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6:00 a.m.,
December 21st, 1968.
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The floodlit Apollo Saturn
503 space vehicle is poised like a giant white dart
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on pad A of launch
complex 39 at the John F. Kennedy Space Center.
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While search lights
reach up from the pad into the star-filled sky,
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three astronauts, Colonel Frank Borman, Captain James Lovell,
and Major William Anders
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wait inside the Apollo 8 command
module for the climactic moment
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when the six-million-pound
rocket will lift from the ground.
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The manned spacecraft's
target for the first time in history will be the Moon.
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T-minus fifteen,
fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine...
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We have ignition sequence start.
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I'm James Lovell.
I was a naval officer and, also, a test pilot and, finally,
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NASA astronaut in the period of '62 through '73.
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My life was quite varied.
I was born in Ohio.
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My father died, though, when I was young
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and, uh, essentially,
my life consisted, basically, in the early years,
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uh, living with my mother who was a secretary.
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My, uh, early childhood was one of survival.
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When I was growing up,
Charles Lindbergh made his famous flight across the Atlantic,
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and this was the inspiration for a lot
of young boys growing up in the '30s.
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I was very much interested in aviation, flying.
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I built, you know, model airplanes,
uh, solid ones, and ones I tried to fly.
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When I got out of, uh, college,
I hoped, uh, that I would become,
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uh, a, either a naval aviator
or get involved in aviation.
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I was born in Gary, Indiana in 1928.
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Uh, at the age of around five or six,
I contracted a mastoid and sinus problem.
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So my parents really at the beginning of the
depression and the height of the depressions,
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sold out in, uh, Indiana,
and moved to Arizona where the doctors,
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uh, said that I would have a chance of recovery.
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As an, a youth, I had no
interest in space and, uh,
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in rockets.
While my friends were reading Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers,
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I was reading Smilin' Jack and, and the Red Eagle.
I was, uh, totally involved,
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both in my, my memory or in
my aspirations with airplanes.
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This is Major William Anders,
United States Air Force, NASA astronaut.
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I'm Bill Anders. I was born in, uh, Hong Kong, China.
My father was number two officer,
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the executive officer of the USS Panay,
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picking up people who were trying
to escape the Sino-Japanese war.
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We happened to be in Nanking
when the Japanese bombed the ship.
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The captain was taken out with the first bomb.
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My dad, who was gunnery officer, took over.
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And even though it got him a Navy Cross,
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uh, it didn't save the ship and
eventually they had to abandon it.
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And he was, uh, pretty badly wounded.
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Uh, we went to San Diego where
he spent, uh, several months,
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uh, connected to the San Diego Naval Hospital.
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So he was, actually, retired, much to his disappointment,
and, uh, put in the reserves.
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But almost immediately, uh,
called back in when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
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We spent the balance of the war in San Diego where I went to,
to grammar school.
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Perhaps the first or second year in high school,
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I happened to come across a pamphlet
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that was written in 1913 by a, um, fella,
a professor called Robert Goddard.
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His title was "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes."
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It was the story about how to use liquid fuel,
rocket technology,
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to get into high altitudes, uh,
for exploration of the upper atmosphere.
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I, uh, didn't understand half
of the book or the pamphlet,
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but it got me really interested.
So towards the last part of my high school education,
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I started with some friends building rockets.
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Uh, we thought we would try
to build a liquid fuel rocket,
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but we soon found out that was impossible.
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Uh, but we did build some solid
rockets using mailing tubes,
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uh, a, uh, combination of, uh, potassium nitrate
and charcoal, and, uh, sulfur I think it was,
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which turns out to be the
ingredients of gun powder.
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I started building model
airplanes with my dad's help.
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Eventually would get graduated to,
uh, gas-powered model airplanes.
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And then, uh, when I was fifteen,
I worked, uh, I don't know how many jobs
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in order to get enough, uh, money to fly on the,
or, uh, get a lesson or two on the weekend.
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And in 1944, or '45, I soloed in the Taylorcraft.
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My, uh, first aviation experience,
uh, first flight in an airplane,
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was after my dad had retired.
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After the war we went to a small town in,
uh, Southeast Texas.
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And I remember one day going by this,
uh, cattle field
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and here was a biplane airplane
parked out in the field.
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And they had a sign on the fence,
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uh, biplane rides, uh, fifteen dollars.
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Well that was big money in those days,
but my dad said, hey, would you like to do that?
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Well sure.
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We went out and, uh, took off, and,
uh, he asked me if I'd like to do a loop.
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I didn't know any better, so I said sure.
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So we did a loop and it impressed me
that he was relatively close to the ground.
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To make a long story short,
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we flew around a little bit, landed,
I enjoyed it, and, uh, I went to school.
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And that afternoon, and coming back,
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coming up to the same field,
here was this airplane with its nose
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buried about two feet into the, into the pasture.
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And I guess the guy had been too, too low,
and, uh, killed a passenger and the pilot.
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I wanted to be a pilot,
and I tried to join the Air Force.
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The last thing they needed was pilots.
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You know, all the people were
coming home from World War ll.
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They had more pilots than
they knew what to do with.
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I had...
so then I decided, well, I'll, I'll be an aeronautical engineer.
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And there was a draft on,
but I volunteered for induction
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on the theory I'd serve eighteen months,
and then get the GI bill,
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and I could get an education that way.
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This is Camp Buckner,
West Point summer training site
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where each year cadets of the
United States Military Academy,
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who have just finished their plebe year,
engage in a program of planned military activities.
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I graduated from West Point in 1950
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and reported into, uh,
Perrin Air Force Base in Sherman, Texas
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to start basic flying training in a T-6 airplane.
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From there I went to, um, Williams Air Force Base
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and was, uh, appointed a, uh,
pilot on the 4th of August 1951,
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and, uh, at Williams Air Force
Base in Chandler, Arizona.
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Towards the end of my high school days,
I, uh, had two choices.
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And the first thing, my, my mother wanted me to get,
uh, my education all at once,
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and, uh, so I applied to the
United States Naval Academy.
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But when I got my card back,
well the information back from the academy,
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it turned out that I was third alternate.
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So I wrote to the American Rocket Society
and I got a very nice letter back from them.
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Said that, um, rocketry, uh, as a career,
it's just starting, I would suggest you apply to,
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uh, colleges like, uh, MIT, and Caltech.
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I'm sure that you'll be successful.
Well, huh, there wasn't any money for colleges.
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In those days, um, we didn't have,
uh, student loans like we do today.
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And, consequently, my career looked pretty bleak.
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And, then, a door of opportunity.
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The Navy, after World ll,
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found out that most of the naval aviators
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didn't want to make the Navy
their career, and, consequently,
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all these naval aviators were
going back into civilian life.
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And so the Navy Department set up a program,
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a program to get more naval
aviators into the service.
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I applied immediately, and I was accepted.
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00:14:48,179 --> 00:14:54,019
I went to the University of Wisconsin for
two years in a mechanical engineering course,
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and when I was finished there
I was sent down to Pensacola,
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00:14:57,981 --> 00:15:01,401
and I was starting my naval training.
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00:15:01,526 --> 00:15:07,991
Suddenly, I got, from the Navy Department,
a set of orders that if I was still...
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wanted to go to the Naval Academy,
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I should report to the Naval Academy.
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And, consequently,
I dropped my career at that time in naval aviation,
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and I went to the Naval Academy at Annapolis,
started all over again as a plebe.
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In 1950 the Korean War happened,
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and a lot of my contemporaries that went
through what we call the Holloway Program,
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uh, that I was in originally, uh,
went to sea, got their wings,
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00:15:39,648 --> 00:15:44,194
uh, were in the war itself and never got back
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to their last two years of college.
So very fortunately, my mother was right,
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get your education while you can.
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00:15:55,580 --> 00:15:59,209
Well since my father,
uh, was a career naval officer,
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I had always assumed that I
would follow in his footsteps and,
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uh, become a, uh, a naval officer.
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00:16:06,466 --> 00:16:11,471
I got accepted to the Naval
Academy and went away as a plebe.
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We went on cruises in the summer,
and the second cruise as a mid-Shipman
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was on an aircraft carrier.
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I remember, almost, the very first day.
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00:16:44,587 --> 00:16:48,341
Pilot, uh, missed the wires,
and it was a straight-deck carrier.
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All the, the, the other
airplanes were up in the front.
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00:16:50,969 --> 00:16:54,889
He missed the wires and crashed
into about six other airplanes,
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00:16:55,015 --> 00:16:56,933
which they just pushed over the side.
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00:17:12,240 --> 00:17:15,827
One day the, the head of the,
um, Marine Reserve squadron,
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00:17:15,952 --> 00:17:21,750
the squadron commander came out in,
uh, his gull wing Corsair, looks over
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00:17:21,875 --> 00:17:25,086
and, uh, revs the engine up,
and he gives the okay, or they saluted,
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00:17:25,211 --> 00:17:30,300
whatever they do, and off he goes.
Well as he went down the catapult,
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this wing came up.
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00:17:37,307 --> 00:17:42,145
And I remember, uh, looking over at this,
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00:17:42,270 --> 00:17:44,314
uh... he was just
sitting in the cockpit.
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00:17:44,439 --> 00:17:49,235
But I thought, well he'll be picked up.
So we went by and, uh, the ship missed him,
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00:17:49,360 --> 00:17:51,237
and by the time the helicopter was close
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the, uh... His airplane
sunk and he never got out.
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00:18:01,623 --> 00:18:07,921
The, uh, mortality rate that they had on that cruise,
uh, wrecking airplanes, uh,
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00:18:08,046 --> 00:18:13,927
I'm thinking do I really want to do this?
Maybe I would be better off in the Air Force,
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00:18:14,052 --> 00:18:20,100
uh, where they had ten thousand feet of,
uh, nice concrete to land and take off on.
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As a result of intensive work by
Research Institute and Designing Bureau,
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00:18:44,457 --> 00:18:49,295
the first artificial earth satellite in
the world has now been created.
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00:18:50,588 --> 00:18:55,260
This first satellite was, today,
successfully launched in the USSR.
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00:18:56,177 --> 00:18:59,139
According to preliminary
information, this carrier...
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00:18:59,264 --> 00:19:05,061
It's hard for people to realize now the impact that had on,
uh, on the American psyche,
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00:19:05,228 --> 00:19:09,065
'cause here were the Russians
sending over every ninety minutes a,
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00:19:09,190 --> 00:19:13,027
a satellite over our heads,
the first one that had ever been launched.
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00:19:13,153 --> 00:19:16,948
And, uh, I, I started to,
uh, rethink my priorities
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00:19:17,073 --> 00:19:20,577
as far as the Air Force went
'cause I hadn't had any combat time,
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although I had taught in the
Fighter Weapons School.
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00:19:23,204 --> 00:19:27,625
So I applied to go to the Air
Force Test Pilot School,
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00:19:27,750 --> 00:19:32,714
and I was accepted.
We got back in the car and drove to Edwards Air Force Base
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00:19:32,839 --> 00:19:35,967
and I, uh, I went into the
Test Pilot School at Edwards.
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00:19:39,179 --> 00:19:45,018
We were doing zoom flights in the, in the F-104,
uh, to get up high enough to give some people
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00:19:45,143 --> 00:19:48,897
some idea of what zero G was
like in an extended period of time
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00:19:49,022 --> 00:19:51,649
and, also, what it was like to,
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00:19:51,774 --> 00:19:55,403
uh, to control an airplane in
circumstances that they'd never done before.
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00:19:59,157 --> 00:20:02,869
They, originally, were around thirty,
thirty-two thousand feet up to Mach 2,
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00:20:02,994 --> 00:20:07,540
and then pull up into a
forty-five or fifty degree climb.
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00:20:07,665 --> 00:20:12,086
About sixty-five thousand feet,
as I recall, their afterburner blew out.
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00:20:12,212 --> 00:20:15,256
About seventy-five or seventy-thousand
feet you had to turn the engine off
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00:20:15,381 --> 00:20:17,300
because it got too hot, you shut the engine off.
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00:20:17,425 --> 00:20:20,136
So you floated over the top. Uh,
we were at... it was gettin',
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00:20:20,261 --> 00:20:22,639
we were gettin' up around ninety,
ninety-one thousand feet,
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00:20:22,764 --> 00:20:27,810
and then came back down, uh,
relit the engine, and landed.
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00:20:27,936 --> 00:20:31,439
Uh, one of the times I was goin' out of a Mach 2.
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00:20:38,071 --> 00:20:41,282
Uh, all of a sudden, uh, I had,
uh, an explosion in the airplane.
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00:20:43,409 --> 00:20:50,166
My immediate reaction was to bail out.
