's nice and stayed in here okay can you pull the door open a little more right [Applause] mail radio check a pretty smart move by Neil there you know if you've got the entire planet Earth tuned in you probably want to do a sound check before you start the show this Houston loud and clear break break Buzz this is Houston radio check and verify TV circuit breaker and now back in that New York hotel room where I was watching live as a 10 year old we still couldn't see anything but right about here after helping Armstrong out of the hatch Buzz Aldrin moves to the right window of the limb that's the lunar module's pilot stations where he belongs and he starts rolling Motion Picture film which of course we wouldn't see until they returned from the Moon and we gotten it developed now the image is jumpy for a few seconds then it kind of stabilizes buzz must have braced himself to steady the image because it Jiggles just a little bit as he checks the circuit breaker [Music] now from where he's standing Aldrin and and the camera he's holding can only see about half of the frame the entire left half of the image is just black and gray it's the circular nose of the limb jutting forward blocking the view of the small platform at the top of the ladder just outside the hatch called the porch then right at the edge of that diagonally split frame we see a moment of movement it's a backpack and then as he gets onto the ladder we see just the left quarter of Armstrong we see an arm a leg the backpack the image is a little bit dark so Aldrin opens it up a spot then the light levels come up okay now it's not a squiggle anymore right there on the top of his left shoulder there's a definite patch of red white and blue it's a flag it's our flag there's another camera bump as Neil steadies himself at the head of the ladder you can't get a good clear look at his face because you're looking down at him from the limb looking down on the top of his helmet but it's clear that his golden visor is up you can definitely see that there's some kind of head inside that helmet and we're getting a picture on the TV [Music] uh no uh Buzz they don't have a good picture Aldrin speaking as a test pilot here when he says you got a good picture that means the damn thing's actually working that's about all you can say about it I couldn't make any sense out of the image at all uh there's a great deal of contrast in it and currently it's upside down on our monitor but we can make out a fair amount of detail the entire world is watching that live blurry TV image but I want to stay with what Aldrin is seeing up in the limb he's looking down from the right side of the eagle he's filming Neil Armstrong as he's working the image is still a little bit blurry but it's in color and it is far better than what's coming up from a late 60s handheld TV Camera then you can see Neil Armstrong looking down he's holding on to the base of the ladder actually leans back a little bit to get a better look at the four lunar landing pads they are only with the surface appears to be uh very very fine grained as you get close to it it's almost like a powder now as we keep watching the footage shot from inside the limb Aldrin moves a little you can see the blurry reflection of his pressure suit moving across the window Neil is looking straight ahead and he's looking down he's in the shadow of the eagle and that shadow stretches up and across the right side of the frame all the way to the top it's ominous and imposing the shadow of that lunar module then there's a moment it's just a quick beat as if he's rehearsing a line he wrote in his head here comes the greatest moment in human history and here is a man speaking as calmly as he possibly could you can see the tether straining a little as he moves slightly to the left he's looking down now at his left foot which is invisible below the frame and then you can actually see him shift his weight you can actually tell from his posture that he's stepping on dust that's giving away just a little and he does something else I didn't notice before you can actually watch him pushing down maybe five or six times damping down the gray talcum powder of the surface the way you would if you were standing on snow he's testing to make sure it's going to support his weight up in the limb from our point of view aldrin's reflection is moving across the glass Armstrong is looking down at his left boot it's one small step for man one guy at least Amanda [Music] hi everybody I hope you're enjoying this series on Apollo 11 in the Space Race before we get any further I wanted to share an important announcement with you I partnered with daily wire plus to create a brand new season of what we saw this time we're keeping our feet on the ground and exploring the Cold War this is an unflinching look at the 45-year standoff between Russia and the United States you have to realize that for decades people were kept in the dark about what really went on behind the Iron Curtain Cold War what we saw shined some much-needed light on the brutal and drastic measures the Soviets took to preserve communism and the Western countries that did everything in their power to bring freedom to those Nations who suffered under the iron grip of their government you can watch episode 1 of this 13-part series on daily wire Plus for free and there'll be new episodes every week I hope you become a daily wire plus member to see the rest click on the link in the description to watch episode one and now back to Apollo 11 what we saw for the first and only time during this entire run of footage Armstrong glances up almost to see if Buzz got the shot but of course that's just my Hollywood background talking Armstrong was looking right at Aldrin and for half a second you can see the eyes of the man who just stepped off of his spacecraft and into immortality 1160 a second for a Shadow Photography on the sequence comma none just like that he goes back to work he starts describing the texture of the lunar dust welcome pick it up Loosely with my toe it does adhere to in fine layers like powdered charcoal through the the stool and and sides of my boots what we saw all around the world was a barely legible blob moving against a black background as if he really were stepping out onto the stage of history and reading his line but if you watch it from above you can see all of the Nuance all the hesitation and then you actually get to watch for a moment as Neil Armstrong prepares himself to step out onto the moon this demystifies the entire moment it becomes less iconic becomes less abstract becomes less historic and it becomes far far far more human when Neil Armstrong was just