Speaker 1: Nine Days in July is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Trade Traft Studios in association with High five Content.
Speaker 1: Just half an hour after the Saturn five bearing Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven lifted off from Cape Kennedy, Vice President Spirou Agnew
Speaker 1: sat down with Walter Cronkite, anchorman for the CBS Evening News.
Speaker 1: After a brief discussion about the launch, Cronkite said the following,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a nature of the American and the
Speaker 1: people on the space program, particularly to constantly look beyond
Speaker 1: where we are. This is the nature of the man
Speaker 1: who wants to go to the Moon. However, Cronkite reminded
Speaker 1: the Vice President that he had recently said, I think
Speaker 1: the United States should undertake a very ambitious new project
Speaker 1: in space. I think we should attempt interplanetary exploration in
Speaker 1: a man's sense. At the time Agnew sat down with
Speaker 1: America's most beloved newsman, Apollo eleven had just reached dorbent,
Speaker 1: it would be four more days before it reached the Moon,
Speaker 1: and no one knew if the first lunar mission would
Speaker 1: even be successful. Despite that context, the Vice President of
Speaker 1: the United States felt that American needed to articulate a
Speaker 1: broad objective for the future. It's very easy to forego
Speaker 1: the optimistic, long range approach to these things because you
Speaker 1: can always find a hundred reasons not to do it
Speaker 1: or why it may fail. But with the way science
Speaker 1: has advanced in the past fifty years, I don't think
Speaker 1: we'd be out of line and saying, for example, we're
Speaker 1: going to put a man on Mars by the end
Speaker 1: of this century. And when it came to Mars, Agnew's
Speaker 1: objective was clear, and I think we should do it
Speaker 1: by the end of the century. In nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: the year nine seemed a long way off. As of
Speaker 1: the time of this recording was already two decades ago,
Speaker 1: and we are still decades from landing on Mars. If ever, so,
Speaker 1: what happened, Why did everything just stop? Where did we
Speaker 1: go wrong? And is there any hope for humanity's space
Speaker 1: faring future. About five hours before their planned splashed down,
Speaker 1: the crew of Apollo eleven wake and prepare for landing.
Speaker 1: Like excited kids waiting to open presents on Christmas morning.
Speaker 1: They are up even before Houston attempts to rouse them.
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven Good morning. To muse them all, Roger, we
Speaker 1: saw you're up to turn around, and we're you're probably
Speaker 1: leading your breakfast there about the maroon bugle, all of
Speaker 1: fanning by here to give you the morning news. To
Speaker 1: hear it. It's the last day of the news, okay.
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven remains the prime story with the world awaiting
Speaker 1: your landing today at about the eleven am used in
Speaker 1: time President Nixon that surprised your wise with a phone
Speaker 1: call from San Francisco just before reboarded a plane to
Speaker 1: fly out to meet you. President Nixon is flying out
Speaker 1: to the aircraft carry you're assigned to retrieve the crew
Speaker 1: once they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Eric Canada
Speaker 1: says it has accepted twenty three hundred reservations for flights
Speaker 1: to the Moon and the past five days, it might
Speaker 1: be noted that more than one has been made by
Speaker 1: men for their mothers in law. The fun stuff out
Speaker 1: of the way, now it's time to get down to business.
Speaker 1: Remember that last night before they went to sleep, mission
Speaker 1: control informed the crew that a sudden storm had moved
Speaker 1: into their landing zone. The night before the caps that
Speaker 1: was forced to land in the Pacific Ocean. There n
Speaker 1: from Hawaii, there were thunder storms, and so Mass had
Speaker 1: decided to change to splashdown location just that night before,
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty miles closer to Samoa, so the ship
Speaker 1: had to steam all not loan to get down. That's
Speaker 1: John Wolfram. John was a Navy seal who had already
Speaker 1: done one tour in Vietnam and was about to embark
Speaker 1: on another. But first he was chosen to be part
Speaker 1: of A. Paulo Levin's recovery team. I was the youngest.
Speaker 1: I am the team at the town. We'll have lots
Speaker 1: more from John, the first person to greet the crew
Speaker 1: of Apollo eleven upon their return. In just a minute.
Speaker 1: The weather forecast in the landing area right now is
Speaker 1: two thousands entered high added ten miles when about zero
Speaker 1: eight zero at eighteen knots uh. You'll have about three
Speaker 1: to second foot ways and it looks like they'll be
Speaker 1: landing about ten minutes before sunrise over okay, Cluck shows
Speaker 1: where five and a half hours away from entry interface
Speaker 1: point at which Apollo living winner of the RK's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It really gets bigger up there, follow eleven. There the
Speaker 1: hornet is on the station, just far enough off the
Speaker 1: target point to keep from getting hit a recovery one
Speaker 1: are the coppers. They're they're on station. However, as John
Speaker 1: wolf From said, the Navy had to race full speed
Speaker 1: ahead to the new landing area in order to get
Speaker 1: on station on time. The ship assigned to recover the
Speaker 1: capsule and crew is the USS Hornet, an Essex class
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier that saw action up and down the Pacific
Speaker 1: during World War Two. And I guess we're expanding by
Speaker 1: for you to whip into the entry attitude. Okay, we
Speaker 1: just been thanking a couple of lass manufacturers. Roger might
Speaker 1: hid that may never come in there. Jim Lovell told
Speaker 1: buzzing the crew to make sure they come in B
Speaker 1: E F. That means blunt and forward. That's the heat
Speaker 1: shield side astor not humor. I can see the moon
Speaker 1: flight and by the window, and it looked at what
Speaker 1: I considered to be a correct sign. I follow control
Speaker 1: at one fifty minutes Follow eleven systems now eleven thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred sixty three nautical miles, approaching at the velocity
Speaker 1: of seventeen thousand three hut per second. We were just
Speaker 1: under an our away from the scheduled command module of
Speaker 1: service Michul separation. If you had fallen into a coma
Speaker 1: just after the first Moon landing in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: and awoke in two thousand and nineteen, you could be
Speaker 1: forgiven for assuming the mission sparked a long and robust
Speaker 1: era of interstellar exploration At DASA, The truth is, enthusiasm
Speaker 1: for the Moon mission started to wane almost immediately. Though
Speaker 1: we returned to the Moon five more times, it would
Speaker 1: have been six if Apollo thirteen hadn't been forced to abort.
