Speaker 1: Nine Days in July is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Trade Traft Studios in association with High five Content. Okay,
Speaker 1: off flight Controller's got I'll go for power decent retro FI.
Speaker 1: Don't go guide and control Calcom, go Sergeant, go Capcom,
Speaker 1: or go for power decent. We don't get any here
Speaker 1: A year ago for a power decent over backer copy.
Speaker 1: You think you knew this story, are right before good
Speaker 1: A couple on day protoomum, but you don't proto auto
Speaker 1: d R pop. But read that pop. But at the
Speaker 1: border board day read that program alarm the trolbo toobo
Speaker 1: to gether the reading on the twelve boat through program
Speaker 1: alarm into the agg degree posy to pick that ray.
Speaker 1: Feel it to be a little louder. Rock are hundred
Speaker 1: ft down at nine things six hundred feet. They're four
Speaker 1: hundred feet down at nine pay forward four hundred feet
Speaker 1: Thannard faid down for app pouring forward three hundred feet.
Speaker 1: I don't want anna wanna down If the astronauts inside
Speaker 1: the lunar module are unable to reach the Moon surface.
Speaker 1: Years of training, billions of dollars, and the hopes and
Speaker 1: dreams of an entire planet work for nothing today. They
Speaker 1: are like callouts. From now on will be fueled six day,
Speaker 1: six day seconds, but they paid don't have down drip
Speaker 1: into the right level. There is zero margin for error.
Speaker 1: One miscalculation could cost them their lives third thurday seconds.
Speaker 1: So much of the Apollo leven story you've heard is
Speaker 1: the exact same moments, recycled and repeated over end over again.
Speaker 1: But not here. This time you are going to hear
Speaker 1: the stories behind the stories, the ones you've never heard.
Speaker 1: For the next nine hours, we are going to stow
Speaker 1: away aboard a tin can, soaring through space at twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand miles an hour. We're also going to go
Speaker 1: behind the consoles of mission control to meet the unsung heroes,
Speaker 1: the men and women who didn't make the headlines but
Speaker 1: whose stories deserve to be told and will be returning
Speaker 1: to Earth to look into what was happening while Apolo
Speaker 1: eleven raced to the Moon and how everything stopped cold
Speaker 1: when the eagle touched down. Using never before heard mission audio,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you the story of Apollo eleven
Speaker 1: as it unfolded, day by day, hour by hour, minute
Speaker 1: by minute. This was one of the most tumultuous eras
Speaker 1: in American history. The profoundly unpopular Vietnam War was raging
Speaker 1: on without an end in sight. Saia that we are
Speaker 1: fired and stalemate same thing all only realistic, if unsatisfactory conclusion.
Speaker 1: Back home, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. And
Speaker 1: the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States,
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy, were assessments. Very sad news for all
Speaker 1: of you, and that is that Martin Luther King and
Speaker 1: was shot and was killed tonight. Remember, at the Democratic
Speaker 1: National Convention, thousands of demonstrators clashed violently with police, National
Speaker 1: guardsman or push thee hippie and anti war demonstrators back
Speaker 1: a half a block or so from the hotel area.
Speaker 1: On top of all of this, the United States was
Speaker 1: embroiled in a cold war with its ideological nemesis, the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. Nuclear tipped violence seemed to be just one
Speaker 1: thoughtless mistake away. Freedom as many difficulties, and democracy is
Speaker 1: not perfect, but we have never had to put a
Speaker 1: wall up to keep off people in smack in the
Speaker 1: middle of This is the proxy war of a lifetime,
Speaker 1: the race for space. I'll be up Apollo eleven is
Speaker 1: about more than putting a man on the moon. Hanging
Speaker 1: in the balance is the national pride and global grandstanding
Speaker 1: of two superpowers on the brink of war. For many
Speaker 1: who lived through this era, the United States seemed to
Speaker 1: be coming apart at the seams. Not since the Civil
Speaker 1: War had the country felt more divided or more angry.
Speaker 1: Never had our democracy felt more brittle or imperiled. Sound familiar.
Speaker 1: America needed a miracle. We needed a reason to reach
Speaker 1: for a greatness beyond our misfortunes. We needed Apollo eleven.
Speaker 1: No pressure right. I'm Brandon Phibbs. I'm a science documentary
Speaker 1: producer and journalist. Before that, my office was the cockpit
Speaker 1: of an S three Viking jet aircraft, and my job
Speaker 1: was to hunt submarines for the United States Navy. I
Speaker 1: invite you to join me as we embark on one
Speaker 1: of the most thrilling adventures any human has ever undertaken.
Speaker 1: This is nine Days in July. At exactly four fifteen
Speaker 1: on the morning of July nineteen sixty nine, Neil Armstrong,
Speaker 1: Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins waken their living quarters at
Speaker 1: NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Launch Control all elements
Speaker 1: at the countdown Apollo eleven for setting satisfactorily. At this time,
Speaker 1: the crew was described as appearing to be rested, that is,
Speaker 1: a fiddle and ready to go. More than one thousand
Speaker 1: miles away Admission control in Houston, Texas, two dozen flight
Speaker 1: controllers are powering up their equipment. Apollo eleven lifts off
Speaker 1: the pad in a little over four hours. This is
Speaker 1: the calm before the storm. The rest of America is
Speaker 1: still to sleep, including the astronauts families, though I suspect
Speaker 1: the night has not been especially considerate to the astronauts wives.