another test pilot like Chuck Yeager and most of the rest of the Mercury and Gemini astronauts out at Edwards Air Force Base he naturally enough fell into the small circle of men who had a 25 chance of being killed every time they went up to test a new aircraft they had their own language these men they had their own insults they had their own compliments a lot of it was the dark humor that protects you from watching so many people being killed in a seat you'd just been in or one you are about to be in 1201 Roger 1201 alarm Roger 1202 we copy it is emotion any kind of emotion is fatal for men like this when a never-before-seen computer error kept reappearing at the worst possible moment during The Descent it's the lack of emotion in Armstrong's and aldrin's voice that's what's keeping them alive the rating on the 12 th now look I don't for an instant mean to seriously compare what I'm about to say with what they actually experienced but it's as close as I have to come up to that kind of moment and it's the only way I can kind of explain to you how it feels during moments like that I was on my dress rehearsal flight for my instrument check ride and by some miracle Santa Monica Airport was actually IFR instrument flight rules meaning that a low cloud ceiling ruled out visual flight references in other words it was the only time during my entire instrument training that I was going to fly into actual weather instead of wearing the hood that I'd worn to keep me looking down at the instruments and not out the window at yet another Perfect Day in Paradise my flight instructor was in the right seat we got our clearance I read it back we added power and 10 seconds after the wheels were off the Runway we'd entered clouds so thick that I could not see the stubby wing tips just a few feet away on the Piper Archer instrument trainer just a puddle jumper really now I reached a certain intersection determined by radio beams and I started a right climbing turn towards Burbank now between me and that airport where the Santa Monica Hills and they're not really Hills maybe 1 500 feet high actual mountains and I've driven over them thousands of times I know they're there I started the right turn towards the hills climb rate looked good my turn and Bank indicator indicated a turn to the right but my primary instrument my Artificial Horizon told me that I was making a descending turn to the left now at that exact instant I could feel I could actually feel that little red-eyed rat of sheer Panic starting to nibble on my ankles I turned to my flight instructor I told him my primary instrument was indicating a turn in the wrong direction I looked at him to tell me what to do he did tell me what to do kick its ass what he said and then in that instant I felt a lever a big one kind of get thrown somewhere in the back of my head okay Panic is completely gone now now all I have to do I had turned to the right it felt like we were turning to the right but that didn't mean a thing thousands and thousands of Pilots have died in exactly that fashion all I knew was that I was flying the general direction of a mountain range and that in every contest between the ground and the airplane the ground has won every single time trust your instruments so what are they telling me well the simple bank and turn indicator shows a turn to the right the far more sophisticated Artificial Horizon is indicating a turn to the left so I looked down at the gyroscopic heading indicator and also at the simple Compass just up there on the dash both of those were showing a turn to the right the Artificial Horizon was outvoted I covered it up with a black suction cup bought precisely for this kind of emergency so that it would not distract me with false information now as required by regulations I radioed air traffic control and I advise them that I was in instrument conditions and that my primary instrument had failed SoCal departure replied with and I quote Roger say intentions and what I wanted to say was that I intended that someone on the ground would get a fire truck with a big [ __ ] ladder and get me the hell out of this damn thing what I actually said was that we would continue the ILS the instrument Landing system approach into Burbank which is what we did and there was no moving map I just had two needles against a black background I had to keep them centered it took us just an instant for us to descend through that cloud layer and when we did I looked up and I saw the approach lights of Burbank airport now I was slightly to the left of the center line and my instructor was slightly to the right of it at that exact instant I felt like the Lord of all creation if I had not been able to suppress that emotion if I let that little rat get to my knees if I panicked I wouldn't be here I'd be mixed with small bits of aluminum in a charge Spot somewhere on the left where the 405 goes over Sepulveda to pass and I've had three engine failures in single engine airplanes two of those in experimental aircraft and all three of those times I felt that lever getting thrown in the back of my head and that sick sense of fear just kind of Fall Away I'm alive to tell these true Tales of Adventure because my primary flight instructor named Jeff Larkin told me something as we walked out to our two-seat Grove glider just before my first flying lesson back in 1991. Billy said it's probably never going to happen
but if something does go wrong up there you you are going to leave that airplane and your reptile brain is going to take over my job is to make sure that the reptile knows what to do now I'm saying all of this because I want you to understand that emotion is fatal for test pilots and as I said this shows up in the language the test pilots use no one ever said to Neil Armstrong none of his Pilot friends anyway no one ever said wow what an amazing job Neil we're just so damn proud of you a colleague might if he had survived extraordinarily trying circumstances have a chance to maybe under his breath say to Neil Armstrong you sir are a steely-eyed missile man a big mistakes also have their own sardonic emotionless tone you didn't crash you augured in you didn't leave a flaming smoking crater on someone's property you ruined the guy's place so your last act on Earth was to do the right thing you bought the farm if you messed up badly and somehow managed to survive well that was like sneaking into your girlfriend's house creeping silently up the darkened stairs expertly sliding past her snoring father with a shotgun at his side and then entering the wrong room and end up screwing the pooch Neil Armstrong was the most steely-eyed of missile men during the