So I raced for the, uh, for the ejection handle,
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00:20:50,291 --> 00:20:52,043
but then I remember I'm goin' that fast,
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00:20:52,168 --> 00:20:55,922
so I was pretty certain that I didn't
have a catastrophic failure in the back.
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00:20:56,047 --> 00:20:57,715
There we go, I still had hydraulics.
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00:20:57,840 --> 00:21:01,636
And, so I started it and ran it for about two minutes,
got enough thrust,
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00:21:01,761 --> 00:21:05,890
shut it off, and deadsticked
into the... landed on the dirt
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00:21:06,015 --> 00:21:12,105
at Edwards, which was, uh, an exciting time.
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00:21:23,741 --> 00:21:26,119
I went into Naval Aviation training,
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00:21:26,244 --> 00:21:32,125
graduated in February of 1954,
and I was assigned to a team.
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00:21:32,250 --> 00:21:35,086
We had a plane called the Banshee,
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00:21:35,211 --> 00:21:37,213
the F2H Banshee.
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00:21:37,380 --> 00:21:40,591
We were assigned to a carrier
called the Shangri-La.
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00:21:42,552 --> 00:21:47,724
The skipper of the ship decided that
he wanted to have a combat air group
201
00:21:47,849 --> 00:21:51,936
flyin' over the task force,
so I was the first person off at night.
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00:21:57,900 --> 00:22:01,446
Went ahead of the carrier for
about three or four minutes,
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made my one-eighty turn, came back,
only at fifteen-hundred feet.
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00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:10,788
I had made it special so
that as a night fighter pilot,
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00:22:10,913 --> 00:22:19,630
I had a light that I had built on the kneeboard
during the trip from the U.S. to Japan.
206
00:22:19,756 --> 00:22:24,510
I plugged in the wire to the receptacle
and then I turned on the switch.
207
00:22:24,635 --> 00:22:28,473
And when I did that, I must
have blew a circuit breaker
208
00:22:28,598 --> 00:22:32,477
because every light in my instrument
panel of the cockpit went out,
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00:22:33,478 --> 00:22:35,188
and I'm at fifteen-hundred feet.
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00:22:35,313 --> 00:22:39,609
I pulled out a little penlight
in my suit, put it in my mouth,
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00:22:39,734 --> 00:22:43,821
but it could shine on only
one instrument at a time.
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00:22:43,946 --> 00:22:48,076
So I, very carefully, turned around,
still at fifteen-hundred feet,
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00:22:48,201 --> 00:22:50,828
which you should never do in a jet airplane,
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00:22:50,953 --> 00:22:55,583
and I was coming back and
trying to see if I can find the carrier.
215
00:22:55,708 --> 00:22:58,628
I did see on the surface of the water,
216
00:22:58,753 --> 00:23:01,881
a shimmering trail that was going on.
217
00:23:03,007 --> 00:23:05,843
A, sort of a phosphorescent thing.
218
00:23:05,968 --> 00:23:07,261
And then it dawned on me
219
00:23:07,387 --> 00:23:13,768
that perhaps that was the algae that was
being churned up by the screws of a large ship.
220
00:23:15,353 --> 00:23:19,482
And so as I got to that, I followed it,
made the turn to the right,
221
00:23:19,607 --> 00:23:21,984
looked at it down, followed it,
222
00:23:22,110 --> 00:23:25,196
and sure enough as I came up
at fifteen-hundred feet
223
00:23:25,321 --> 00:23:29,075
I could see the running lights
of two airplanes circling this,
224
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:31,869
this, uh, darkened ship.
225
00:23:31,994 --> 00:23:37,458
Still no lights in my cockpit,
and we're coming down now at five-hundred feet,
226
00:23:37,583 --> 00:23:41,254
and I could hear them as
they're landing one by one.
227
00:23:41,379 --> 00:23:44,173
But then we went down to
a hundred and twenty-five feet.
228
00:23:44,298 --> 00:23:48,719
Suddenly, when I looked
down at my radar altimeter,
229
00:23:48,845 --> 00:23:52,557
and it was going past twenty feet,
that scared me half to death.
230
00:23:52,682 --> 00:23:57,186
I pulled full power on the airplane,
came back up to five-hundred feet,
231
00:23:57,311 --> 00:23:59,105
made another turn around the carrier.
232
00:24:15,496 --> 00:24:20,251
And finally I crashed on the carrier.
My hook got the last cable,
233
00:24:20,376 --> 00:24:21,878
came to a screeching halt,
234
00:24:22,003 --> 00:24:25,173
blew two tires, but I got down that carrier.
235
00:24:25,298 --> 00:24:28,593
I eventually made a hundred
and seven night landings,
236
00:24:28,718 --> 00:24:33,556
learned my lesson from the first one,
and became a competent night fighter pilot.
237
00:24:39,395 --> 00:24:44,275
When I graduated from pilot training in the Air Force,
I was sent to Interceptors.
238
00:24:44,400 --> 00:24:47,403
These are aircraft that are
generally lightweight and,
239
00:24:47,528 --> 00:24:53,159
uh, were able to climb rapidly in order to intercept a,
uh, a Soviet bomber.
240
00:24:55,036 --> 00:24:59,457
One day, I got scrambled, along with my wingman.
241
00:25:06,297 --> 00:25:11,260
We were sent to a place about forty
miles off the eastern shore of Iceland,
242
00:25:11,385 --> 00:25:17,892
well beyond our normal range.
It turned out to be a Bear bomber, a six-engine,
243
00:25:18,017 --> 00:25:22,897
counter-rotating turbo prop aircraft,
which is still flying even today.
244
00:25:24,148 --> 00:25:27,860
But as we came up alongside,
I came alongside to get their number,
245
00:25:27,985 --> 00:25:33,658
my wingman stayed out to shoot
'em down in case they shot at me.
246
00:25:33,783 --> 00:25:40,831
As I approached, their quad, uh, uh,
23-millimeter cannon, tracked me all the way in.
247
00:25:40,957 --> 00:25:44,544
Came up alongside and the crew, the Russian crew
248
00:25:44,669 --> 00:25:47,630
who'd, who knew they were
just there to tantalize us,
249
00:25:47,755 --> 00:25:53,970
were looking out the window and smiling,
waving, so I gave them the finger.
250
00:25:55,513 --> 00:25:57,807
And I thought, you know, uh,
maybe I shouldn't have done that,
251
00:25:57,932 --> 00:25:59,725
maybe I'll get into trouble.
252
00:25:59,850 --> 00:26:07,358
Coming up alongside a armed, uh,
probably not nuclear armed, but at least machine-gun armed,
253
00:26:07,483 --> 00:26:11,487
Bear bomber, was a bit of a puckering experience,
254
00:26:11,612 --> 00:26:13,489
but it was, in retrospect,
255
00:26:13,614 --> 00:26:18,786
kind of surprising to see their crews
at the windows smiling and waving.
256
00:26:26,335 --> 00:26:29,380
I've always thought you're known more by
your enemies than you are by your friends.
257
00:26:29,505 --> 00:26:33,509
And so our enemies in those days, uh, in my view
258
00:26:33,676 --> 00:26:37,013
were much more worthy than some of the friends,
259
00:26:37,138 --> 00:26:41,309
the so-called friends we joined
up with later for the domino theory.
260
00:26:41,434 --> 00:26:45,104
And, I found it even more interesting,
261
00:26:45,229 --> 00:26:49,150
as time went on, and the Berlin
Wall came down, and we met
262
00:26:49,275 --> 00:26:52,028
our soviet counterparts in the space program,
263
00:26:52,153 --> 00:26:54,822
they all were pretty nice guys
and very much like we were.
264
00:27:02,622 --> 00:27:05,750
In 1958, I wanted to become a test pilot,
265
00:27:05,875 --> 00:27:10,171
so I applied for Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland.
I was accepted.
266
00:27:13,132 --> 00:27:17,762
Suddenly, in 1958, the old NACA,
the government agency
267
00:27:17,887 --> 00:27:21,474
that helped the air space industry
268
00:27:27,021 --> 00:27:31,442
decided that they wanted to,
maybe, put a man into space.
269
00:27:31,567 --> 00:27:36,781
And they re-designated that agency to the NASA.
270
00:27:38,366 --> 00:27:43,120
Well they thought, well,
what kind of a person should we put into the spacecraft?
271
00:27:43,245 --> 00:27:46,415
They had to be under the age of thirty-five,
272
00:27:46,540 --> 00:27:50,336
they had to be a graduate
of an engineering school,
273
00:27:50,461 --> 00:27:53,714
and, also, have to graduate
from a test pilot school.
274
00:27:53,839 --> 00:27:56,759
The Navy and the Air Force submitted about,
275
00:27:56,884 --> 00:27:59,345
total, about hundred and forty names.
276
00:27:59,470 --> 00:28:00,763
I was one of them.
277
00:28:00,888 --> 00:28:04,058
NASA had selected thirty-two for the physical.
278
00:28:04,183 --> 00:28:07,436
They dropped eight, they had thirty-two.
I was one of the thirty-two.
279
00:28:07,561 --> 00:28:10,272
We took a whole week having physicals.
280
00:28:10,398 --> 00:28:13,859
Now this physical, they did things, actually,
281
00:28:13,984 --> 00:28:16,696
they tested us that were not even necessary,
282
00:28:16,821 --> 00:28:21,200
to see if we were physically
fit for the Mercury program,
283
00:28:21,325 --> 00:28:22,827
or any other program.
284
00:28:34,213 --> 00:28:37,591
Out of the thirty-two people that
they tested over the period of time,
285
00:28:37,717 --> 00:28:40,302
I was the only guy to flunk the physical.
286
00:28:40,428 --> 00:28:45,182
I think that the Lovelace Clinic
just had to flunk somebody.
287
00:28:45,307 --> 00:28:51,480
They couldn't prove all thirty-two people,
because that would make them look bad.
288
00:28:51,605 --> 00:28:55,651
And, consequently, I was not accepted.
I went back to Virginia Beach
289
00:28:55,776 --> 00:28:58,320
to start training some of the new pilots
290
00:28:58,446 --> 00:29:03,492
coming through on how to operate
and fly the Phantom airplane.
291
00:29:15,796 --> 00:29:19,258
In the Cold War period,
it was mutual assured destruction.
292
00:29:19,383 --> 00:29:22,887
So neither side was gonna do anything really,
293
00:29:23,012 --> 00:29:27,850
in retrospect, to, uh, upset
the, uh, the nuclear applecart.
294
00:29:41,113 --> 00:29:44,950
I was trained, uh, as a Cold Warrior.
295
00:29:45,075 --> 00:29:50,331
And, even though in looking back,
the Cold War seems kind of silly.
296
00:29:50,456 --> 00:29:53,125
Its outcome in other wars seemed even more silly.
297
00:29:54,251 --> 00:29:55,836
It was a serious time.
298
00:30:32,289 --> 00:30:36,293
The dramatic achievements in space,
which occurred in recent weeks,
299
00:30:36,418 --> 00:30:38,671
should have made clear to us all,
300
00:30:38,796 --> 00:30:47,972
as did the Sputnik in 1957,
the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere
301
00:30:48,097 --> 00:30:53,435
who are attempting to make a
determination of which road they should take.
302
00:30:53,561 --> 00:30:56,522
I believe that this nation should commit itself
303
00:30:56,647 --> 00:31:00,526
to achieving the goal before this decade is out,
304
00:31:00,651 --> 00:31:05,114
of landing a man on the Moon
and returning him safely to the Earth.
305
00:31:05,239 --> 00:31:11,036
When Kennedy made his speech,
that they were gonna put a man on the Moon,
306
00:31:11,161 --> 00:31:13,831
and that was about two weeks after
307
00:31:14,748 --> 00:31:19,378
Alan Shepard made that suborbital
fifteen-minute flight into the Atlantic,
308
00:31:19,503 --> 00:31:24,008
I wasn't in the space program
yet but I thought, man, that,
309
00:31:24,133 --> 00:31:27,553
uh... to do this before the end of the decade,
how are they gonna do that?
310
00:31:29,013 --> 00:31:33,809
I got a call from the Navy and
said that, that NASA needed,
311
00:31:33,934 --> 00:31:40,232
or wanted,
more pilots and would you be interested in applying again?
312
00:31:41,358 --> 00:31:43,903
Well I said, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
313
00:31:44,028 --> 00:31:48,908
Yes, I'd be more than happy to."
So the Navy submitted my name one more time.
314
00:31:49,033 --> 00:31:52,912
NASA was selecting the
second group of astronauts.
315
00:31:53,037 --> 00:31:55,497
The first seven had already been selected.