Speaker 1: It's time to make history. Today is the day Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven leaves for the Moon. Neil, Buzz and Michael have
Speaker 1: a quick breakfast before reporting to the sud up room,
Speaker 1: where a small army of technicians is waiting to help
Speaker 1: them into their space suits, basically a spaceship shaped like
Speaker 1: a human being. Once the astronauts are sealed in, they
Speaker 1: are attached to horrible cases delivering pure oxygen, and just
Speaker 1: like that, Neil buzzin Michael will not breathe outside air
Speaker 1: or hear another human voice that is not coming through
Speaker 1: a speaker for the next nine days back in Houston,
Speaker 1: Gene Crantz is already awake. I have this incredibly spectacular
Speaker 1: I mean just absolutely deep sleep, no dreams, no worries,
Speaker 1: no nothing. But now he's pacing the house like a
Speaker 1: caged animal. You got all this energy and you don't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with it. You got no focus,
Speaker 1: and you can't sleep. Heck, we had six kids and
Speaker 1: and uh, MARTA's trying to figure out some way. Oh Jean,
Speaker 1: what are you going to settle down? When are you
Speaker 1: going to sleep? Jean's wife pushes him out the door.
Speaker 1: Jean is one of four flight directors for Apollo eleven,
Speaker 1: meaning the weight of the entire mission rests on his shoulders. Well,
Speaker 1: he's not on duty this morning. He still wants to
Speaker 1: be in mission control when Apollo eleven lifts off. Traditionally,
Speaker 1: all flight directors show up in there and you find
Speaker 1: a place to sit near three or four deep. Every
Speaker 1: console is three or four deep. Nobody's gonna miss the
Speaker 1: launch for the first lunar landing mission. Nobody. You know
Speaker 1: Jean Crantz, even if you don't realize it. If you
Speaker 1: saw the film with Pollo thirteen, he was the one
Speaker 1: played by Ed Harris, you know the failure is not
Speaker 1: an option. Guy, the guy whose wife made him a
Speaker 1: new vest for every mission. Now why I pumped myself
Speaker 1: up each time I get ready to do something. Stars
Speaker 1: and traps. John Phillips sus I got probably thirty four
Speaker 1: year records tapes and at this time also we had
Speaker 1: eight act recorders, so I had him in the car.
Speaker 1: It was every place i'd go, I'd have John Philip Sousa.
Speaker 1: And this is why I get up to speed, get
Speaker 1: the energy, get the adrenaline flowing. At around six three am,
Speaker 1: Florida time, Neil, Buzz and Michael waved to the gathered guests,
Speaker 1: press and other NASA employees and climb aboard a van
Speaker 1: for a short trip to the launchpad eight miles away.
Speaker 1: As they draw closer, they can see their Saturn five
Speaker 1: bathed in giant Xenon lights, the tallest, heaviest, and most
Speaker 1: powerful rocket ever created. Normally, Launchpad thirty nine A is
Speaker 1: a beehive of activity and equipment, but today it is
Speaker 1: eerily deserted. The weather is perfect, with only a light
Speaker 1: breeze from the southeast, and temperatures are already climbing into
Speaker 1: the mid eighties. Jim Lovell was the backup commander for
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven. He flew to space on the Saturn five
Speaker 1: twice aboard Apollo eight and apollow their team. What we
Speaker 1: got off the vehicle, I started to walk up to
Speaker 1: the elevator to go up to uh where we would
Speaker 1: get inside the spacecraft. It was what have apprehensive to
Speaker 1: the fact that this vehicle is sitting here with five
Speaker 1: and a half billion pounds of high explosives, liquid oxygen,
Speaker 1: liquid hydrogen. You know it happened, you know history. The
Speaker 1: astronauts board the elevator and begin ascending to the top
Speaker 1: of the rocket. Though they have yet to blast off.
Speaker 1: The astronauts have already left the Earth. The Saturn five
Speaker 1: rushing past them is an engineering marble. At three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty three ft, it is sixty ft taller than
Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty. It carries more than six million
Speaker 1: pounds of rocket fuel and weighs as much as four
Speaker 1: hundred elephants. Apollo said Launch Control at this time and
Speaker 1: their time proof for Apollo eleven has quoted the high
Speaker 1: speed elevator from inside the A level and the mobile launcher.
Speaker 1: That's Jack King. He's an assid Public Affairs Officer. You're
Speaker 1: going to be hearing a lot from nassa's p a
Speaker 1: os this series. It was their job during the mission
Speaker 1: to explain what was going on to the public. There's
Speaker 1: a high speed elevator six minutes which will carry them
Speaker 1: to the three level, the spacecraft level. Dick Gordon went
Speaker 1: to space on Apollo twelve. As he looked down at
Speaker 1: the Saturn five on launch day, it's suddenly hit him
Speaker 1: and say, hey, this is real. That beach below is
Speaker 1: that Saturn five is a living, breathing object. It's vetting
Speaker 1: vapors and ice is falling off of it, and it's
Speaker 1: a creature. There's just about to come alive. The Saturn
Speaker 1: five consists of three stages, basically just gas tanks with engines.