entire Mission the question for history is did Neil screw the pooch when it came time to utter the most Monumental words in human history man die at least Amanda that's one small step for men one giant leap for mankind doesn't make any sense in that sentence man and Mankind are interchangeable what he intended to say was that's one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind which is absolutely perfect it Shakespeare coming from an engineer now a half century later we still reverently report the world's most famous botched line but not too long ago certainly before he died a couple of audio Engineers told Neil Armstrong that they had put some serious computer power into the actual broadcast that he made from the Moon those two audio guys discovered what they believed to be an almost instantaneous radio heterodyne that is when two radio signals are both communicating on the same frequency at the same time they block each other out according to the analysis of these two audio experts Armstrong's a in a man was spoken but it was actually blocked I will say this just try saying it out loud for yourself that's one small step for man you see how easy it is to swallow but still say that missing a tell me if you got a picture here well you've got a beautiful picture here now there's a great film sequence same position up there in the limb looking down and it's a picture of Neil he's got his visor up his face is clearly visible for the only time during the entire Mission as Aldrin filmed him grabbing what was called the contingency sample that's just a real quick scoop of moon dust in case some emergency caused them to have to cheese it out of there ahead of schedule d a high desert of the United States government but it's very pretty out here there's really not much to look at honestly but it's important footage because a moment later Aldrin would stop filming from the Lem as he prepared to join Armstrong on the surface that little clip is important because it's the only time that we can actually make out Neil Armstrong's face as soon as Aldrin stops filming from the limb Aldrin will perform the bulk of the actions while Neil is almost all of the photography in virtually every Apollo 11 image you see of an astronaut on the moon that astronaut is Buzz Aldrin Neil Armstrong essentially disappears once Buzz gets his boots on the moon 20 minutes after Armstrong Buzz Aldrin exited the eagle by crawling back out of the hatch and onto the porch of the Lamb Armstrong was there to film this in great detail ing okay you're right at the edge of the porch I want to uh back up and partially close the hand Buzz wasn't joking about being locked out of the Lamb either if the hatch had fully closed it would have been very difficult perhaps impossible for them to get back inside now that would be the ultimate sprue the pooch moment in all of human history it got the only laugh I personally ever heard from Neil Armstrong that's our home for the next couple hours we want to take good care of it it's like Armstrong before him by backing out Aldrin is not able to see anything of the lunar surface until the final jump onto the lunar module's foot pad when he's finally able to turn around the shock of it is just electrifying out here magnificent desolation that's exactly right Buzz Armstrong then walks over to the remote TV camera that had taken pictures of him coming down the ladder but he changes the setting on the lenses around your nail now this new shot is much better through the gray cathode tube scan lines we can see both men they're standing very close together they're right up against the ladder haven't uh some reason Neil Armstrong's Midwestern accent seems to go into full afterburner and just for this moment 69 50. For All Mankind you know a lot of people both in America and abroad like to characterize us as these mindless jingoistic knuckle draggers waving our giant foam fingers with we're number one on them while we're chanting USA USA USA But if there was ever a more graceful more humble or a more generous message than the one tied to the leg of the eagle I've yet to hear it here men from the planet Earth First set foot upon the moon July 1969 A.D we came in peace For All Mankind hey Elizabeth Houston we're copying instruments were then placed on the surface a thin pole was hammered with some significant effort into the hard lunar Rock underneath the dust and an American flag was put up Roger the Eva is progressing beautifully I believe they're setting up the flag now it had been stiffened with wires so it gave the general appearance of blowing in the non-existent wind now if they hadn't done this it would have just simply hung wimply from the pole and would have essentially been invisible planting that flag on the moon was the only Cold War Victory Parade that we would ever have oh it's beautiful Mike it really is they got the flag up now and you can see the stars it was what the Marines raising the flag on Iwo jima's Mount suribachi meant to our fathers and mothers it was proof in this case In Living Color that all of the years of effort and sacrifice all the Lost blood and lost treasures spent to make good on a challenge made by a young president who like Lincoln did not get to see the great struggle that we had finally overcome so it's small wonder that after the mission looking back on all of the computer failures the close calls the near misses that they had to get to in order to land on the moon Buzz Aldrin stated without hesitation that of all the jobs I had to do on the moon the one I wanted to go the smoothest was the flag raising now two hours and 15 minutes may seem like a decent stretch of time for a first walk on another planet and it is but one thing that absolutely blew my mind was the size of the ground that they actually covered imagine looking down at a major league baseball diamond you put the Lem on the pitcher's mound and each leg extends exactly to the circle where the clay meets the grass the entire moonwalk virtually all of it doesn't only take place in the infield virtually all of it takes place inside the Baseline now there's one Excursion over the home team dugout to set up a camera and there's a little Loop just past first base in foul ball territory and finally the single greatest Trek by far is a solitary walk about halfway into right center field to examine the rim of a small crater that's it with the Lem on the pitcher's Mount not counting that one brief foray about twice the distance to second base pretty much the entire moonwalk takes place inside the clay of the infield it's actually on the grass in the center of the diamond it's absolutely shocking you know I