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.
Speaker 1: September three, in the air of Page or nine, Korea.
Speaker 1: Do you hear that sound? That's the roar of a
Speaker 1: Grummin F nine panther holding the stick is a twenty
Speaker 1: one year old well boy. He's a newly minted lieutenant
Speaker 1: junior grade and he's only been in the Navy for
Speaker 1: two and a half years. It's the height of the
Speaker 1: Korean War. Our pilot is in one of five U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy Fighter jets flying over a narrow road known as
Speaker 1: Green six. The ground is blurring beneath him at three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles per hour. The squadron's mission is
Speaker 1: to bomb some freight yards and a bridge the enemy
Speaker 1: is using to resupply their troops. Well, the men have
Speaker 1: been warned they're going into a hot zone. None are
Speaker 1: prepared for what they encounter at three o'clock's slip information.
Speaker 1: According to one of the pilots, the anti aircraft fire
Speaker 1: was so thick it looked as if he could have
Speaker 1: climbed out of his jet and walked on top Beyond
Speaker 1: the pilot in the jet. Just in front of ours
Speaker 1: is Lieutenant Frank Sistruct. He's heading for the bridge. The
Speaker 1: lead panther is struck. Lieutenant Sistructs aircraft spirals into the ground,
Speaker 1: exploding on impact. Our pilot doesn't have time to mourn
Speaker 1: or panic. He inhales deeply and takes a His aircraft
Speaker 1: is also hit. As he wrestles to maintain control, his
Speaker 1: panther plows into a metal cable strung across the valley
Speaker 1: as a booby trap for low flying aircraft. The cable
Speaker 1: slices through the panther's right wing, sharing off nearly six feet,
Speaker 1: narrowly missing the cockpit. Our pilot manages to stay locked
Speaker 1: just long enough to return to friendly territory, but there
Speaker 1: is no away. He's landing this plane. Facing an impossible decision,
Speaker 1: He has no choice but to eject over a rice pat,
Speaker 1: cracking his helmet in half and breaking his tailbone in
Speaker 1: the process. This is a polo control at twenty two
Speaker 1: hours forty nine minutes ground the lapsed time spacecraft communicator
Speaker 1: here in mission control, Bruce McCandless is standing by to
Speaker 1: make a call to the crew. It's July sev nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, day two of the Apollo eleven mission. Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven has left planet Earth and is on its way
Speaker 1: to the Moon. As the crew begins their first full
Speaker 1: day in space, it's the perfect time to tell you
Speaker 1: how Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins became the
Speaker 1: Dream Team, as well as how a handful of kids
Speaker 1: built Mission Control. But first, let's check in with the
Speaker 1: capsule communicator, who's decided it's time to wake our crew
Speaker 1: with some morning news from Earth eleven. When you're really
Speaker 1: to copy the eleven I've got in the morning nude.
Speaker 1: This will become a tradition. Each day the capcom and
Speaker 1: mission control will let the astronauts know what's going on
Speaker 1: on the planet they left behind. Okay, we're all immigration
Speaker 1: of facial and Louva. Laredo announced Wednesday that hippies will
Speaker 1: be refused third Guard banner Mexico and large. They take
Speaker 1: a bath and get haircut. It's sometimes hard to remember
Speaker 1: given all of these clean cut NASA types running around
Speaker 1: that nineteen sixty nine was also the epicenter of the
Speaker 1: hippie movement. For historical context, the Woodstock Music Festival, perhaps
Speaker 1: the most famous expression of hippie culture is less than
Speaker 1: one month away. But the House of Lords was assured
Speaker 1: one day that I made the American submarine would not
Speaker 1: quote damage or a full unquote. They locked as monker
Speaker 1: in one the British tabloid Daily Express said no one
Speaker 1: will ever understand Lockness. Its conquest will be a greater
Speaker 1: triumph than the conquest of the mood. Fitting then that
Speaker 1: the old Georgia man named Dan Taylor built a yellow
Speaker 1: submarine in his garage and shipped it to Scotland, where
Speaker 1: he planned to fire biopsy darts into the creature so
Speaker 1: scientists could figure out exactly what it was. Luckily, the
Speaker 1: most famous sea monster in history was safe from the
Speaker 1: midget sub The Locknest Monster was nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1: That's Apollo control. Pollo eleven's distance from Earth is three
Speaker 1: eight nautical miles velocity five thousand, four hundred eleven feet
Speaker 1: per second. Uh, the Earth should be a lot more
Speaker 1: in your field of you today, and I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: a lot more qualified to tell us about that than
Speaker 1: we are. It's true. Exactly one day after their Saturn
Speaker 1: five left the Earth, Michael thinks to himself that his
Speaker 1: home planet appears no larger than the watch face on
Speaker 1: his wrist. It's really a fantasticing we all end view.
Speaker 1: The view up there today is all about mission critical housekeeping,
Speaker 1: ensuring their metallic home, currently moving at nearly thirty seven
Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour, remains in tip top shape. This
Speaker 1: means purging fuel cells, stirring oxygen tanks, recharging batteries, dumping wastewater,
Speaker 1: and chlorinating their drinking water. All of it is essential
Speaker 1: to getting them from here to where they need to go.
Speaker 1: Remember the story that opened our show, our pilot whose
Speaker 1: F nine panther was so badly damaged that he had
Speaker 1: to eject over a rice patty, breaking both his helmet
Speaker 1: and his tailbone. While that pilot was none other than
Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong. It's time to meet the astronauts of Apollo eleven.
Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong was born on August fifth, nineteen thirty, in Wapakanetta, Ohio,
Speaker 1: a small town of barely five thousand people. James Hansen
Speaker 1: wrote Neil's definitive biography, First Man, from the time he
Speaker 1: was this very small boy who became passionate about the
Speaker 1: whole idea of airplanes, and as a boy, Neil just
Speaker 1: begged his mother for the model airplane, and as he
Speaker 1: got older, his model airplanes got more and more. Just
Speaker 1: before his sixth birthday, Neil and his father skipped Sunday
Speaker 1: school to take a ride in a Ford trimotor. Do
Speaker 1: you remember the plane that Indiana Jones, Willie and Short
Speaker 1: Round jumped out of in the beginning of Indiana Jones
Speaker 1: and the Temple of Doom. That's a Ford trimotor. It
Speaker 1: was there in those wicker seats that Neil realized he
Speaker 1: wanted to spend the rest of his life in the sky.
Speaker 1: At age fifteen, he began working in the stock room
Speaker 1: of a local pharmacy, earning forty cents an hour to
Speaker 1: pay for flying lessons. It's a little grass airfield outside
Speaker 1: of his town of Waplicanetta, Ohio, where they were living.
Speaker 1: Uh He soloed and got his pilot's license on the
Speaker 1: dairy day of his birthday. Neil could pilot an aircraft,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't even old enough to drive a car.
Speaker 1: At seventeen, Neil graduated from high school and began studying
Speaker 1: aeronautical engineering at nearby Purdue University. While he'd been accepted
Speaker 1: to m I T his family convinced him to take
Speaker 1: advantage of a new post war government program that paid
Speaker 1: for students tuition if they would commit to three years
Speaker 1: flight service with the U. S. Navy. You finished two
Speaker 1: years of schooling when the Korean War started, and so
Speaker 1: he was notified that at the end of his second
Speaker 1: year he would need to report to Pensacola, Florida, where
Speaker 1: the naval aviation training took place. Then suddenly, in the
Speaker 1: pre dawned darkness of June nineteen fifty, South Korean's what
Speaker 1: jarred awake by living nightmare, unprovoked and unannounced, the Communist
Speaker 1: latest war of conquest had begun. Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.
Speaker 1: Was born into a flying family on January nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. His father was a World War One
Speaker 1: Army pilot and later served as the assistant commandant of
Speaker 1: the Army's Test Pilot School. Young Edwin was the youngest
Speaker 1: of three children. His sister, fay Anne, who was just
Speaker 1: a year and a half older, struggled with the word brother.
Speaker 1: She consistently pronounced it as buzzer. Edwin enjoyed her mispronunciation
Speaker 1: so much that he shortened it to buzz and a
Speaker 1: opted it as his own. Buzz was a terrific student
Speaker 1: and a champion football player in high school. His father
Speaker 1: wanted him to attend the U. S. Naval Academy, but
Speaker 1: Buzz stood up to him. He wanted to fly, not sail.
Speaker 1: There was no US Air Force yet, so if you
Speaker 1: wanted to fly in the military and you didn't like boats,
Speaker 1: you joined the Army Air Corps. Buzz did just as
Speaker 1: well at West Point as he did in high school,
Speaker 1: graduating third in his class. The Korean War had broken
Speaker 1: out during his junior year, and he now chose to
Speaker 1: transition out of the Army and into the brand new
Speaker 1: Air Force, even though he knew he'd be heading straight
Speaker 1: for the front lines. Like Buzz, Michael Collins's father was
Speaker 1: in the Army, assigned to a base in Rome, Italy,
Speaker 1: when Michael entered the world on Halloween Day ninety Over
Speaker 1: the next seventeen years, Michael called eight different military bases home.
Speaker 1: One of those bases was in Puerto Rico, where a
Speaker 1: teenage Michael took his first plane ride aboard a Grumm
Speaker 1: and Widgeon, a small aircraft that could take off and
Speaker 1: land in the water. He even took controls for part
Speaker 1: of the flight and was immediately hooked. Michael finished high
Speaker 1: school in Washington, d c. His mother was keen for
Speaker 1: him to work as a diplomat, but Michael wanted to
Speaker 1: follow his father into military service. He attended West Point
Speaker 1: and graduated in nineteen fifty two, two years after Buzz,
Speaker 1: with a bachelor's degree in military science. Buzz graduated third
Speaker 1: in his class. Michael, I went to West Point primarily
Speaker 1: because it was a free and good education. When I
Speaker 1: graduated from the Military Academy, there was no Air Force academy,
Speaker 1: but we had a choice of either going into the
Speaker 1: Army or the Air Force. The Air Force seemed like
Speaker 1: a more interesting choice. Had he not transition to the
Speaker 1: Air Force, we wouldn't be talking about him today. This
Speaker 1: is control. The ignation time for this mid course correction
Speaker 1: will be twenty six hours, four four minutes fifty seven seconds.
Speaker 1: Back in Apollo eleven, more than one hundred and eight
Speaker 1: thousand miles from the Earth and traveling at more than
Speaker 1: thirty four hundred miles, the crew is preparing to make
Speaker 1: a minor course correction. Yesterday, the third stage of the
Speaker 1: Saturn five launched Apollo eleven toward the Moon. Isaac Newton
Speaker 1: is currently piloting Apollo eleven. An object in motion will
Speaker 1: stay in motion unless acted upon by some other force,
Speaker 1: but the crew does need to make small course corrections
Speaker 1: here and there. One minute to the burn, the duration
Speaker 1: will be three seconds burning shut down. There's the burn
Speaker 1: complete that you caught me in our residual term. What
Speaker 1: was a good burn. Apollo eleven will now begin a
Speaker 1: series of passive thermal control burns. The astronauts have dubbed
Speaker 1: this barbecue mode because the spacecraft spins like a rotisserie
Speaker 1: chicken to ensure one side of the spacecraft is not
Speaker 1: always exposed to the blistering heat of the sun. And
Speaker 1: now recovered an opulent rap out of the row of
Speaker 1: car driving up down. That was Michael. Ever, the class
Speaker 1: clown chances are if someone on this mission is cracking
Speaker 1: a joke or horsing around, it's Michael. He and Buzz
Speaker 1: are chatting with astronaut Jim Level, who has temporarily taken
Speaker 1: over at Capcom out of the deal of the airborne again.
