Speaker 1: Buzz, an audio drama for iHeart Podcasts starring John Lithgow
Speaker 1: and Jeffrey Aaron as buzz Aldren. This series is based
Speaker 1: on real events, However, certain characters, names, incidents, locations, and
Speaker 1: dialogue have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Speaker 2: Chapter one, Eagles descending a thirteen hundred feet litteral landing
Speaker 2: area in sight Mission control, Houston.
Speaker 3: Do you copy?
Speaker 4: We copy?
Speaker 5: Neil all love and looking good for letter landing?
Speaker 6: Mission Control confirm AGS landing coordinates.
Speaker 7: Roger that bun and confirming a.
Speaker 3: Decent continuing twelve hundred.
Speaker 6: Feet copy prepare for a lunar touchdown in ninety seconds.
Speaker 6: How about those coordinates used in While We're Young.
Speaker 8: We're about the Flights?
Speaker 7: AGS is one zero one three six one four point
Speaker 7: zero seven plus zero zero zero nine or eight.
Speaker 9: Houston, your numbers are incorrect. AGS is plus zero zero
Speaker 9: five seven to two. You expect us to hit our
Speaker 9: landing site with coordinates that are off by a factor
Speaker 9: of five?
Speaker 8: How long before he mentioned it? Mentions?
Speaker 10: What that he's five beta kappa and we're not capcom
Speaker 10: run that AGS calculation again?
Speaker 9: I already ran it, Houston, AGS is plus zero zero five.
Speaker 6: Seven to two.
Speaker 9: I'll bet my five beta Kappa.
Speaker 10: Key on it.
Speaker 8: Told you you know him well.
Speaker 6: Anyone else want to anti up.
Speaker 7: AGS? Error is acknowledged.
Speaker 3: Repeat please whose error ours? Your figures are correct?
Speaker 7: Buzz AGS is zero zero five two.
Speaker 6: Sorry about that, Roger Houston. The air is human to
Speaker 6: forgive is mine?
Speaker 2: Eagle descending one thousand feet till lunar touchdown, and then we.
Speaker 6: Have an alarm code descent propulsion failure.
Speaker 3: Initiate engine restart.
Speaker 6: Losing altitude rapidly eight hundred feet.
Speaker 5: Neil is flight.
Speaker 10: Your descent rate is critical.
Speaker 3: I can save it.
Speaker 6: Engine restart is not five hundred feet and falling. Neil
Speaker 6: initiate landing aboard now three hundred feet.
Speaker 3: I can save it.
Speaker 6: We're no longer possible lunar impact.
Speaker 7: Eminent Eagle has craft likelihood of cruise survival is zeround.
Speaker 4: If Neil and I had really left the ground, but
Speaker 4: we hadn't. We were still in the lunar module simulate
Speaker 4: at NASA's headquarters in Houston. There's nothing like a near
Speaker 4: death experience, even simulated, to change your priorities.
Speaker 10: Eagle crew and flight engineers stand by to evaluate cause
Speaker 10: and effect of DPS malfunction.
Speaker 4: The cause may have been a mystery to everyone but
Speaker 4: flight director Gene Krantz, but the effect was staring all
Speaker 4: of us in the face. Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo eleven,
Speaker 4: shut down when he should have stepped up.
Speaker 10: Gentlemen, listen up, clench your right hand, stick out your
Speaker 10: index finger, and use it to call your wife, your girlfriend,
Speaker 10: or your mommy and tell her you're going to be
Speaker 10: late tonight. Today we had a setback, but the launch
Speaker 10: of Apollo eleven will not be delayed.
Speaker 4: More people saw us on the Moon than just any
Speaker 4: single event before or since. We galvanized the world, then
Speaker 4: we came home. That's the story you think you know,
Speaker 4: this is the story.
Speaker 10: You don't ignition frequent five.
Speaker 5: Five four with the quality day here. You ain't going
Speaker 5: to plant the one all trap per ram.
Speaker 10: Fil.
Speaker 4: You're listening to buzzz and this is the story of
Speaker 4: my greatest achievement. Chapter one.