316
00:31:55,623 --> 00:32:00,544
They were flying Mercury.
And now they were looking for the second group. So I volunteered.
317
00:32:12,056 --> 00:32:14,058
I passed the physical very nicely.
318
00:32:14,183 --> 00:32:18,812
I was then, uh,
finally selected for what we called the Gemini program.
319
00:32:26,612 --> 00:32:29,823
I went in and told, uh, Colonel
Yeager that, then I said,
320
00:32:29,949 --> 00:32:32,576
"Look, Colonel, I got new-good news today."
He said, "What's that Borman?"
321
00:32:32,701 --> 00:32:36,163
I said, "Well, I've just been
selected to go to NASA."
322
00:32:36,288 --> 00:32:39,959
And, uh, he looked at me
and he said, "Well, Borman,
323
00:32:40,084 --> 00:32:44,296
you can just kiss your blank-blank
Air Force career goodbye."
324
00:32:44,421 --> 00:32:45,547
And he was right.
325
00:32:45,673 --> 00:32:50,177
Before I had left Virginia Beach to go down,
I got a set of orders that said,
326
00:32:50,302 --> 00:32:52,554
"When you arrive at Houston,
327
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:57,726
uh, get yourself some transportation
over there and check into the Rice Hotel.
328
00:33:00,020 --> 00:33:04,984
Now this is somewhat still secretive,
so don't use your regular name.
329
00:33:05,109 --> 00:33:11,490
"Say you're Max Peck and the hotel will
give you a room and they'll know all about it."
330
00:33:11,615 --> 00:33:17,454
Unpacking for a while and thinking
what to do and suddenly the phone rings...
331
00:33:18,664 --> 00:33:23,419
and a fellow on the line
says, "Who are you?"
332
00:33:23,544 --> 00:33:26,547
And I said, "I'm Max Peck."
333
00:33:26,672 --> 00:33:29,425
He says, "No you're not
because I'm Max Peck."
334
00:33:30,467 --> 00:33:35,639
And I said, "Well I don't know,
there's an awful lot of Max Pecks here, but I'm Max Peck."
335
00:33:35,764 --> 00:33:39,560
Well that turned out to be, uh, Ed White.
336
00:33:39,685 --> 00:33:42,438
Other people were checking in, the other nine,
337
00:33:42,563 --> 00:33:49,445
and we all looked at each other and I
recognized Pete Conrad and Jim McDivitt was there
338
00:33:49,570 --> 00:33:56,035
and Frank Borman was there,
so that's how we all got started, uh, in the Gemini program.
339
00:34:05,919 --> 00:34:11,300
I decided that to be-being a
interceptor pilot for the rest of my career
340
00:34:11,425 --> 00:34:13,343
was not that challenging,
341
00:34:13,469 --> 00:34:20,476
so I thought I'd apply for test pilot school and
went and seek the advice of, uh, Chuck Yeager.
342
00:34:22,394 --> 00:34:28,358
He recommended that I apply to go and get a,
uh-a graduate degree, which I did.
343
00:34:28,484 --> 00:34:36,617
In the meantime NASA put out a
release for a third group of astronauts.
344
00:34:36,742 --> 00:34:39,912
So I was driving home
from work one Friday evening
345
00:34:40,037 --> 00:34:46,418
listening to the radio and the
NASA announcer came over with the,
346
00:34:46,543 --> 00:34:51,673
uh, new NASA selection criteria.
When he said that you either had to be
347
00:34:51,799 --> 00:34:55,886
a test pilot or have an advanced
degree, I couldn't believe it.
348
00:34:56,011 --> 00:35:02,017
So I quickly pulled over to the side of the
road and waited for the next, uh, news cycle.
349
00:35:07,189 --> 00:35:12,611
To my surprise, uh, on my birthday in 1963,
350
00:35:12,736 --> 00:35:16,615
I got a call from Deke Slayton saying,
351
00:35:16,740 --> 00:35:20,035
uh, "How'd you like
to come to work for us?"
352
00:35:20,202 --> 00:35:25,165
Which I accepted immediately and
totally amazed that I made it that far.
353
00:35:25,290 --> 00:35:29,002
The next day I get a call from Chuck Yeager...
354
00:35:30,129 --> 00:35:31,421
and he said, "Well, Bill," he said,
355
00:35:31,547 --> 00:35:36,969
"Keep applying but you didn't make it this time.
Uh, but keep applying."
356
00:35:37,094 --> 00:35:40,597
Then I made the first of a series of errors.
357
00:35:40,722 --> 00:35:46,937
I said, "Well, Colonel Yeager,
uh, I, uh-I got a better offer."
358
00:35:47,062 --> 00:35:48,313
"What do you mean
you got a better offer?"
359
00:35:48,438 --> 00:35:51,859
And I said, "Well I was just,
uh-I got a call yesterday
360
00:35:51,984 --> 00:35:56,697
from, uh,
Deke Slayton to say I'd been selected for the Apollo Program."
361
00:35:56,822 --> 00:35:59,908
He said, "Not possible."
I said, "What do you mean?"
362
00:36:00,033 --> 00:36:03,871
He said,
"Because I sat on the screening board for the Air Force
363
00:36:03,996 --> 00:36:06,582
and for all those forms that were filled out,
364
00:36:06,707 --> 00:36:10,460
we threw every one of them
out if they hadn't been test pilots."
365
00:36:10,586 --> 00:36:15,883
I said, "Well, Colonel,
it must have been that letter I sent to them, uh, in parallel."
366
00:36:16,008 --> 00:36:18,510
Well he went ballistic, saying that,
367
00:36:18,635 --> 00:36:21,471
uh, "You went and you made an end run,
you went out of channels."
368
00:36:21,597 --> 00:36:24,558
This is Chuck Yeager.
I mean, out of channels for Chuck Yeager?
369
00:36:24,683 --> 00:36:27,102
He spent his life out of channels.
370
00:36:27,227 --> 00:36:30,022
But, uh, so he said, "I'm
gonna have you thrown out."
371
00:36:31,315 --> 00:36:38,030
Well I, uh, immediately called Deke Slayton,
the head of the astronaut group,
372
00:36:38,155 --> 00:36:43,035
not realizing that Deke Slayton and most of the astronauts,
the Mercury astronauts,
373
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:45,579
did not like Chuck Yeager.
374
00:36:45,704 --> 00:36:48,332
So when I told Slayton this,
375
00:36:49,249 --> 00:36:50,542
he said, "Don't worry about it."
376
00:36:50,667 --> 00:36:55,172
And I didn't realize that that locked me in since he didn't like,
uh, Yeager very much.
377
00:37:06,516 --> 00:37:09,686
Gemini program in, in total
378
00:37:09,811 --> 00:37:13,523
was designed to prove all of the
things that you needed to go to the Moon.
379
00:37:13,649 --> 00:37:17,569
You had to be able to last
zero-in zero-G for two weeks.
380
00:37:17,694 --> 00:37:20,405
You had to be able to rendezvous.
381
00:37:20,530 --> 00:37:25,160
You had to be able to dock.
You had to be able to do extravehicular activity
382
00:37:25,285 --> 00:37:27,788
and you had to have guided re-entry.
383
00:37:27,913 --> 00:37:30,832
We had to prove all of these things on Gemini.
384
00:37:30,958 --> 00:37:36,630
And Lovell and I were assigned to, uh,
Gemini 7, which was the two-week mission.
385
00:37:38,757 --> 00:37:43,887
This is Gemini Launch Control.
T-minus one minute and forty seconds and counting.
386
00:37:44,012 --> 00:37:48,141
Last several minutes of the countdown.
All conditions still looking good.
387
00:37:49,059 --> 00:37:51,687
As we proceed down to the final
moments of the countdown,
388
00:37:51,812 --> 00:37:55,524
the launch vehicle first
stage engines will ignite
389
00:37:55,649 --> 00:37:59,111
and build up some four hundred
and thirty thousand pounds of thrust.
390
00:37:59,236 --> 00:38:02,155
When seventy-seven percent
of this thrust is reached,
391
00:38:02,281 --> 00:38:04,741
the launch vehicle is released from the pad.
392
00:38:04,866 --> 00:38:08,870
All this takes a matter of seconds,
some two and a half to three seconds.
393
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:13,417
T-minus one minute and counting.
T-minus one minute and counting.
394
00:38:14,876 --> 00:38:16,003
T-minus fifty.
395
00:38:18,046 --> 00:38:20,299
T-minus forty seconds and counting.
396
00:38:20,424 --> 00:38:24,344
The astronauts have been alerted
that the pre-valves on stage two
397
00:38:24,469 --> 00:38:28,640
that permit the oxidizer to come down
into the engine compartment will be opened.
398
00:38:28,765 --> 00:38:30,392
T-minus thirty seconds and counting.
399
00:38:33,061 --> 00:38:34,479
T-minus twenty-five.
400
00:38:37,524 --> 00:38:39,109
T-minus twenty.
401
00:38:43,155 --> 00:38:44,197
Fifteen.
402
00:38:47,826 --> 00:38:51,955
T-minus ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.
403
00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:53,415
Six. Five.
404
00:38:53,540 --> 00:38:58,128
Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.
405
00:39:26,740 --> 00:39:28,158
We're
on our way, Frank. Yup.
406
00:39:29,785 --> 00:39:33,914
I flew on a lot of airplanes but I
never had ridden a rocket before.
407
00:39:34,039 --> 00:39:38,960
Uh, and I have to tell you the Gemini,
uh, booster, called the Titan,
408
00:39:39,086 --> 00:39:41,755
was really a booster to ride.
409
00:39:43,298 --> 00:39:48,804
It is a two-stage booster.
So the fuel burned out in the... in the booster itself,
410
00:39:48,929 --> 00:39:52,641
it got lighter of course, and
that meant it accelerated.
411
00:39:52,766 --> 00:39:57,187
First stage burned out,
all the fuel was expended and we jettisoned it
412
00:39:57,312 --> 00:39:58,855
at the second stage.
413
00:40:14,496 --> 00:40:17,290
Now the second stage was
trying to get us all the way up
414
00:40:17,416 --> 00:40:20,335
into the proper altitude for being in orbit
415
00:40:20,460 --> 00:40:23,338
and the proper speed to
get it into circular orbit,
416
00:40:23,463 --> 00:40:26,967
about seventeen thousand
five hundred miles an hour.
417
00:40:27,092 --> 00:40:33,140
And as the second stage fuel burned off,
then we got lighter and lighter and lighter,
418
00:40:33,265 --> 00:40:38,145
the G-loading got more and more
and finally it got up to eight G's
419
00:40:38,270 --> 00:40:40,522
when suddenly the engine shut down
420
00:40:40,647 --> 00:40:44,067
and we went inside the spacecraft from eight G's
421
00:40:44,192 --> 00:40:47,612
to zero G's and it was quite a site.
422
00:40:47,737 --> 00:40:52,701
Some of the old washers and stuff that was left over by the...
by the workmen floated up.
423
00:41:08,091 --> 00:41:11,178
When we first separated
from the rocket and looked down,
424
00:41:11,303 --> 00:41:14,806
uh, I frankly thought it was like flying a-
425
00:41:15,807 --> 00:41:18,602
a fighter airplane but at very high altitude.
426
00:41:21,313 --> 00:41:25,233
You could see of course
clouds below you and the oceans,
427
00:41:25,358 --> 00:41:30,739
uh, airports with the runways laid out and you see railroads and,
uh, freeways.
428
00:41:31,781 --> 00:41:38,246
It was very much like flying at very high altitude in a...
in a airplane, except more so.
429
00:41:41,416 --> 00:41:47,506
Gemini 7 required Lovell and I to
stay in the cockpit of a Gemini capsule
430
00:41:47,631 --> 00:41:51,843
smaller than the front seat of a
Volkswagen for two weeks.
431
00:41:55,472 --> 00:42:00,101
I think two weeks in a Gemini capsule,
432
00:42:00,227 --> 00:42:04,981
you know,
trying to get out of pressure suits and two weeks of Frank Borman
433
00:42:05,106 --> 00:42:07,025
is a real challenge.
434
00:42:07,150 --> 00:42:11,029
Gemini 7 is basically a medical mission.
435
00:42:11,154 --> 00:42:14,074
It's the culmination of our efforts to increase
436
00:42:14,199 --> 00:42:17,577
or double man's exposure
to the spaceflight environment
437
00:42:17,702 --> 00:42:20,664
ending with a fourteen-day manned space flight.