Speaker 1: Deploying ever more sophisticated experiments and gaining greater scientific insights,
Speaker 1: Apollo's budget was soon slashed, and the entire project was
Speaker 1: halted just three years after Neil and Buzz first set
Speaker 1: foot on the Moon. While some assumed that the Moon
Speaker 1: was just the beginning of America's exploration of space, others,
Speaker 1: like those in control of the Federal Purse, felt that
Speaker 1: we'd beat the Soviets and won the space race. Why
Speaker 1: did we need to keep going back, Andy Aldren, It
Speaker 1: was kind of inevitable. We got into race, we won
Speaker 1: the race, and so after the race, you've kind of
Speaker 1: warmed down a little bit, and then you go look
Speaker 1: for the next race. And it wasn't one. What happened
Speaker 1: after Apollo was kind of the normalization of space. There
Speaker 1: were a few significant last gasps. Rather than let its
Speaker 1: left over rockets go to waste, the US built a
Speaker 1: space station under the third stage of a Saturn five.
Speaker 1: Between nineteen seventy three and seventy four. Sky Lab was
Speaker 1: occupied for about twenty four weeks, demonstrating that humans can
Speaker 1: live and work in space for long periods of time,
Speaker 1: what more leisure. It was not uncommon for the men
Speaker 1: of sky Lab who indulge themselves in the fluidity of
Speaker 1: movement in zero G. And in July of ninety exactly
Speaker 1: six years after Neil, Buzz and Michael went to the Moon,
Speaker 1: a command module docked in Earth orbit with a Russian
Speaker 1: Soyu spacecraft and three US astronauts and two Soviet cosmonauts
Speaker 1: visited each other's spacecraft. With the final goodbye. The astronauts
Speaker 1: of Apollo and the cosmonauts US ended their historic meeting
Speaker 1: in space, and that was it. After decades of intense rivalry,
Speaker 1: the space race was officially over and Apollo was grounded.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just the Apollo spacecraft coming down, it was
Speaker 1: the curtain the last Apollo mission once he beat the Soviets,
Speaker 1: who care Space historian Amy Shearer title Nixon okayed a
Speaker 1: space shuttle program, but hecated as the Shuttle to nowhere.
Speaker 1: It was just a vehicle that could go up. It
Speaker 1: couldn't go very far. It couldn't land anywhere but on
Speaker 1: a runway. So we ended up in like NASCAR and space.
Speaker 1: We ended up just kind of like running labs. While
Speaker 1: I was alive for the sky Lab and Apollo Soyus missions,
Speaker 1: I was too young to remember them. I grew up
Speaker 1: with a Space Shuttle. I remember seeing the prototype Enterprise
Speaker 1: during its international tour in nineteen three, which, as a
Speaker 1: colossal Star Trek fan even then, delighted me to no end.
Speaker 1: As an adult, I was lucky enough to witness three
Speaker 1: Space shut launches and a landing. I loved that ship.
Speaker 1: But while the space shuttles did great things, including launching
Speaker 1: the Hubble Space Telescope, which gave us an unparalleled look
Speaker 1: at our galactic home, and lift off of the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle Discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope our window on
Speaker 1: the universe, and building the International Space Station, ensuring we've
Speaker 1: had humans living and working in space continuously for more
Speaker 1: than two decades. Tonight, I am directing Nasha to develop
Speaker 1: a permanently manned space station, and to do it within
Speaker 1: a decade. The Space Shuttle was an indisputable technological step backwards.
Speaker 1: We went from a spacecraft capable of deep space flight
Speaker 1: to one that couldn't even leave lower th orbit. It
Speaker 1: was a perfect landing as the Atlantis touched down after
Speaker 1: a thirteen day mission delivering supplies to the International Space Station,
Speaker 1: a final voyage that brings the Shuttle programming to an end.
Speaker 1: And when the last Space Shuttle touched down on July
Speaker 1: twenty one, two thousand and eleven, America no longer had
Speaker 1: the technology to get to space. To get to and
Speaker 1: from the International Space Station, it had to begin buying
Speaker 1: seats on Russian spacecraft. Spacecraft distance eight thousand, ninety will
Speaker 1: bring autical miles a lot of the nineteen thousand, five
Speaker 1: twelve second back in ninety nine. Apollo eleven is nearly home.
Speaker 1: Rescue and the aircraft are reported on the station and
Speaker 1: Horner helicopters containing with swimmers are reported. Airborne weather still
Speaker 1: holding real fun the recovery area, and I signed going
Speaker 1: down on Steal darkn as you heard earlier, the crew
Speaker 1: will splash down just before sunrise. As they draw nearer
Speaker 1: to the Earth, they find themselves shrouded in the darkness
Speaker 1: of the Earth's night side. They are now traveling down
Speaker 1: the barrel of a forty mile wide entry corridor. In
Speaker 1: the command module, Michael swears he can feel the gravity
Speaker 1: of his planet pulling him home. The men swallow anti
Speaker 1: nausea pills. Assuming everything goes according to plan, they will
Speaker 1: soon be bobbing in seas with three to six foot waves.
Speaker 1: The men have gone over their entry checklists numerous times already.
Speaker 1: They have too much time on their hands, and it's
Speaker 1: beginning to create some anxiety. And we're about ten minutes
Speaker 1: away from the scheduled separations time. Now it's time to
Speaker 1: lose the service module, the largest portion of their spacecraft,
Speaker 1: containing most of their power, fuel and rocket engine. They
Speaker 1: can't enter the atmosphere if it's still attached. We see
Speaker 1: you getting ready for sent Everything wants to find to
Speaker 1: find down here, we're awaiting confirmation of separation. When Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven launched, it weighs six million pounds. The only thing
Speaker 1: left of the once massive Saturn five is the eleven
Speaker 1: thousand pound triangular shaped station wagon sized command module. Once detached,
Speaker 1: thrusters on the service module fire to push it far
Speaker 1: from the crew. They don't want it burning up anywhere
Speaker 1: near them. Away confirmed separation. Now from on my ground
Speaker 1: reading telemetry, we can confirm separation. And also was mindul
Speaker 1: taking good carabous? You want to take you to a
Speaker 1: camp in Houston. I used to look at mighty fine
Speaker 1: here your player for landing. I appreciate every d gears
Speaker 1: down a lock more astronaut humor. We got the modulet
Speaker 1: going by a little high coming across now right to left. Buzzes.
Speaker 1: Words that you just heard were actually classified for years.
Speaker 1: The thrusters that were supposed to move the service module
Speaker 1: away didn't work properly. The crew is about to begin
Speaker 1: their re entry and the service module is diving into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere right beside them. Hello, I'm gonna lined up
Speaker 1: right down the mid a little bit. Entry corridors now
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand, five seventy eight ft per second. We're
Speaker 1: a minute in forty five seconds from entry. Blackout will
Speaker 1: begin eighteens second after once the ship strikes the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and becomes wreathed in plasma calms with mission control will
Speaker 1: be impossible. They will be coming down in the blind
Speaker 1: over the hill. You're looking mind to find that we're
Speaker 1: an entry time black guys. Very shortly, there's a black
Speaker 1: guy at am Houston time, four thousand feet above Australia, Columbia,
Speaker 1: hits the atmosphere and more than thirty six thousand ft
Speaker 1: per second, or ten times faster than a rifle bullet.