Speaker 1: Bud about Daddy, I've been having a ball floating around
Speaker 1: in air. Lovel and Buzz shared a far smaller capsule
Speaker 1: three years earlier on their Gemini mission. But that's jumping
Speaker 1: too far ahead in our story. When we last checked
Speaker 1: in with our cruise younger selves, becoming astronauts wasn't even
Speaker 1: on their radar screens. They had far larger things to
Speaker 1: worry about, like surviving one dred and forty collective combat
Speaker 1: missions in the skies over Korea. That's one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty different times when our boys could have suffered the
Speaker 1: same fate as the more than thirty six thousand American
Speaker 1: war fighters who perished in the Korean War. When Neil's
Speaker 1: number got called, he just nineteen. A year or so later,
Speaker 1: he'd already made his first aircraft carrier landing. In late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty, he became the youngest officer at VF fifty one,
Speaker 1: the Screaming Eagles, the Navy's first all jet fighter squadron.
Speaker 1: Here's Hanson again. Once that squadron was then its pilots
Speaker 1: were ready to go. They got aboard their carrier, the Essex,
Speaker 1: which headed over to the Sea of Japan, where they
Speaker 1: began operations to fly over North Korea during the Korean War.
Speaker 1: Neil flew nearly eighty combat missions over Korea, including the
Speaker 1: one we profiled at the beginning of this podcast. His
Speaker 1: active duty commission ended when he was only twenty two,
Speaker 1: and he transferred back to the United States. As Neil
Speaker 1: was leaving Korea, Buzz was just getting there. After his
Speaker 1: initial flight training, Second Lieutenant Aldren had to decide what
Speaker 1: kind of aircraft he wanted to pilot. His father recommended bombers.
Speaker 1: Once again, Buzz stood up to his old man and
Speaker 1: chose fighters. In late nineteen fifty two, Buzz began patrolling
Speaker 1: an area of Korea the serviceman dubbed MiG Alley, looking
Speaker 1: for enemy fighters heading south to terrorize American troops. On
Speaker 1: May fourteenth, nineteen fifty three, he was in his F
Speaker 1: eighty six Saber when he spotted an enemy aircraft below him.
Speaker 1: Luz locked his guns on his target and shot the
Speaker 1: plane down. Less than a month later, the tables were
Speaker 1: turned a MiG surprise Buzz and moved in behind him
Speaker 1: for the kill. Buzz had only one chance, a high
Speaker 1: gi maneuver in which he kept crossing over the MiG's
Speaker 1: direction of travel while cutting his speed. Buzz hoped his
Speaker 1: adversary would miscalculate and overshoot him. His plan worked. The
Speaker 1: fifty caliber machine gun brought the enemy plane down Back
Speaker 1: on Apollo eleven. Michael Collins, of course, is joking around
Speaker 1: with Jim Level about all the housekeeping chores Houston has
Speaker 1: the crew doing. I've been very busy so far. I'm
Speaker 1: working for it, tagging afternon. I've been cooking and sleeping
Speaker 1: and almost going and then well, you know the years,
Speaker 1: your little house, big thing. It was very convenient the
Speaker 1: way they put the food preparations. That's right next to
Speaker 1: the math days, everything right next to everything that was
Speaker 1: armstrong reminding level than in a spacecraft this small, everything's
Speaker 1: within arm's reach. While the crew takes a break for lunch,
Speaker 1: Bruce McCandless returns to the capcomposition. I gred that music
Speaker 1: got here in the background thing. Okay, ye, Michael's having
Speaker 1: a joke at Bruce's expense. The crew is enjoying Angel
Speaker 1: of the Morning by Merrily Rush and the Turnabouts. Shortly
Speaker 1: after they conclude their lunch, the crew passes a significant milestone.
Speaker 1: A Polo eleven distance from the Moon is one five thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred nine nautical miles. At the present time. In
Speaker 1: terms of distance, Apollo eleven has just passed the halfway
Speaker 1: point on its trip to the Moon. In terms of time,
Speaker 1: they still have more than a day's journey. Based on
Speaker 1: the present trajectory, a Polo eleb and will enter the
Speaker 1: lunar sphere of influence at an elapsed time of sixty
Speaker 1: one hours, thirty nine minutes fifty eight seconds. The lunar
Speaker 1: sphere of influence is that point at which the gravity
Speaker 1: of the Moon becomes stronger than the gravity of the Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: are you that way? How are you fine? Team? Today?
Speaker 1: The White teams bright at Bucky Dale, wherever learned down there.
Speaker 1: It's time to meet Neil, Buzz and Michael's co pilots
Speaker 1: and mission control. These are the guys who keep a
Speaker 1: close watch over the spacecraft's trajectory, hardware, and software, as
Speaker 1: well as the crew's health. These unsung heroes are the
Speaker 1: backbone of every NASA mission. They operate out of a
Speaker 1: place they initiated, reverently referred to as the Cathedral. The
Speaker 1: high priest of the cathedral is the flight director, whose
Speaker 1: call sign is simply flight. These men were responsible for
Speaker 1: overseeing every element of any given mission while a mission
Speaker 1: was in progress. Not even the NASA administrator or the
Speaker 1: President of the United States could countermand in order given
Speaker 1: by flight. If they wanted to overrule him, they had
Speaker 1: to fire him. Flight supervises a hive mind of brilliant kids.
Speaker 1: And I say kids because for most of the men
Speaker 1: helming these consoles, this was their first job out of college.
Speaker 1: Why are they so young? Simple? NASA needed flight controllers
Speaker 1: fluent in the latest emergent technologies, meeting computers. Bill Barry
Speaker 1: is NASA's chief historian who's an expert on going into space.