think looking back on it history went out of her way to be particularly fair to Armstrong and Aldrin both men landed simultaneously of course but Neil Armstrong was is and forever will be the first man on the Moon there's a curious kind of symmetry at work here for while Armstrong's name became history and then Legend the fact remains that all of our memories of that breathtaking event really belong to Aldrin that boot print on the moon every single drop of sweat and blood in every single scent that the Apollo program ended up spending could be crystallized forever in that one image of that boot print on the moon was Buzz aldrin's boot that image of an American astronaut crisply saluting the American flag that's Aldrin 2. and what's rightfully been called the most famous picture in history it's a man standing casually almost idly on the surface of another world he's anonymous due to the golden visor needed to protect his eyes from the brilliant unfiltered sunlight well that's Aldrin too now you can't see his face but if you look closely there's a word printed on the spacesuit in that picture of the first moon landing that picture of the Space Age that picture it's going to last as long as humans last and that word is Aldrin so which one would you rather be the immortal name in the history books or the person in an equally Immortal picture where's the entire idea ridiculous kind of like the idea of a one-sided coin Neil Armstrong's name would not have been written without Buzz Aldrin aldrin's picture would not have been captured without Armstrong behind the camera and that's actually my very favorite thing about that image of an Apollo astronaut on the moon you look closely you'll see aldrin's name but if you look even closer you'll see that Neil Armstrong is in the shot as well he's reflected in the mirror-like visor that's how it should be too I think each man reflecting the other with neither face visible as if any one of the 350 000 people who powered this journey could be behind that face plate maybe it said white behind the golden Glasser Gus Grissom or Roger Chaffee maybe it's the entire human race hidden in that small little bubble brought up from Earth maybe it's me in that picture maybe it's you and uh congratulations to yesterday's performance and our prayers are with you thank you Jim thank you Jim crime Quality Base but it's beautiful and then it was over not just the mission the entire program the idea of Dreams made real the spirit of the Space Age was over we just didn't know it yet go ahead 11. Neil and Buzz climbed back into the eagle they sealed the hatch they stowed the
samples and they prepared for liftoff but while he was trying to find a place for a big bag of moon rocks Aldrin accidentally hit the control console of the Lem with this giant sack of rocks and he broke something now what he happened to break turned out to be the switch that's going to fire the ascent stage to get them back up into lunar orbit rendezvous with Mike Collins in Colombia and then go home there's a story I've heard I've heard it twice from people who actually knew Buzz Aldrin and despite all the research I did for this program I was never able to find out if it's true or not actually you know what I don't care if it's true it's perfect whether it happened or not I loved this story because to me it perfectly captures the difference in Attitude between how we thought during the Space Age versus how we think today here's the story many many years after the flight of Apollo 11 a young journalist was interviewing Buzz Aldrin on television she'd read about Buzz accidentally smashing the switch that's going to bring them home and then she asked him with the perfect kindness and sensitivity of modern America if Buzz began to give some thought to what he would tell his wife and children before the air ran out during those final moments did he or Armstrong discuss what their final words to Earth would be and would Buzz be willing to share that with us after all these years now according to Legend Buzz Aldrin stared at her for a moment as if she'd asked this last question in some kind of foreign language and once he realized that she was serious he supposedly leaned forward and said we weren't thinking about any last words we're trying to figure out how to fix the goddamn switch I do love that story so Armstrong Aldrin and Collins all made it home safely turns out felt tip pen was just the right size to close the contact on that broken switch no there's a picture of Neil Armstrong in the limb taken by Aldrin of course just a few minutes after they'd repressurized the eagle and removed their helmets first man on the Moon looks tired he looks very tired he needs a shave and probably needs a shower as well his eyes appear swollen and red but the look on his face is just transcendental the eyes and the smile not those of a 38 year old steely-eyed missile Man Neil Armstrong looks exactly like a six-year-old kid seeing a shiny new bike in front of the tree on Christmas morning it's a real smile but those blue eyes appear to be just a little bit watery it's kind of our first time at Disneyland look you're just so happy you don't know what else to do but cry I think that photo is one of the most remarkable pictures ever taken of anyone there's no other photos of Armstrong that even comes close there's joy in that look the kind of deep deep Pride you must feel after finally realizing that you've just done the single most difficult task in the history of the world and there's not just pride in those eyes either there's an overwhelming sense of relief it's strong enough to come forward half a century and still knock the wind out of you 600 million people that was everyone on Earth who could get to a TV set had watched this one man carry the weight of all Humanity the dreams and sweat of the 375 000 people who worked on Project Apollo were with him too as well as the blood of Gus Grissom Ed White Roger Chaffee Elliot C and Charlie Bassett any one of whom might have been the person in the picture if luck and timing had gone a different way Neil looks like a man who has the satisfaction of having carried all of that weight for all of that time and finished the job without screwing the pooch now Apollo 11 was the first of six lunar Landings but something had ended once those parachutes appeared in the sky and Colombia came down and splashed into the ocean Space Race was over war was over and we won but without that tightly wound spring it would end up shocking all of us Apollo kids who'd grown up in the space age and thought that this was just the very beginning of an endless Adventure that how fast everything could