Speaker 1: We had to be able to use the atmosphere to
Speaker 1: slow us all the way down, uh until we got
Speaker 1: into a velocity that will allow us to put up
Speaker 1: the parish. That was Apollo eight and Apollo thirteen astronaut
Speaker 1: Jim Level. Tracy Caldwald Dyson is a current NASA astronaut.
Speaker 1: She went to space twice, once on the Space Shuttle
Speaker 1: and the second time to live aboard the International Space Station.
Speaker 1: To get home from that trip, she had to take
Speaker 1: a ride in a Russian soy Use capsule and you
Speaker 1: see the the atmosphere that you're about to go through,
Speaker 1: and then you fire this one burn. It's a long burn,
Speaker 1: and it's directed precisely to put you at the right
Speaker 1: angle and at the right spot to pass through the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: If Michael didn't calculate the precise right angle, the command
Speaker 1: module will be vaporized too shallow, and it will bounce
Speaker 1: off the atmosphere and be flung into space. The blackness
Speaker 1: the guys were talking about earlier is now gone. Out
Speaker 1: their tiny windows. The astronauts now begin to see ravenous
Speaker 1: flames as ionized gases created by the heat re entry
Speaker 1: begin enveloping the ship. Calms are gone for the next
Speaker 1: four minutes. No one on Earth will know what's going
Speaker 1: on inside apollow eleven, or indeed whether they successfully made
Speaker 1: it through the atmosphere or disintegrated on re entry. Where
Speaker 1: three minutes since entry blackout shoot in about three minutes
Speaker 1: fifty three seconds after entry, or about eleven minutes lay
Speaker 1: back in mission control, Evans at Capcom optimistically attempts to
Speaker 1: raise the ship. There is no answer. Inside Columbia, the
Speaker 1: astronauts can no longer see the service module. They are
Speaker 1: enveloped in incandescent protoplasm. If you could see them right now,
Speaker 1: they appear as a blazing comment. The astronauts are falling
Speaker 1: through a tunnel of colors orange, yellow, blue, even lavender,
Speaker 1: which finally gives way to pure white. Michael feels as
Speaker 1: if he's sitting inside of an enormous light bulb. Jim Level.
Speaker 1: We could, of course look out the windows and see
Speaker 1: the hate shield material. Flaky's all as the flames going
Speaker 1: passed us. You never go through grade school thinking you're
Speaker 1: going to be in the middle of a fireball, but
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happens as you go through the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Your spacecraft is a blating and designed to do that.
Speaker 1: Pieces of embers as your window, and you can smell
Speaker 1: the charring, so you can feel the g forces building.
Speaker 1: What they can't see is that the service module is
Speaker 1: being torn into fiery pieces. If any of the dying
Speaker 1: vessels fragments collide with the command module, it will almost
Speaker 1: certainly kill everyone aboard. Right, we tried going to the
Speaker 1: Moon again. Inspired by all that that has come before,
Speaker 1: and guided by clear objectives, today we set a new
Speaker 1: course for America's space program. We will give NASA new
Speaker 1: focus and vision for future exploration. We will build new
Speaker 1: ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain
Speaker 1: a new foothold on the Moon, and to prepare for
Speaker 1: new journeys to the worlds beyond our own on January
Speaker 1: two and four, President H. W. Bush said, we will
Speaker 1: undertake extended human missions to the Moon as early as
Speaker 1: with the goal of living and working there for increasingly
Speaker 1: extended periods of time. We even tested one of the
Speaker 1: rockets that was going to get us there, the Cognition
Speaker 1: lift off of Harry's one X festing concepts for the
Speaker 1: future of new rocket design. On top of the arias
Speaker 1: was going to be a new command module named Oriyan,
Speaker 1: and blueprints were being drafted for a new lunar module
Speaker 1: dubbed Altaire. However, when the Obama administration took over, they
Speaker 1: found the program over budget and behind schedule, and they
Speaker 1: shut it down. Yes, pursuing this new strategy will require
Speaker 1: that we revise the old strategy. In part. This is
Speaker 1: because the old strategy, including the constellation program, was not
Speaker 1: fulfilling its promise in many ways, and in the organization
Speaker 1: like NASA, where lead times for developing technology are so long,
Speaker 1: if you suddenly change the general objective of things every
Speaker 1: four years, it has a huge impact. We have to
Speaker 1: stop pushing the reset button every time there's a change
Speaker 1: of power. In Washington, they've been pushing the reset button
Speaker 1: on NASA again. And again and again, and it's been
Speaker 1: really harmful to the progress of the program. To keep
Speaker 1: moving the goal post the entire football stadium. That's destructive.
Speaker 1: That was NASA chief historian Bill Berry and Apollo historian
Speaker 1: Andrew Chaken. Under Obama, NASA proposed a new mission landing
Speaker 1: humans on an asteroid, but that too soon withered on
Speaker 1: the vine, and all the while American astronauts kept getting
Speaker 1: two and from space on Russian equipment. Then in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seventeen, nearly a decade after Constellation was shelved,
Speaker 1: NASA announced the Artemis program. Fifty years ago, we went
Speaker 1: to the Moon. We called it Apollo. Well many people
Speaker 1: don't know is that Apollo had a twin. She was
Speaker 1: a woman named Artemis, the goddess of the Moon. As
Speaker 1: Tracy calledwell Dyson. She represents our next era of exploration
Speaker 1: in space. Artemis encompasses how we're going to get to
Speaker 1: the Moon and what we're gonna do when we get there.
Speaker 1: NASA's goal is landing the first woman in man on
Speaker 1: the Moon. By just four years from now, we are
Speaker 1: returning to the Moon as a new generation of explorers,
Speaker 1: this time to stay. Artemists is intended to be the
Speaker 1: first step in setting up a long term human presence
Speaker 1: on the Moon and perhaps even creating a lunar economy.