Speaker 1: Nobody that that capability didn't really exist in MR Control.
Speaker 1: Their average ages about six uh and so it's a
Speaker 1: really young group of folks who really set the stage
Speaker 1: for getting to the Moon and really create our space program.
Speaker 1: I'm Steven Bales. I was the guidance officer on Apollo
Speaker 1: level the time to follow eleven mission flew. I was
Speaker 1: the people that led us were older than example Jean
Speaker 1: Kransmas Ticks, I believe, and then we call them the
Speaker 1: older folks older. If you picture Mission Control in your mind,
Speaker 1: it looks like something straight out of a movie. A
Speaker 1: high tech control center dominated by massive display screens flanked
Speaker 1: by four long rows of twenty consoles. The first of
Speaker 1: our four rows is known as the trench. These guys
Speaker 1: job was monitoring what the ship was doing and where
Speaker 1: it was going. Let's take a look at our mission
Speaker 1: control roster. The Flight Dynamics Officer or FIDO, supervises the
Speaker 1: spacecraft's trajectory over the course of the entire mission. Guido
Speaker 1: is the guidance officer. He monitors Apollos onboard systems, making
Speaker 1: sure where the spacecraft is and where it thinks it
Speaker 1: is are aligned. When we get to the moon landing,
Speaker 1: you're going to get to know Steve Bales and this
Speaker 1: console very well. Retro is the Retro fire officer. His
Speaker 1: job is getting the crew back home again. Taken together, Fido, Guido,
Speaker 1: and Retro are Apollo eleven's ground pilots. Behind the trench
Speaker 1: is a second row of consoles, which includes the surgeon.
Speaker 1: That position is occupied by a medical doctor responsible for
Speaker 1: monitoring the health of the crew. To avoid chaos and confusion,
Speaker 1: the astronauts only ever communicate with a single person in
Speaker 1: mission control, the capsule communicator or capcom. You should already
Speaker 1: know this position pretty well. The person in this seat
Speaker 1: is always an astronaut. The flight director oversees everything from
Speaker 1: the third row. The final top row is reserved for
Speaker 1: various agency management and the public affairs officer giving play
Speaker 1: by play commentary for the public. Obviously, these guys can't
Speaker 1: stay at their console. Apollo eleven had four rotating shifts,
Speaker 1: divided into the black, White, Green, and Maroon teams. And
Speaker 1: that's not even everybody. There were also hundreds of other
Speaker 1: mission control technicians working in various back rooms throughout the building,
Speaker 1: directly supporting each of the consoles we just ran through,
Speaker 1: plus nearly two dozen more. Oh and one last thing.
Speaker 1: This was a man's world, if ever there was one.
Speaker 1: But that didn't mean there weren't women already taking pick
Speaker 1: axes to that glass ceiling. I was tired, is what
Speaker 1: was called a computerst It occurred to me that I
Speaker 1: was as smart as those guys, that we're earning a
Speaker 1: lot more million than I was. That's Poppy north Cut.
Speaker 1: She had a degree in mathematics and was hired by TRW,
Speaker 1: a NASA contractor, to check the work of the male
Speaker 1: engineers in mission control. Unlike her male colleagues who were salaried, Poppy,
Speaker 1: because she was a woman, was hourly and not paid
Speaker 1: beyond nine hours a day. My supervisor would come around
Speaker 1: and tell me, you know, at six o'clock, state law
Speaker 1: says we can't pay you. And I would just say,
Speaker 1: I understand that. I just keep on working. Poppy would
Speaker 1: not only come in early and stay late, she would
Speaker 1: bring her work home with her, going over everything until
Speaker 1: she knew it backwards and forwards. I think that was
Speaker 1: the real key to want I got promoted and other
Speaker 1: people didn't. I really became a member of the team.
Speaker 1: Poppy was assigned to the retro flight controller. Her job
Speaker 1: was to help compute the trajectories that ensured the Apollo
Speaker 1: spacecraft traveled to and from the Moon safely. She was
Speaker 1: the first woman to ever work in mission control. I
Speaker 1: didn't know I was going to be the first three
Speaker 1: knowledge and during mission control when I walked in there,
Speaker 1: and you're certainly aware that you stand out and that
Speaker 1: you're an object of attention, and it's it's always a
Speaker 1: little uncomfortable, especially if your whole idea is that you
Speaker 1: want to be a member of the team. I mean,
Speaker 1: you want to blend into the team. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be standing out. Poppy was tall, blond, and beautiful.
Speaker 1: She did stand out. ABC's Jules Bergman once interviewed her,
Speaker 1: asking how much attention do men in mission control pay
Speaker 1: to a pretty girl wearing miniskirts? Yeah, she was swimming
Speaker 1: in a sea of sexism. My feeling was that it
Speaker 1: was important for women and men for that matter, to
Speaker 1: know that women could do these jobs. So you had
Speaker 1: to put up with a certain amoun out of that stuff.
Speaker 1: And with that, let's return to Apollo eleven, where Michael
Speaker 1: is running an experiment to mess with mission control, because
Speaker 1: that's what astronauts with a bit of spare time in
Speaker 1: their hands. Do you got any maddict right, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do some running in light down here, and I'm
Speaker 1: wondering curiosity where they break my heart rate up? Uh?
Speaker 1: Well they will spring in acting here momentarily said Michael
Speaker 1: is running in place in zero gravity. He's curious if
Speaker 1: the exertion, without actually impacting any surfaces, will increase his
Speaker 1: heart rate and show up on the flight surgeon's monitors. Soon,
Speaker 1: Neil and Buzz decided to join him very inflat I'd
Speaker 1: like to see that night. Why don't you give us
Speaker 1: a TV picture of that one? Everybody's running from levon
Speaker 1: Houston Mike, we say about a ninety so hardly now right,
Speaker 1: there's a reasonable Michael decides to haul to his experiment.