come to an end and disappear like a rocket contrail heading ever higher into the heavens three two one commit stop Apollo 12 may have been the worst sequel in Showbiz history Tranquility base 2 Electric Boogaloo uh yeah there were some decent moments Apollo 12 got struck by lightning on the way up that was pretty cool although just like the near disaster on the landing of Apollo 11 we wouldn't know just how serious that was until many years later actually Apollo 12 got hit twice the first strike at 36 seconds knocked all three fuel cells offline a second strike at 52 seconds knocked out Apollo 12's Artificial Horizon indicator these two lightning strikes lit every warning light in the capsule called Yankee Clipper and every light back at Mission Control as well it looked like that crew escape rocket was going to get a chance to be on live TV after all no one at that instant knew just how badly Yankee Clipper had been damaged Apollo 12 Houston uh we can start getting that platform squared away go IMU power standby and then back to on and we'll get her caged up the electrical environmental and consumables manager known as Ecom and Mission Control was operated at that moment by a man named John Aaron he alone recognized the pattern of the failures from an earlier test when a power supply on an instrumentation unit just blew a fuse now this is where the dividends pay off when you treat a flight crew like a group of individuals rather than a technological Army of foot soldiers in a tight top-down hierarchy Aaron had the confidence in himself and in his bosses for him to get on the mic without hesitation and Satan Apollo 12 Houston Try SCE to auxiliary over this was a long way from a routine failure it had been simulated briefly over a year before but lunar module pilot Alan Bean remembered it somehow and when he reached out to find that obscure switch inflicted over to auxiliary the fuel cells instantly came back online Telemetry began to flow back to Houston and Mission Commander P Conrad could stop glancing over at that abort button Aaron and Bean's quick thinking had saved the mission earning the Ecom desk jockey enough brownie points to achieve the Priceless Award of being called a steely-eyed missile man in front of the entire launch Team also had saved the mission which was good because a few days later Alan Bean was going to screw the pooch Big Time Alan beam quite by accident you understand was about to make Apollo 12 the Forgotten Landing you're coming into the picture now Pete they had that may have been a small deal but that's along with Ruby now one of the great Hypes regarding the second lunar Landing was that Apollo 12 would not carry those blurry black and white TV cameras but rather new state-of-the-art gear that would show the surface of the Moon In Living Color Conrad Bean and the lunar module Intrepid made a brilliant absolutely Pinpoint Landing just close enough for them to walk 600 feet or so to visit the unmanned surveyor 3 Lander which had landed back in April of 1967. it was the first and only time that humans have been able to visit the space probes that came before them and paved the way Intrepid landed in the Southeastern corner of Oceanus proscillarum that's the ocean of storms now this particular piece of real estate had been visited three times before Apollo 12. the surveyor III probe from 1967 which they examined the Soviet Luna 5 Mission in 1965 would have made the first soft landing on the moon but the Retro Rockets failed and it just dug another crater to fly over launch of the Ranger missions was accomplished by an atlas agena combination from Cape Kennedy first of them was America's Ranger 7 which in July of 1964 also crashed into the moon but that was the mission plan for Ranger 7 it was designed to crash in the moon NASA's Ranger 7s impacted the moon in a pre-selected Target area it also took the first image of the Moon obtained from an American space probe and 4 300 more of them as it rocketed into the moon at 2 300 miles per hour the last image recorded objects about a foot wide this traffic jam in the Southeastern end of the ocean of storms had drawn so much attention that the iau the international astronomical Union a multinational Consortium of leading astronomers which is among other things responsible for approving every single name on every single feature that we discover out in space while the iau decided that after four missions and two craters that particular patch of ancient lava would henceforth be named mayor Cognito the known sea now unfortunately we didn't get to see that Apollo 12 is the missing mission for so many of us because as being followed Conrad down the ladder to become the Fourth Man on the Moon his first task was to set up the brand new widely hyped color camera but Alan Bean who understandably was probably pretty excited ended up missing a procedure and he removed the lens cover before he had the camera securely in place that camera got pointed for a few moments directly at the Sun the delicate Electronics in the camera fried almost immediately and we didn't see anything on Apollo 12. that means for most of us like it never happened that's the power of the image for you a needless to say the next mission Apollo 13 would be historic Apollo 13 was the first and only mission to the Moon that I clearly saw on the pad go off with my own eyes also there was some kind of an explosion apparently I could afford to be a little flip about this because there's nothing I can add to that magnificent work that Ron Howard Tom Hanks Ed Harris Bill Paxton Kevin Bacon and Gary Sinise did on the movie Apollo 13 based on the book lost Moon by Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell it is hands down the best non-fiction Space movie ever made uh faulty wiring to an oxygen tank caused an explosion in the service module crippling power bleeding oxygen and basically turning the Command Module Odyssey into a dead spacecraft [Applause] we've had a problem here the lunar module Aquarius was a completely separate spacecraft conveniently docked to the nose of the Odyssey Aquarius would become the Lifeboat that would get those three men Jim Lovell Jack Swaggart and Fred Hayes back to Earth but not before going to the Moon first now huddled inside the limb the three men were at high risk of Suffocation not from lack of oxygen there was plenty of that but from the accumulation of carbon dioxide which is normally removed from the air by chemical scrubbers the lamb was designed for two men over three days it didn't have the scrubbers that the Command Module had which was enough for three men and eight or nine days but with the fuel cells on the