Speaker 1: And this is all to explore the surface of the
Speaker 1: Moon and utilize the resources there. We found an ideal
Speaker 1: fuel in the soul when materials on the Moon for
Speaker 1: fusion power production. It's called helium three. Apollo seventeen moonwalker
Speaker 1: and geologist Harrison Schmidt Iste imp that fuse with itself
Speaker 1: produces absolutely no radio activity. It creates energetic particles that
Speaker 1: can be converted to electricity at much higher efficiencies than
Speaker 1: any other kind of power systems. Artemis is the most
Speaker 1: ambitious thing NASA has done since Apollo. It is nearly
Speaker 1: done building the SLS, a new rocket even larger and
Speaker 1: more powerful than the Saturn five. NASA is building the
Speaker 1: Space Launch System, comprising of a cargo hold and exploration
Speaker 1: upper stage, a massive course stage, and two extended solid
Speaker 1: rocket boosters. Altogether, this is the world's most powerful rocket
Speaker 1: and it exceeds the legendary Saturn five of the Apollo
Speaker 1: era in numerous ways. The fl F is Space Launch System,
Speaker 1: and it is the greatest rocket we've ever built. Yes,
Speaker 1: it will be more powerful than the Saturn five. The
Speaker 1: Ryan Capsule is the spacecraft that is going to return
Speaker 1: humans to the Moon and destinations beyond. Just as the
Speaker 1: Command Module is the only part of the Saturn five
Speaker 1: to survive the trip, so two is the Orion Capsule
Speaker 1: the only thing to survive Constellation. This is their deep
Speaker 1: space human rated spacecraft called Orion. The crew module. We're
Speaker 1: up to four astronauts will live and work throughout the flight,
Speaker 1: and while the original Command Module could hold only three people,
Speaker 1: the Orion Capsule has seating for four. Other than the
Speaker 1: new lemb which will discuss in just a moment, NASA
Speaker 1: has added something to the Apollo architecture, the Gateway. Building
Speaker 1: on the lessons learned from the International Space Station, the
Speaker 1: key to sustainable lunar missions is establishing an orbiting lunar
Speaker 1: outpost that we call Gateway, a small space station. The
Speaker 1: Gateway will be placed in orbit around the Moon and
Speaker 1: provide the astronauts living quarters and their research lab. The
Speaker 1: Apollo missions were inspired by a space race. Artemis is
Speaker 1: also a global partnership. We're not a race, We're a partnership.
Speaker 1: We're going to explore the Moon for purposes that benefit
Speaker 1: mankind to learn more about it and use it as
Speaker 1: a platform to then go further. I'm profoundly grateful that
Speaker 1: we are setting our sights on the Moon again after
Speaker 1: so much time when the Moon seemed to be sideline. However,
Speaker 1: Chicken is skeptical, and I just am not convinced that
Speaker 1: we can, even with the most talented people that we
Speaker 1: have at NASA and elsewhere. It's asking a lot to
Speaker 1: do it in just five years. But I'm glad we're
Speaker 1: talking about it. I want to see it happen. I
Speaker 1: just don't want to see us do it without the
Speaker 1: same care and the same diligence, because if we don't
Speaker 1: do those things, we're gonna pay the price that they
Speaker 1: paid an Apollo with accidents and perhaps even fatal accidents.
Speaker 1: And he's not the only one. Space historian Amy Sharer
Speaker 1: title feels the same way. Yeah, I feel like we're
Speaker 1: in that compleateding where we have to manage expectations with
Speaker 1: the reality of how hard space it. That's fine, because
Speaker 1: space is hard, but you know, let's let's be realistic
Speaker 1: and say we're going to do this, and we're going
Speaker 1: to do it in the time that it needs to take.
Speaker 1: For her part, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who's in line to
Speaker 1: be the first woman on the moon, thinks NASA is
Speaker 1: doing just that. We know things take time, and they
Speaker 1: take time because human lives are at stake. Everything in
Speaker 1: space takes longer. And then in this day and age
Speaker 1: where everything is so instant, we have to take time
Speaker 1: or else we're not gonna get there smartly, and then
Speaker 1: we could end up parting somebody in the process. One
Speaker 1: of the ways NASA is hoping to alleviate time and
Speaker 1: stress is by allowing commercial interests to take over human
Speaker 1: and cargo flights to the I s s. That way
Speaker 1: they can focus on bigger things. There are a group
Speaker 1: of billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and some
Speaker 1: others who are leading sort of the growth of a
Speaker 1: commercial private space industry that has been over the last
Speaker 1: decade or so slowly eroding the government's long held but
Speaker 1: not lee on space. That's Chris Davenport. I'm a reporter
Speaker 1: at the Washington Post, where I write about space and
Speaker 1: um also the author of a book called The Space
Speaker 1: barns Well. NASA and other global governments have dominated space
Speaker 1: exploration given its expense and risk. Private entrepreneurs Chris is
Speaker 1: aptly named space Barns are beginning to move in on
Speaker 1: their domain, bringing with them new technologies and innovative manufacturing
Speaker 1: processes that drive costs down and get the job done faster.
Speaker 1: First and foremost elon Musk SpaceX. I mean, they are
Speaker 1: the ones who sort of broke down the barriers from
Speaker 1: the very beginning and said we are going to enter
Speaker 1: this market and try to disrupt the space launch market.
Speaker 1: And they've been successful in doing that, and they've gotten
Speaker 1: multiple contracts from NASA to the tune of billions of
Speaker 1: dollars to fly first cargo and supplies to the International
Speaker 1: Space Station, which they've been doing now for a number
Speaker 1: of years. And SpaceX along with Boeing have contracts to
Speaker 1: fly people to the International Space Station. And then you
Speaker 1: have Blue Origin, which was founded by Jeff Bezos. Bezos,
Speaker 1: who owns Amazon, is the richest man in the world.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't even realize that Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: has a space company, but he does, and they're building
Speaker 1: a whole suite of vehicles. In fact, Blue Origin will
Speaker 1: be the lead company designing and building the new lunar
Speaker 1: module for the artist project. Let me show you something.
Speaker 1: This is Blue Moon. We've been working on this lander
Speaker 1: for three years. This is an incredible vehicle and it's
Speaker 1: going to the Moon. And you're seeing NASA initially being
Speaker 1: I think reluctant, are wary of that, and now more
Speaker 1: and more starting to embrace that, saying if we are
Speaker 1: going to go back to the Moon or on to Mars,
Speaker 1: we're gonna need these companies. One of the biggest things
Speaker 1: companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing is rebooting
Speaker 1: how we make rockets. Since they were first invented, rockets
Speaker 1: have been a one and done piece of equipment. And
Speaker 1: Ellen looked at that, and Jeff Bezos looked at that
Speaker 1: and said, you know, we're never going to lower the
Speaker 1: cost of space. We keep throwing away the most expensive
Speaker 1: part of the hardware. Imagine if after flying from Los
Speaker 1: Angeles to New York, United Airlines threw away the seven
Speaker 1: thirty seven that brought you there. That's essentially what we're
Speaker 1: doing in space right now. So they are working on
Speaker 1: building rockets that deliver their payloads to orbit and then
Speaker 1: fly back down to Earth and land on land or
Speaker 1: land on a ship at sea. During the Cold War,
Speaker 1: space exploration was driven by intense political and ideological rivalries.
