Speaker 1: Nine Days in July is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and trade Craft Studios in association with High five Content. Palmdale, California,
Speaker 1: just outside Los Angeles, a red sob sonnet is racing
Speaker 1: down back streets. Inside are a man and a woman.
Speaker 1: The mail driver appears angry and out of it. The
Speaker 1: woman looks terrified. The driver is going too fast to
Speaker 1: notice that a stop sign at an upcoming tea intersection
Speaker 1: is obscured by low hanging tree branches. The car rockets
Speaker 1: through the intersection, hits a ditch, and is suddenly airborne,
Speaker 1: sailing several car lengths before crashing back to earth. The
Speaker 1: woman's head smashes into the dashboard. She will have two
Speaker 1: black eyes for weeks. The man is tossed about like
Speaker 1: a rag doll, his body bruised. Thankfully, both are wearing
Speaker 1: their seatbelts. The shocked couple stagger out of the mangled
Speaker 1: are and, recognizing that it isn't going anywhere ever again,
Speaker 1: begin walking to town to find help. The couple is
Speaker 1: Buzz and Joan Aldren and Buzz is drunk. This is
Speaker 1: a follow control at one sixty six hours, eight minutes.
Speaker 1: Follow eleven is one seven thousand four nautical miles from
Speaker 1: the Earth, velocity four thousand, nine hundred seventy five ft
Speaker 1: per second. Crew still sleeping. All systems are still normal.
Speaker 1: All systems of board Apollo eleven may be normal. But
Speaker 1: on Earth there's a bit of a hiccup. NASA has
Speaker 1: set up a number of monitoring stations across the planet
Speaker 1: to ensure that as the Earth rotates, there is at
Speaker 1: least one station constantly in communication with Apollo. One of
Speaker 1: NASA's most critical stations is in Guam, and while the
Speaker 1: astronauts were sleeping, bearings in one of its dishes became
Speaker 1: stuck and the antenna was unable to track the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: There is no way to contact Apollo eleven or for
Speaker 1: them to reach Earth. The director of the tracking station,
Speaker 1: Charles Force, had tried everything, but the hole through which
Speaker 1: he needed to grease the bearing was simply too small.
Speaker 1: Then it hit him. He raced home and grabbed his
Speaker 1: ten year old son Greg and sped back to the station.
Speaker 1: Gregg had no problem at all, reaching through a two
Speaker 1: and a half inch aperture and packing grease around the bearing.
Speaker 1: Soon the antenna was able to slew into position and
Speaker 1: once again began tracking its celestial quarry. Years later, Gregg
Speaker 1: met Neil Armstrong, who thanked him for his pint size
Speaker 1: heroics eleven and I don't think good morning over Okay,
Speaker 1: everything right here yet we've been in at It's July,
Speaker 1: the eighth day of the Apollo eleven mission and the
Speaker 1: cruise penultimate day in space. The object outside the cockpit
Speaker 1: that they've been so captivated by is the Earth looming
Speaker 1: larger than ever before on here flank plan uh item
Speaker 1: of a few updates. First of all, we've canceled a
Speaker 1: mid court number six. I did remain in PPC. This
Speaker 1: is Apollo Control at one seventy three hours eighteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Are virtually no flight plan activities scheduled at this time.
Speaker 1: The spacecraft systems will all continue to perform normally. It's
Speaker 1: going to be another quiet day aboard Apollo eleven. We've
Speaker 1: been jumping back in time a lot during this podcast,
Speaker 1: but today we'll be jumping forward into the future. How
Speaker 1: is the crew of Apollo eleven greeted on their return
Speaker 1: to Earth, and especially how are their lives changed by
Speaker 1: their experience on the Moon. How do you propose to
Speaker 1: restore some normalcy to your private lives and the years ahead.
Speaker 1: I wish I knew the answers to the latter part
Speaker 1: of your question. It kind of depends on you. M
Speaker 1: The months and years immediately following Apollo eleven's return was
Speaker 1: filled with all the pomp and circumstance you might imagine,
Speaker 1: but it also masked a dark lining to this silver cloud.
Speaker 1: Follow eleven, Houston over go ahead. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure you fellas hadn't gone back to sleep again.
Speaker 1: And I also have a little bit of late news
Speaker 1: here if you'd like to find out what's happened in
Speaker 1: the last twelve fourteen hours over Okay, okay. Looking overseas,
Speaker 1: we find South Korea's first super highway linking coal with
Speaker 1: support of in John, has been named the Apollo Highway.
Speaker 1: To commemorate your trip, the West Coast residents all planned
Speaker 1: to make their areas visible to the three of you
Speaker 1: by lighting their lights between nine pm and midnight tonight,
Speaker 1: so that you may be able to see Christmas lights,
Speaker 1: porch light, door lights, and whatever may be turned on.
Speaker 1: Back in Memphis kind of s a young lady who
Speaker 1: was presently tipping the scales at eight pounds two ounces,
Speaker 1: I was named module by her parents Mr. And Mrs
Speaker 1: Eddie Lee McGhee. It wasn't my idea that Mrs McGhee,
Speaker 1: it was my husband. He said, bulk at the lame
Speaker 1: lunar module McGhee because it didn't sound too good. But
Speaker 1: apparently they have compromised on just module over Module McGee,
Speaker 1: a special ed teacher, still lives in Georgia and still
Speaker 1: loves her unusual name. They All Star Game currently being played.
Speaker 1: The present score at the end of the fourth inning
Speaker 1: as the National League leading the American League by nine
Speaker 1: to three, so the hitters are having a good day.