Speaker 1: On the tippy top is a needle like structure. That's
Speaker 1: the launch escape tower. It's there to yank the astronauts
Speaker 1: free in the event of an emergency during launch. Directly
Speaker 1: beneath the tower is a metallic gum drop. That's the
Speaker 1: Command module. That's what our astronauts will spend the next
Speaker 1: nine days. In the cylindrical section just beneath it is
Speaker 1: the service module. So where's the lunar module, the spidery
Speaker 1: looking moonship that will actually make the voyage to the
Speaker 1: surface of the Moon that's hidden away inside of a
Speaker 1: compartment on top of the third stage. Remember this configuration
Speaker 1: because it will become very important in a couple of minutes. Shortly,
Speaker 1: we'll expect us and it's Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins
Speaker 1: to come across Swing arm nine. The follow as time
Speaker 1: empathy to the White Home and a standby to board
Speaker 1: the spacecraft. The p AO only mentions Neil and Michael
Speaker 1: because two flights below their final destination, the elevator pauses
Speaker 1: for Buzz to step off. The loading area above is
Speaker 1: simply too small to accommodate everyone at once. As the
Speaker 1: elevator pulls away, Buzz welcomes the chance to steal a
Speaker 1: couple contemplative moments. In the distance, he can see numerous
Speaker 1: camp fires flickering on the beaches spectators who have been
Speaker 1: camping out for days. He can see the vehicle assembly
Speaker 1: building where the Saturn five's pieces were mated together by area.
Speaker 1: It is one of the largest buildings in the world.
Speaker 1: It's four walls enclose eight full acres and on human
Speaker 1: Florida days, rain clouds have been known to form inside
Speaker 1: the one story building. Once it was complete, the Saturn
Speaker 1: five was perched on top of the crawler transporter, a
Speaker 1: vehicle the size of a baseball infield, which began the
Speaker 1: slow process of moving to launch pad at one mile
Speaker 1: a gym level. Recalls pausing on the gantry as the
Speaker 1: enormity of what he was about to do sunk in.
Speaker 1: I had a few moments to look down, and there
Speaker 1: I saw the lights of the press people going into
Speaker 1: their press sites to get set up to watch the launch,
Speaker 1: and I thought, we're going to the boom. I mean,
Speaker 1: all this training and all this navigation training and everything else,
Speaker 1: you know, I just took it as part of everyday
Speaker 1: type of working. But that sort of forgetting where I
Speaker 1: was going, and uh, it was suddenly the realization said, hey,
Speaker 1: they're serious about this. The space pat command of Neil
Speaker 1: Armstrong and they command Module Violet. Michael Collins, now proceeding
Speaker 1: a class to swing arm into the small white homb
Speaker 1: that attaches at the spacecraft level. At just shy of
Speaker 1: seven am, Neil climbs off the elevator and enters the
Speaker 1: white room, the space connecting the Saturn five to the
Speaker 1: support structure. The unchallenged lord of the White Room is
Speaker 1: Pad Leader Gunther, vent bespectacled and bow tied. The rail
Speaker 1: thin Gunter is responsible for the Saturn five from the
Speaker 1: moment it arrives at the pad till the moment he
Speaker 1: seals the astronauts inside their capsule. The astronauts consider him
Speaker 1: to be a good luck charm. They never want to
Speaker 1: fly without. Der Pad Furer a nickname given to Gunter
Speaker 1: by Mercury astronaut John Glenn. You heard that right, der
Speaker 1: Pad Furer. During World War Two, Gunter was a flight
Speaker 1: engineer for the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force. He immigrated
Speaker 1: to America after the war, where he found work in
Speaker 1: the burgeoning space program. If it seems peculiar that a
Speaker 1: former Nazi is enmeshed at such a high level in
Speaker 1: the U S Space program, gerg your loins. Gunter is
Speaker 1: one of nearly two thousand x Nazis on Nassa's payroll.
Speaker 1: How the hell did that happen? We'll get back to that.
Speaker 1: Neil grabs the handrail and swings himself inside the command module.
Speaker 1: It's roughly the size of a SUBU outback. He takes
Speaker 1: this position at the left of the capsule, the place
Speaker 1: reserved for the mission commander. The spacecraft commander Neil Armstrong
Speaker 1: now aboard the Apollo eleven space class at the level
Speaker 1: at the pad. Morning, Nail, good, welcome aboard. I feel
Speaker 1: like a good mone Michael, the command module pilot, takes
Speaker 1: his seat on the right. Eventually, Buzz is called up
Speaker 1: and drops into the center seat for the lunar module pilot.
Speaker 1: The gang's all here, though he once served in the Navy.
Speaker 1: Kneels the civilian now and a former test pilot. The
Speaker 1: other two are officers of the U. S. Air Force.
Speaker 1: Each of the men was born in ninety Each way
Speaker 1: is a hundred and sixty five pounds, and each are
Speaker 1: within an inch of the same height five ft eleven inches.
Speaker 1: Neil is the quintessential calm, cool and collected personality. He
Speaker 1: is unruffled, unassuming, and always laser focused. He never opens
Speaker 1: his mouth unless he has something important to say. The
Speaker 1: primary objective is is the ability to demonstrate that man
Speaker 1: mankind in fact can do this kind of a job.
Speaker 1: Buzz couldn't be more different. He is blunt and opinionated. Luckily,
Speaker 1: his abrasive opinions are backed up by one of the
Speaker 1: greatest brains at NASA. We certainly have the utmost confidence
Speaker 1: of total six that Michael is the peacemaker he once
Speaker 1: called Neil and Buzz amiable strangers. No one remembers Michael.