Speaker 1: Today space has become ego driven. Davenport once asked Elon
Speaker 1: Musk about his rivalry with Bezos, and Musk told him
Speaker 1: if I had a button that I could press and
Speaker 1: make Jeff Bezos Blue Origin go away, I would not
Speaker 1: press that button. And I think that's because he understands
Speaker 1: how important it is to have competition and to be
Speaker 1: driven by rivals. Competition is the best rocket fuel. But
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is not satisfied with merely shuttling cargo and
Speaker 1: people to the International Space Station. He and NASA have
Speaker 1: their eyes set much higher. The reason for creating SpaceX
Speaker 1: was to accelerate humanity becoming a space bearing civilization to
Speaker 1: a point where we could potentially become a multiplanet species.
Speaker 1: All of Humanity's eggs are in one basket, and should
Speaker 1: something happen to the Earth, you know, like if an
Speaker 1: asteroid would hit the Earth, we're toast. We're going the
Speaker 1: way of the dinosaur. And his goal was to sort
Speaker 1: of have a backup um, the way you would back
Speaker 1: up your hard drive, but for humanity, and that's Mars,
Speaker 1: to make it a place where humanity could go and
Speaker 1: to extend the light of consciousness well into the future
Speaker 1: and sort of as an insurance plan. Eleven th Back
Speaker 1: in mission control, Ron Evans is still trying to raise Neil,
Speaker 1: buzzing Michael in the command module. If Columbia survived re entry,
Speaker 1: they should have regained contact again by now, even through
Speaker 1: ray standing by. Be nice to get that confirmation and
Speaker 1: minutes gone by now since they scheduling opening to the mains.
Speaker 1: On the USS Hornet spotters scan the sky with binoculars.
Speaker 1: Give us the word. We're getting nothing from a mission
Speaker 1: control or from the spaceship, reports Sonic Colon. One of
Speaker 1: the sailors cries out he thinks he sees something falling
Speaker 1: through the clouds aboard his helicopter. Rescue swimmer John Wolfer
Speaker 1: sees it too. We looked up from the helicopter. You
Speaker 1: can see the capsule burning back to the atmosphere. A
Speaker 1: momentary eventual of high attack has now disappeared behind cloud
Speaker 1: and FLO elevens and standing by for your desty reading
Speaker 1: over FULO eleven east and your destry reading plays over
Speaker 1: at that was new They've made it dog they are,
Speaker 1: and they're obviously all right shoots have deployed eleven cos
Speaker 1: right on. Well, you take that to Some of the
Speaker 1: more sensational moments are when the parachutes open up and
Speaker 1: it feels like it brings the whole copsle to a
Speaker 1: slam stop, and then it spins, and then it sways
Speaker 1: back and forth, and the whole time you're just hoping
Speaker 1: that you keep your cookies and should be on main shoots.
Speaker 1: It is like one of the craziest ride you've ever
Speaker 1: had in your life. Eight minutes after first hitting the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: the command modules slowed enough for three large red and
Speaker 1: white parachutes to open. They had to deploy at just
Speaker 1: the right time. If they opened too late, the capsule
Speaker 1: would hit the water too violently too early, and they'd
Speaker 1: likely drift off course far from rescue. For the crew
Speaker 1: of Apollo eleven, the view outside their windows went from
Speaker 1: the inky blackness of space to the nucleus of a
Speaker 1: fireball and is now the dazzling azure blue of the
Speaker 1: earth sky. We're cast four minutes and with that, mission
Speaker 1: control's work is done. With the shoots deployed, tactical operational
Speaker 1: command transfers from mission control to the U S s Hornet,
Speaker 1: I have an Eric, I have a three part flashed down.
Speaker 1: They're back from the Moon. As for not time strong
Speaker 1: Aldrin and Collins landing in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Hay,
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven splashes down eight hundred and twenty five nautical
Speaker 1: miles southwest of Honolulu, about thirteen nautical miles from the
Speaker 1: recovery show inside the capsule, Mike Collins is astonished at
Speaker 1: how blue the ocean looks Imagine after nine days of
Speaker 1: monochrome black and then gray and then black again, what
Speaker 1: dropping into a violet ocean must look like their eyes.
Speaker 1: Jim Lovell splash down for me was very exhilarated. I
Speaker 1: could feel the bobby of the ocean and the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: and suddenly I realized that, my gosh a home. Everything
Speaker 1: worked out now if the Navy would be very careful
Speaker 1: and not to let the spacecraft sake on us, but
Speaker 1: we were safe. In Houston. Buzzes son Andy is watching
Speaker 1: the news on splash down day. We had a lot
Speaker 1: of people over at the house, and hind everyone that
Speaker 1: was associated with my dad or mom seemed to show up.
Speaker 1: Andy wishes he was aboard the U. S. S. Hornet,
Speaker 1: not so much because he wants to be among the
Speaker 1: first to greet his dad, but rather because he's eleven
Speaker 1: years old and aircraft carriers are cool. There was sort
Speaker 1: of a collective sigh of relief when it was all done.
Speaker 1: His mother, Joan, can finally relax. Her husband and his
Speaker 1: two shipmates survived the greatest feat humans ever attempted, and
Speaker 1: would soon be on their way home as conquering heroes.
Speaker 1: At this moment in time, Joan has no idea of
Speaker 1: the challenges and heartaches to come, but if she had,
Speaker 1: she would surely have taken some strength in the fact
Speaker 1: that she had just faced the most profoundly difficult nine
Speaker 1: days of her life and come out on the other
Speaker 1: side a hero to her children. My mother was incredibly
Speaker 1: effective at not letting us know what happened. I didn't
Speaker 1: sense her anxiety at all. It just reflects the incredible
Speaker 1: strength that my mom showed throughout this whole process. After
Speaker 1: the splashdown, Janet Armstrong stood on her front yard and
Speaker 1: in front of the gathered press, thanked everyone in America
Speaker 1: for their thoughts and prayers. The entire experience, she said,
Speaker 1: was quite simply out of this world and when the
Speaker 1: capsule hit the ocean water. I think mars Alden was
Speaker 1: supposed to flip a lever the jets in those parachutes,
Speaker 1: but his hand got knocked up to lever because of
Speaker 1: the jolt, and the wind carried the capsule upset. Now,
Speaker 1: the last thing you want to be attached to in
Speaker 1: the water is a parachute. One of two things is
Speaker 1: going to happen. I the parachute will fill with water
Speaker 1: and drag you wonder, or it will catch the wind
Speaker 1: like a sail and begin dragging you away. As soon
Speaker 1: as Columbia hit the water, Buzz was supposed to trip
Speaker 1: a circuit breaker, jettisoning the shoots and allowing Michael to
Speaker 1: deploy inflatable balloons to keep the capsule upright, but the
Speaker 1: impact was so violent that his hand was knocked off
Speaker 1: the switch, and by the time he was able to
Speaker 1: find it again, the gum drop was already inverted, with
Speaker 1: each of the men hanging upside down in their seats. Earlier,
Speaker 1: Michael Bett Neil a beer that they'd stay upright. He
Speaker 1: just lost that bed. They flipped some splitches I think
Speaker 1: Mark Collins did that would inflate these blooms. And they
Speaker 1: took the whole a minister that capsule the upright. As
Speaker 1: they hang upside down with the balloons inflating, Michael thinks,
Speaker 1: how wrongly oriented everything looks back in a world with
Speaker 1: gravity for the first time in nine days, tops and
Speaker 1: bottoms are real things again. Got in position and I'm standing.