Speaker 1: As you can tell. The National League would go on
Speaker 1: to vanquish the American League nine to three. And rain
Speaker 1: clouds are over the MSc area at the moment. It
Speaker 1: began raining here just about ten minutes ago, and last
Speaker 1: report we were having a pretty heavy delusion. So that's
Speaker 1: it from the news front for the afternoon. Here follow
Speaker 1: eleven over. Thank you very much. I thank my yard
Speaker 1: could do water. That's very true. I've forgotten exactly how
Speaker 1: many days they did go buzz, but something like thirty
Speaker 1: days without rain, and we can't appreciate the rain we're
Speaker 1: getting right now. That was the last time cut. All right,
Speaker 1: you're going what non right now, Buzz, But Janets reports
Speaker 1: the grads is getting pretty high, and I would have
Speaker 1: to make that it's going to make close to your
Speaker 1: knees by the time you get out of quarantine over. Neil,
Speaker 1: Buzz and Michael returned to Earth very different men than
Speaker 1: they left just nine days earlier. Not only had they
Speaker 1: experienced something transcendent and utterly outside the experience of any
Speaker 1: other human who has ever lived, but they were also
Speaker 1: greeted as conquering heroes. They were not merely American celebrities,
Speaker 1: they were global icons. They would forever be changed by
Speaker 1: their encounter with the Moon. Neil Armstrong's biographer James Hansen.
Speaker 1: Even before the Powell and spacecraft gets back and splashes down,
Speaker 1: Jim Level, who is capcom the capsule communicator, told the
Speaker 1: astronauts as that who were coming back in you know
Speaker 1: now the hard part is going to start, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, coming back to Earth and facing everything you're
Speaker 1: gonna face is the first men who visited the Moon.
Speaker 1: Following their splashdown, which we will cover on our next episode,
Speaker 1: the men were immediately placed into three weeks of quarantine
Speaker 1: just in case they came back with any dangerous lunar
Speaker 1: micro organisms. While in quarantine, Buzz began drinking heavily. No
Speaker 1: one thought much of it, after all, he just done
Speaker 1: something monumentally stressful, and military pilots are known to blow
Speaker 1: off some steam with a couple of drinks. What no
Speaker 1: one knew, including Buzz, was that this would become the
Speaker 1: norm for the next decade. Three days after they were
Speaker 1: released from quarantine, the crew of Apollo eleven hunkerd for
Speaker 1: a relentless victory. And there was one day, you know,
Speaker 1: in August when they started in Houston, they go to
Speaker 1: New York City for a Tigercape parade. In New York,
Speaker 1: people dumped so much confetti that the astronauts writing and
Speaker 1: open convertibles could not even see the sky above them
Speaker 1: way to play for their black of the cars before
Speaker 1: one million New Yorkers lined Wall Street and Broadway for
Speaker 1: a look at the crew. That's more than turned out
Speaker 1: for the festivities celebrating the end of the Second World War.
Speaker 1: That same day, they had to Chicago for another big parade.
Speaker 1: State Street just crowded with push Chicagolan's wishing well to
Speaker 1: the astronauts to follow eleven by Chicago, buzzes face eight.
Speaker 1: With all the smiling he was doing, he was overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Everywhere he went people asked him what it was like
Speaker 1: to walk on the moon, but he never had a
Speaker 1: good answer. They wanted something philosophical, something spiritual, something profoundly
Speaker 1: poetic that spoke to some deeper meaning of life. But
Speaker 1: he was just an engineer. The words he uttered on
Speaker 1: the Moon's surface, magnificent desolation, slowly began to describe what
Speaker 1: was going on inside of him. In the end of
Speaker 1: the day, out in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, where
Speaker 1: President Nixon has a big black tie dinner for them
Speaker 1: with all kinds of v I P s and uh,
Speaker 1: that's just one day. President Nixon presented each of the
Speaker 1: men with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and we are
Speaker 1: therefore awarding them tonight the Medal of Freedom, the highest
Speaker 1: civilian honor that we can present to an American citizen.
Speaker 1: Remember Steve Bales, the flight controller who recognized that the
Speaker 1: Eagle was still go for the moon despite all of
Speaker 1: those alarms. He was there too, and unbeknownst to him,
Speaker 1: was called up to receive the same award from the President.
Speaker 1: On behalf of the entire White team in mission control.
Speaker 1: I told my parents, I'm going to this dinner. I
Speaker 1: don't know, probably you won't see me. That I'll be
Speaker 1: back in the back somewhere. One of the guys on
Speaker 1: whatever network was Karen, said, there's this young guy, Steve
Speaker 1: Bals going to come up and be given this award.
Speaker 1: They about sell off their chairs. I mean, they couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. This is a young man. When the computers
Speaker 1: seemed to be confused and we when he could have
Speaker 1: said stop, or when he could have said wait, said go.
Speaker 1: Three days later, another parade was thrown for the crew
Speaker 1: back home in Houston, where three thousand people lined the
Speaker 1: streets to catch sight of Neil, Buzz and Michael. That evening,
Speaker 1: people packed the Astrodome to see them on stage. Frank
Speaker 1: Sinatra was there too. He sang fly Me to the Moon.
Speaker 1: They had an appearance before a joint session of Congress
Speaker 1: where they gave a talk. They brought with them two
Speaker 1: flags that they had carried on the lunar module to
Speaker 1: fly over each House of Congress. Neil wasn't comfortable as
Speaker 1: a public speaker, but by all accounts he always rose
Speaker 1: to the challenge and dazzled his listeners. The formality and
Speaker 1: pomp of everything terrified Buzz. After parades in their hometowns,
Speaker 1: it was time for Operation Giant Leap, NASA chief historian
Speaker 1: Bill Berry. President Nixon had plans for them. They wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that everybody knew that we won the
Speaker 1: race of the Moon, and so he sends them off
Speaker 1: on a world tour. One of the wives said, at
Speaker 1: one point, and now it begins, and that was a
Speaker 1: reference to the fact that they were leaving their normal
Speaker 1: lives behind. That was space historian and author of A
Speaker 1: Man on the Moon Andrew Chacken, with their wives beside them.
Speaker 1: The Apollo eleven astronauts visited twenty eight cities in twenty
Speaker 1: three countries, meeting with twenty heads of state in just
Speaker 1: thirty seven days. Elam Strong, the first man on the Moon,
Speaker 1: led the way on this historic meeting, anesty, her husband
Speaker 1: and family, like the people of Britain, were proud to
Speaker 1: greet the space trio. Buzz later confessed that traveling to
Speaker 1: and from the Moon was less exhaustic than jetting between Mexico, England, Iran, India,
Speaker 1: Japan and zaire I always referred to this as the
Speaker 1: mission they never trained for. Right, we come back from
Speaker 1: the Moon and suddenly you have to go be public celebrities.