Command Module not working that simply wasn't going to help now there were plenty of canisters in the Command Module but they were designed only for the Command Module the ones in Aquarius had a completely different intake now I'm probably my favorite moment of the movie Engineers take the canisters they take socks tape lunar sample bags every single thing actually on board both spacecraft and they just dump it onto a table in a conference room and one of the guys holds up the square peg of the Command Module canister to the round hole of the lunar module scrubber and basically says we have to make this fit into this with that that scene is so critical to understanding how we got to the Moon because it was a combination of intricately laid out precisely detailed and painstakingly rehearsed procedures for every single type of emergency that NASA could imagine but here they were with an emergency that they couldn't have imagined and the ability to switch mental gears from rigid adherence to precise procedures and switching suddenly to kind of a freestyle out of the box throw the spaghetti on the wall to see if it sticks kind of improvisation well that encapsulates the success of the entire program and there's one more thing that that movie gets exactly right and that's flight director Gene krantz's attitude failure is not an option and that's not just something printed below the logo of some insurance company he means it literally and don't come to me until you can find a way to get these guys back home in one piece you know there's another Aviation story I heard when I was Learning to Fly Chuck Yeager once found himself in a flat spin it was unrecoverable everything you try to do with power Rudder ailerons nothing was working and he's heading downstairs like an anvil Jaeger eventually found a way to recover now the way I heard it he said essentially that he couldn't get the plane out of the flat spin but he did think it was possible to flip it over into an inverted spin and he knew how to get out of one of those who thinks like this we're in horrible shape and we have to make it worse in order to make it better ignition sequence start five four three two one zero lines commit liftoff we have liftoff with Apollo 14 three minutes past the hour Apollo 14 launched on January 31st 1971 was the last of the H missions and was headed to from morrow which was Apollo 13's intended Landing site but this was no longer a relatively safe and mostly secure flat and featureless lunar Sea from morrow it's much older one of the lunar Highlands which means that the Apollo 14 photos are the first to show actual terrain there are Hills in these pictures Rolling Hills and not very tall this actually adds a great deal of reality to that magnificent desolation that Aldrin described on Apollo 11 and which we didn't see thanks to a blinded TV camera on Apollo 12. Mission Commander Alan Shepard had waited patiently for 10 years for this moment if NASA had not decided to test the Mercury capsule with ham astrochimp 65 then Alan Shepard would have been the first man in space with that delay allowed Yuri Gagarin that well-deserved honor that was a pretty tough hit for Shepard back in 1961 when he told his wife that the first man in space was standing in that very room Louise said who let a Russian in here that Russian Yuri Gagarin was killed in a training flight in 1967. he died before witnessing the first moon
landing with Apollo 11 and just nine months before Apollo 8 made the first journey into lunar orbit Alan Shepard however was alive and well 10 years later and he got to walk on the moon he was the oldest man to walk on the moon and the only one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts to do so Alan Shepard had been grounded due to an inner ear condition for most of those 10 years so he joined fellow Mercury astronaut the also grounded Deke Slayton as chief of the astronaut office in 1963. now this was a valuable place to be during that 10-year Hiatus and when a new surgical procedure corrected his inner ear problem Shepard was back in the rotation even if your business happens to be going to the moon it's always good to have friends in high places and sometimes it's not just what you know it's who you know fellow Mercury 7 astronaut Gordon Cooper who unlike Shepard flew a Gemini Mission Gemini 5 with Pete Conrad who just returned from the Moon on Apollo 12 had been slated to be the commander of the backup crew for Apollo 10. Now using the usual rotation schedule that would have made Cooper the mission Commander for the planned moonwalk of Apollo 13. Slayton had his doubts about coop Cooper was rumored to
have a LAX attitude towards training having had to be repeatedly coaxed into the Gemini simulator or so it was said so Slayton inserted his Deputy Shepherd as the commander of Apollo 13. now this created its own set of problems and not just with a justifiably furious Leroy Gordon Cooper Shepard actually asked Jim mcdivitt commander of Apollo 9 and the first man to test the lemon Earth orbit if he would join his team as the lunar module pilot for a walk on the moon as part of Apollo 13. mcdivitt declined with thanks he flat out turned him down on the grounds that Shepard lacked the experience to command a moon mission now the response of the first American in space to this refusal on the part of Jim mcdivitt is not recorded but mcdivitt had a point Shepard could use more training so Deke Slayton had a talk with Jim Lovell who had been on the first flight to orbit but not land on the moon on Apollo 8 back in 1968. Lovell had headed up the backup crew for Apollo 11 which again going by the standard rotation protocol made level commander of Apollo 14. Deek Slayton asked Lovell if he and his crew would switch missions with Shepard to give Shepard more training time now offered a chance to walk on the moon several months earlier than expected Lovell agreed to the switch what could possibly go wrong Apollo 13 went wrong and there were more delays as modifications were made to the service module after the near fatal explosion on Apollo 13. Jim Lovell went to the moon twice but he never landed on it and for the rest of their lives every time Shepherd and Lovell would find themselves in each other's company Lovell would ask jokingly but a little wistfly also if Shepard wanted to switch missions back to the original schedule meanwhile Gordo Cooper was pushed back to the later Apollo missions and he could already see the writing was on the wall Apollo 20 was canceled due to lack of funding there were serious doubts about Apollo's 18 and 19. so L Gordon Cooper resigned from NASA and the Air Force on July 31 1970.