Speaker 1: Then they go, and as I'm looking down at that capsule,
Speaker 1: I realized the world was watching, so I didn't want
Speaker 1: to make any mistakes. John Wolfram jumps from the hovering
Speaker 1: helicopter and swims over to Columbia. It's lower half charred
Speaker 1: and blackened from re entering. The capsule is still warnder
Speaker 1: to touch. John attaches a sea anchor, basically a large
Speaker 1: cloth bucket designed to fill with water and keep the
Speaker 1: vessel more or less where it is that I was
Speaker 1: supposed to get a thumbs up in the astronauts. I
Speaker 1: saw them grinning back at me. I relayed that to
Speaker 1: the National helicopter that was circund above and let him
Speaker 1: mold the Okay, right, we're going. There's two more frogmen.
Speaker 1: They jumped in and together we put this floatation bladder
Speaker 1: around the capsule, and then after that was completed, they
Speaker 1: dropped down a wrapped if we implanted in and then
Speaker 1: we got trashed right in front of the hatch store
Speaker 1: where the ash nuts would come out. Next come the
Speaker 1: bigs biological isolation garments. Do you swimmer with? The biological
Speaker 1: isolation garments is in the next to the space crap.
Speaker 1: That's Lieutenant Clancy Handelberg of Chippewa falls within a const
Speaker 1: NASA is concerned that the astronauts may have brought something
Speaker 1: harmful back with them from the Moon. Because of this,
Speaker 1: the rescue divers are all wearing protective gear, and they
Speaker 1: brought biggs for the Apollo eleven crew to put on
Speaker 1: as well. The fear of alien pathogens is in the
Speaker 1: forefront of everyone's minds. Nine is the same year that
Speaker 1: Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain came out about the deadly
Speaker 1: outbreak of an extraterrestrial micro organism. Neil opens the command
Speaker 1: module hatch so twenty five year old Lieutenant Haddleberg can
Speaker 1: hand them their suits. If there are moonbugs, they were
Speaker 1: just released into our atmosphere and ocean, so much for
Speaker 1: that plan is now transferring to the crew. Haddleberg reseals
Speaker 1: the hatch inside Columbia Neil, Buzz and Michael stand unsteadily.
Speaker 1: After a week and a half in space, Earth normal
Speaker 1: gravity feels well aliens. The men swallow several more anti
Speaker 1: nausea meds. The last thing they want to do is
Speaker 1: throw up inside their biohazard suits. A big sama now
Speaker 1: spraying the hatch area and the top deck and around
Speaker 1: the hatch. Command modger with it, even in stamina. While
Speaker 1: the crew changes, Lieutenant Haddleberg uses a large brush to
Speaker 1: scrub the exterior of Columbia with a sudsy decontaminant, just
Speaker 1: in case it's covered in spacebugs. First, after they downed them,
Speaker 1: they came out into the raft, Haddelberg washed them all down.
Speaker 1: Once all the astronauts are decontaminated, they climb aboard the raft.
Speaker 1: They are splashed by waves, and even though they're covered
Speaker 1: head to toe, they can feel the fresh and cold.
Speaker 1: Michael wants nothing more than to rip off his suit,
Speaker 1: splash cold water all over his face, and inhale the
Speaker 1: fresh sea air. They are burning up inside those suits.
Speaker 1: Hold on recovery is one by one. Neil, Buzz and
Speaker 1: Michael are lifted into a hovering helicopter. As the helicopter
Speaker 1: with the Apollo eleven crew begins making its way back
Speaker 1: to the Hornet. John Wolfrem and the rest of the
Speaker 1: Navy seals decided to grab a little memento of the occasion.
Speaker 1: When no one was looking. We stripped off huns with
Speaker 1: that gold coil that was burned off from coming back
Speaker 1: through the atmosphere and put it down our website for souvenirs.
Speaker 1: We knew that once the castle got out board the
Speaker 1: usas Hornet Marine super Garden, so we got our souvenirs first.
Speaker 1: Aboard the helicopter, Michael and Buzz stand precariously on unsteady legs.
Speaker 1: Now that gravity is once again a factor, their body
Speaker 1: fluids are moving in very different ways than they have
Speaker 1: for the past week and a half. When the helicopter
Speaker 1: touches down on the Hornet, the flight elevator descends to
Speaker 1: the hangar deck, where the men are escorted to a
Speaker 1: mobile quarantine chamber, a modified airstream trailer. Their face plates
Speaker 1: are so fogg up they can hardly see anything, but
Speaker 1: they can hear a band playing. They will remain in
Speaker 1: this trailer until they reach the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in
Speaker 1: Houston three days from now at which point they will
Speaker 1: be transferred to a larger quarantine facility for the next
Speaker 1: three weeks. Back in Houston, flight controllers begin lighting cigars
Speaker 1: and waving small American flags above them. All glowing on
Speaker 1: the main display screen are the words John F. Kennedy
Speaker 1: uttered the Congress nearly ten years earlier. I believe that
Speaker 1: this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before
Speaker 1: this decade is out of landing a man on the
Speaker 1: Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. And so
Speaker 1: this nation has locked inside the trailer with Neil, Buzz
Speaker 1: and Michael are two NASA representatives, including a flight surgeon,
Speaker 1: who gives each of the men a quick physical. Next,
Speaker 1: they enjoy a quick but much needed shower while they
Speaker 1: wait for the celebration outside to begin. The men are
Speaker 1: shown several videos covering their landing and moonwalk. Buzz said
Speaker 1: that they were sitting there watching these tapes and it
Speaker 1: suddenly dawned on him that he and Neil and Mike
Speaker 1: were removed from that. He turned to Neil and he said, Neil,
Speaker 1: we missed the whole thing. The mood on the USS
Speaker 1: hornet is jubilant. The mobile quarantine trailer is surrounded by
Speaker 1: euphoric sailors and NASA personnel from the midst of the melee.