438
00:42:20,789 --> 00:42:24,000
NASA, being run by engineers,
439
00:42:24,125 --> 00:42:27,796
kinda looked at the astronauts
as a piece of equipment
440
00:42:27,921 --> 00:42:31,800
uh, that was, uh, put on a, uh, on a shelf
441
00:42:31,925 --> 00:42:34,928
and when the time came they
would take it off the shelf,
442
00:42:35,053 --> 00:42:39,474
stick it into a spacecraft, uh,
then said, "Don't touch anything."
443
00:42:39,641 --> 00:42:44,187
And then take off and they would find
out just how humans would... would last.
444
00:42:46,898 --> 00:42:50,485
Gemini 6 mission was, uh,
Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford.
445
00:42:50,652 --> 00:42:54,573
It was gonna be the first
rendezvous with an Agena rocket.
446
00:42:58,243 --> 00:43:00,787
But unfortunately, the Agena blew up.
447
00:43:06,543 --> 00:43:10,005
Why doesn't Gemini 6 then
rendezvous with Gemini 7?
448
00:43:10,130 --> 00:43:12,382
Because 7 will be up there for two weeks,
449
00:43:12,507 --> 00:43:17,262
will give us time to turn around the Gemini
6 booster and the spacecraft to rendezvous.
450
00:43:17,387 --> 00:43:18,597
And so that's exactly what happened.
451
00:43:56,885 --> 00:44:01,556
The controllers here think
hey heard, uh, Tom Stafford say
452
00:44:01,723 --> 00:44:04,559
that he had the spacecraft in sight,
453
00:44:04,684 --> 00:44:06,978
the 7 spacecraft with its blinking lights,
454
00:44:08,021 --> 00:44:09,564
at twelve o'clock high.
455
00:44:10,482 --> 00:44:14,736
We've had no, uh, conversation via Tananarive
456
00:44:14,861 --> 00:44:17,989
at this point and as Chris
Kraft observed earlier,
457
00:44:18,114 --> 00:44:22,160
the ground has done all it can at
this point through computations.
458
00:44:22,285 --> 00:44:23,912
It's all up to them now.
459
00:44:25,789 --> 00:44:29,000
We're standing by.
We'll come back to you when we have additional information.
460
00:44:29,125 --> 00:44:30,919
This is Gemini control, Houston.
461
00:44:32,003 --> 00:44:35,340
We'd been up there maybe eleven or twelve days,
462
00:44:35,465 --> 00:44:39,386
uh, Gemini 6 came up.
First it looked like a star.
463
00:44:39,511 --> 00:44:44,307
Eventually it came right up to us, uh,
and there was Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford flying
464
00:44:44,432 --> 00:44:46,810
within a foot of us.
465
00:44:57,153 --> 00:45:00,949
You guys are really a shoddy looking
group with all those wires hanging around.
466
00:45:01,074 --> 00:45:02,450
Where are they hanging from?
467
00:45:03,576 --> 00:45:06,454
Frank,
it looks like it comes out at the separation plane.
468
00:45:06,579 --> 00:45:07,706
It might be the fiberglass.
469
00:45:07,831 --> 00:45:12,293
It's approximately, oh, ten to fifteen feet long.
470
00:45:12,419 --> 00:45:14,462
The separation plane from the booster, right?
471
00:45:14,587 --> 00:45:15,630
Affirmative.
472
00:45:15,797 --> 00:45:17,924
That's exactly where you have one, too.
473
00:45:24,472 --> 00:45:29,811
We flew nose to nose, uh, side to side.
474
00:45:29,936 --> 00:45:32,272
We found out that flying the two spacecraft,
475
00:45:32,397 --> 00:45:35,775
using our attitude thrusters was very nice,
476
00:45:35,900 --> 00:45:38,903
even though of course we didn't
have wings but we had thrusters,
477
00:45:39,028 --> 00:45:42,282
we had zero gravity and the vacuum of space,
478
00:45:42,407 --> 00:45:45,368
uh, and it was a very successful flight.
479
00:45:50,165 --> 00:45:55,962
We came to the conclusion that, you know,
in Gemini 6 there were two, uh, graduate of-
480
00:45:56,087 --> 00:45:58,631
uh, graduates of the Naval Academy,
481
00:45:58,757 --> 00:46:02,677
and in Gemini 7 there was
another Naval Academy graduate,
482
00:46:02,802 --> 00:46:06,931
Jim Lovell, and, uh, Frank
Borman was a West Pointer.
483
00:46:07,056 --> 00:46:09,809
And it was just that time was near the,
484
00:46:09,934 --> 00:46:15,440
uh, Army-Navy game, and so when
Gemini 6 went up to rendezvous
485
00:46:15,565 --> 00:46:19,194
us and during the position
that we were nose to nose,
486
00:46:19,319 --> 00:46:23,031
uh, Tom Stafford held up a little plaque that said,
"Beat Army".
487
00:46:23,156 --> 00:46:29,078
I took the picture and it was then known as
the highest Beat Army rally known to man.
488
00:46:42,091 --> 00:46:48,014
The reentry, you fire three retro solid retro
rockets that you fire to slow you up enough
489
00:46:48,139 --> 00:46:52,310
so that the Earth's gravity would capture
you and take you back in to a landing.
490
00:47:00,527 --> 00:47:03,947
It was like flying a-an instrument
landing system on an airplane,
491
00:47:04,072 --> 00:47:05,990
except instead of making connections
492
00:47:06,115 --> 00:47:09,160
on an airplane they can only
make three to five degrees,
493
00:47:09,285 --> 00:47:12,956
they were making hundred and
eighty degree corrections.
494
00:48:57,560 --> 00:49:00,355
That really set the Apollo program back.
495
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:03,650
They assigned Frank Borman to be the major,
496
00:49:03,775 --> 00:49:11,199
main astronaut interface with the, uh,
accident investigation, and Frank basically disappeared
497
00:49:11,324 --> 00:49:14,744
where this command module
was being assembled and,
498
00:49:14,869 --> 00:49:17,872
uh, found all kinds of problems.
499
00:49:18,039 --> 00:49:22,335
We found that there had been very
slipshod workmanship at North American
500
00:49:22,460 --> 00:49:23,503
on the spacecraft.
501
00:49:26,381 --> 00:49:30,009
We were given carte blanche to find
out what the problem was and fix it.
502
00:49:58,830 --> 00:50:02,834
It was a, uh... a revealing time.
503
00:51:14,447 --> 00:51:17,283
I'd been waiting around hoping to fly on Gemini,
504
00:51:20,495 --> 00:51:23,206
realizing that, uh, being a non-test pilot
505
00:51:23,331 --> 00:51:27,794
and engineer put me sort of near
the bottom of the totem pole.
506
00:51:28,836 --> 00:51:31,339
So when I was informed by Frank Borman,
507
00:51:31,464 --> 00:51:37,804
that I would be on his crew as a lunar module pilot,
I was, uh, quite satisfied.
508
00:51:37,929 --> 00:51:43,101
Finally gonna get a chance to fly
and to maybe even land on the Moon.
509
00:51:46,062 --> 00:51:48,815
Jim Lovell and Bill Anders
and I were out at North American
510
00:51:48,940 --> 00:51:51,109
with a spacecraft, Spacecraft 104.
511
00:51:52,193 --> 00:51:54,153
Our mission was Apollo 9
512
00:51:54,278 --> 00:51:58,825
and we were to fly basically the Apollo 8 mission,
uh, which was a-
513
00:51:58,950 --> 00:52:01,202
a rendezvous mission with the lunar module,
514
00:52:01,327 --> 00:52:03,913
uh, but instead of doing it in low earth orbit,
515
00:52:04,038 --> 00:52:06,958
we were gonna do it out into a,
I believe it was an eight-thousand mile orbit.
516
00:52:08,167 --> 00:52:11,337
I got a phone call.
I was in the spacecraft.
517
00:52:11,462 --> 00:52:14,465
They got me out and said, "Deke
Slayton wants to talk to you."
518
00:52:15,550 --> 00:52:18,469
So I went over and talked to him,
told him, "Hi Deke, what can I-"
519
00:52:18,594 --> 00:52:23,808
He said, uh, "Come
back to Houston."
520
00:52:23,933 --> 00:52:26,352
And I said, "Deke, I'm busy.
I can't come back."
521
00:52:26,477 --> 00:52:29,063
And he said, "Come back to Houston right away.
522
00:52:29,230 --> 00:52:31,065
Get an airplane and
come back right away."
523
00:52:31,232 --> 00:52:32,066
And, "Yes, sir."
524
00:52:38,865 --> 00:52:41,200
Uh, he said, "Come on in
and close the door."
525
00:52:41,325 --> 00:52:46,080
I closed the door and he
told me that the... the CIA
526
00:52:46,247 --> 00:52:50,710
had determined that the Russians
were going to try a lunar flyby
527
00:52:50,835 --> 00:52:53,379
before the end of 1968
528
00:52:53,504 --> 00:52:59,927
and he wanted to know if, uh,
we would object to changing our mission
529
00:53:00,052 --> 00:53:04,182
and taking just the command module and going, uh,
530
00:53:04,307 --> 00:53:07,018
around the Moon before the Russians did.
531
00:53:10,730 --> 00:53:14,317
When I learned that we were gonna
lose the lunar module and be accelerated,
532
00:53:15,401 --> 00:53:18,362
uh, for a circumlunar flight,
533
00:53:18,487 --> 00:53:24,410
I was quite disappointed because I knew
that without the lunar module background,
534
00:53:24,535 --> 00:53:28,122
if I ever flew again it would
be as a command module pilot
535
00:53:28,289 --> 00:53:29,957
and not land on the Moon.
536
00:53:31,125 --> 00:53:33,085
I made two flights around the Earth.
537
00:53:33,211 --> 00:53:36,589
I've done a lot with Gemini.
It was a very small flight.
538
00:53:36,714 --> 00:53:41,385
Of course Apollo would be a new challenge,
but the fact that we'd be the first people to,
539
00:53:41,510 --> 00:53:44,388
uh, go to the Moon, I was very excited.
540
00:53:44,513 --> 00:53:49,644
We're gonna change your...
your launch date to December.
541
00:53:49,769 --> 00:53:51,938
It originally was in February,
we're gonna move you up.
542
00:53:52,063 --> 00:53:57,568
You'll have to take, uh,
McDivitt's command module and McDivitt will take yours
543
00:53:57,693 --> 00:54:00,279
and they'll just switch time and numbers.
544
00:54:00,404 --> 00:54:04,408
McDivitt will be on number nine
and you'll be Apollo 8.
545
00:54:08,871 --> 00:54:12,917
The final objective of, uh,
President Kennedy's, uh,
546
00:54:13,042 --> 00:54:16,170
talk back in '61 was that
we were gonna land somebody
547
00:54:16,295 --> 00:54:20,633
on the surface of the Moon and bring them
back safely before the end of the decade.
548
00:54:20,758 --> 00:54:24,053
But in reality, to do that,
you needed a pathfinder.
549
00:54:24,178 --> 00:54:27,181
You needed someone to
really work out the majority
550
00:54:27,306 --> 00:54:31,310
of the problems with going to
the Moon, and that was Apollo 8.
551
00:54:31,435 --> 00:54:34,021
We had a...
a great deal to do
552
00:54:34,146 --> 00:54:36,565
and only four months to do it
in because this was August
553
00:54:36,691 --> 00:54:41,362
when we learned that our mission had been
changed and we were supposed to launch in December.
554
00:54:41,487 --> 00:54:44,699
Blinders on, how do we make Apollo 8 work?
555
00:56:43,609 --> 00:56:46,112
When I look back on 1968,
556
00:56:46,237 --> 00:56:51,075
of course we were so, uh,
in... involved in training and,
557
00:56:51,200 --> 00:56:55,788
uh, worrying about the Apollo 8
spacecraft and getting ready for the flight,
558
00:56:55,913 --> 00:57:00,543
we had kinda forgotten what the tenure of the,
559
00:57:00,668 --> 00:57:03,921
uh, uh... of the United States
was in at that time.
560
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:13,055
The protestors have been prevented
from marching toward the amphitheater.
561
00:57:13,180 --> 00:57:16,934
The clashes have occurred five
miles away in downtown Chicago
562
00:57:17,059 --> 00:57:19,353
outside the Democrat's headquarters hotel.
563
00:57:19,478 --> 00:57:23,107
There was serious violence there
last night and Jack Lawrence reports.
564
00:57:25,151 --> 00:57:30,448
They jabbed nightsticks into stomachs and skulls,
battering demonstrators and bystanders
565
00:57:30,573 --> 00:57:34,660
who were hopelessly trapped on
sidewalks in panic with nowhere to run.
566
00:57:58,392 --> 00:58:02,605
Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated,
Martin Luther King had been assassinated.