he was battling Parkinson's disease when he died of a heart attack at his home in Ventura California on October 4th 2004 that was the 47th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik one which had started the whole thing dying in 2004 was not the end of Gordo's space flights not by a long shot Gordo Cooper went on to fly aboard a capsule that was lost in the mountains for several weeks Gordo Cooper was aboard spacex's Falcon 1 rocket when it exploded two minutes into its flight Gordo Cooper flew on a successful mission to the International Space Station Gordo Cooper was burned into incandescence as he re-entered the atmosphere without a spacesuit joining him on two of those missions presumably as flight engineer was Montgomery Scott Scotty on the original Star Trek series played by actor James Dewan both duhens and Cooper's ashes repeatedly failed to be released in outer space both men had been battling tough diseases prior to their deaths neither one of them were quitters or complainers now both finally made it to Earth orbit on spacex's unmanned second mission to the International Space Station on May 22nd 2012. both of them re-entered the Earth's atmosphere about a month later and some remains of mercury and Germany astronaut Cooper and chief engineer Montgomery Scott is still up there and they always will be but Alan Shepard got his moon mission the Apollo 14 lunar module Antares undocked with the command service module Kitty Hawk piloted by Stuart Russa and began its descent to framaro after hand flying Antares even closer to its intended landing spot than any other Apollo Mission before us since Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr stepped off of the foot pad and onto the lunar surface in utter silence his mind on other things apparently because he'd walk several yards away from the lamb before remarking quietly as if to himself and it's been a long way but we're here now apparently preparing for his imminent retirement from the space program Shepard took a couple of swings without a t engulfs all-time most difficult sand trap That Swing was captured on tape by his lunar module pilot Ed Mitchell rookie astronaut Edgar Dean Mitchell only made a single flight into space but it was a doozy he was the sixth human to walk on the moon was his only flight and so ended the H series of Apollo missions now Apollo 15 was supposed to be an H Mission but as that deep dark shadow of budget cuts and waning enthusiasm stretched ever longer in the lunar Twilight NASA realized that it had better fly while the flying was still good Neil Armstrong's fellow crew member on Gemini 8 Dave Scott who'd publicly marveled at Armstrong's skill and coolness under pressure and who then went on to Pilot The Command Module in Earth orbit back on Apollo 9. was selected as Mission Commander for this first of the long duration Apollo J missions Ricky's Al Warden Command Module pilot and Jim Irwin as lunar module pilot would join Scott on this all-air Force flight they had named the lunar module Falcon after the mascot of the Air Force Academy The Command Module they christened endeavor the space race was back on in Earnest by this time but not against the Soviets it was against the United States Congress which grew more and more intolerant of what many saws admission that had already been accomplished Apollo 15 was sent to Hadley rill a genuinely mountainous region dominated by Hadley rill itself it's a smooth sinuous fault line in the lunar surface looks a lot like a dry Arroyo but it's the result of subsurface collapse rather than ancient flowing water four zero four one four five four seven this three-day Mission had a lot of ground to cover there was absolutely no way to accomplish all of the scientific objectives on foot but that didn't stop Scott from having his way regarding sleep cycles determined not to Mar the mission with three full days of jet lag Scott landed the Falcon at Hadley rill in the late afternoon and insisted on some solid sleep prior to their first DBA now this was made much more comfortable by removing the pressure suits completely they were the first Apollo crew to spend time on the lunar surface in their shirt sleeves this strategy apparently paid off during their three-day stay on the lunar surface Scott and Irwin took three road trips in their Luna Rover one of them taking them right to the edge of Hadley real itself together they spent an incredible 18 hours outside of the limb bringing home 170 pounds of moon rocks including the Genesis Rock named in the belief that it might have been a part of the moon's primordial crust formed 4.4 billion years ago in a solar system that only began 4.6 billion
years ago now alas this proved not to be the case the Genesis rock sample number 15 for 15 pretty remarkable coincidence when you consider it was for Apollo 15 was later discovered to be a mere 4 billion years old well in my left hand I have a feather my right hand a hammer Apollo 15 also gave Mission Commander Dave Scott a great chance to prove Galileo correct with his anti-intuitive idea that all objects fall at the same rate because when you get rid of the air that slows the feather down the feather and the hammer hit the lunar surface at exactly the same time now since that camera on the lunar rover could be controlled from the ground in Houston Scott and Irwin parked the buggy at what was presumably a safe distance away from the falcon and the buggy recorded the first video of an Apollo Ascent stage lifting off the surface of the Moon aside from a shower of golden debris from the four-legged descent stage there's no rocket flame no smoke nothing would come out of this event both smoke and Flame being a product of a rocket engine firing on or near the Earth's surface Falcon's second stage climbed Skyward like a scalded ass ape which would be test pilot jargon for rapidly the instruction to tilt the camera as it took off had to be sent from Earth one and a quarter seconds before the launch occurred the radio signal would take that long to get to the Rover moving at a mere 186 262 miles per second speed of light's not just a good idea it's the law Apollo 15's lunar module pilot Jim Irwin repeated the remarkable story of his immediate predecessor Apollo 14's Ed Mitchell on his one and only trip into space Jim Irwin would not only get to walk on the moon he'd get to drive on it unlike his Commander Dave Scott who as we record this is one of only four surviving men to have walked on the moon Jim Irwin died of a heart attack in 1991. only 61 years old he was the first member to leave the most exclusive Club in human history 7.7 John Young who'd orbited the moon during the dress rehearsal flight of Apollo 10 got his second trip back as commander of Apollo 16 Bound for the even older even more mountainous terrain of the Descartes Highlands [Applause] Ken Mattingly pulled from the crew of Apollo 13 three days prior to launch due to a suspected case of German Measles that he never actually contracted would fly his Command Module pilot on a ship named Casper of Friendly Ghost Fame the one departure from serious ship names after Snoopy and Charlie Brown modules flew the lunar Landing dress rehearsal on Apollo 10. it was largely through Ken Mattingly's tireless efforts in a cold wet and dark Command Module simulator that the crew of the flight he'd missed Apollo 13 made it back alive and well rookie Charlie Duke would make it a hat-trick for lunar module Pilots Apollo 16 would be his only flight into space aboard the more impressively named Orion the Descartes Highlands would prove as varied and interesting as Hadley really had been and if John Young and Charlie Duke didn't encounter a rock as old as the Genesis Rock from Apollo 15. they sure as hell ran into one a good