Speaker 1: President Richard Nixon appears and greets the astronauts through a
Speaker 1: large window. This is the greatest week and the history
Speaker 1: of the world since the creation, because as a result
Speaker 1: of what happened in this week, the world is bigger infinitely,
Speaker 1: as a result of what you've done, the world has
Speaker 1: never been closer together before. And we just thank you
Speaker 1: for that, and I own I hope that all of
Speaker 1: us in government, all of us in America, that as
Speaker 1: a result of what you've done, we could do our
Speaker 1: job a little better. We can reach for the stars,
Speaker 1: just as you have raised so far from the stars.
Speaker 1: The astronauts will later be treated to a state dinner
Speaker 1: and Michael will finally get that Martini he's been craving.
Speaker 1: In our first episode, I mentioned that humankind has always
Speaker 1: been driven by an innate desire to explore. There are
Speaker 1: times in human history when people have struck out beyond
Speaker 1: the known universe, has gone over the next hill into
Speaker 1: the next valley, got on a boat and cross the ocean.
Speaker 1: And the Apollo program was one of those times when
Speaker 1: people really and truly were exploring and pushing the boundaries
Speaker 1: of human understanding and investigating new places that no one
Speaker 1: had ever seen before. Once client, the unexplored hill on
Speaker 1: the horizon now becomes familiar territory. But that's the thing
Speaker 1: about exploration, isn't it. There's always another mountain, there's always
Speaker 1: another horizon calling to us. Going to the Moon is
Speaker 1: super important, but the ultimate goal is to go to Mars.
Speaker 1: I think Mars is the next logical destination. I think
Speaker 1: the Moon is absolutely in the critical path to get
Speaker 1: to Mars. The next real advance of space flight is
Speaker 1: to go back to the Moon. And then used the
Speaker 1: architecture of going to the Moon and expanded to go
Speaker 1: to Mars. And I'm positive that man, one day we'll
Speaker 1: go to Bars. Why because it's there. Robert Zubran was
Speaker 1: five years old when spot Nick flew, and while to
Speaker 1: the adults it may have been terrifying, to me as
Speaker 1: a small kid, it was exhilarating. It meant that these
Speaker 1: stories that I was already reading about this space faring
Speaker 1: future science fiction, we're going to be true, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to be part of it. Robert is an aerospace engineer,
Speaker 1: the president of the Mars Society and the author of
Speaker 1: the The case for Mars. I was seventeen when we
Speaker 1: landed on the Moon. And if anybody had told me
Speaker 1: then that I'd be sixty seven and we wouldn't be
Speaker 1: on the Moon, and in fact on Mars, I would
Speaker 1: have thought they were crazy. Apollo was the last to
Speaker 1: rob the people that won World War Two and a
Speaker 1: political class that could work together to accomplish great ends,
Speaker 1: whether it was World War Two, the Interstate Highway system,
Speaker 1: the development in nuclear energy, or Apollo. What great accomplishments
Speaker 1: has the US government achieved since three Without a goal,
Speaker 1: you don't achieve anything, and the human spaceflight program has
Speaker 1: been drifting for almost fifty years. Apollo inspired Americans, showing
Speaker 1: them that they were capable of doing great things. It
Speaker 1: motivated tens of thousands of people to go into engineering,
Speaker 1: and was the bedrock on which our modern computerized and
Speaker 1: technological world is based. But for Zubrin, we are living
Speaker 1: off of Apollo's favors. Just days after Apollo eleven returned
Speaker 1: to Earth, Verni von Braun, the architect of the Saturn five,
Speaker 1: began drawing up plans for a Mars mission for Robert
Speaker 1: and many in the space industry. We should have listened
Speaker 1: to von Braun. We never should have abandoned the Moon,
Speaker 1: but rather used it as an outward bound school where
Speaker 1: we could learn to live off planet, honing our skills
Speaker 1: for our next trek into the unknown Mars. For Zubrin,
Speaker 1: there are three reasons to go to Mars. For the science,
Speaker 1: for the challenge, and for the future the science. There's
Speaker 1: profound science to be discovered by going to Mars. Mars
Speaker 1: was once a warm and wet planet. The early Mars
Speaker 1: was very similar to the early Earth. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: convinced that there was once life on Mars and there
Speaker 1: probably still is. Second is the challenge. I believe that
Speaker 1: civilizations are like individuals. We grow when we challenge ourselves,
Speaker 1: we stagnate when we do not. And then finally, there's
Speaker 1: the future. If we do what we can do in
Speaker 1: our time, which has established that first human foothold on Mars,
Speaker 1: then you know, five years from now there will be
Speaker 1: new branches of human civilization. And we're talking about new nations,
Speaker 1: new cultures, new languages, new literatures, new traditions, new contributions
Speaker 1: to technology and invention and social thought, new heroes, new
Speaker 1: tales of great deeds that will be used to inspire
Speaker 1: people that will go further. And if you have it
Speaker 1: in your power to create something brand and wonderful, then
Speaker 1: you should. Robert believes this so strongly that he thinks
Speaker 1: NASA should skip the Moon and divert all of its
Speaker 1: energies to Mars. We're not going to fully inspire the
Speaker 1: next generation of youth by replicating a feat done by
Speaker 1: their grandparents generation. We're going to inspire them by going
Speaker 1: to a new world to do what has been done before,
Speaker 1: to see what hasn't been seen before, to discover what
Speaker 1: was never known before. That's why we're gonna to Mars,
Speaker 1: and that's why this fool inspire of the next generation.
Speaker 1: And yet I hear some of you asking what about
Speaker 1: our problems back here on Earth. As we discussed on
Speaker 1: the outside of this podcast, the America of nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the America of two
Speaker 1: thousand and nineteen. For every York Pennsylvania, there's a Ferguson Missouri.