Speaker 1: You have to make speeches at dinners, you have to
Speaker 1: be beating heads of steak, and you know, shaking so
Speaker 1: many hands, being in one parade after another, having to
Speaker 1: sign autographs. You know, this was not what they had
Speaker 1: originally signed up for as test pilots and fighter pilots,
Speaker 1: but it came with the job of being a conquering hero.
Speaker 1: Mike Collins adapted pretty Walter World Tour, and Neil seemed
Speaker 1: to do pretty well at it too, but it really
Speaker 1: took its toll on Buzz because they really weren't prepared
Speaker 1: for that. Hundreds of thousands of people came out to
Speaker 1: see them in Berlin, it was more like a million.
Speaker 1: But cracks were starting to show in Buzz. His wife
Speaker 1: Joan kept asking her husband to tell her about his
Speaker 1: experiences on the moon, but Buzz kept brushing her off,
Speaker 1: saying he was so tired of talking about that subject.
Speaker 1: According to Lily Coppell, the author of The Astronaut Wives Club,
Speaker 1: he began acting more and more erratic and rome. He
Speaker 1: was out parting all night little j VDA style. Buzz
Speaker 1: felt like he had been being a very good boy.
Speaker 1: He had done what NASA asked of him, so he
Speaker 1: sort of allowed himself to sort of start letting luc
Speaker 1: a bit. Buzz began to drink, he began to dance,
Speaker 1: He began to show his dissatisfaction with what he saw
Speaker 1: is I think propaganda role that he had placed. Both
Speaker 1: Neil and Michael noticed something was the matter, but they
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was or how to help. At
Speaker 1: one point, Bill Carpenter, the Apollo eleven flight surgeon, pulled
Speaker 1: Buzz aside and asked him if everything was okay. Buzz
Speaker 1: admitted to being overwhelmed and accepted some pills. He was
Speaker 1: having a space age existential crisis. At some point, he
Speaker 1: turns to Joan and she's sort of wondering why he
Speaker 1: can't just enjoy this moment of glory, and he just
Speaker 1: said to a very flatly Joan, I've been to the moon.
Speaker 1: Nothing in our lives is ever going to be the
Speaker 1: same again. Things got so bad at one point that
Speaker 1: Joan told her husband that he needed to get control
Speaker 1: of himself or move out. Once they got back to America,
Speaker 1: Buzz righted himself, at least for a little while, as
Speaker 1: they finished the tour in d c. At dinner with
Speaker 1: the President and spent the night at the White House.
Speaker 1: A few days after they returned to the United States,
Speaker 1: the US Postal Service came out with a new stamp
Speaker 1: on it. Neil Armstrong was shown to sending the ladder
Speaker 1: to the lunar surface. Beneath the image was the text
Speaker 1: first man on the Moon Man singular. He was incredibly
Speaker 1: upset over not having been the first man to step
Speaker 1: on the face of the Moon. It still seems absolutely
Speaker 1: incredible to me and many of the lives I spoke to,
Speaker 1: and I think many people, hey, you were up there,
Speaker 1: you were with Neil, But I guess he would have
Speaker 1: preferred to be first. Sort of typical as these competitive astronuts,
Speaker 1: we're in deeply speculative territory here. To this day, Buzz
Speaker 1: denies caring about being the first man to step foot
Speaker 1: on the Moon. He's even said he's thankful, given how
Speaker 1: Neil was mobbed all of his life for the honor,
Speaker 1: and yet those closest to him never bought it. Many
Speaker 1: friends and historians think that Buzz was very angry that
Speaker 1: he was not chosen as number one, but there's almost
Speaker 1: always this qualifier. It was not a matter of pride,
Speaker 1: but rather an inability to please his overbearing father. Buzz
Speaker 1: came from a very difficult background in the sense that
Speaker 1: he had a very difficult and demanding father, and he's
Speaker 1: certainly whether or not he was always conscious of it.
Speaker 1: I think he felt the impact of that. That was
Speaker 1: almost as if nothing he ever did was good enough
Speaker 1: for his father. In fact, some of the other astronauts
Speaker 1: told me that they even remember his father kind of
Speaker 1: campaigning on Buzz's behalf. You know that maybe Buzz should
Speaker 1: be the first guy out on the moon, and it
Speaker 1: must have been very hard on Buzz to have that
Speaker 1: kind of father. Neil, Buzz and Michael traveled half a
Speaker 1: million miles to the Moon and back, and another one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand criss crossing the Earth. In all, nearly one
Speaker 1: and fifty million people came out to see the crew
Speaker 1: of Apollo eleven, and it was estimated that they shook
Speaker 1: half a million hands. We've all come a long way
Speaker 1: with these three Apollo eleven aspronauts. They've made us proud,
Speaker 1: They've shown us the massive national effort can be mounted
Speaker 1: and carried through to success, whether out into their reaches
Speaker 1: of space or praised me perhaps right here on the
Speaker 1: face of the Earth. Back on Apollo eleven, the crew
Speaker 1: has just finished their breakfast, and as always, Michael is
Speaker 1: singing the praises of their re hydrated food. Bo's magnetism
Speaker 1: is usually it's like they got it patty doo, cups
Speaker 1: coffee and I forget all what else, And that does
Speaker 1: sound pretty good. As a matter of fact, I'm way
Speaker 1: overdue for a meal myself here. I could use some
Speaker 1: of that to get milk to give you five minutes
Speaker 1: up Hamburg. I've exacted that a while ago. He was
Speaker 1: pointing out about the weight problem here. I gotta keep
Speaker 1: the calorie is low, so I better stand by without it.
Speaker 1: As with yesterday, everyone is a lot more relaxed, cracking
Speaker 1: jokes and goofing around. Speaking of food, Mike has some
Speaker 1: advice for a Paul twelve due to launch the following November.