Speaker 11: Normally, which expects to being the leader of other natives,
Speaker 11: can't expect to stay behind in this race of space.
Speaker 4: In the fall of nineteen sixty two, President Kennedy summoned
Speaker 4: the best in US as Americans and as human beings.
Speaker 7: We choose to go to the moon. We choose to
Speaker 7: go to the moon.
Speaker 3: And this decayed because that challenge is one.
Speaker 5: That we're willing to acampt, one we are willing to postpone,
Speaker 5: and one we intend to win.
Speaker 4: Then it was dead. Six years later, what should have
Speaker 4: been America's decade saw us on the brink of a
Speaker 4: second civil war, city streets on fire, with racial violence,
Speaker 4: campuses torn apart by the war in Vietnam. Kennedy's challenged
Speaker 4: to reach the Moon seemed an impossible dream, a race
Speaker 4: we were bound to lose to the enemy in Moscow.
Speaker 10: Intends to militarize space as a platform to hold the
Speaker 10: world hostage. We want to explore the final frontier for
Speaker 10: the betterment of man. When a flag is planted on
Speaker 10: the Moon, it'll be our flag and you will have
Speaker 10: put it there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Anyone who says Apollo eleven was about collecting moon rocks
Speaker 4: has their head up their ass. It was the stars
Speaker 4: and stripes versus the hammer and sickle, the land of
Speaker 4: the free against the home of the enslaved, the white
Speaker 4: hatted capitalists and the commies in black. For those of
Speaker 4: us who flew fighter jets in Korea and during the
Speaker 4: iciest days of the Cold War, Beating the Russians was
Speaker 4: what we lived for and would have died for.
Speaker 10: So make your calls, gentlemen, grab dinner, potato chips, fig Newton's,
Speaker 10: whatever's in the vending machines, and then it's back to work.
Speaker 4: One man at Mission Control wasn't deployed. Chris Kraft had
Speaker 4: been flight director before Gene Krantz took over. Chris was
Speaker 4: Jeane's mentor, his surrogate father until the bosses at NASA
Speaker 4: kicked Chris upstairs but not out the door.
Speaker 8: Nice speech, Jane, Well, I said what I thought you
Speaker 8: would have.
Speaker 3: What went wrong with the landing exercise?
Speaker 10: I simulated a DSL malfunction and Neil missed it.
Speaker 8: Has he missed before? We never ran the simulation before.
Speaker 8: What made you run it? Now? All other systems have
Speaker 8: been cleared. Why would Neil have missed? Is what the
Speaker 8: reviews for? Chris? If you want, you can sit in.
Speaker 8: I'm not flight director anymore.
Speaker 10: Well, as long as I am, you're welcome to the table.
Speaker 10: I wouldn't be in the job if it.
Speaker 8: Wasn't for you.
Speaker 3: What about Neil and Buzz?
Speaker 8: Have they done their own review.
Speaker 4: I was just in the process of offering some constructive
Speaker 4: criticism to my bosom.
Speaker 6: Chum, you fucked up, Neil.
Speaker 11: Your boart was unnecess Mission control overreacted when the code sounded.
Speaker 6: You froze That simulation should have been cake. I would
Speaker 6: have pulled us out of it. A kid in flight
Speaker 6: school would have pulled us out of it. You know
Speaker 6: it goes on record as a crew failure. A crew
Speaker 6: failure includes me and I.
Speaker 5: Don't fail boys, boys, let's play nice.
Speaker 6: What do you want, Brian?
Speaker 3: The reporters are ready.
Speaker 6: Fuck them.
Speaker 5: It's the last briefing before the launch. Where's my Collins?
Speaker 5: They want to talk to the entire crew.
Speaker 6: Are you gonna tell them about our little glitch? Are
Speaker 6: we still perpetrating the myth of Neil's infallibility?
Speaker 5: There are some things they don't need to know, but
Speaker 5: if I cancel, they'll get suspicious.
Speaker 3: Hi, guys, how's everybody's day?
Speaker 6: Mike?
Speaker 5: What do you do the briefing? Maybe a few jokes
Speaker 5: about suborbital rendezvous.