567
00:58:02,730 --> 00:58:03,898
Things were building up.
568
00:58:04,023 --> 00:58:05,816
You know, it's strange but...
569
00:58:06,817 --> 00:58:09,111
and I suppose I shouldn't, uh,
570
00:58:10,696 --> 00:58:12,239
even admit this,
571
00:58:12,364 --> 00:58:17,786
but we were so absorbed in the,
uh, space program and so or...
572
00:58:17,912 --> 00:58:23,167
oriented toward beating the Russian and...
and making certain that things went well
573
00:58:23,292 --> 00:58:25,836
that it didn't have a large impact on me.
574
00:59:16,762 --> 00:59:18,305
We were very, very
575
00:59:19,890 --> 00:59:22,309
I think so... so much
Cold Warriors on our own
576
00:59:22,434 --> 00:59:26,063
that they, uh... the
Cold War had three battles.
577
00:59:26,188 --> 00:59:31,986
Korea we tied. Vietnam we lost.
Space we won.
578
00:59:32,111 --> 00:59:35,489
And my Cold War war was in space.
579
00:59:51,714 --> 00:59:57,928
The Saturn V is the world's, uh,
most powerful, successful rocket.
580
00:59:59,179 --> 01:00:04,393
The Saturn V never had
a failure on a manned mission.
581
01:00:04,518 --> 01:00:09,607
It was really a, uh-a marvel of engineering and...
and, uh, production.
582
01:00:31,170 --> 01:00:34,548
It was gigantic, three sixty-five feet tall.
583
01:00:45,893 --> 01:00:48,520
Weighed six million pounds.
584
01:00:48,646 --> 01:00:53,275
Developed seven and a half million pounds of thrust.
It was really a beast.
585
01:00:53,400 --> 01:00:59,490
Three stages. It had been tested several times,
each test having some anomalies.
586
01:01:09,708 --> 01:01:12,920
Had five big engines on the first stage,
587
01:01:13,045 --> 01:01:17,800
five smaller engines on the second stage,
and then one engine on the third stage.
588
01:01:17,925 --> 01:01:22,096
The time you lifted off 'til you were
in orbit was about eleven minutes.
589
01:01:31,438 --> 01:01:35,943
Frank Borman was the, sort of the rocket expert
590
01:01:36,068 --> 01:01:40,364
and when he said it was okay with him,
that was okay with me.
591
01:01:54,002 --> 01:01:59,633
And as the time got close to launch and
we figured the launch would be December 21,
592
01:01:59,800 --> 01:02:01,009
1968,
593
01:02:01,135 --> 01:02:03,637
that was a good window to get to the Moon,
594
01:02:03,762 --> 01:02:07,766
and we were still worried about
what the Soviets were going to do.
595
01:02:07,891 --> 01:02:11,270
Uh, the last night, we spent in the quarters.
596
01:02:14,523 --> 01:02:19,278
Doing final lookings
at... at charts and maps.
597
01:02:19,403 --> 01:02:24,324
Did one last look at the...
the chart that showed the lunar topography,
598
01:02:24,450 --> 01:02:26,910
and of course they were going
to go around the Moon.
599
01:02:28,912 --> 01:02:30,164
Woke up in the morning.
600
01:02:30,289 --> 01:02:34,585
My favorite breakfast is bacon and eggs,
so I had bacon and eggs.
601
01:02:35,836 --> 01:02:39,506
It's for the last meal of your choice.
602
01:02:39,631 --> 01:02:41,592
But then we went and suited up.
603
01:02:43,051 --> 01:02:46,013
Apollo set and launch control at three hours,
twenty-one minutes,
604
01:02:46,138 --> 01:02:48,182
twenty-seven seconds and counting.
605
01:02:48,307 --> 01:02:52,686
The spacecraft test conductor now
has given a go for crew departure.
606
01:02:52,853 --> 01:02:56,815
We expect that the astronauts Frank Borman,
Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders
607
01:02:56,940 --> 01:02:59,443
will be coming out in a matter of a few minutes.
608
01:02:59,568 --> 01:03:00,986
This is Launch Control.
609
01:03:40,192 --> 01:03:45,656
Conductor Dick Proffitt has advised that
the prime crew is now leaving the suit room,
610
01:03:45,781 --> 01:03:50,118
and we should expect them downstairs ready to,
uh, board their transfer van
611
01:03:50,244 --> 01:03:52,955
in just a matter of, uh, a short time.
612
01:04:02,714 --> 01:04:06,635
First, Frank Borman, away from,
uh, Frank, also Jim Lovell,
613
01:04:06,760 --> 01:04:10,764
and the final man aboard the transfer van,
astronaut Bill Anders.
614
01:04:10,931 --> 01:04:13,308
They're being joined by two suit technicians,
615
01:04:14,309 --> 01:04:16,895
and we expect the door on the
transfer van to be closed shortly.
616
01:04:17,020 --> 01:04:20,774
Astronaut, uh, Deke Slayton,
Director of Flight Crew Operations
617
01:04:20,899 --> 01:04:22,776
also aboard the transfer van.
618
01:04:22,901 --> 01:04:25,779
He'll drop off here at the, uh, control center.
619
01:04:25,946 --> 01:04:27,447
The transfer van now departs...
620
01:04:27,573 --> 01:04:31,618
We went down into the
van, and, uh, the van took us,
621
01:04:31,743 --> 01:04:35,247
uh, to the, uh, to the booster,
to the launch area.
622
01:04:35,372 --> 01:04:40,210
It's kind of...
it's kind of eerie to go down to that big Saturn V on launch day.
623
01:04:40,335 --> 01:04:44,590
It's loaded with about five-and-a-half
million pounds of high explosive.
624
01:04:44,715 --> 01:04:47,467
The Apollo 8 crew now on the way to the pad.
625
01:04:47,593 --> 01:04:49,970
Our countdown is go at this time.
626
01:04:50,095 --> 01:04:55,058
Still aiming for a plan liftoff time of 7:51 AM,
Eastern Standard Time.
627
01:04:55,183 --> 01:04:56,977
This is Launch Control.
628
01:04:57,102 --> 01:05:00,772
As we got to the gantry and went up,
only the check-out people.
629
01:05:00,898 --> 01:05:07,279
Three... about three nervous check-out
people were anywhere near that vehicle with us.
630
01:05:07,404 --> 01:05:12,576
Everybody else was a comfortable three-and-a-half
miles away at the Launch Control Center.
631
01:05:12,701 --> 01:05:15,954
All three astronauts now getting
aboard the first of two elevators
632
01:05:16,079 --> 01:05:20,834
that will take them to the three-twenty-foot level,
and their Apollo 8 spacecraft.
633
01:05:21,001 --> 01:05:24,004
Now being joined by two suit technicians.
634
01:05:24,129 --> 01:05:27,883
Gate to the elevator closing,
and we expect it will be going up shortly.
635
01:05:34,681 --> 01:05:37,267
We expect they'll be up
at the three-twenty-foot level,
636
01:05:37,392 --> 01:05:42,272
and the Apollo 8 spacecraft in a
matter of minutes from this time.
637
01:05:42,397 --> 01:05:47,069
When I got on the elevator and went up thirty-six stories to the,
uh, spacecraft,
638
01:05:47,194 --> 01:05:51,531
and I do remember walking on the gantry
over to the spacecraft from the elevator.
639
01:05:51,657 --> 01:05:52,741
It was a long way down there.
640
01:05:52,866 --> 01:05:58,580
You got the...
you could see then the size of that, uh, of that launch vehicle.
641
01:05:58,705 --> 01:06:01,833
Was... was really,
uh, impressive.
642
01:06:01,959 --> 01:06:04,086
Astronauts Frank Borman and Bill Anders
643
01:06:04,211 --> 01:06:08,757
now going across swing-arm nine,
the top swing-arm at the launch pad.
644
01:06:08,882 --> 01:06:13,762
And, of course,
the access arm that attaches to the Apollo spacecraft.
645
01:06:13,887 --> 01:06:19,559
I remember looking down through the grating,
and thinking, "Boy, this is a big rocket."
646
01:06:19,685 --> 01:06:22,437
Borman and Anders now
have arrived in the White Room.
647
01:06:22,562 --> 01:06:27,484
The spacecraft commander, astronaut Frank Borman,
is now aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft,
648
01:06:27,609 --> 01:06:30,404
and Bill Anders is now boarding the spacecraft.
649
01:06:30,529 --> 01:06:35,409
Astronaut Jim Lovell,
the third member of the crew now is aboard the spacecraft.
650
01:06:35,534 --> 01:06:40,622
Hatch closure at 5:34 AM,
Eastern Standard Time.
651
01:06:40,747 --> 01:06:44,501
Strapped in, uh, and they
closed the hatch, and we waited.
652
01:06:45,711 --> 01:06:48,880
Sort of quiet during that period.
653
01:06:49,006 --> 01:06:53,927
Because in the meantime lots of
people started coming out of the-
654
01:06:54,094 --> 01:07:00,517
the beaches, and everything was set up,
uh, the people were gathering the stands.
655
01:07:00,642 --> 01:07:04,104
The NASA PR guy with...
through loudspeakers,
656
01:07:04,229 --> 01:07:09,026
telling everybody what was
happening in the countdown at that time,
657
01:07:09,151 --> 01:07:11,945
and meanwhile, we heard nothing.
Everything was quiet in there.
658
01:07:12,070 --> 01:07:19,202
We were left alone for the final countdown of,
uh, the Saturn to launch.
659
01:07:19,327 --> 01:07:25,500
The Apollo 8 crew standing y.
Spacecraft commander, Frank orman, Jim Lovell, Bill Anders.
660
01:07:25,625 --> 01:07:28,587
We were out there doing our job,
and here was our chance
661
01:07:28,712 --> 01:07:33,050
to make a major strike for
freedom in the Cold War.
662
01:07:33,175 --> 01:07:34,968
Propellants pressurized at this time
663
01:07:35,135 --> 01:07:38,638
as we come up on the sixty-second
mark on a flight to the Moon.
664
01:07:38,764 --> 01:07:41,516
First flight on the Saturn V,
first to leave the Earth.
665
01:07:41,641 --> 01:07:44,895
So there, you know,
there really wasn't much to wring your hands about.
666
01:07:45,020 --> 01:07:46,855
T-minus sixty seconds and counting.
667
01:07:46,980 --> 01:07:51,193
T-minus sixty seconds and counting.
The vehicle now is completely pressurized.
668
01:07:51,318 --> 01:07:57,115
I thought we had about one chance in three,
of having a successful mission.
669
01:07:57,240 --> 01:08:00,786
T-minus fifty seconds and counting,
we have the power transfer.
670
01:08:00,911 --> 01:08:04,372
We're now on the flight
batteries within the launch vehicle.
671
01:08:04,498 --> 01:08:07,667
The launch vehicle almost came
alive as they opened different valves,
672
01:08:07,793 --> 01:08:09,628
you could hear fuel gurgling,
673
01:08:09,753 --> 01:08:13,090
and, and, uh, it swayed a
little bit in the, uh, breeze.
674
01:08:13,215 --> 01:08:15,801
Thirty-five seconds and
counting. We'll lead up to an...
675
01:08:15,926 --> 01:08:19,137
an ignition sequence
start at 8.9 seconds.
676
01:08:19,262 --> 01:08:21,181
This will lead up as we build up the thrust...
677
01:08:21,306 --> 01:08:25,018
The biggest stress for a
pilot is screwing up in public.
678
01:08:25,185 --> 01:08:28,021
Almost rather die than screw up in public.
679
01:08:28,146 --> 01:08:32,567
And so we were mainly severely
motivated not to screw up.
680
01:08:32,692 --> 01:08:36,029
T-minus fifteen, fourteen, thirteen,
681
01:08:36,196 --> 01:08:40,033
twelve, eleven, ten, nine.
682
01:08:40,200 --> 01:08:42,035
We have ignition sequence start.
683
01:10:53,833 --> 01:11:00,882
When the countdown came to zero, all hell broke loose.
Mighty F-1 engines kicked in.
684
01:11:02,175 --> 01:11:06,513
We were held down for a second or two,
check 'em out, and then released.
685
01:11:11,476 --> 01:11:13,812
Liftoff, the clock is running.
686
01:11:13,937 --> 01:11:15,563
Roger. Clock.
687
01:11:15,689 --> 01:11:19,109
The one distinguishing thing that
I can say about a Saturn V launch
688
01:11:19,234 --> 01:11:21,194
was it was noisy.
689
01:11:21,361 --> 01:11:23,697
And the Saturn V was really an old man's booster,
690
01:11:23,822 --> 01:11:26,199
because I don't believe we got more than six G's.