Speaker 1: We've been doing a little flight planning for a POB
Speaker 1: twelve up here, Roger go ahead, trying to calculate how
Speaker 1: much spaghetti and mate bills we can get on pork
Speaker 1: for Elbain. I'm not sure the stage craps will take
Speaker 1: that much text your weight? Have you made any antimates
Speaker 1: it'll be closed. Last comment came from my colin's referring
Speaker 1: to Al being as the Leno modical pilot to a
Speaker 1: Polo twelve. Shortly after this chat, Apollo eleven passes the
Speaker 1: midway point on its homeward journey. They are now just
Speaker 1: over one hundred thousand nautical miles from splashdown Houston. Are
Speaker 1: you still up there over? Oh? Yeah, but not like
Speaker 1: we were wanting to go for a general informational eleven.
Speaker 1: You're now nine or five thousand, nine hundred and deny
Speaker 1: miles from the areas over trying to come downhill a
Speaker 1: little bit? Now, what velocity is five thousand and nine
Speaker 1: hundred and per second? And you are indeed coming downhill.
Speaker 1: In y one, Citizen Kane opened in theaters. The film
Speaker 1: is considered the greatest American masterpiece ever made. Its director,
Speaker 1: co writer, and star Orson Welles was just twenty five
Speaker 1: years old. For the rest of his life, Wells would
Speaker 1: try to make something as good as his very first film.
Speaker 1: The attempt would nearly ruin him. The crew of Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven isn't yet forty years old. They have done something
Speaker 1: no one else in human history has ever accomplished. They
Speaker 1: are heroes the world over. So what do they do next?
Speaker 1: NASA's Bill Barry. It became apparent right after the Paulovan
Speaker 1: crew came back to Earth that they weren't going to
Speaker 1: fly in space again. The worst fate for pilots and
Speaker 1: astronauts is sorry, you don't get to go in space anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't think I can emphasize it enough that you know,
Speaker 1: their identity was as military aviators and and test pilots,
Speaker 1: and so suddenly they're not going to be allowed to
Speaker 1: do that anymore, and they have to find some of
Speaker 1: their meaning in their life. Neil, Buzz and Michael were icons,
Speaker 1: now too important to risk on another flight. It was
Speaker 1: time to reinvent themselves. After the Giant Leap Tour, Neil
Speaker 1: spent a few weeks with Bob Hope entertaining the troops
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. I've had the privilege of meeting some outstanding
Speaker 1: men in our time, but the very quiet and soft
Speaker 1: spoken young man you're about to meet now is a
Speaker 1: part of a team that provided this world with a thrill.
Speaker 1: They will not soon forget Armstrong biographer James Hanson, and
Speaker 1: Neil showed a lot of good humor and was very
Speaker 1: popular with the troops all across Vietnam. And then he
Speaker 1: was invited to go to the Soviet Union and gave
Speaker 1: talks and was met cosmonauts and met the wife of
Speaker 1: Uriga Garin, the first man in space. Neil may have
Speaker 1: fled the country just to get away from the mountains
Speaker 1: of mail that was coming in. While he'd planned on
Speaker 1: responding to everyone, it quickly became clear that that was impossible.
Speaker 1: For the first couple of months, he received ten thousand
Speaker 1: letters a day. NASA threw a bunch of clerks and
Speaker 1: public affairs officers into the mix to help him, but
Speaker 1: they couldn't keep up with the tsunami. Even decades later,
Speaker 1: he continued to maintain an administrative assistant whose sole job
Speaker 1: was handling his overwhelming correspondence. He was getting all kinds
Speaker 1: of invitations to do this, and do that, and give
Speaker 1: this talk, and give this commencement speech, and come to
Speaker 1: this grand opening, and and Neil, it was sort of
Speaker 1: it was overwhelming. Neil needed some stability, and he found
Speaker 1: it in an offer from NASA. The NASA Administrator Dr.
Speaker 1: Thomas Paine asked Neil to take on a position back
Speaker 1: in the NASA's aeronautics programs as Associate Administrator for Aeronautics,
Speaker 1: which would have been a desk job in Washington, and
Speaker 1: Neil accepted it kind of grudgingly. He wasn't that interested
Speaker 1: in staying in Washington. He wasn't interested that much in
Speaker 1: a desk job, but aeronautics was his passion, so he
Speaker 1: accepted the job. Not surprisingly, Neil didn't enjoy flying a
Speaker 1: desk and he remained in the job for only a
Speaker 1: couple of years. I think he would have been happy
Speaker 1: if in the job, if they had just let him
Speaker 1: do it. But being in Washington, d C. It was
Speaker 1: constantly getting calls to come over to have a photo
Speaker 1: shoot with an ambassador or visiting dignitary or congressman or
Speaker 1: something like that. And after a while Neil just got
Speaker 1: tired of that. They wouldn't leave him alone, and and
Speaker 1: he chose, well, I'm going to just have to get
Speaker 1: out of I need to find a normal life. Neil
Speaker 1: tried to get back to some sense of normalcy by
Speaker 1: going back to Ohio, having a farm that he lived on.
Speaker 1: Even as he was teaching engineering at the University in
Speaker 1: Cincinnati and maintaining a fairly low profile throughout his post
Speaker 1: Apollo years. He was not the recluse that people made
Speaker 1: him out to be. He just didn't seek publicity and
Speaker 1: he was steadfast about meeting the world on his own terms.
Speaker 1: As Andrew Jakin just alluded to, for Neil, it was
Speaker 1: never about celebrity or fame, It was only ever about
Speaker 1: the flying. He became a favorite professor at Cincinnati's School
Speaker 1: of Engineering from nineteen seventy one to nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: but in the early eighties he decided to try something new.
Speaker 1: I don't think he was really after big money, but
Speaker 1: I think he was in tree by the possibilities of
Speaker 1: what he might be able to do for certain corporations,
Speaker 1: especially those that had a had a technical engineering side
Speaker 1: to it. So, starting you know, around nineteen eighty, really
Speaker 1: until his retirement, Kneels involved with a number of different companies,
Speaker 1: including Lear Jet and Chrysler. Michael Collins retired from NASA
Speaker 1: just a year after the Apollo eleven mission. Having basically
Speaker 1: worked as a US diplomat during the Giant Leap tour,
Speaker 1: Michael took a job he would later describe as plush purgatory.