Speaker 1: Remember there are no showers on Apollo eleven. After the war,
Speaker 1: Neil went back to school. Korea had hijacked his degree,
Speaker 1: and now it was time to jump back in. That
Speaker 1: wasny too, It was really old man. We have this
Speaker 1: image of Neil as a stick in the mud, but
Speaker 1: he joined a fraternity, wrote and co directed to student musicals,
Speaker 1: and played in the Purdue All American Marching Band, and
Speaker 1: of course he continued flying. At a party one night,
Speaker 1: he met Janet Elizabeth Sharon, a home economics major NASA
Speaker 1: historian James Hanson. Janet grew up in suburban Chicago, a
Speaker 1: very different kind of upbringing than Neil. She went to
Speaker 1: Purdue and she was very popular there. She's a very
Speaker 1: attractive and vivasious young woman. Neil told his roommates later
Speaker 1: that night that he just met his future wife, but
Speaker 1: it still took him three years to find the askar
Speaker 1: out of a date. He was not the sort of
Speaker 1: person to rush into anything. In January of nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: Neil graduated Perdue with a degree in aeronautical engineering. The
Speaker 1: following year, he married Janet. Soon the happy couple moved
Speaker 1: to a small off the grid cabin in southern California,
Speaker 1: where Neil began work as an experimental research test pilot
Speaker 1: at Edwards Air Force Base. Edwards is the flight test
Speaker 1: center of the United States Air Force Air Research and
Speaker 1: Development Command. Here, men in search of truth fly into
Speaker 1: the world of the future. Edwards is the place where
Speaker 1: all the really hot and new experimental airplanes were being tested.
Speaker 1: It was here, nearly a decade earlier that Chuck Yeager
Speaker 1: first broke the sound barrier in the Bell X one
Speaker 1: Glamorous Glennis, and he does it the first human to
Speaker 1: attract the sound barrier. Decades later, the facility would become
Speaker 1: a NASA campus and be renamed the Neil A Strong
Speaker 1: Flight Research Center. But we're clearly getting ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 1: Neil's fellow pilots were astonished at his flying prowess, as
Speaker 1: well as his ability to master dozens of different aircraft.
Speaker 1: He was regarded as intense and enigmatic in a field
Speaker 1: of swagger and bluster. He rarely opened his mouth. He
Speaker 1: let his superb flying do all the talking. But that
Speaker 1: didn't mean he didn't have a close call or two.
Speaker 1: There was the time in the spring of nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: six when Neil was co piloting a B twenty nine
Speaker 1: super Fortress when one of the propellers shadowed it, shredded
Speaker 1: the engine beside it, and launched trapnel through the fuselage,
Speaker 1: destroying one of the engines on the opposite wing. Armstrong
Speaker 1: and his copilot landed the massive bomber using only one
Speaker 1: of its floor engines. Neil's next brush with death was
Speaker 1: in something a bit more high tech. The X fifteen
Speaker 1: was more rocket than plane and flew at the boundary
Speaker 1: of space. Before the X fifteen, the question had been
Speaker 1: what is to be man's role in space travel? Kenny
Speaker 1: pilot on air craft out of the Earth's atmosphere, fly
Speaker 1: it in space, then re entered the atmosphere, and bring
Speaker 1: it back to a safe landing on Earth. During one
Speaker 1: particular descent, the X fifteen's nose refused to pitch downward,
Speaker 1: meaning that the plane kept bouncing off from the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Over the course of his life, Neil would have more
Speaker 1: than a half dozen brushes with death. So for six years,
Speaker 1: basically he's flying almost every day. You know, Without that experience,
Speaker 1: he really would not have been ready for the astronaut experience.
Speaker 1: Neil might have had the perfect experience, but he was
Speaker 1: ineligible to become an astronaut. He was no longer in
Speaker 1: the military, and an active duty status was a NASA requirement.
Speaker 1: After the Korean War ended, Buzz returned home and married
Speaker 1: Joan Archer, a young woman his parents had set him
Speaker 1: up with shortly before he went overseas. She was a
Speaker 1: stage actress with a masters in theater from Columbia University.
Speaker 1: Their wedding day was only the fifth time they'd ever
Speaker 1: gone out together. Joan called marriage her greatest role. One
Speaker 1: of Buzz's fellow officers at his new squadron was Ed White.
Speaker 1: Ed was getting a master's degree in aeronautical engineering because
Speaker 1: he wanted to be an astronaut and encouraged Buzz to
Speaker 1: do the same. Buzz enrolled at m I T and
Speaker 1: went all in getting a doctorate instead. Doctor Buzz Aldrin
Speaker 1: graduated in early nineteen sixty three with a degree in astronautics.
Speaker 1: His doctoral thesis was titled Line of Sight Guidance Techniques
Speaker 1: for Manned Orbital Rendezvous. He dedicated the thesis to those
Speaker 1: working in America's space program. If only I could join
Speaker 1: them in their exciting endeavors, Buzz admitted in the dedication.
Speaker 1: Buzz had applied for NASA's Gemini program, but his application
Speaker 1: was rejected. Another NASA requirement was that all astronaut candidates
Speaker 1: had to be test pilots. Neil and Buzz were out
Speaker 1: of the running. That left Michael Collins. Michael never went
Speaker 1: to war. By the time he graduated from flight training,
Speaker 1: the Korean War was over. In nineteen fifty six, Michael
Speaker 1: met his wife, Patricia Finnegan, at the base officers club.
Speaker 1: She was a social worker taking some time off to
Speaker 1: see the world. They were married the following year and
Speaker 1: were soon joined by two daughters and a son. Pat
Speaker 1: gushed about how wonderful a husband and father Michael was.