Speaker 3: Just do me a favor.
Speaker 6: No questions about why I became an astronaut.
Speaker 5: Everyone one at a time, one at a time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you over there?
Speaker 5: There hand raised, Yes, sir, Neil. What's it like knowing
Speaker 5: the success or failure of Apollo eleven is in your hands?
Speaker 2: Apollo eleven is the result of the efforts of four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand people, and each one is just as vital
Speaker 2: to its success as the mission commander.
Speaker 5: And you in the far corner when you're on top
Speaker 5: of that rocket as a launch sequence counts down, how
Speaker 5: do you expect to feel?
Speaker 3: Define what you mean by feel.
Speaker 4: Exhilary, asking Neil about his emotions was like asking a
Speaker 4: fish how to sing.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't know how to answer that.
Speaker 4: I almost felt sorry for him. He was so out
Speaker 4: of his depth. Next question, on the other hand, talking
Speaker 4: aerospace to the reporters was right in my wheelhouse.
Speaker 6: After departing the command module, coming down in the descent
Speaker 6: orbit will ignite the descent engine.
Speaker 4: They didn't understand a word, which is why I love
Speaker 4: demand module bus.
Speaker 3: Can you translate for those of us who don't have
Speaker 3: an MIT degree.
Speaker 6: An MIT doctorate? And sorry, boys, translation wouldn't help you.
Speaker 5: Any questions for Colonel Mike Collins.
Speaker 3: Mike, why did you want to be an astronaut?
Speaker 4: Normally, after a tough day at the office, I'd visit
Speaker 4: a saloon called Elroy's, where, if you happen to be
Speaker 4: buzz Aldrin, the drinks were free and the women were moonstruck.
Speaker 4: But first Gene Krantz brought Neil and me to his office,
Speaker 4: where as flight director, he admitted what I already knew
Speaker 4: in my gut.
Speaker 10: I triggered the DPS malfunction.
Speaker 3: For what possible purpose.
Speaker 10: It could happen during an actual dissent.
Speaker 3: The odds are statistically nil.
Speaker 6: The odds aren't the issue. The issues your failure to
Speaker 6: react after the alarm sounded.
Speaker 3: I didn't fail to react.
Speaker 6: We crashed, didn't we.
Speaker 3: It's the job of mission control to provide timely and
Speaker 3: accurate information to the crews coordinates where you're a mistake, Jane,
Speaker 3: not ours, And it's the commander's job to push the
Speaker 3: simulation as far as it will go, even when mission
Speaker 3: control panics and calls for an abort.
Speaker 6: You're not buying that horse shit, are you?
Speaker 4: Jane?
Speaker 3: Are you?
Speaker 10: When the review is complete, I'll assessed the data.
Speaker 6: There's nothing left to review.
Speaker 8: Buzz wait, buzz hold up.
Speaker 11: I'm aware of the significance of being commander, and therefore
Speaker 11: of being the first man on the moon. It's a
Speaker 11: position I've earned and deserve, and I expect that what
Speaker 11: happened today will have no impact on my keeping it.
Speaker 11: Unless this was a setup designed to justify replacing me.
Speaker 11: What makes you think Buzz has resented that I'm commander
Speaker 11: since the crew assignments were announced.
Speaker 10: He can resent it all he wants. As flight director,
Speaker 10: I'm responsible for the selection.
Speaker 8: Of the crew.
Speaker 3: Will I be replaced? Jane?
Speaker 10: Until today, I hadn't considered it, But you are now, Neil.
Speaker 10: But I understand you're not wanting to admit failure to us.
Speaker 10: I worry about you not admitting it to yourself.
Speaker 3: You think Buzz is any different?
Speaker 8: He would have reacted, Buzz.
Speaker 3: Can't be commander. We both know it, and we both
Speaker 3: know why.
Speaker 4: What I didn't know was that in a windowless office
Speaker 4: at Missigan Control, a chain smoking woman named Rachel Ludwig
Speaker 4: who'd soon become part of my life, was making it
Speaker 4: her mission to learn more about US astronauts than we
Speaker 4: did about ourselves. She wouldn't be putting Neil's head in
Speaker 4: the noose, She'd be putting mine. The streets were empty,
Speaker 4: When who should pull up to me at a red light,
Speaker 4: but Neil he and his Corvette, me and mine gifts
Speaker 4: from Chevrolet. The cars were identical, the drivers weren't.