Speaker 1: He actually volunteers to be the Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Speaker 1: State for Public Affairs, and he does that for a
Speaker 1: year or so, and like his colleagues, after about a
Speaker 1: year so and his his alternate career, realizes that there's
Speaker 1: another opportunity I like better. He became the first director
Speaker 1: of National Air and Space Museum, where he supervised the design,
Speaker 1: the development of the exhibits, the construction of the building,
Speaker 1: made sure that it came in on time and under
Speaker 1: budget when opened right around the time of the nation's
Speaker 1: bicentennial uh in n j four. After that, he became
Speaker 1: the Undersecretary of the Smithsonian. This beautiful new museum and
Speaker 1: it's exciting exhibits of the mastery of air and space
Speaker 1: is a perfect birthday present from the American people to themselves.
Speaker 1: Neil and and Mike I think make a pretty good adjustment.
Speaker 1: Buzz had a harder time with it. Budd came back
Speaker 1: from the Moon a changed man, Jones said. After the
Speaker 1: world tour, Buzz was emotionally exhausted and physically drained. His
Speaker 1: marriage was coming apart, and he was haunted by an
Speaker 1: all consuming aimlessness. What does a man do for an encore?
Speaker 1: After walking on the moon, He later wrote in one
Speaker 1: of his autobiographies, at home, he was moody and dismissive.
Speaker 1: He stopped talking to his kids and would spend hours
Speaker 1: in front of the TV nearly every night. Was fitful
Speaker 1: and sleepless. He was a hero without a sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: About the only thing consistent in his life was his drinking.
Speaker 1: In April of nineteen seventy, less than a year after
Speaker 1: the splashdown of Apollo eleven, Buzz met a woman named
Speaker 1: Mary Hann at an Air Force event in New York.
Speaker 1: He was immediately attracted to her, and she to him.
Speaker 1: She represented everything he felt his marriage currently lacked life, color,
Speaker 1: and vitality. It wasn't long before he and Mary Anne
Speaker 1: began a secret affair. He began taking regular flights to
Speaker 1: New York to see her, under the pretense of needing
Speaker 1: to maintain his flight hours. Mary Anne was about the
Speaker 1: only bright spot in his life. He still needed a job,
Speaker 1: and the Air Forces, well, we'll put you in charge
Speaker 1: of the test school, which was not really the assignment
Speaker 1: he wanted, and I think was a very good fit there.
Speaker 1: Buzz his son Andy that I know he very much wanted.
Speaker 1: He wanted to run the Air Force Academy. I think
Speaker 1: that's was his real fashion, and I think he was
Speaker 1: frustrated that he didn't do that buzz head zero test
Speaker 1: flight or administrative experience. But at least it was a job.
Speaker 1: At least he had purpose again. But it wasn't long
Speaker 1: before the hopelessness returned and Buzz checked himself into a
Speaker 1: San Antonio medical clinic. The official reason for Buzz's day
Speaker 1: was to treat some back and neck pain, but really
Speaker 1: he was there to come to grips with his deteriorating
Speaker 1: mental health. There was great stigma attached to mental illness
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, and Buzz was convinced, not incorrectly,
Speaker 1: that if word got out, his career would be over
Speaker 1: and his status as an American hero severely tarnished. Buzz
Speaker 1: was there for about four weeks, during which time he
Speaker 1: regularly sat down with a psychiatrist. He began opening up
Speaker 1: about his depression, and the doctor learned that Buzz's grandfather
Speaker 1: had ended his life with his own revolver on his
Speaker 1: mother's side a history of depression. In fact, his mother
Speaker 1: had committed suicide. Buzz's mother, whose maiden name was poignantly Moon,
Speaker 1: said she didn't think she could handle her son's looming
Speaker 1: fame and committed suicide less than a year before Buzz
Speaker 1: walked on the Moon. It was something Buzz blamed himself for.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what a burden, What a psychic burden
Speaker 1: to carry. While the sessions were enlightening, neither Buzz nor
Speaker 1: his doctor was aware of one of the most toxic
Speaker 1: elements of Buzz's decline, an example of which was stashed
Speaker 1: beneath his clothes in his suitcase a bottle of Scotch.
Speaker 1: When Buzz checked himself out of treatment, he was feeling better,
Speaker 1: though his doctor warned him that he still had a
Speaker 1: long way to go. One of the first things Buzz
Speaker 1: did was fly to New York to see Mary Anne,
Speaker 1: but he quickly learned that she had decided to end
Speaker 1: their relationship and marry someone else. His self esteem in tatters,
Speaker 1: a dejected Buzz stepped down from the Edward's job just
Speaker 1: nine months after he took it, and with it, he
Speaker 1: left the military and NASA behind. I wanted to resume
Speaker 1: my duties, but there were no duties to resume. Buzz
Speaker 1: later wrote, there was no goal, no sense of calling,
Speaker 1: no project worth pouring myself into. He felt adrift, cut
Speaker 1: off from anything that wants to find and him. Shortly
Speaker 1: before he retired, he wrote an article in the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Times recounting his post Apollo leven difficulties. Rather than
Speaker 1: being shunned, he received wide acclaim for being bold enough
Speaker 1: to come forward publicly and admit his struggles, especially given
Speaker 1: his straight laced military background. He was asked to serve
Speaker 1: on the board of the National Association for Mental Health
Speaker 1: and soon wrote a book describing his battles in greater detail.
Speaker 1: He didn't hold much back, admitting to nearly all of
Speaker 1: his personal struggles and indiscretions. You know, the issues with
Speaker 1: depression and alcoholism were really, really difficult. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: my dad being so public about it made it easier
Speaker 1: or harder, but we certainly didn't have to hide the
Speaker 1: fact because he was so public about it. The book
Speaker 1: was intended by him to be a cathartic experience, and
Speaker 1: that after the book he was going to get sober
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of rekindle a relation ship with
Speaker 1: my mom, And none of that happened. In seventy four,
Speaker 1: shortly after the death of Buzz's overbearing father and twenty
Speaker 1: years of marriage, Buzz and Joan divorced. He was hardly alone.