Speaker 1: Unlike many of his colleagues, Michael was able to leave
Speaker 1: work at the office at home. He was happy, relaxed,
Speaker 1: and devoted to his family. Maybe that's because he hated
Speaker 1: his job commanding an aircraft mechanics school. He still managed
Speaker 1: to get in more than fift undred flight hours, the
Speaker 1: minimum requirement for the Air Force's Experimental Test Pilot school.
Speaker 1: At where else Edwards Air Force Space, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty he began flying the most technically challenging and futuristic
Speaker 1: aircraft rolling off the line. But after John Glenn became
Speaker 1: the first American to orbit the Earth on February nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, Michael instantly knew what he wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and it was simple logical thing to go on to
Speaker 1: the next increment, which was higher and faster, and become
Speaker 1: an astronaut rather than a test pilot. The Air Force
Speaker 1: was behind him all the way, going so far as
Speaker 1: to send him to specialized training and even charm school
Speaker 1: to increase his chances. But despite it all, Michael, like
Speaker 1: Neil and Buzz, was rejected. I didn't make that I
Speaker 1: didn't have sufficient experience, They said. None of these men
Speaker 1: were ever going to see space. Now that their housekeeping
Speaker 1: duties have been accomplished, it's time for the crew of
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven to begin their first scheduled color telecast, transmitting
Speaker 1: their incredible views back to their home planet. Neil begins
Speaker 1: by describing the view of Earth out of Polo eleven's windows.
Speaker 1: Our left hand window, we're looking at the eastern Pacific
Speaker 1: of the North America. We got doing a good job
Speaker 1: at the real estate picture here. Clarity is an excellent Today,
Speaker 1: we're so used to images of our beautiful spherical planet
Speaker 1: that it's necessary to be reminded that just fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: seeing Earth from space was still a unique and aw
Speaker 1: spy thing. The person holding the camera so steadily is Michael,
Speaker 1: but always the jokester. He can't pass up an opportunity
Speaker 1: to give millions of people back on Earth vertigo. Hey world,
Speaker 1: hold on your head, I'm gonna turn you upside down.
Speaker 1: He begins spinning the camera eleven. That's a pretty good
Speaker 1: roll there, that's very flappy. Let me out hein, You'll
Speaker 1: never be at the Thunderberg. Charlie Duke is mocking Michael's
Speaker 1: camera work, claiming he'll never be better than the Air
Speaker 1: Force's aerobatic Demonstration Squadron. Magay that good and put you
Speaker 1: back right inside up bray Blon Roger could comply, we'd
Speaker 1: like to see smiling faces up there if you could
Speaker 1: give us some intery re views. I'm sure everybody likes
Speaker 1: to see you over. Mission control has seen enough of
Speaker 1: the Earth. Charlie wants to see the astronauts themselves. Quite
Speaker 1: my gout, who they had big Mike Colin there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hello there, you got up in a may but Mail
Speaker 1: the center couch and Buzzy doing the camera work good time, right,
Speaker 1: put on a okay, but I don't about them. Add
Speaker 1: that Roger looked like Neil was coming in five by
Speaker 1: their eleven and nail Dannon on his head again. He
Speaker 1: trying to make me nervous. Buzz must have enjoyed his
Speaker 1: exercise earlier, because he decides to demonstrate how the crew
Speaker 1: stays physically fit in zero gravity. We can get some
Speaker 1: of the wire and untangled. Here. We'll give you a
Speaker 1: demonstration of how easy push ups are up here. Buzz
Speaker 1: begins doing some pushups on what is according to the
Speaker 1: orientation of the camera the command modules floor. And it's
Speaker 1: pretty hard doing it that way. Why we just rolling
Speaker 1: over and do it the other way. He begins doing
Speaker 1: more pushups off the ceiling. All right, we copy. I
Speaker 1: didn't figure out whether that was a pin up or
Speaker 1: put up joints. I guess clearly the guys are enjoying weightlessness.
Speaker 1: When we last checked in with Neil, Buzz, and Michael,
Speaker 1: they had each been rejected by the Astronaut program. Buzz
Speaker 1: had no test pilot experience, Michael didn't have enough, and
Speaker 1: Neil was no longer in the military, all required as
Speaker 1: to be an astronaut. But as time went on, NASA
Speaker 1: began changing its rules. It no longer required active duty
Speaker 1: military service. Civilians could now apply, but Neil didn't even
Speaker 1: know if he wanted to. In those days, space flight
Speaker 1: was not generally regarded as a realistic objective. That was
Speaker 1: a bit buying this guy. I was plying the X fifteen,
Speaker 1: and I had the understanding or belief that if I continued,
Speaker 1: I would be the chief pilot of that project. Ironically,
Speaker 1: it was all those hours in the X fifteen that
Speaker 1: made him a shoe in to be selected, or at
Speaker 1: least he would have been had he sent his application
Speaker 1: in on time. NASA's James Hansen, Neil's daughter Karen two
Speaker 1: an a half years old, dies in late January nineteen two.
Speaker 1: She had a glioma of the ponds, which is very
Speaker 1: malignant brain tumor that had been diagnosed a few months earlier.
Speaker 1: So the call for a new class of astronauts came
Speaker 1: right during that spring, when he was still very significantly
Speaker 1: affect by the daughters. That luckily someone at NASA knew
Speaker 1: of Neil's incredible skills and snuck his tardy application into
Speaker 1: the pile. He got the job. He thought maybe it
Speaker 1: was time for a fresh start, and I think Janet
Speaker 1: felt that way about it too well. Initially depressed after
Speaker 1: his NASA rejection, Michael Collins threw himself into his work
Speaker 1: with even greater abandoned. He began flying the F one
Speaker 1: oh four Starfighter, which was capable of flying at ninety
Speaker 1: thousand feet. Any higher and you'd have to call it
Speaker 1: a spacecraft. In nineteen sixty three, when NASA again began
Speaker 1: calling for astronauts, Michael resubmitted his application. He now logged
Speaker 1: more thans of flight time. The second time was the charm.