Speaker 1: He didn't walk on the Moon, and so history has
Speaker 1: declared him Apollo eleven's official third wheel. But he was
Speaker 1: the glue, the fun one, witty, lighthearted, and quick with
Speaker 1: a joke. We're going nine seven percent of the way there,
Speaker 1: and that suits me just fine. These guys weren't friends.
Speaker 1: They definitely weren't getting beers after work, but they were
Speaker 1: pros with a job to do. Together, they are about
Speaker 1: to crack history wide open. At all. Three astronauts now
Speaker 1: avoids the spacecraft. Gunter and his technicians strapped the astronauts
Speaker 1: in disengage their portable oxygen and begin hooking them up
Speaker 1: to the ship's internal life support system and communications. Neil
Speaker 1: gives the thumbs up, and the White Room team seals
Speaker 1: the hatch. At this time or this in the process
Speaker 1: of closing the hatch on the Apollo eleven spacecraft, the
Speaker 1: astronauts are now cut off from all human contact they
Speaker 1: won't see another person for the next nine days. For
Speaker 1: the next two and a half hours, the astronauts run
Speaker 1: through checklists. At this point in the countdown, spacecraft command
Speaker 1: and Neil Armstrong once again appears to be the basic
Speaker 1: worker in the spacecraft as he's performing a series of
Speaker 1: alignment checks associated with a guidance system in the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: The astronauts are subdued working inside the tunnel vision of
Speaker 1: their training, but Michael Steele a moment of self reflection
Speaker 1: as the only one not descending to the moon surface,
Speaker 1: he realizes that the odds of him getting back in
Speaker 1: one piece are far better than the two men flanking
Speaker 1: ten minutes away from our plan lifts up the access
Speaker 1: arm retracts. The men in the capsule feel a jolt.
Speaker 1: In Houston, mission Control is a beehive of activity. Seconds
Speaker 1: after Apollo eleven takes flight. The men and women in
Speaker 1: this building will take over responsibility of the rocket from
Speaker 1: the launch center in Florida. Gene Crantz is sitting in
Speaker 1: the back. He catches sight of Cliff charles Worth, the
Speaker 1: flight director for the launch. Charles Worth is the conductor
Speaker 1: choreographing a room of finally two instruments. Charles Worth calls
Speaker 1: for the room's attention. It's time to get a go
Speaker 1: no go for launch sequence. He found fun go Fight, Go,
Speaker 1: Busch Control Networks, you get it in everything has run
Speaker 1: his life operations speed. When the countdown clock reaches t
Speaker 1: minus nine minutes, Charles Worth orders the doors to mission
Speaker 1: control locked. Jean bows his head in silent prayer. Three
Speaker 1: and a half miles away minimum safe distance from the launchpad,
Speaker 1: the grandstands are packed with invited guests and dignitaries. Three
Speaker 1: thousand newsmen from fifty six countries stand by to file
Speaker 1: to day's story. I think it's really a great event
Speaker 1: for a man from just our planet, not just the
Speaker 1: United States, to get on a do you actually be
Speaker 1: on another world? Along miles of grid luck roads, bridges,
Speaker 1: sand flats and beaches, more than a million spectators hold
Speaker 1: their breath. Janet Armstrong, Neil's wife, and their sons Mark
Speaker 1: and Ricky, have escaped the crush of onlookers and snooping
Speaker 1: press by sleeping aboard a small yacht floating in the
Speaker 1: Banana River. Unsurprisingly, Janet didn't get a wink of sleep
Speaker 1: last night. Collins and Joe Aldron watched from the privacy
Speaker 1: of their homes, glued to their television sets, like an
Speaker 1: estimated five hundred and thirty million people across the globe.
Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Mike Collins where make the flight of
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven. Let's take a look at their activities, beginning
Speaker 1: last night at dinner. Andy Aldrin, buzz is youngest, remembers
Speaker 1: the morning, well, I was home with mom, which kind
Speaker 1: of annoyed me. I wanted to be at the launch,
Speaker 1: and Mom told me that we couldn't go to the
Speaker 1: launch because NASA didn't want us there because if something happened,
Speaker 1: they think it would just be really horrible for the
Speaker 1: family to be on camera with, you know, a national tragedy.
Speaker 1: It would be decades before Andy would discover the truth.
Speaker 1: NASA had no problem with them being there. Pat Collins
Speaker 1: and his mother were merely trying to guard their privacy
Speaker 1: and brittle emotions in case something went catastrophically wrong. I've
Speaker 1: seen pictures of my mom during that time, and she's
Speaker 1: literally very, very anxious, but I didn't notice it at
Speaker 1: the time. The only place on Earth where people are
Speaker 1: not sitting in front of their television sets is the
Speaker 1: Soviet block there on the other side of the planet.
Speaker 1: The workday is coming to a close, just like any
Speaker 1: other day. Apollo eleven will not be televised. Everything, all
Speaker 1: the years of research, testing, training, and even the deaths
Speaker 1: of beloved colleagues has led to this moment. It's one
Speaker 1: minute seconds on the Apollo missions, the flights to land
Speaker 1: of the first men on the Moon. All indications are
Speaker 1: coming in to the control center at this time indicate
Speaker 1: we are of gold. Neil Armstrong. Just we put it back.