691
01:11:26,366 --> 01:11:29,411
So it wasn't a rapid acceleration to begin with,
it was quite slow.
692
01:11:34,040 --> 01:11:36,751
The people are watching that vehicle lift off,
693
01:11:36,876 --> 01:11:40,171
and then suddenly sort
of dance away from the gantry,
694
01:11:40,297 --> 01:11:47,012
because the vehicle is being controlled by
the four outside F-1 engines that are gimbaled.
695
01:11:47,137 --> 01:11:50,724
And so the guidance system
gimbals them to allow the spacecraft
696
01:11:50,849 --> 01:11:54,477
to move a little bit away from the gantry,
and then start to take off.
697
01:12:01,568 --> 01:12:04,821
Tower clear at thirteen seconds.
698
01:12:04,946 --> 01:12:06,656
Roll and pitch program.
699
01:12:07,741 --> 01:12:08,908
Roger.
700
01:12:09,034 --> 01:12:11,453
- How do you hear me, Houston?
- Loud and clear.
701
01:12:12,871 --> 01:12:16,166
I only got scared twice in the flight,
and the launch was one of them.
702
01:12:16,291 --> 01:12:18,209
And I thought this is a bad way to start.
703
01:12:18,335 --> 01:12:20,170
We've simulated everything we could think of,
704
01:12:20,295 --> 01:12:24,841
and we didn't simulate the launch
that was unbelievably violent.
705
01:12:26,301 --> 01:12:28,928
Mark. Mode 1
Bravo, Apollo 8.
706
01:12:29,054 --> 01:12:30,263
Mode 1B.
707
01:12:40,982 --> 01:12:44,277
One minute out.
Mike Collins tells the crew we're looking good.
708
01:12:48,782 --> 01:12:52,577
It was so noisy, uh, you couldn't think.
You couldn't speak.
709
01:12:52,702 --> 01:12:55,246
If something happened, you couldn't communicate.
710
01:13:04,672 --> 01:13:07,592
Apollo 8, Houston.
You are go for staging. Over.
711
01:13:11,471 --> 01:13:12,764
Staging.
712
01:13:12,889 --> 01:13:15,600
S2 has ignited, we can confirm.
713
01:13:17,560 --> 01:13:18,812
And the thrust looks good.
714
01:13:18,937 --> 01:13:22,774
All engines,
all sources show the second stage is burning perfectly.
715
01:13:22,899 --> 01:13:25,193
Two minutes, fifty-one seconds into the mission.
716
01:13:28,154 --> 01:13:32,617
The staging from first stage to second stage,
particularly, was extremely abrupt.
717
01:13:43,795 --> 01:13:48,675
When the first stage fuel is expended,
we're pulled down about five G's,
718
01:13:48,800 --> 01:13:52,178
because as the first stage gets
lighter the faster we're going.
719
01:13:52,303 --> 01:13:56,224
I felt like I was being catapulted through the,
uh, instrument panel.
720
01:14:08,862 --> 01:14:11,531
On the Saturn V, everybody was a rookie.
721
01:14:17,996 --> 01:14:21,082
Apollo 8, Houston.
You are go. Over.
722
01:14:21,207 --> 01:14:23,710
Apollo 8 is go.
Thank you, Houston.
723
01:14:28,381 --> 01:14:29,591
S4-B ignition.
724
01:14:31,926 --> 01:14:34,012
Guidance initiate.
725
01:14:34,137 --> 01:14:36,014
Hey, Houston. How
do you read? Apollo 8.
726
01:14:36,139 --> 01:14:37,932
Apollo 8, reading you loud and clear.
727
01:14:39,142 --> 01:14:41,936
Everything was...
was exactly perfect, we got it.
728
01:14:42,061 --> 01:14:44,397
We find ourselves in orbit eleven minutes later,
729
01:14:44,522 --> 01:14:48,568
and we had to go around once-and-a-half,
uh, an earth orbit
730
01:14:48,693 --> 01:14:52,489
before we re-lit the S4-B third stage,
731
01:14:52,614 --> 01:14:55,992
and got injected out to the velocity that
would allow us to escape Earth gravity
732
01:14:56,117 --> 01:14:56,868
and go to the Moon.
733
01:15:09,297 --> 01:15:13,092
Apollo 8, Houston.
We'll have LOS in, uh, one minute.
734
01:15:13,218 --> 01:15:18,181
We'll pick you up again over
Tananarive at 2:09.
735
01:15:19,432 --> 01:15:21,142
Roger,
Michael. Thank you.
736
01:15:21,267 --> 01:15:23,144
Correct. How
does it feel up there?
737
01:15:24,229 --> 01:15:26,940
Very good, very good.
Everything is going rather well.
738
01:15:28,107 --> 01:15:31,653
It looks just about the same
way it did three years ago.
739
01:15:31,778 --> 01:15:36,074
I was afraid, that in that orbit-and-a-half,
740
01:15:36,199 --> 01:15:39,452
the ground was obviously going
over every system on board.
741
01:15:39,577 --> 01:15:41,955
I'm afraid if they find any anomaly at all,
742
01:15:42,080 --> 01:15:44,457
you know, they weren't going
to inject us toward the Moon
743
01:15:44,624 --> 01:15:48,044
with, uh, some sort of concern about a system.
744
01:15:48,169 --> 01:15:54,342
So I was afraid that we would end up
spending eleven days in earth orbit, and, uh,
745
01:15:54,467 --> 01:15:58,972
I was relieved when, uh,
I heard Mike Collins say,
746
01:15:59,097 --> 01:16:02,517
"Apollo 8, you're go for TLI,"
go for trans-lunar injection.
747
01:16:03,726 --> 01:16:04,978
Apollo 8, Houston.
748
01:16:06,229 --> 01:16:07,313
Go ahead, Houston.
749
01:16:07,438 --> 01:16:10,775
Apollo 8,
you are go for TLI. Over.
750
01:16:10,900 --> 01:16:13,194
Roger. We
understand; we are go for TLI.
751
01:16:15,280 --> 01:16:19,033
Well, once you add the velocity
that you already have in orbit,
752
01:16:19,158 --> 01:16:24,372
but you add the velocity necessary to escape it,
you knew there was no coming back.
753
01:16:26,541 --> 01:16:29,377
Apollo 8 coming up on twenty seconds to ignition.
754
01:16:29,502 --> 01:16:31,588
Mark it, and you're looking very good.
755
01:16:32,589 --> 01:16:38,136
As the spacecraft came around the Earth,
on the far side of the Earth, away from the Moon,
756
01:16:38,261 --> 01:16:40,013
we lit the third stage a second time.
757
01:16:40,930 --> 01:16:44,017
And they gave us... that
gave us the proper velocity,
758
01:16:44,142 --> 01:16:48,646
and on the proper course, to
coast all the way to the Moon.
759
01:16:50,607 --> 01:16:55,612
So we knew we were on our way, and,
uh, our fate was now in the hands of, uh,
760
01:16:55,737 --> 01:16:59,282
the, uh, physicists and,
uh... and computers.
761
01:17:00,491 --> 01:17:02,410
We're past forty-two.
That was when our light...
762
01:17:02,535 --> 01:17:04,162
That's 58:42 or 59...
763
01:17:04,287 --> 01:17:05,371
59.
764
01:17:05,496 --> 01:17:08,791
Nine, eight, seven, four,
765
01:17:11,294 --> 01:17:14,714
three, two, light on.
766
01:17:14,839 --> 01:17:17,175
- Ignition.
- Ignition.
767
01:17:17,300 --> 01:17:18,509
Ignition.
768
01:17:28,561 --> 01:17:31,898
Apollo 8, Houston.
You're looking good, right down the center line.
769
01:17:32,023 --> 01:17:33,483
Roger. Apollo 8.
770
01:17:38,112 --> 01:17:41,949
I'd like to tell you it required a
great deal of skill and piloting ability
771
01:17:42,075 --> 01:17:43,785
and... and we cheated death.
772
01:17:43,910 --> 01:17:45,745
But the fact is, it worked perfectly.
773
01:17:45,870 --> 01:17:50,667
We came into sunlight,
we had to disengage from the third stage, separate.
774
01:18:01,386 --> 01:18:05,014
The idea was to turn the spacecraft
one hundred and eighty degrees,
775
01:18:05,139 --> 01:18:06,974
and go back to the third stage.
776
01:18:09,394 --> 01:18:15,441
Every flight to the Moon, after Apollo 8,
would have a lunar module,
777
01:18:15,566 --> 01:18:19,070
and the lunar module was tucked
into the end of the third stage.
778
01:18:25,451 --> 01:18:26,536
What a view.
779
01:18:28,204 --> 01:18:29,580
Looks pretty good, huh?
780
01:18:34,210 --> 01:18:36,796
We've SEP'd Houston.
We got the IVB, right?
781
01:18:38,047 --> 01:18:39,257
Roger, Apollo 8.
782
01:18:41,926 --> 01:18:46,222
Roger. Loud and clear.
We are taking pictures of the S-IVB.
783
01:18:46,347 --> 01:18:50,977
Uh, the, uh, post-separation sequence is-
784
01:18:51,102 --> 01:18:52,854
is completed, and we seem to have a high gain.
785
01:18:54,397 --> 01:18:58,609
We stayed closer to the S-IVB than I liked.
786
01:18:58,735 --> 01:19:01,112
Because the S-IVB was now unpowered,
787
01:19:01,237 --> 01:19:07,493
but it was slowly beginning to tumble,
and venting, spewing out all the unburned fuel.
788
01:19:07,618 --> 01:19:13,666
It was a remarkable sight, it, uh, looked like a...
a giant lawn sprinkler.
789
01:19:17,128 --> 01:19:22,258
Boy, it's starting to vent now, blowing down.
The S-IVB is really venting.
790
01:19:23,551 --> 01:19:28,765
Roger, understand.
That is supposedly a non-propulsive vent.
791
01:19:28,890 --> 01:19:32,059
That is a non-propulsive vent,
but it's pretty spectacular.
792
01:19:37,690 --> 01:19:41,027
We see the Earth now, almost as a disk.
793
01:19:42,528 --> 01:19:45,072
Good show, get a picture of it.
794
01:19:45,198 --> 01:19:46,073
We are.
795
01:19:47,825 --> 01:19:49,786
Tell Conrad he lost his record.
796
01:19:52,038 --> 01:19:56,751
We have a beautiful view of Florida now.
We can see the Cape, uh, just the point.
797
01:19:57,835 --> 01:19:59,337
Roger.
798
01:19:59,462 --> 01:20:01,631
And at the same time, we can see Africa.
799
01:20:04,967 --> 01:20:06,636
West Africa is beautiful.
800
01:20:07,929 --> 01:20:09,680
What window are you looking out of?
801
01:20:11,724 --> 01:20:13,601
- The center window.
- Roger.
802
01:20:16,437 --> 01:20:20,608
We've slithered out of our space
suits with some help from each other.
803
01:20:20,733 --> 01:20:23,027
And, uh, stowed them under the seats.
804
01:20:23,152 --> 01:20:26,364
Uh, then, had an opportunity
805
01:20:26,489 --> 01:20:28,825
to look out the window,
806
01:20:28,950 --> 01:20:34,914
and, uh, see the Earth as a full Earth for the first time,
and that was a beautiful sight.
807
01:20:36,290 --> 01:20:37,291
Well, Mike.
808
01:20:38,459 --> 01:20:41,671
I can see the entire Earth
now out of the center window.
809
01:20:41,796 --> 01:20:46,592
I can see Florida, Cuba, Central America,
810
01:20:46,717 --> 01:20:49,011
the whole northern half of Central America,
811
01:20:49,136 --> 01:20:54,392
in fact all the way down through Argentina and down through,
uh, Chile.
812
01:20:55,560 --> 01:20:57,395
When we first left the Earth,
813
01:20:57,520 --> 01:21:01,190
and the...
and we were looking back at the Earth as we were going out,
814
01:21:01,315 --> 01:21:06,112
and the, uh, we started on at a very high velocity,
and slowly we're slowing down.
815
01:21:06,237 --> 01:21:10,867
But I can see the Earth then get smaller
and smaller and smaller as we got away.
816
01:21:10,992 --> 01:21:15,997
Uh, it's some...
it looked like, uh, being in the backseat of an automobile,
817
01:21:16,122 --> 01:21:19,500
as you go through a tunnel,
and you're looking out the back window,
818
01:21:19,625 --> 01:21:22,628
and you see the tunnel shrink
and shrink and shrink and shrink,
819
01:21:22,753 --> 01:21:25,548
until, you know, it gets smaller and smaller.