Speaker 1: This time Project Gemini came calling, went their pockets started
Speaker 1: the first Mercury astronauts were more or less along for
Speaker 1: the ride. They had little to do. The rocket went up,
Speaker 1: their capsule came back down. But Buzz knew that the
Speaker 1: Moon was the goal, meaning the complexity was about to
Speaker 1: increase exponentially. NASA would soon need people for the Gemini
Speaker 1: and Apollo programs who were fluent in navigating space and
Speaker 1: finding and doalking with other spacecraft in short, NASA would
Speaker 1: need more than just hotshot test pilots. They would need
Speaker 1: brilliant engineers who understood complex orbital mechanics. In nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: doctor Buzz again applied to become an astronaut. This time
Speaker 1: NASA was requiring either test pilot experience or a thousand
Speaker 1: hours of flight time in a jet aircraft. Buzz and
Speaker 1: more than two thousand he was in. Finally, the stars
Speaker 1: were calling. Neil, Buzz and Michael traded their military green
Speaker 1: flight suits for NASA blue. Buzz was the first astronaut
Speaker 1: with an advanced degree, and based his studies, was assigned
Speaker 1: to help NASA develop docking scenarios. Soon he earned the
Speaker 1: name Doctor Rendezvous. His fellow astronauts did not always intend
Speaker 1: that as a compliment, it was said he could out
Speaker 1: compute a computer. A loner among his fellow astronauts, Buzz
Speaker 1: was regarded as an easy man to admire but a
Speaker 1: hard man to like. But he was, also, according to
Speaker 1: one of his trainers, the best scientific mind to ever
Speaker 1: go into space. Neil's first trip into space where Gemini eight,
Speaker 1: was almost his last. After docking with an unmanned a
Speaker 1: Gina target vehicle, he and crewmate Dave Scott suddenly realized
Speaker 1: that their capsule was rotating. Neil used the capsule's thrusters
Speaker 1: to stop their rotation, except that it didn't work. Nothing
Speaker 1: Neil did seemed to stop the joint spacecraft from tumbling
Speaker 1: end over end. Something must be wrong with the aegina.
Speaker 1: Scott separated the two spacecraft and Neil backed their capsule away. However,
Speaker 1: instead of finding themselves stabilized, the capsules spin began accelerating.
Speaker 1: The capsule was spinning at revolution a second. Neil and
Speaker 1: Dave's vision was beginning to blur. When the rates became
Speaker 1: quite violent. I concluded that we just we couldn't continue.
Speaker 1: I was afraid we might lose consciousness. If Neil didn't
Speaker 1: stop this, they would soon pass out and die. He
Speaker 1: noticed that his thruster propellant reserve indicated less than There
Speaker 1: was no way it should be that low. Even with
Speaker 1: all the maneuvers he had been attempting. One of his
Speaker 1: thrusters must be locked in the on position. Neither of
Speaker 1: us thought the Germany might be the culprit, because it
Speaker 1: could easily hear the gemany thrusters were whenever they fired
Speaker 1: crack crack, crack, crack, and we weren't hearing anything. The
Speaker 1: reason we didn't hear it as you don't hear it
Speaker 1: when it's running steadily. Neil shut the entire system off
Speaker 1: and engaged the thrusters designed to orient the spacecraft for
Speaker 1: atmospheric reentry. It was a dangerous choice. They'd need those
Speaker 1: thrusters to get home, but if they didn't get this
Speaker 1: issue fixed, they wouldn't be going home. By the time
Speaker 1: Neill regain control of the spacecraft, he'd used up seventy
Speaker 1: of the re entry thrust or fuel. That meant they'd
Speaker 1: have to cancel the rest of the mission and return
Speaker 1: to Earth immediately. It was a great disappointment to us
Speaker 1: to have to cut that flight short. We had so
Speaker 1: many things we wanted to do it well. The mission
Speaker 1: was more or less considered a bust. One thing stood
Speaker 1: out Neil Armstrong. Not only did he not break under pressure,
Speaker 1: his quick thinking and skilled piloting saved the mission. Michael's
Speaker 1: first mission was Gemini ten, during which he conducted a
Speaker 1: number of spacewalks. His orders were to exit the capsule
Speaker 1: and traverse the length of the a Genus spacecraft they
Speaker 1: docked with, but there weren't nearly enough handholds built onto
Speaker 1: either spacecraft, and Michael couldn't wrap his bloated pressurized gloves
Speaker 1: around the ones that were there. And then I went
Speaker 1: car whiling ass over cake cattle, up and around and
Speaker 1: about until I came to the end of my tether
Speaker 1: and then it swung me in a great, big arc.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was more acrobatics and on a trap
Speaker 1: pays as terrifying an experience as that was. Michael later
Speaker 1: said he felt like a Roman god writing the skies
Speaker 1: in his chariot. Buzz flew on Gemini twelve, the final
Speaker 1: Gemini mission, alongside Jim Lovell in nineteen sixty six. When
Speaker 1: Gemini twelves radar failed in orbit, Buzz had to use
Speaker 1: an old fashioned sextant and rendezvous charts that he helped
Speaker 1: create to successfully locate their Genus spacecraft. Before Buzz left,
Speaker 1: his wife Jones, said that she was convinced that once
Speaker 1: Buzz got back, their relationship would be much more magical
Speaker 1: and meaningful because of this experience. But after Buzz returned home,
Speaker 1: he instead fell into a deep depression. This dark period
Speaker 1: coming right on the heels of such an astonishing personal
Speaker 1: accomplishment would not be Buzzes last. It would happen again.