Speaker 1: It's been a real smooth countdown. We passed the fifty
Speaker 1: second month. Power transfer is complete while on internal power
Speaker 1: with the launch vehicle at this time, and a good
Speaker 1: an report. It feels good. Ten nine ignition sequenced. Jim
Speaker 1: Leble paints the scene inside the command module before the liftoff.
Speaker 1: We can start to hear things happen, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: with a five or six seconds to go, we hear
Speaker 1: the rumbling of the fuel started to float down into
Speaker 1: the engine at a m the Saturn five engines ignite.
Speaker 1: The vehicle pours out flame, building thrust, but it doesn't move.
Speaker 1: Hold down lamps keep it in place where the edge
Speaker 1: is the knife Before the liftoff, there's a tremendous war
Speaker 1: roar of the spacecraft is shaking back and forth. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you're just sitting there hoping that everything works. So
Speaker 1: okay five or three two one, they're all all engine
Speaker 1: running at zero. Explosive bolts released the vehicle. You might
Speaker 1: think it erupts off the pan, but it doesn't. This
Speaker 1: is the point at which gravity is the strongest and
Speaker 1: the ship is the heaviest. Walter cunning Gown who flew
Speaker 1: aboard Apollo seven. It's not a sudden acceleration. It's not
Speaker 1: like a cat shot on an aircraft carrier. I mean
Speaker 1: that is like that, and you see spots in front
Speaker 1: of your eyes. With this, you're starting out with zero
Speaker 1: velocity and it's just a slow building. It's like a
Speaker 1: train behind you that's just building up. Ripped off let
Speaker 1: the thirty two minute they are ripped off on a
Speaker 1: follow eleven, not on her boat. Janet Armstrong tightly clutches
Speaker 1: her son Ricky as her husband's rocket emerges from the
Speaker 1: Royaling Smoke and Flames power program. On reporting their role
Speaker 1: in pitture program, which you put topolo and living on
Speaker 1: a proper heading. That's Neil letting everyone know that the
Speaker 1: Saturn five is clear of the tower and angling itself
Speaker 1: to its proper heading. The other voice you hear is
Speaker 1: astronaut Bruce McCandless at the capcom or capsule communicator position
Speaker 1: in Michig Control. Bill Anders flew on Apollo eight and
Speaker 1: remember is his launch like it was yesterday. We had
Speaker 1: simulated essentially everything we could think of, and yet the
Speaker 1: very first seconds of the flight were a total surprise
Speaker 1: to everybody. On the violent sideways movement and massive noise,
Speaker 1: Thomas Mattingly Abolo sixteen launch man Apollo was really dramatic.
Speaker 1: It feels just like a challenge. It's shaking and banging
Speaker 1: and pushing hard, and there is no doubt there's something
Speaker 1: really gigantic is going on. Neil's left hand is wrapped
Speaker 1: around the aboard handle. One quick twist would activate the
Speaker 1: launch escape tower and lift the command module free from
Speaker 1: the Saturn five, assuming he even knows there's a problem.
Speaker 1: Bill Anders recalls that the first phase of the ascent
Speaker 1: was so noisy it was impossible to communicate with the
Speaker 1: men sitting right next to it. Had there been a
Speaker 1: need to abort, detected on my instruments, I could not
Speaker 1: have relayed that. Michael wonders how the headlines will read
Speaker 1: tomorrow if Neil A. Sidentally rotates that aboard handle moonshot
Speaker 1: falls into ocean. Last transmission from Armstrong was oops altitudes
Speaker 1: two miles and you're good at one a minute, down
Speaker 1: range one mile, altitude three four miles. Now velocity two
Speaker 1: thousand per second. We're through the region of maximum dynamic pressure. Now.
Speaker 1: Maximum dynamic pressure is the point at which the Saturn
Speaker 1: five is under the greatest amount of physical stress. Is
Speaker 1: it attempts to smash its way through the densest part
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere. Bill anders. As we burned out on
Speaker 1: the first stage, we were hitting about out of the
Speaker 1: six or eight g s. You're back in your seat,
Speaker 1: hardly lift your arms. You have trouble breathing to try
Speaker 1: to reach out. It's like you had a light in
Speaker 1: your hand. The first stage of the Saturn five rocket
Speaker 1: is made up of five clustered F one engines. These
Speaker 1: are the largest, most powerful rocket engines ever designed. The
Speaker 1: nozzles are so low large that the Apollo leven spacecraft
Speaker 1: can fit inside them. Each one weighs more than nine
Speaker 1: tons and produces seven point five million pounds of thrust.