Speaker 1: Of the thirty astronauts who served at NASA from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one to nineteen sixty nine, twenty three of their
Speaker 1: marriages ended in divorce. Buzzes drinking continued to spiral out
Speaker 1: of control. His role with a national Association for Mental
Speaker 1: health came with many speaking engagements which Buzz was often
Speaker 1: too drunk to perform. His new girlfriend pleaded with him
Speaker 1: to check into an alcohol rehabilitation center, which he did,
Speaker 1: and after a month of treatment, they were married. That
Speaker 1: relationship fell apart just a year or so later. Buzz's
Speaker 1: Air Force pension wasn't cutting it, and one of his
Speaker 1: A contacts helped him land a new job selling Cadillacs
Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills, but after six months on the job
Speaker 1: and not a single car sold, Buzz quit. It wasn't
Speaker 1: long after that that he kicked in his new girlfriend
Speaker 1: door in a drunken rage and was arrested for disorderly conduct.
Speaker 1: Buzz Aldrin had hit rock bottom. Back on Apollo eleven,
Speaker 1: the crew is preparing for their final TV transmission. They
Speaker 1: never wanted cameras to be a part of this mission,
Speaker 1: but NASA hadn't given them a choice. Tonight, however, they're
Speaker 1: thankful to have a chance to say a few words
Speaker 1: to the watching world. What follows is a beautiful and
Speaker 1: heartfelt acknowledgment of the history they made and the team
Speaker 1: back on Earth that made it possible. Let's settle in
Speaker 1: and listen, Glug. We're all set whenever you're ready to
Speaker 1: send the commander of Apollo eleven. A hundred years ago
Speaker 1: Jill book about a void spaceship Calabia from Florida and
Speaker 1: landed after compleating and trept of them in the appropriate
Speaker 1: the share with you some of the reflections of the
Speaker 1: crew as the modern day Colombia complete gets rendezvous with
Speaker 1: the planet Earth in the same Pacific Ocean tomorrow. First,
Speaker 1: my column, Roger, this trip of ours to the Moon
Speaker 1: may have looked to you simple or easy. I'd like
Speaker 1: to share you that that has not been the case.
Speaker 1: The battered by a rocket which put us into orbit
Speaker 1: is an incredibly complicated piece of machinery, every piece of
Speaker 1: which works broadly. The SPS engine are large rocket engine
Speaker 1: on the FD end of our service module must have
Speaker 1: performed flawlessly, or we would have been stranded in lunar orbit.
Speaker 1: The parachute up above my head must work perfectly tomorrow,
Speaker 1: or we will plumb it into the ocean. All this
Speaker 1: is possible only through the blood, sweat and tears of
Speaker 1: the American workman who put these pieces of the machinery together.
Speaker 1: The factory that evaporates him is somewhat like the periscope
Speaker 1: of a deepery. All you see is the three of us,
Speaker 1: but beneath the drivers a thousands of thous the brothers,
Speaker 1: and to all of us, I would like to say
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Michael later admits that he has
Speaker 1: a huge lump in his throat and ends very emotionally
Speaker 1: buzzes up next Good evening. As we've been discussing the
Speaker 1: events that have taken place in the past two or
Speaker 1: three days here on Boordars Big Craft, we've come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that this has been far more than three
Speaker 1: men on a voyage to the moment, more still than
Speaker 1: the efforts of our government and industry teams, or even
Speaker 1: than the efforts of one nation. We feel that this
Speaker 1: stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all
Speaker 1: mankind to explore the unknown. We've been particularly pleased with
Speaker 1: the emblem of our plight depicting the U. S. Eagle
Speaker 1: bringing the universal symbol of peace from the planet Earth
Speaker 1: to the Moon, that symbol being the olive branch. Personally
Speaker 1: and reflecting the events of the past several days of
Speaker 1: hearths from the thomps comes to mind to me where
Speaker 1: I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the
Speaker 1: moan and the stars which thou hast ordained. What is
Speaker 1: man if thou art mindful of him? Last, but not
Speaker 1: least is nil. Responsibility for the plight lies first with history,
Speaker 1: with a giant of science who have preceded deservers. Next
Speaker 1: to the American people who have through their will indicated
Speaker 1: their desire. Next to four administrations in their congresses for
Speaker 1: implementing the will. And then to the agency and industry
Speaker 1: teams that built our space past the Saturn, the Colombia,
Speaker 1: the Eagle, and the little gam you the space. The
Speaker 1: fact that that was our all space prayers out on
Speaker 1: the Learner Service. We'd like to give a special thanks
Speaker 1: to all those Americans who have built those space prams.
Speaker 1: We did the constructions, design the death and put their
Speaker 1: hearts and all their abilities and into those prayers. To
Speaker 1: those people tonight we give a special thanking and to
Speaker 1: all the other people that are listening and watching tonight,
Speaker 1: God U good night from all follow all over. I
Speaker 1: can think a few better ways to begin winding this
Speaker 1: podcast down than to let these men gush about the
Speaker 1: very people whose voices we've been hearing over the past
Speaker 1: eight episodes. Those who designed, built, and tested the spacecraft
Speaker 1: in which they've been traveling, the flight controllers in mission
Speaker 1: control watching over them every step of their journey, the
Speaker 1: political machine that gave birth to such an audacious feat,
Speaker 1: and the American public who cheered them on and in
Speaker 1: the end footed the bill and given the act that
Speaker 1: this extraordinary accomplishment was carried out as part of a
Speaker 1: titanic struggle between two global titans. There's something meaningful in
Speaker 1: the crew's insistence that the winner of the space race
Speaker 1: was not a government or a single nation, but rather
Speaker 1: the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown.
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven was a small step for the United States,
Speaker 1: but a giant leap for human kind in while on
Speaker 1: a ski trip, Neil Armstrong suffered a heart attack. It
Speaker 1: was the same day he'd begun the process of separating
Speaker 1: from Janet, his wife of thirty eight years. Lily Coppel
Speaker 1: and James Hanson explained, has been a very guarded, playing
Speaker 1: his cards posted his chest kind of guy. I think
Speaker 1: jan felt sort of an emotional coldness from Neal. I
Speaker 1: think Janet had hoped all along that the Neil might
Speaker 1: change in in important ways and their relationship, that Neil
Speaker 1: could be more present for her. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: she was hoping that when he left the Astronaut Corps
Speaker 1: and then and then left NASA and they went back
Speaker 1: to Ohio and he got this teaching position and they
Speaker 1: got this farm, uh, that that would all be enough
Speaker 1: for things to change in ways, it would make the
Speaker 1: relationship healthier, in the whole situation of the family better.