820
01:21:25,673 --> 01:21:27,174
Are you receiving television now?
821
01:21:27,300 --> 01:21:29,927
Apollo 8,
Houston. We just got it.
822
01:21:32,680 --> 01:21:33,973
You are getting it?
823
01:21:38,686 --> 01:21:43,608
We had a relatively primitive, uh,
black and white television camera.
824
01:21:43,733 --> 01:21:45,610
Frank didn't want to take it, he didn't...
825
01:21:45,735 --> 01:21:50,156
he basically didn't want to take anything
that might detract from the mission.
826
01:21:50,281 --> 01:21:53,159
I was, uh, wrong.
827
01:21:53,284 --> 01:21:54,994
Because I had, uh,
828
01:21:57,330 --> 01:22:01,751
suggested or advocated not taking a
television camera at all on the spacecraft.
829
01:22:01,876 --> 01:22:06,631
But I was wrong, and I was overruled by my smarter people in...
in NASA.
830
01:22:06,756 --> 01:22:08,966
You know, people deserve to understand and see,
831
01:22:09,091 --> 01:22:12,303
and be as much a part of it as they could be.
832
01:22:12,428 --> 01:22:13,846
This transmission is coming to you
833
01:22:14,013 --> 01:22:16,807
approximately halfway between
the Moon and the Earth.
834
01:22:17,850 --> 01:22:24,065
We've been thirty-one hours and about twenty minutes into flight.
We have about, uh,
835
01:22:24,190 --> 01:22:28,861
less than forty hours left to go to the Moon.
Jim is busy working preparing lunch.
836
01:22:29,028 --> 01:22:32,865
Uh, Bill is, uh, playing cameraman right now,
837
01:22:33,032 --> 01:22:37,328
and I'm, uh, about to take
a light reading on the Earth.
838
01:22:37,453 --> 01:22:41,040
We all feel fine.
It was a very exciting ride on that big Saturn,
839
01:22:41,165 --> 01:22:43,000
but it worked perfectly,
840
01:22:43,125 --> 01:22:46,295
and we are looking forward now,
of course, to the day after tomorrow
841
01:22:46,420 --> 01:22:49,715
when we will be just sixty
miles away from the Moon.
842
01:22:52,510 --> 01:22:54,095
Happy birthday, mother.
843
01:22:55,388 --> 01:22:57,515
Hello, Houston.
This is Apollo 8.
844
01:22:57,640 --> 01:23:01,185
We have the television camera
pointed directly at the Earth now.
845
01:23:03,437 --> 01:23:06,816
Okay,
we're just picking it up at three o'clock on our screen.
846
01:23:06,941 --> 01:23:10,152
The bright blob on the upper
right of the screen is the Earth.
847
01:23:10,277 --> 01:23:11,153
It's looking better.
848
01:23:11,278 --> 01:23:14,991
You're-you're holding up about one to two o'clock.
Looking better.
849
01:23:16,701 --> 01:23:18,452
Give us a little more in that same direction.
850
01:23:18,577 --> 01:23:21,872
You're down at three o'clock now,
we see about half of what you see.
851
01:23:21,998 --> 01:23:24,125
That... you're going the right
way, you're going the right way.
852
01:23:24,250 --> 01:23:26,669
A little bit more, a little bit more.
853
01:23:27,586 --> 01:23:29,380
Ah, whoa, stop right there.
854
01:23:29,505 --> 01:23:32,091
Mark, it's right at the center of our screen.
855
01:23:32,216 --> 01:23:35,594
Just hold her-hold her steady.
It's really looking good.
856
01:23:36,554 --> 01:23:39,432
Houston,
what you're seeing is the Western Hemisphere.
857
01:23:40,349 --> 01:23:43,144
Looking at the top is the North Pole.
858
01:23:43,269 --> 01:23:46,772
In the center, just lower to
the center, is South America,
859
01:23:47,732 --> 01:23:50,109
all the way down to Cape Horn.
860
01:23:50,234 --> 01:23:55,906
I can see Baja California,
and the southwestern part of the United States.
861
01:23:56,032 --> 01:24:00,828
For colors, the waters
are all sort of a royal blue.
862
01:24:00,953 --> 01:24:03,664
The clouds, of course, are bright white.
863
01:24:03,789 --> 01:24:06,959
The reflection off the Earth is,
appears much greater than the Moon.
864
01:24:08,127 --> 01:24:11,464
The land areas are generally a brownish.
865
01:24:12,423 --> 01:24:14,425
You're all looking at yourselves
866
01:24:14,550 --> 01:24:18,304
as seen from hundred and eighty
thousand miles out in space.
867
01:24:19,972 --> 01:24:22,308
Mike, what I keep imagining is,
868
01:24:22,433 --> 01:24:25,227
if I'm a... some lonely
traveler from another planet,
869
01:24:25,352 --> 01:24:30,608
what I think about the Earth from this altitude,
whether I think it'd be inhabited or not.
870
01:24:31,942 --> 01:24:34,528
You don't see anybody waving,
is that what you're saying?
871
01:24:35,571 --> 01:24:40,618
Right.
Well we're seeing the entire Earth now, including the... the terminator.
872
01:24:43,746 --> 01:24:45,247
I was just kind of curious
873
01:24:45,372 --> 01:24:48,793
whether I would land on the
blue or the brown part of the Earth.
874
01:24:51,879 --> 01:24:53,964
You better hope we land in the blue part.
875
01:24:55,758 --> 01:24:56,675
So do we, babe.
876
01:24:56,801 --> 01:24:58,552
Jim is always for land landings.
877
01:25:00,179 --> 01:25:04,141
I took what, to me,
was the most notable picture of the flight.
878
01:25:04,266 --> 01:25:08,604
Showing the Earth against a dark,
879
01:25:08,729 --> 01:25:11,232
velvet background in space.
880
01:25:11,357 --> 01:25:14,068
About the size of your fist in arm's length.
881
01:25:17,655 --> 01:25:19,698
One lunar distance
882
01:25:19,824 --> 01:25:24,036
seems like a long way, but
it's hardly anywhere in space.
883
01:25:24,203 --> 01:25:27,623
Indeed, ten lunar distances are
hardly going anywhere in space.
884
01:25:27,748 --> 01:25:32,378
In a ten lunar distances' fist,
it's down to a one-tenth size marble.
885
01:25:33,462 --> 01:25:37,049
At a hundred lunar distances where
you're not even close to Mars yet,
886
01:25:37,216 --> 01:25:41,137
you're down now to a tiny little sand grain.
887
01:25:42,096 --> 01:25:44,890
And five hundred lunar distances,
888
01:25:45,015 --> 01:25:48,602
you can't really see the Earth
with the naked eye, physically.
889
01:25:51,272 --> 01:25:55,317
The idea that, uh, the Earth
was the center of the universe,
890
01:25:55,442 --> 01:26:01,907
and therefore, you know,
humans were the center of, uh, universal civilization,
891
01:26:02,032 --> 01:26:05,077
sounded to me like baloney
the more I thought about it.
892
01:26:05,202 --> 01:26:11,625
Very selfish, very, you know, uh, human-centric.
893
01:26:11,750 --> 01:26:15,754
And so, uh, that has sort of upset my views
894
01:26:15,880 --> 01:26:19,925
on, uh, a lot of things
that we've taken for granted.
895
01:26:20,050 --> 01:26:25,097
Uh, politics, religion, you name it.
896
01:26:25,264 --> 01:26:29,185
Uh, to think that we're just
probably one among millions
897
01:26:29,310 --> 01:26:35,274
or billions of centers of
intelligence that have existed,
898
01:26:35,399 --> 01:26:38,194
or maybe even still exist, in the universe.
899
01:26:57,046 --> 01:27:02,593
Frank, uh, is being an old Air Force officer,
and I, Navy, he was...
900
01:27:02,718 --> 01:27:07,264
he got a pretty bad case of, uh, airsickness.
901
01:27:07,389 --> 01:27:12,853
He gets that way. Gemini, because he was so tied in, and so...
looking so straight
902
01:27:12,978 --> 01:27:15,064
I was sitting next to him that he...
903
01:27:15,189 --> 01:27:18,525
if he had it at the very beginning,
he overcame it and didn't even tell me.
904
01:27:18,651 --> 01:27:23,280
Uh, but, he couldn't do that on Apollo,
because as soon as you got out of that seat,
905
01:27:23,405 --> 01:27:27,493
uh, you had enough room to move around in,
and you had to move around and do things.
906
01:27:27,618 --> 01:27:29,787
So he got quite ill.
907
01:27:30,704 --> 01:27:35,334
This is Apollo Control, ouston.
Within the last hour, in a private conversation,
908
01:27:35,459 --> 01:27:39,672
we've learned that there is some,
uh, a little nausea aboard.
909
01:27:40,839 --> 01:27:44,051
Frank Borman reported an upset stomach.
910
01:27:44,176 --> 01:27:46,804
I remember Lovell and I were up on our couches,
911
01:27:52,351 --> 01:27:54,144
and this glob came up.
912
01:27:54,270 --> 01:27:57,481
We immediately donned- or I put on, uh,
913
01:27:57,606 --> 01:27:58,565
uh, oxygen mask.
914
01:27:58,691 --> 01:28:01,193
It was supposed to be
saved for... only for fire.
915
01:28:01,318 --> 01:28:03,654
I said to hell with that, so I put the mask on.
916
01:28:04,613 --> 01:28:09,034
And, uh, this thing about
that big came floating up.
917
01:28:09,159 --> 01:28:11,120
And it, and I thought,
"Boy, that's fascinating."
918
01:28:11,245 --> 01:28:17,126
You know, I was initially repulsed,
but then the physicist in me rose to the occasion.
919
01:28:17,251 --> 01:28:24,591
So here was this three-dimensional,
multi-colored, oscillating ball.
920
01:28:25,801 --> 01:28:29,388
And uh, both Lovell and I kind of watched it,
it was going this way.
921
01:28:29,513 --> 01:28:31,265
Then it split.
922
01:28:32,516 --> 01:28:36,478
And the laws of conservation
momentum sends one piece went that way,
923
01:28:36,603 --> 01:28:40,691
the other piece had to go this
way, right towards Lovell.
924
01:28:40,816 --> 01:28:45,070
So I watched it go,
and it splatted like a fried egg on his chest.
925
01:28:45,195 --> 01:28:50,075
That was, uh, built up a lot
more than it was, because, uh,
926
01:28:50,200 --> 01:28:53,078
you know, the doctors all of a
sudden had a chance to shine.
927
01:28:53,203 --> 01:28:56,373
And they go, "Oh my goodness,
we oughta do this, or we oughta do that."
928
01:28:56,498 --> 01:28:59,877
If you're in that environment for that amount of time,
your stomach finally says,
929
01:29:00,002 --> 01:29:03,339
"Hey, there's no sense fighting this thing,
I'll go along with it."
930
01:29:03,464 --> 01:29:06,633
And that's essen... essentially
what happened, uh, to Borman.
931
01:29:06,759 --> 01:29:11,555
I got over it quite quickly, and I can tell you if the...
if the doctors had threatened,
932
01:29:11,680 --> 01:29:14,767
or, uh, recommended-I get...
maybe... I had heard that,
933
01:29:14,892 --> 01:29:18,062
that Dr. Murray even recommended
that we abort the mission,
934
01:29:18,187 --> 01:29:21,023
because I-but if that would've happened,
we would've had radio failure.
935
01:29:21,982 --> 01:29:23,984
I can... I can guarantee
you that.
936
01:29:26,195 --> 01:29:29,865
Frank, is... is this
lunar orbit mission too risky
937
01:29:29,990 --> 01:29:32,534
after only one manned Apollo flight?
938
01:29:32,659 --> 01:29:37,831
No, Jules, as I said before.
If I-I can honestly say this, if I thought it was too risky,
939
01:29:37,956 --> 01:29:41,001
I don't know how the other two people feel,
but I wouldn't be on board.
940
01:29:41,126 --> 01:29:45,714
We've, uh, flown many unmanned Apollos,
as you know, we have, uh,
941
01:29:45,839 --> 01:29:50,302
the, uh,
the - the system history of the Apollo is fantastic,
942
01:29:50,469 --> 01:29:54,056
and the testing, the
redundancy, the quality control,
943
01:29:54,181 --> 01:29:55,933
and the care that we've made,
and then the proceed -
944
01:29:56,058 --> 01:29:59,061
the changes that we made since the fire.
I think-I think it's a safe vehicle.
945
01:30:06,068 --> 01:30:11,698
Uh, Apollo 8, this is Houston.
At 68:04, you're go for LOI.