Speaker 1: How much is that. It's equivalent to roughly thirty seven
Speaker 1: forty seven jumbo jets pumping out more power than eighty
Speaker 1: five Hoover dams. In the two minutes of their use,
Speaker 1: they gobble up twenty tons of fuel per second. When
Speaker 1: they're done, the Saturn five will have gone from a
Speaker 1: dead stop to fifteen times faster than the speed of
Speaker 1: a rifle bullet, and it will achieve that speed while
Speaker 1: carrying one hundred and thirty tons, about as much weight
Speaker 1: as ten full school buses. Think of the Saturn five
Speaker 1: three stages as a relay race. One runner circles the track,
Speaker 1: and when they get back to the point at which
Speaker 1: they began, they hand the baton off to another teammate,
Speaker 1: who carries it from there. That's also how the Saturn
Speaker 1: five gets its payloaded. Do orbiting gave. A couple of
Speaker 1: the first stage's engines begin to shut down. The higher
Speaker 1: the Saturn five goes, the less Earth's gravity is working
Speaker 1: against it. The mass of the vehicle is now dropping
Speaker 1: by more than thirteen metric tons per second if it
Speaker 1: keeps accelerating at the same speed that was necessary to
Speaker 1: get it off the ground. It is going to overshoot
Speaker 1: its intended orbit and fling the crew into deep space
Speaker 1: down range thirty five miles thirty miles high standing by
Speaker 1: for the hardboard engine cuts down. Now, just two minutes
Speaker 1: and forty two seconds after launch, the Saturn's first stage
Speaker 1: shuts down completely. Apollo eight's bill anders, then the engine
Speaker 1: is cut off. You go from a plus six G
Speaker 1: to a minus one. I felt like I was going
Speaker 1: to be catapulted right through that instrument panel. Explosive charges debtonate,
Speaker 1: severing the two stages. The first stage tumbles back towards
Speaker 1: the planet. Half a second later, at just shy of
Speaker 1: nine oh five am, the second stag age engines ignite.
Speaker 1: They will fire for six minutes, elevating the payload to
Speaker 1: more than one hundred miles in altitude. The spacecraft is
Speaker 1: currently traveling at more than sixty three hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 1: This is the point at which the G forces are
Speaker 1: the greatest. The astronauts are nearly four times heavier than
Speaker 1: their normal weight. Power und the arm from confirming both
Speaker 1: the engine skirt separation and the launch escape tower separations go. Today,
Speaker 1: they finally gave me a wines that last voice you
Speaker 1: heard was Michael. While Neil and Buzz both have their
Speaker 1: own windows, the launch escape tower blocked Michael's view. He
Speaker 1: is finally getting his first look outside the ship. Down
Speaker 1: range two seventy miles, altitude eighty two miles, velocity twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred seventy. The second stage is done at nine
Speaker 1: minutes and nine seconds. It is jettison and falls back
Speaker 1: to Earth, but for time, the astronauts taste witlessness. At
Speaker 1: am the third and final stage comes to life. They're
Speaker 1: gently pushing them back into their couches. A follow eleven
Speaker 1: that then you are gonna firm to go for urban
Speaker 1: habit and go velacinating certain twenty five th six A
Speaker 1: follow eleven, it says jison. They booster has been configured
Speaker 1: for orbital code. Folk spacecraft are looking good or The
Speaker 1: third stage blasts what remains of the Saturn five into
Speaker 1: a one and three nautical mile high Earth orbit. Do
Speaker 1: you remember playing tag as a kid? Think of orbit
Speaker 1: as base. It's a safe place where the astronauts can
Speaker 1: hang out for a while. If something didn't work right,
Speaker 1: they can turn around and head home. But if everything
Speaker 1: went according to plan, they finally have a chance to
Speaker 1: catch their breath. Apollo eleven will now circle the Earth
Speaker 1: one and a half times. The third stage remains its
Speaker 1: job is not yet done. The crew removed their helmets
Speaker 1: and gloves and unbuckle from their restraints. The pressures of
Speaker 1: gravity have lifted. They begin to levitate euphorically in micro
Speaker 1: gravity and begin unstowing and checking their equipment. Michael decides
Speaker 1: that Buzz should take some pictures. Ever since Wally Shara
Speaker 1: bought his own Hasselblad from a local Houston camera shop
Speaker 1: and used it to take the first pictures from space.
Speaker 1: A word Mercury eight. The Swedish company has been manufacturing
Speaker 1: cameras for Nassa. They had to be as light, as small,
Speaker 1: and as rugged as possible. Plus they had to work
Speaker 1: in the vacuum of space and in temperatures as high
Speaker 1: as two hundred and forty eight degrees fahrenheit in the
Speaker 1: sun and negative eighty degrees fahrenheit in the shade town
Speaker 1: that was Neil. The astronauts find themselves on the dark
Speaker 1: side of the Earth, lost in the planet's shadow. They
Speaker 1: moved caut a lee about the cabin. It takes a
Speaker 1: while for the inner ear to acclimate to micro gravity.
Speaker 1: Rapid movements reduce even the most iron stomached metro to
Speaker 1: a nauseous mess. A real need to picture that here, real,
Speaker 1: There's just one problem. They can't find the camera. Everybody's
Speaker 1: seen a half of breast bloating bird at two lights
Speaker 1: for sunrise. No, but I mean where you want to
Speaker 1: get it before the l T L I is translunar injection.
Speaker 1: This is the upcoming burn which is going to propel
Speaker 1: the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and toward the Moon.
Speaker 1: The vehicle's acceleration will impart one point five g s,
Speaker 1: and anything not secured inside the cabin, like a camera,
Speaker 1: becomes a potentially deadly projectile. Ah. Here it is Planet
Speaker 1: Ye floating on the alf all over standing collection. Clearly
Speaker 1: the guys are having fun with the camera. Michael is
Speaker 1: spoofing Cecil B. De Mill, the legendary film director of
Speaker 1: the Greatest Show on Earth and the Ten Commandments. He
Speaker 1: were ready to go ahead with the in the docking probe,
Speaker 1: and you know with the RN's hot fire when you're
Speaker 1: ready to monitor. So did you go ahead with the probe? Now?
Speaker 1: Remember when I told you to keep in mind how
Speaker 1: everything on top of the Saturn five was configured. Here's why.