Speaker 6: What do you say, pal first off the line, fastest
Speaker 6: down the block, just es you see.
Speaker 7: Anyone else.
Speaker 3: Ten bucks or glory?
Speaker 6: I don't need your money.
Speaker 4: Within seconds, Neil and I were doing upwards of eighty
Speaker 4: in a thirty zone. We'd have wound up behind bars.
Speaker 4: If justice was as blind as it's supposed to be.
Speaker 5: We got high speed trexters on Elm and Carlisle.
Speaker 8: Turn off the siren.
Speaker 6: You see those guys, that's buzzing'.
Speaker 3: Neil let him be. I beat him by an hour.
Speaker 4: Flushed with victory, I made a pit stop at the
Speaker 4: apartment of an able and very willing brunette named Lauren.
Speaker 4: Being with women other than my wife was just another perk,
Speaker 4: like personalized parking admission control. Doesn't mean I didn't love Joan.
Speaker 4: I just loved being buzz more Hi, honey, to replace
Speaker 4: the full time husband she deserved. I'd got her a
Speaker 4: monkey the kids named Popo. Where have you been?
Speaker 6: We had a DPS malfunction. Neil didn't pick up on it, so, ah,
Speaker 6: what's that smell?
Speaker 5: It's popo.
Speaker 3: What's wrong with him? What's wrong?
Speaker 5: He's a monkey?
Speaker 3: I mean this afternoon he ripped off his diaper and
Speaker 3: threw shit all over the living room.
Speaker 5: The drapes are ruined, the sofa is a wreck.
Speaker 8: You wanted to read decoration?
Speaker 3: Come on for Christmas. He was a joke. He stopped
Speaker 3: being funny at Easter. Next week's the fourth of July.
Speaker 6: That kids love him, The kids.
Speaker 3: Never look at him. It's all on me, buzz. I'm
Speaker 3: through with it, honestly, all of it.
Speaker 4: All of what.
Speaker 3: I want him gone given to the zoo. I don't
Speaker 3: care enough.
Speaker 6: I'm not talking about the monkey. You said all of it?
Speaker 6: What's all of it? Come here, Joe, come here?
Speaker 3: Oh how was Alroy's.
Speaker 8: I wasn't at al Roy's.
Speaker 6: I told you we had a DPS malfunction and all
Speaker 6: of us were working on it.
Speaker 5: I called Pat Collins.
Speaker 3: Mike got home three hours ago. So don't treat me
Speaker 3: like an idiot.
Speaker 6: Baby, No, buzz, no, Yes.
Speaker 3: That's my girl.
Speaker 6: So if you're going to be out there making the
Speaker 6: most of your celebrity, at least show some discretions.
Speaker 8: I don't have to hear about it for my friends.
Speaker 8: Oh well, that was my favorite shirt.
Speaker 5: Somewhere else saw it later.
Speaker 4: We were stars of a new magnitude. Our faces were
Speaker 4: on magazine covers and cereal boxes, the blue eyed, pimple
Speaker 4: free personifications of all American values. Did I recognize the
Speaker 4: hypocrisy as I sat in a pew on Sundays with
Speaker 4: my wife and kids? Sure, but it didn't bother me.
Speaker 1: Buzz, starring John Lithgow and Jeffrey Errand, is created by
Speaker 1: Stephen Cronish and directed by John Scott Dryden. Episode one
Speaker 1: is written by Stephen Cronish. Original music is by Sasha Putnam,
Speaker 1: editing and sound design by Elouise Whitmore. The producer is
Speaker 1: Emma Hearn. The executive producers are Jeremy Fox, John Scott Dryden,
Speaker 1: Stephen Cronish, Howard Stringer and Jason English. Buzz is a
Speaker 1: production of Thoroughbred Studios, Goldhop Productions and iHeart Podcasts.