deal larger look at the size of it House Rock a medium-sized Boulder that had rolled down from the Descartes Hills millions and millions of years ago makes quite an impression when seen with an actual human to provide some sense of scale speaking of Impressions it was Boulders like that one that had littered the area that Apollo 11 was Landing for before Neil Armstrong did what he was paid to do Orion left the moon in as spectacular a fashion as it had arrived there's a frame a still frame from the video of the liftoff taken from the Apollo 16 Rover that looks like nothing so much as the inside of Studio 54 in New York with golden rays of debris blasting out like a spotlight on a mirror ball John Young would return home and wait almost as long as Alan Shepard did for his next flight 10 years after leaving the moon John Young would take the left seat as commander of sts-1 the first space shuttle flight ride in Colombia into orbit accompanied by Rob Crippen young would take Colombia up again a few years later on STS9 John Young number nine of the 12 men who've walked on the moon is one of only three astronauts who flown to the Moon twice he was chief of the astronaut office from 1974 until 1987 and he is the only person in history to have flown four different types of spacecraft the Gemini capsule the Apollo Command Module the Apollo lunar module and the space shuttle John Young died from complications from pneumonia in Houston Texas on January 5th 2018 at age 87 and he has sorely missed and that left one more chance everything left to do would have to be done on Apollo 17. Apollo 20 had been canceled some time before in fact Richard Nixon had wanted to cancel Apollo 16 17 18 and 19. but Office of Management and budget deputy director Casper Weinberger who would go on to become Ronald Reagan's secretary of defense managed to salvage Apollo 16 and 17. Apollo 18 was at one time targeted for the massive spectacular terrorist crater named Copernicus Apollo 19 failed a budget cuts as well one of its potential Landing sites was the most spectacular formation on the entire Moon Tycho whose brilliant white rays of ejecta spread out for a thousand miles in every direction but none of this was to be Apollo 17 would be Humanity's last trip to the moon Apollo 17 also brought the most bitter disappointment of the entire Apollo program 17 Houston you're a go for orbit go for orbit I'm not talking about the mission Apollo 17 was the most spectacular success of them all but for yours truly by now all of 13 years old and just three weeks short of that first telescope when Apollo 13 launched on December 7th 1972 well that night turned out to be the single most bitter disappointment of my entire life Apollo 17 was not the last flight of a Saturn V but it was the first and only night launch of the world's biggest Roman candle and I son of a hotel manager still living in Bermuda was going to be directly under it when it dropped its first stage in an explosion of light and Vapor so there I sat outside the house waiting was scheduled for liftoff around 10 pm eastern time which would make it 11 pm local time in Bermuda I think I got set up around 9 30. I wasn't going to miss this no way I sat watching the Western Horizon as liftoff time approached I did never radio and the internet was still 30 years in the future I was sure about the launch time so I waited and when launch time came and went I thought there must be some kind of launch delay so I waited some more alone with my mom and dad attending an Apollo 17 party at the hotel which was just about a quarter of a mile away and then I waited some more got to be so desperate that I would see a distant airplane and wonder if I hadn't oversold myself I waited till about 11 30. and then I waited till midnight
and then I waited till 1am which was the latest I'd ever been up now having a launched scrub wasn't all that uncommon I just get the new launch date in the newspaper the next day and I just prayed it'd be another night launch so I packed up my chair and my sleeping bag and my drinks and my snacks and I went to bed actually I first went to the bathroom I was utterly convinced that going to relieve myself would be what actually triggered the Apollo 17 launch sequence so I went to bed that night disappointed certainly but hardly crushed I was woken up about an hour later by my mother I remember her exact words she said Billy wasn't that simply unbelievable that was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen [Music] what was the most beautiful thing you've ever seen and right at that instant I could feel my internal organs withering into grapes as it slowly began to dawn on me the horrible truth of what had actually happened Apollo 17 cleared the pad at 12 33 a.m Eastern Standard Time that would be about 1 33 in the morning where I was about 15 minutes after I'd fallen asleep now I knew I'd fallen asleep during a launch because my mama told me that it had been bright enough to turn night into day and I'm sure I would have remembered something like that you know I think that was the moment I had my first genuine adult thought and that was this there are some things that happen and they can't unhappen no matter how much you want them to it was over it was done I missed it period the end still not over it now as I said Apollo 17 was simply a magnificent Mission Gene cernan who'd flown to within 10 miles of the Moon back on Apollo 10's final rehearsal finally got his chance he would be the 11th man to walk on the moon and he'd be the last man to leave it joining him on the lunar surface was Apollo's only full-time scientist geologist Harrison Schmidt known as Jack he was rotated to Apollo 17 when it was finally clear that this was going to be the last chance to get an actual geologist on the moon he'd be the fourth person in a row to make their one and only trip into space a walk on the moon that's super they would ride the last lunar module Challenger to a truly spectacular landing spot the Taurus litro Valley they would set Challenger down on a small Plate
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