Speaker 1: After A Paul eleven initiates the coming trains lunar injection,
Speaker 1: they will undertake one of the single most difficult and
Speaker 1: dangerous elements of the entire mission. The command service module
Speaker 1: will separate from the third stage, make a you turn
Speaker 1: dock with a lunar module and pull it out slightly
Speaker 1: one already open data, We confirm existion and the throats go.
Speaker 1: Two hours and forty four minutes into their mission. At
Speaker 1: eleven forty six am Houston time, Apollo eleven is finally
Speaker 1: on its way. Right, you know, there's a little tiny
Speaker 1: pretty grating the founds. The old FLA can be praga
Speaker 1: brecond phenomenal, right, they were we have cut off the
Speaker 1: last we have had a t l I cut off
Speaker 1: seven article. That's more than twenty four thousand miles an hour,
Speaker 1: more than enough to escape the Earth's gravitational field. He's
Speaker 1: been eleven said and gave up right, all right, you're
Speaker 1: eleven will pass that on and it's sly looks like
Speaker 1: you're rolling your roy now. We have no complaints with
Speaker 1: any of the three stages on that. That right was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Michael glances out the window at Earth launch Day. Crowd
Speaker 1: is probably still stuck in bumper to bumper traffic trying
Speaker 1: to get home. He thinks on the yacht where Janet
Speaker 1: Armstrong and her kids are hiding out from the press,
Speaker 1: no champagne bottles have been popped. According to Neil's wife,
Speaker 1: there will be no celebrating until her husband is back home.
Speaker 1: Your Gopher separation. It's time to separate the command module
Speaker 1: from the Saturn five and retract the lunar module. Shortly
Speaker 1: after noon in Houston, Michael takes over the controls everywhere
Speaker 1: they used them about the sad explosive bolts free the
Speaker 1: Command Service Module from the Saturn five third stage. Expertly,
Speaker 1: Michael uses short thruster bursts to ease the spacecraft forward.
Speaker 1: Tucked beneath and behind it, hidden inside the third stage
Speaker 1: garage rests the lunar module. It's spider like legs tucked
Speaker 1: tight to its body, we can Michael guides the Command
Speaker 1: Service Module out to a distance of one or so
Speaker 1: feet and rotates it around so that the CSMs docking
Speaker 1: port is aligned with that of the lunar module. Michael
Speaker 1: uses thrusters to slowly close that distance. Neil and Buzz
Speaker 1: help him site navigating. No, I don't think he's a
Speaker 1: little bit alright, alright, They are now looking directly at
Speaker 1: the top of the lunar module. To Michael, the docking
Speaker 1: port looks like a malevolent black eye. Four conical shroud panels,
Speaker 1: which protected the lunar module during launch, peel away like
Speaker 1: the opening petals of a flower. The moonship dubbed the
Speaker 1: Eagle begins to gleam in the sunlight. All right, lul look,
Speaker 1: it's time to see if the hundreds of hours Michael
Speaker 1: spent alone in the command module trainer preparing for just
Speaker 1: this moment payoff. If he can't get the lunar module out,
Speaker 1: their moonshot is over before it begins. Then that they
Speaker 1: were closing at at last the fact he must maintain
Speaker 1: steady and slow rate of speed. Too fast and they'll
Speaker 1: have a head on collision, likely damaging or destroying both craft.
Speaker 1: As they nuzzle ever closer, the command modules thrusters caused
Speaker 1: the eagles metallic skin to ripple, damn the command service
Speaker 1: modules Probe slides into the eagles docking port and three
Speaker 1: latches snap closed. Michael has done. It is done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it felt good for me. Next, Michael must reverse plucking
Speaker 1: the lunar module free when we're ready for lambent petion.
Speaker 1: Al right, here go for let me jack. Apollo eleven
Speaker 1: is now a complete spacecraft and all of this took
Speaker 1: barely more than four hours from their launch. The Saturn
Speaker 1: fives job is now complete. This is a control at
Speaker 1: four hours thirty four minutes, where about five minutes away
Speaker 1: from the evasive maneuver that wasn't sure there will be
Speaker 1: no whole problems of recontact between the spacecraft and the
Speaker 1: S four beast stage of the launch vehicle. What's left
Speaker 1: of the Saturn five is now too far from Earth
Speaker 1: to fall back and burn up on re entry, and
Speaker 1: it's also too close for comforts. Looking good were standing?
Speaker 1: The Apollo eleven sends a command of the third stage
Speaker 1: to jettison all of its remaining fuel in space, any
Speaker 1: kind of ejection acts as a propulsive force. Venting the
Speaker 1: fuel sends the third stage tumbling away from the astronauts.
Speaker 1: It will ultimately be thrown into an orbit around the Sun,
Speaker 1: and it remains there to this day. And just like that,
Speaker 1: the astronauts can finally relax. They peel themselves out of
Speaker 1: their bulky space suits, a difficult task considering their trapped
Speaker 1: inside a capsule the size of a station wagon. Eventually
Speaker 1: they ease into white, two piece nylon jumpsuits. Suddenly the
Speaker 1: cabin feels much larger. Back at mission control, Jeane Krantz
Speaker 1: and his white team are relieving Cliff Charlesworth and his
Speaker 1: Green team. Gene is anxious to get into the light
Speaker 1: director chair and started shift. It's here that he feels
Speaker 1: most at home. Hello, Apollo, Levan Houston. The advice you're
Speaker 1: apparently white name is come over REVERSI we can see
Speaker 1: as a service hesitate to com. That was Charlie Duke.