Speaker 1: So how did Neil, Buzz and Michael make it on
Speaker 1: too Apollo eleven? Sure they had the resume and they
Speaker 1: had the skills, but how exactly did these three men
Speaker 1: get chosen for the Moon? Each part of a Paula
Speaker 1: was tested in stages, two uncrewed missions for crude missions
Speaker 1: to test the various spacecraft, and finally the seventh mission,
Speaker 1: the landing itself. Most people assume the astronauts were assigned
Speaker 1: to their missions ahead of time, with Neil, Buzz and
Speaker 1: Michael knowing they were going to the Moon from the
Speaker 1: very beginning, But that wasn't the case because NASA knew
Speaker 1: that any hiccup, either a sick astronaut or a malfunctioning
Speaker 1: spacecraft would throw the entire rotation into chaos, and there
Speaker 1: were a lot of traumatic hurdles on the weight of
Speaker 1: the Moon. One astronaut was repeatedly injured in training, three
Speaker 1: others were killed in a series of plane crashes, and
Speaker 1: of course, on January nine, the Apollo programs stopped cold
Speaker 1: when Ed White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffey, the crew
Speaker 1: of Apollo one were burned to death in a training exercise.
Speaker 1: Apollo astronauts Roger Chaffey, Edward White, and Gus Grissom lose
Speaker 1: their lives and a tragic flash fire aboard a grounded
Speaker 1: space capsule. The tragedy occurred during a simulated countdown for
Speaker 1: the first flight of the Apollo program. If ed White's
Speaker 1: name sounds familiar, that's because he was Buzz's friend who
Speaker 1: encouraged him to get an advanced degree and apply to
Speaker 1: become an astronaut. Meanwhile, Michael Collins began losing sensation in
Speaker 1: his legs. Sometimes they would buckle beneath him while he
Speaker 1: was walking and he'd end up sprawled on the ground.
Speaker 1: He developed a bone spur in his neck pressing on
Speaker 1: his spinal cord, and he had to be yanked for surgery.
Speaker 1: For all the people back on Earth eight having that
Speaker 1: made that we would like then a beginning. On Christmas
Speaker 1: Eve night, as Apollo eight orbited the Moon, Deeck Slayton,
Speaker 1: the director of Flight Crue Operations, pulled Neil Armstrong aside.
Speaker 1: He told Neil he was being given command of Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven unless something throw a monkey wrench into Nassa's plans.
Speaker 1: This was going to be the mission that would land
Speaker 1: on the Moon. Michael call And had just returned to
Speaker 1: duty after a successful surgery, and Slayton wanted to put
Speaker 1: him on Apollo eleven, and by this time Neil had
Speaker 1: been teamed with Buzz, but Slayton gave Neil the option
Speaker 1: of replacing him. A lot of people didn't like Buzz.
Speaker 1: He was a bossy, know it all and rubbed many
Speaker 1: people in the program the wrong way. Slayton offered Jim
Speaker 1: Lovell in his place, but Neil said that he wanted
Speaker 1: to keep Buzz. He'd never had any issues with him,
Speaker 1: and besides, Buzzes arrogance was equal to his skills, the
Speaker 1: perfect companion to accompany him to the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 1: And just like that, the crew of Apollo eleven was cemented.
Speaker 1: There would be no further reshuffling. Less than a year later,
Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldron, and Michael Collins would leave for
Speaker 1: the Moon. It was more than anything else, pure dumb luck.
Speaker 1: Before we get back to the Apollo spacecraft. I'd be
Speaker 1: remiss if I didn't say that. While Neil, Buzz and
Speaker 1: Michael were obviously thrilled to be going to the moon.
Speaker 1: Their wives greeted the news somewhat differently. When Joe Aldron
Speaker 1: found out that Buzz had been selected, she didn't know
Speaker 1: whether to cheer year or weep. She suddenly found herself
Speaker 1: wishing she'd married a carpenter or a truck driver, anything
Speaker 1: but an astronaut. Neil's wife, Janet, was angry with her
Speaker 1: husband because the closer the launch date came, the more
Speaker 1: withdrawn and uncommunicative Neil became. She had to force him
Speaker 1: to sit down with their children and explain that if
Speaker 1: something went wrong, Daddy would not be coming home. Polo
Speaker 1: eleon hethan as it doesn't think slowly, and it went
Speaker 1: the white thing they do. Good night, Hey Aaron, you
Speaker 1: play today night? Day two is over. On day three,
Speaker 1: a million things need to go right to ensure Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven makes it to the Moon in one piece. The
Speaker 1: Apollo program is the result of hundreds of companies, tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people, and billions of dollars. On our
Speaker 1: next episode, we'll look at how we built Apollo and
Speaker 1: why I believe it or not. Most Americans did not
Speaker 1: want to see us go to the moon. This podcast
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio and trade Craft Studios,
Speaker 1: Executive producers Ash Serohia and Scott Bernstein in association with
Speaker 1: High five Content, and executive producer Andrew Jacobs. Amazing research
Speaker 1: and production assistants by associate producers Brian Showsau and Natalie Robomed.
Speaker 1: Our incredible editor is Bill Lance. Original music by Henry
Speaker 1: ben Wah. The experts who contributed to this episode were
Speaker 1: NASA historian Bill Berry, Neil Armstrong, biographer James Hansen, and
Speaker 1: mission controls Steve Bales and Poppy Northcutt. Thanks to this
Speaker 1: episode's voice actor Chris Germain. Licensing rights and clearances by
Speaker 1: Deborah Correa. This is a brand new podcast and we're
Speaker 1: so excited to be sharing it with you. Help us
Speaker 1: spread it far and wide, tell your friends, leave ratings
Speaker 1: and reviews, and chat about it on social media. Our
Speaker 1: hashtag is nine D I J. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear what you think. New episodes come out every week,
Speaker 1: so be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'm Brandon Phibbs. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll
Speaker 1: see you next episode.