Speaker 1: For every Vietnam, there's Afghanistan. For every Cold War, there's
Speaker 1: Russian meddling in our elections. For every looming impeachment of
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon, there's a looming impeachment of Donald Trump. For
Speaker 1: every protest in favor of civil liberties, voting rights, and
Speaker 1: equal pay, there's well, you know, and now we're setting
Speaker 1: our sights on the moon and beyond. Are we fools
Speaker 1: to try this again? The criticisms leveled by civil rights
Speaker 1: leaders who protested all of the money spent on Apollo
Speaker 1: at the expense of the nation's most vulnerable remain both
Speaker 1: valid and omnipresent. Today, fifty years on, not much appears
Speaker 1: to have changed. And yet I'm reminded of the words
Speaker 1: of NASA's Bill Dunford, who said, why should we worry
Speaker 1: about what's going on outside the cave? We have so
Speaker 1: many problems here inside the cave. Why should we waste
Speaker 1: time trying to figure out agriculture. We have so much
Speaker 1: work to do hunting and gathering. Why should we spend
Speaker 1: so much effort messing about in boats? We have so
Speaker 1: many issues right here on land. Why should we fiddle
Speaker 1: with those computers. There's so much calculating that still needs
Speaker 1: to be done with these pencils. Why should we explore space?
Speaker 1: We have so many problems right here on Earth? It's
Speaker 1: all about how we prioritize our future. After all, NASA's
Speaker 1: entire fifty year budget is roughly equal to what this
Speaker 1: country spends on its military in just one year. Historically,
Speaker 1: NASA's grandest steps have stimulated our economy, supercharged our innovation,
Speaker 1: created astonishing spinoff technologies, broadened our science, inspired new generations
Speaker 1: with new opportunities, and remind at us to look up
Speaker 1: from our domestic squabbles and take in the cosmic perspective.
Speaker 1: Asking if space exploration is a sensible use of our
Speaker 1: money is a reasonable and rational question, but it cannot
Speaker 1: be the only question. We must also ask what everything
Speaker 1: we've learned and everything we've derived been possible without it?
Speaker 1: Would our revolutions in computing and communications, in medicine and transportation,
Speaker 1: in astrophysics and planetary sciences come about without Apollo? Would
Speaker 1: we understand our own planet, including the peril it's in
Speaker 1: right now because of our thoughtlessness, if we had not
Speaker 1: dared to step off world. Beyond the political victories and
Speaker 1: the scientific insights, the Space program gave a mangled America hope,
Speaker 1: hope that a better future is within reach. Throughout our history,
Speaker 1: from the Mayflower to the modern refugee crisis. Humans have
Speaker 1: left the safe or the familiar to undertake a bold
Speaker 1: mission to a new world old, and we can do
Speaker 1: it again. Before Explorer George Mallory departed to scale matt Everest,
Speaker 1: he was asked why he was undertaking such a difficult
Speaker 1: and perilous quest, because it is there. He answered, well,
Speaker 1: space is there, and we're going to climb it, and
Speaker 1: the moon and the planet Sada and new hopes for
Speaker 1: knowledge and peace of THEA. And therefore, as we set sail,
Speaker 1: we asked God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous
Speaker 1: and greatest adventure on which man has ever invoked. During
Speaker 1: the cruise voyage back to the United States, aboard the
Speaker 1: U S. S. Hornet, Michael excused himself and left his colleagues.
Speaker 1: The Columbia had been connected to the mobile quarantine facility
Speaker 1: by an air tight tunnel, and Michael claimed aboard alone,
Speaker 1: taking it all in one last time. The Apollo eleven
Speaker 1: mission lasted one and nine hours, eighteen minutes and thirty
Speaker 1: five and in that time the ship traveled nearly one
Speaker 1: million miles. Michael pulled a pen from his pocket and,
Speaker 1: in an act understood by anyone who has ever wanted
Speaker 1: to ensure that they are remembered for something they did
Speaker 1: or saw, scribbled the following graffiti on one of the
Speaker 1: command modules Equipment Bay Panels Apollo eleven alias Columbia, the
Speaker 1: best ship to come down the line. God bless her
Speaker 1: Michael Collins, Command Module Pilot. That note and the vessel
Speaker 1: it adorns now rest in the lobby of the Smithsonian's
Speaker 1: Air and Space Museum in Washington, d C. A tangible
Speaker 1: testament to nine extraordinary days in July. This podcast is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Trade Traft Studios,
Speaker 1: executive producers Astroea and Scott Bernstein, in association with High
Speaker 1: Five Content and executive brucer Andrew Jacobs. This spectacular series
Speaker 1: was his brilliant idea, amazing research and prorection assistance by
Speaker 1: associate producers Brian Schasso and Natalie Robomed. Our incredible editor
Speaker 1: is Bill Lance. Original music by Henry ben Wa, Licensing
Speaker 1: rights and clearances by Deborah Correa. Special thanks also to
Speaker 1: consultant Gina Delvac Studio space generously provided by Gabby and
Speaker 1: Helen Phibbs, the experts who contributed to this final episode
Speaker 1: where Andy Aldred Navy seal John Wolfram, journalist Chris Davenport,
Speaker 1: author of the Space Barons, NASA Chief historian Bill Berry,
Speaker 1: Andrew Chaikin, the author of A Man on the Moon,
Speaker 1: Robert Zubrin, the author of The Case for Space and
Speaker 1: The Case for Mars. Space historian Amy Shearer title the
Speaker 1: author of Fighting for Space out later this month, Apollo thirteens,
Speaker 1: Jim Lovell, Apollo seventeens, Harris and Schmidt, and current NASA
Speaker 1: astronaut Tracy Calledwell Dyson. In addition to the works just mentioned,
Speaker 1: the following books were essential in shaping this series. Carrying
Speaker 1: the Fire by Michael Collins, Magnificent Desolation by Buzz Aldren,
Speaker 1: Failure Is Not An Option by Gene Krantz, First Man
Speaker 1: by James Hansen, and Two Sides of the Move by
Speaker 1: Alexei Leonov and David Scott. This podcast would have been
Speaker 1: impossible without the profound assistance of so many people at NASA,
Speaker 1: people like Bert Ulrich, Sandra Johnson, Brandy Dean, Gregory Wiseman,
Speaker 1: and Stephanie Sherrolds. NASA's Apollo eleven Flight Journal, compiled by
Speaker 1: David Woods, Ken mctaggard and Frank O'Brien was absolutely indispensable,
Speaker 1: and of course, the incredible technological wizardry of consulting producer
Speaker 1: Ben Feist, who is responsible for organizing and cleaning the
Speaker 1: eleven thousand hours of mission audio you heard selections from
Speaker 1: in this podcast. Lastly, I want to acknowledge I Heart's
Speaker 1: own Noel Brown, Tristan McNeil, Crystal Waters, and David Wasserman
Speaker 1: for their unbroken and tireless assistance. We hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this podcast. If you did, please help us spread it
Speaker 1: far and wide, tell your friends, leave ratings and reviews,
Speaker 1: and chat about it on social media. You can subscribe
Speaker 1: to nine Days in July wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'm Brandon Phibbs. Thank you so much for listening