Speaker 1: He's taking over Bruce McCandless's capcom seat for the shift.
Speaker 1: Neil wants to know if Mission Control would like some
Speaker 1: video of the view outside their windows the old anytime
Speaker 1: you want to turn it on. We're ready over okay,
Speaker 1: uh juson. We are ascendant of Birthtown. Right now we're
Speaker 1: seeing the center of the views of the spacecraft and
Speaker 1: the eastern Pacific Ocean. We can't clearly see the western
Speaker 1: coast of North America, the United States, the Samuel Kane Valley,
Speaker 1: the High Sierras, California, elect to go down as far
Speaker 1: as a Copulco, as was so often the case, Seeing
Speaker 1: are marbled blue and white globe made a profound impression.
Speaker 1: The astronauts were all struck both by how imaginary our
Speaker 1: planet's borders are and how fragile it seemed. Everything tearing
Speaker 1: the Earth apart. Wars, protests and assassinations are invisible from
Speaker 1: Apollo Levin's lofty vantage point Apollo twelves. Dick Gordon said,
Speaker 1: we have been asked a lot what don't we discovered
Speaker 1: when we went to the Moon. Collectively, I should say
Speaker 1: that we discovered the Earth, very delicate planet, sitting out
Speaker 1: there in a black of the blackest black you'll ever
Speaker 1: see it, just devoid of any color whatsoever. And it's
Speaker 1: been described like a Christmas tree armament hanging out there.
Speaker 1: You can terminate, You're convenience. We've got enough, stay their
Speaker 1: job done. The crew decides to begin their sleep period
Speaker 1: a couple of hours early. They've earned it. At eight
Speaker 1: pm in Houston, the rest of America isn't far behind.
Speaker 1: In mission control, Jean and his White team settle in
Speaker 1: for a quiet night of monitoring Apollo eleven as it
Speaker 1: races silently toward destiny. This is Apollo Control at fourteen hours,
Speaker 1: six minutes into the flight of Apollo eleven. The mission
Speaker 1: is progressing very smoothly. All spacecraft systems are functioning normally
Speaker 1: at this time, and the flight surgeon reports that all
Speaker 1: three crewmen appear to be sleeping. At the present time.
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven is sixty six thousand, five hundred fifty four
Speaker 1: nautical miles from Earth and traveling at a speed of
Speaker 1: about seven thousand, ninety five ft per second, which would
Speaker 1: be about forty eight hundred miles. Throughout the history of
Speaker 1: our species, humankind has always been driven by an innate
Speaker 1: desire to explore, to see what is outside the cave,
Speaker 1: over the mountain, across the ocean. Civilization was spread into
Speaker 1: the sales of ancient sailing ships. The age of exploration
Speaker 1: pushed back the frontiers of the then known world and
Speaker 1: traced the shape of the planet's contours. Later expeditions crossed continents,
Speaker 1: braved oceans of ice to find the North and South Poles,
Speaker 1: and later still tamed the skies in aircraft that could
Speaker 1: outrun sound. Compared to every other expedition undertaken throughout the
Speaker 1: sweep of human history all paled in comparison to the
Speaker 1: enormity of Apollo eleven. Either Neil, buzzin Michael will die
Speaker 1: reaching for something unprecedented in the two hundred thousand years
Speaker 1: of modern human history, or they will triumph and cement
Speaker 1: their names in eternity. Before they left for the Moon,
Speaker 1: a reporter asked Neil Armstrong to lay odds on their success.
Speaker 1: He stopped to think about the answer for several long
Speaker 1: seconds before replying, The odds that he and his colleagues
Speaker 1: succeed in touching down on the Moon in four days
Speaker 1: is equal to the odds that none of them ever
Speaker 1: see Earth or their loved ones ever again. There is
Speaker 1: still so much that could go wrong. Day one is over.
Speaker 1: Day two, July, the crew's first full day in space,
Speaker 1: begins with our next episode. We're gonna jump back in
Speaker 1: time to learn who Neil, Buzz and Michael are and
Speaker 1: exactly what happened in their lives to put them right
Speaker 1: here right now. It's not nearly as straightforward as you
Speaker 1: might think, and we will go inside the inner sanctum
Speaker 1: that is Mission Control to learn how a handful of
Speaker 1: men and women, most of them just out of College
Speaker 1: made this mission possible. This podcast is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and trade Craft Studios. Executive producers Ashe
Speaker 1: Serobia and Scott Bernstein, in association with High five Content
Speaker 1: and executive producer Andrew Jacobs. Amazing research and production assistance
Speaker 1: by associate producers Brian Showsau and Natalie Robomed. Our incredible
Speaker 1: editor is Old Lands. Original music by Henry ben Wah.
Speaker 1: The experts who contributed to this episode were Apollo eleven
Speaker 1: astronaut Jim Lovell and Andy Aldrich. Special thanks to everyone
Speaker 1: at NASA who made this podcast possible, especially the incredible
Speaker 1: technological wizardry of consulting producer Ben Feist, who's responsible for
Speaker 1: organizing and cleaning the eleven thousand hours of mission audio.
Speaker 1: Your hearing selections from in this podcast. Licensing rights and
Speaker 1: clearances by Deborah CAREA special thanks also to consultant Gina
Speaker 1: dell Back. 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 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.