Speaker 1: And so I think she just kept hoping that that
Speaker 1: would happen um and it didn't. It just didn't change.
Speaker 1: And she came to the realization, obviously over many many years,
Speaker 1: very slowly, that you know, he's just not He's never
Speaker 1: going to change. This is never going to be any different.
Speaker 1: What she said to me was I got tired of
Speaker 1: being missed. Neil Armstrong. Neil recovered from his heart attack
Speaker 1: around nine four when Neil was a member of a
Speaker 1: golf club and a friend of his who had a
Speaker 1: friend that had just lost her husband a few years
Speaker 1: back in a flying accident. Carol Knight was her name.
Speaker 1: Neil was introduced to her at the golf club and
Speaker 1: they hit it off. Neil and Carol married and stayed
Speaker 1: married until Neil's death in and some people think that
Speaker 1: Carol really turned out to be the love is of
Speaker 1: his life, a better match. Neil continued to fly right
Speaker 1: up until the day he died. He was having some
Speaker 1: symptoms uh that he called into his doctor UH and
Speaker 1: the doctor wanted him to come in immediately UH. And
Speaker 1: they gave him a stress test and realized he had
Speaker 1: some blockages that needed to be fixed, and so they
Speaker 1: immediately gave him a quadruple bypass surgery. Just a few
Speaker 1: days later, Neil was up and walking and it looked
Speaker 1: like he'd be heading home soon, but he developed complications
Speaker 1: that his small local hospital was not equipped to handle
Speaker 1: a man who could have died a zillion different ways.
Speaker 1: As a pilot, you know, in combat and Korea, and
Speaker 1: you know, flying airplanes at Edwards Uh as an astronaut.
Speaker 1: For him to die in the way that he did,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel as extraordinarily tragic, and it sort
Speaker 1: of makes a very unfortunate ending to what had been
Speaker 1: a really remarkable life. Neo Armstrong, the first man to
Speaker 1: walk on the Moon, becoming a hero to generations, has
Speaker 1: died back on Earth. The former Navy fighter pilot never
Speaker 1: allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and
Speaker 1: glamor of the space program, calling himself a white Sox
Speaker 1: pocket protector nerdy engineer. Neil Armstrong was eight two. His
Speaker 1: family was offered a state funeral, something usually reserved only
Speaker 1: for presidents and high ranking members of Congress, but they declined.
Speaker 1: He was buried at sea with full naval honors. Pat
Speaker 1: Collins died in two thousand and fourteen after suffering a stroke.
Speaker 1: She and Michael were happily married until the very end.
Speaker 1: Pat and Michael Collins were one of just a handful
Speaker 1: of space couples that stayed together. Pat was a very
Speaker 1: liberated woman and Michael Collins perhaps this was one of
Speaker 1: the trades of any good marriage. Let her be herself
Speaker 1: According to Andrew Chacken, Michael was the most successful at
Speaker 1: maintaining a sense of normalcy after Apollo Levin's return. Mike was,
Speaker 1: of the three of them, the most user friendly. Mike
Speaker 1: was the most approachable, relatable. He talked easily, he smiled,
Speaker 1: he made jokes. You saw that this was a three
Speaker 1: dimensional human being, much more so than the public side
Speaker 1: of Neil or Buzz. Um. I would say, it's it's
Speaker 1: fair to say that in public you had the sense
Speaker 1: that both Neil and Buz were wound pretty tight. Um
Speaker 1: not so with Mike. When we left off with Buzz,
Speaker 1: he'd hit rock bottom. As a result, he quit drinking
Speaker 1: and he never looked back. He married again, to a
Speaker 1: woman named Lois. Every superman needs his Lois, he joked.
Speaker 1: She was the love of his life, he told everyone,
Speaker 1: and indeed they seemed very happy, more than anyone else,
Speaker 1: he wrote in his autobiography. She rebuilt him from the
Speaker 1: inside out, and she had a talent for making money,
Speaker 1: transforming herself into his manager and biggest promoter. She booked
Speaker 1: Buzz on countless television shows, everything from the Simpsons and
Speaker 1: The Big Bang Theory to Thirty Rock and Dancing with
Speaker 1: the stars. She organized speeches, greased the skids on nearly
Speaker 1: a dozen books, and got him endorsement deals with Apple, Nike,
Speaker 1: and Louis Vuitton. Together they made millions, and finally Buzz
Speaker 1: was no longer destitute or buried in darkness, and once
Speaker 1: again he found his passion for space. He was a
Speaker 1: pioneer at heart and still is. It's not an accident
Speaker 1: that he's spent most of his energies since leaving NASA
Speaker 1: on forwarding the cause of space exploration. He began advocating
Speaker 1: for NASA to take the next logical step, placing American
Speaker 1: bootprints in the scarlet soil of the Red planet. He
Speaker 1: wants to see humanity become a two planet species with
Speaker 1: a colony on Mars by twenty forty. Tragically, this Twilight
Speaker 1: renaissance did not last, and Buzz and Lowis divorced in
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve after twenty three years of marriage.
Speaker 1: Most recently, Buzz was in the news as part of
Speaker 1: a legal dispute in which he filed a lawsuit against
Speaker 1: two of his children and his former business partner, accusing
Speaker 1: them of trying to exploit him and steal his money.
Speaker 1: They contended that several of his friends were taking advantage
Speaker 1: of his dementia and Alzheimer's, alienating him from his family
Speaker 1: and draining his life savings. He later dropped the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: but has been largely out of the public eye ever since.
Speaker 1: Many have asked why was Buzz the only one whose
Speaker 1: life was torn apart once he returned to Earth? And
Speaker 1: there are no easier pad answers. Neil was number one.
Speaker 1: He didn't have anything to prove, while he was far
Speaker 1: from the hermit many made him out to be. After
Speaker 1: his return, he wisely rationed himself. He spoke seldom about
Speaker 1: his public life and almost never about his private life.
Speaker 1: Michael said in his autobiography that the moon changed him,
Speaker 1: gave him a cosmic perspective. He no longer got upset
Speaker 1: over the little things in life, no matter the accolades
Speaker 1: he received or the challenges he faced. The Earth continued
Speaker 1: to rotate just the same the Moon continued in its
Speaker 1: path unchanged. Buzz was Apollo's middle child, always trying to
Speaker 1: prove himself to his father, to all of us, an
Speaker 1: artist of all, to himself. Years after their return, he
Speaker 1: admitted that the crew of Apollo even didn't really stay
Speaker 1: all that connected. They took their very different personalities and
Speaker 1: went their separate ways, only glancing into each other at
Speaker 1: special events every half decade or so. And perhaps in
Speaker 1: the end we shouldn't ask why Buzz cracked, but rather
Speaker 1: how could he not have? Given all the pressure he
Speaker 1: was under before, during, and even after the mission. We
Speaker 1: idolized these men. We made them international icons. We dubbed
Speaker 1: them heroes, and indeed they are, but they're also just human.
Speaker 1: Follow eleven. You're a friendly Green team going off for
Speaker 1: the night and going off for the last time. When
Speaker 1: video a good night back on Apollo eleven, Bruce McCandless
Speaker 1: is saying his goodbyes, the Green Team's rotation won't come
Speaker 1: up again during the remainder of the mission. Than you,
Speaker 1: We appreciate all that. Man. Uh, we'll be thanking him back.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed working with Thank you very much, Thank
Speaker 1: you very much working with him. Charlie Duke is the
Speaker 1: next one in the capcom seat, and he has some
Speaker 1: bad news. The weather reports have been predicting beautiful skies
Speaker 1: over their landing zone tomorrow, but things have changed. A
Speaker 1: typhoon is brewing in the South Pacific, where they are
Speaker 1: expected to splash down. The weather is clobbering in at
Speaker 1: our targeted landing point due to uh scattered sun and storm.
Speaker 1: We're gonna move there. The new coordinates are thirty degrees
Speaker 1: nineteen minutes north one minutes with the weather in that
Speaker 1: area is super le When Houston Miken get your chance
Speaker 1: to landing tomorrow, no go around, right, You're gonna let
Speaker 1: me land all right? That's right there. As with their
Speaker 1: moon landing, they're going to have to land down range
Speaker 1: of their intended target two hundred and fifteen nautical miles
Speaker 1: to be exact. This gives Michael pause. It's a very
Speaker 1: different kind of entry, and not one Michael has trained for.
Speaker 1: Assuming the computer keeps working and guides them in, there
Speaker 1: will be no issues. But if something happens and Michael
Speaker 1: has to take control, they're in trouble. All good nights
Speaker 1: having been said, the crew of Follow eleven is now
Speaker 1: preparing to get their ten hours rest their last night
Speaker 1: in space. As they prepare for sleep, Michael finds himself
Speaker 1: thinking about the men in the spacecraft with him. The
Speaker 1: astronauts began as competitors, and Michael assumed that once they
Speaker 1: became a crew, that would fall away and they dropped
Speaker 1: their guards, but they haven't. Michael realizes that they never
Speaker 1: share their thoughts or feelings. They only ever talk about
Speaker 1: the mission. Michael wants to get to know Neil better,
Speaker 1: but Neil seems to hold him and everyone at arms length,
Speaker 1: and oddly enough, Michael is the one keeping Buzz at
Speaker 1: arm's length. Buzz is the more approachable, but Michael feels
Speaker 1: as if Buzz is always trying to probe him for weaknesses.
Speaker 1: Michael realizes that if they get home in one piece,
Speaker 1: their lives are going to change, and there will doubtless
Speaker 1: be challenges none of them can anticipate or are prepared for.
Speaker 1: Michael wishes they were closer and could draw on each
Speaker 1: other for strength. He would later write in his autobiography,
Speaker 1: I don't have any idea what Neil and Buzz intend
Speaker 1: to do after the flight, or me, for that matter,
Speaker 1: but whatever it is, we should support each other, and
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we've yet built the basis for that support.
Speaker 1: Day eight is over. Day nine July begins with our
Speaker 1: next and final episode. Apollo eleven is nearly home, but
Speaker 1: first it has to fall through a veil of fire,
Speaker 1: and we'll take a look at what the future holds
Speaker 1: for our space fairing culture as NASA and private industry
Speaker 1: prepared to return to the Moon and from there make
Speaker 1: history again by setting their sights on Mars. This podcast
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio and trade Craft Studios,
Speaker 1: Executive producers Ashe Serohia and Scott Bernstein, in association with
Speaker 1: High Five Content and executive producer Andrew Jacobs. Amazing research
Speaker 1: and production assistance by associate producers Brian Schosau and Natalie Robomed.
Speaker 1: Our incredible editor is Bill Lance. Original music by Henry
Speaker 1: ben Wah. Licensing rights and clearances by Deborah Correa. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to James Hansen, the author of First Man, Lilly Coppel,
Speaker 1: the author of The Astronaut Wives Club, Andrew Chaykin, the
Speaker 1: author of A Man on the Moon, NASA Chief Historian
Speaker 1: Bill Barry, ad Mission Controls Steve Bales. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: everyone at NASA who made this podcast possible, especially the
Speaker 1: incredible technological wizardry of consulting producer Ben Feist, who's responsible
Speaker 1: for organizing and cleaning the eleven thousand hours of mission
Speaker 1: audio you're hearing selections from in this podcast. Special thanks
Speaker 1: also to consultant Gina Delvac. This is a brand new
Speaker 1: podcast and we're so excited to be sharing it with you.
Speaker 1: Help us spread it far and wide, tell your friends,
Speaker 1: leave ratings and reviews, and chat about it on social media.
Speaker 1: Our hashtag is nine D I J. We would love
Speaker 1: to hear what you think. New episodes come out each week,
Speaker 1: so be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'm Brandon Phipps. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll
Speaker 1: see you next episode.