946
01:30:11,824 --> 01:30:14,159
Okay. Apollo 8 is go.
947
01:30:14,284 --> 01:30:17,413
Apollo 8, Houston.
You're riding the best bird we can find. Over.
948
01:30:17,538 --> 01:30:18,622
Thank you.
949
01:30:19,706 --> 01:30:22,918
Here in Mission Control, we're standing by.
950
01:30:23,043 --> 01:30:27,339
Here's, uh, certainly a great
deal of anxiety at this moment,
951
01:30:27,464 --> 01:30:31,468
as in the next two and a half minutes,
952
01:30:31,593 --> 01:30:36,223
we will not talk with the
crew for some period of time.
953
01:30:36,348 --> 01:30:40,602
As we approached the Moon,
we were in complete darkness.
954
01:30:40,727 --> 01:30:43,063
We hadn't seen the Moon
on the entire trip to the Moon.
955
01:30:44,898 --> 01:30:48,277
We were upside down and going backwards
956
01:30:48,402 --> 01:30:50,863
so that we could fire the rockets to slow us up.
957
01:30:50,988 --> 01:30:54,825
One minute, uh,
thirty seconds away now from loss of signal,
958
01:30:54,950 --> 01:30:57,870
as we continue with this flight of Apollo 8.
959
01:30:58,787 --> 01:31:03,625
One of the issues that, uh,
Frank was concerned about, and rightly so,
960
01:31:03,750 --> 01:31:06,003
that if they could calculate
the trajectory right,
961
01:31:06,128 --> 01:31:09,089
they oughta be able to calculate
when we would lose signal.
962
01:31:09,214 --> 01:31:13,343
Apollo 8, Houston. One
inute to LOS. All systems go.
963
01:31:13,469 --> 01:31:15,721
Thanks a lot, troops.
964
01:31:15,846 --> 01:31:17,347
We'll see you on the other side.
965
01:31:17,473 --> 01:31:22,269
And sure enough,
at the exact time we were supposed to lose radio communications,
966
01:31:22,394 --> 01:31:23,228
we lost it.
967
01:31:23,353 --> 01:31:25,355
Okay, we got ten minutes.
968
01:31:25,481 --> 01:31:27,649
Well, I'll tell you, gentlemen,
that Moon is pretty close.
969
01:31:27,774 --> 01:31:30,569
Okay, go ahead
and start pitch one. One.
970
01:31:30,694 --> 01:31:32,404
- Yaw one.
- Got it.
971
01:31:32,571 --> 01:31:33,322
Okay.
972
01:31:33,447 --> 01:31:35,365
Transitional Hand Controller, clockwise.
973
01:31:35,491 --> 01:31:36,158
Clockwise.
974
01:31:36,283 --> 01:31:40,662
We fired the engine, and that slowed us down,
so that we could get...
975
01:31:40,787 --> 01:31:44,082
and be captured by, uh, the Moon.
976
01:31:44,208 --> 01:31:47,836
Standing by for engine on enable.
Proceed when you get it.
977
01:31:47,961 --> 01:31:48,587
Okay.
978
01:31:48,712 --> 01:31:50,547
Start your watch when you get ignition.
979
01:31:50,672 --> 01:31:53,717
One second, two seconds,
all right, how's every-Got 'em!
980
01:31:55,302 --> 01:31:56,428
Pressure's holding good.
981
01:31:56,553 --> 01:31:58,722
All right. Everything
good over here so far.
982
01:31:58,847 --> 01:32:00,599
Everything is looking good.
983
01:32:00,724 --> 01:32:06,605
We went into the shadow of the Moon from the Sun.
984
01:32:06,730 --> 01:32:07,981
Call it the umbra.
985
01:32:08,106 --> 01:32:11,109
There was no earth-shine, there was no sunshine.
986
01:32:11,235 --> 01:32:15,614
And so consequently we looked out of the window,
all the stars, they came out.
987
01:32:23,997 --> 01:32:27,918
Suddenly there were stars everywhere.
More stars than you could count.
988
01:32:28,043 --> 01:32:33,131
You couldn't recognize the constellations,
because even the little stars seemed bright.
989
01:32:34,675 --> 01:32:41,890
And yet, as I looked back over my shoulder,
I saw suddenly the stars disappeared.
990
01:32:49,898 --> 01:32:52,693
A black hole, and that was the Moon.
991
01:32:52,818 --> 01:32:55,070
And I must say, at that stage of the game,
992
01:32:55,195 --> 01:32:57,447
the hair came up on the back
of my neck a little bit.
993
01:32:57,573 --> 01:33:00,867
If we were sailing into this, uh, black hole.
994
01:33:05,622 --> 01:33:08,166
We rolled out the spacecraft
995
01:33:08,292 --> 01:33:11,878
and then we were just getting into,
uh, where the darkness
996
01:33:12,004 --> 01:33:16,842
slipped into the long shadows of the,
uh, of the sunlight started to come in.
997
01:33:16,967 --> 01:33:21,096
We saw the long shadows of
darkness on the Moon's craters.
998
01:33:21,221 --> 01:33:24,516
Finally, we got into where
there was sunshine on the Moon,
999
01:33:24,641 --> 01:33:28,270
and that's the first time we
saw, saw the Moon itself.
1000
01:33:28,395 --> 01:33:30,105
- Hey, I got the Moon.
- Do you?
1001
01:33:31,440 --> 01:33:33,775
- Right below us.
- Okay. It is below us-
1002
01:33:33,900 --> 01:33:36,528
Yeah. And it's,
uh... Oh my god.
1003
01:33:36,653 --> 01:33:38,030
- What's wrong?
- Look at that.
1004
01:33:38,155 --> 01:33:39,948
Looks like a big beach down there.
1005
01:33:41,158 --> 01:33:42,868
Fantastic.
1006
01:33:44,161 --> 01:33:44,703
Yup.
1007
01:33:44,828 --> 01:33:46,663
You know,
I still have trouble telling the holes from the bumps.
1008
01:33:46,788 --> 01:33:48,165
Alright, alright, come on.
1009
01:33:49,416 --> 01:33:52,127
Here we'd gone two-hundred
and forty-thousand miles,
1010
01:33:52,252 --> 01:33:57,382
and we were only, uh,
about sixty or sixty-five miles above the lunar surface.
1011
01:33:57,507 --> 01:34:00,385
We were the first people to
really see alive these craters.
1012
01:34:00,510 --> 01:34:03,472
At just sixty miles above the surface,
1013
01:34:03,597 --> 01:34:05,974
had no atmosphere around the Moon.
1014
01:34:06,099 --> 01:34:10,145
And with the sun shining,
things were very, very, very clear.
1015
01:34:11,688 --> 01:34:13,398
Apollo 8.
Houston. Over.
1016
01:34:13,523 --> 01:34:16,443
Go ahead, uh, Houston, this is Apollo 8.
1017
01:34:16,568 --> 01:34:22,240
Burn complete.
Our orbit is 160.9 by 60.5.
1018
01:34:22,366 --> 01:34:27,287
Uh, Apollo 8, Houston. h, what does the old Moon look ike from sixty miles? Over.
1019
01:34:27,412 --> 01:34:31,917
Okay, uh, Houston.
The Moon is essentially gray.
1020
01:34:32,042 --> 01:34:33,669
No, no color.
1021
01:34:34,628 --> 01:34:36,421
Looks like plaster of PARIS,
1022
01:34:38,048 --> 01:34:41,343
uh, or a sort of a grayish beach sand.
1023
01:34:41,468 --> 01:34:46,098
We can see quite a bit of detail.
Uh, the crater, craters are all rounded off.
1024
01:34:46,223 --> 01:34:49,518
There's quite a few of them.
Some of them are newer. Many of them look like,
1025
01:34:49,643 --> 01:34:54,564
especially the round ones look like, um,
hits by meteorites or projectiles of some sort.
1026
01:34:54,690 --> 01:34:56,608
Uh, roger. Understand.
1027
01:35:06,326 --> 01:35:10,205
Good evening.
American astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders
1028
01:35:10,330 --> 01:35:13,125
are whirling about the Moon
on this Christmas Eve.
1029
01:35:13,250 --> 01:35:15,877
Further away from home than man has ever been.
1030
01:35:16,002 --> 01:35:18,088
It may be lonely for them, so far away.
1031
01:35:18,213 --> 01:35:20,799
Two hundred and thirty thousand
miles from their families.
1032
01:35:20,924 --> 01:35:26,263
But they are busy making history that will
loom large as long as there is civilization on Earth.
1033
01:35:26,388 --> 01:35:28,140
They're in the remarkable Apollo 8.
1034
01:35:28,265 --> 01:35:30,809
They are the explorers who
have first transited space,
1035
01:35:30,934 --> 01:35:33,103
and have opened the way for the lunar age.
1036
01:35:39,568 --> 01:35:42,571
Instead of going around the
Moon upside down and backwards,
1037
01:35:42,696 --> 01:35:49,619
Frank, uh, repositioned the spacecraft so it
was more like driving a car, uh, down a road.
1038
01:35:49,745 --> 01:35:52,372
Alright, we're gonna roll.
1039
01:35:52,497 --> 01:35:54,124
Ready?
1040
01:35:54,249 --> 01:35:54,958
Set.
1041
01:35:57,919 --> 01:36:03,216
I guess he was turning in my direction,
because something caught my eye out of the, uh-
1042
01:36:03,341 --> 01:36:05,677
out of my window and
I said, "Hey, look at that."
1043
01:36:05,802 --> 01:36:11,600
And it turned about to be the Earth
coming up over the stark lunar horizon.
1044
01:36:16,313 --> 01:36:18,523
Oh my God, look at that picture over there.
1045
01:36:18,648 --> 01:36:21,234
You can see the Earth
coming up. Wow, that's pretty.
1046
01:36:22,569 --> 01:36:25,280
Hey don't take that, it's not scheduled.
1047
01:36:27,199 --> 01:36:28,617
You got a color film, Jim?
1048
01:36:29,743 --> 01:36:32,162
- Hand me a roll of color quick, would you?
- Oh man, that's great.
1049
01:36:32,287 --> 01:36:33,538
- Where is it?
- Quick.
1050
01:36:33,663 --> 01:36:37,501
Just grab me a color.
A color exterior.
1051
01:36:37,626 --> 01:36:39,169
Got one?
1052
01:36:39,294 --> 01:36:41,463
Yeah, I'm
looking for one. C368.
1053
01:36:41,588 --> 01:36:42,422
Anything, quick.
1054
01:36:43,507 --> 01:36:47,552
Hey, I've got it right here.
Bill, I've got it framed it's very clear right here.
1055
01:36:55,143 --> 01:36:56,520
- Got it?
- Yup.
1056
01:36:56,645 --> 01:36:58,522
- Just take several of them.
- Take several of... Here, give it to me.
1057
01:36:58,647 --> 01:37:00,857
Wait a minute, let me just get the right setting here now.
Just calm...
1058
01:37:00,982 --> 01:37:02,818
Take... Calm down, Lovell.
1059
01:37:02,943 --> 01:37:05,111
Well I got it right.
Oh, that's a beautiful shot.
1060
01:37:08,740 --> 01:37:13,078
We had not been programmed, for an Earthrise.
1061
01:37:13,203 --> 01:37:16,706
Uh, nobody had said anything
about taking pictures of it.
1062
01:37:16,832 --> 01:37:18,875
We didn't even have a light meter.
1063
01:37:32,848 --> 01:37:36,935
What did it really mean,
as the three of us looked at the Earth coming up, and
1064
01:37:37,060 --> 01:37:42,691
finally getting a, a true
perspective of where we were,
1065
01:37:42,816 --> 01:37:46,444
three guys just two-hundred and
forty-thousand miles from the Earth.
1066
01:37:50,824 --> 01:37:55,328
There is this beautiful
planet. Blue, with white clouds.
1067
01:37:55,453 --> 01:37:59,374
Kinda brownish pink on us that
you could clearly distinguish.
1068
01:37:59,499 --> 01:38:05,171
Terribly isolated, with a black,
black background of, uh, of space.
1069
01:38:08,842 --> 01:38:12,262
I thought, you know,
how insignificant we all are.
1070
01:38:12,387 --> 01:38:14,347
Everybody I ever knew.
1071
01:38:14,472 --> 01:38:18,351
Five billion people could be
behind my thumb as I put it up.
1072
01:38:18,476 --> 01:38:23,481
And I thought how lucky we
are that we have a body like that,
1073
01:38:23,607 --> 01:38:27,569
that, uh, is there so that
we can live and enjoy it.
1074
01:38:27,694 --> 01:38:32,240
There were no other points of color in
the whole universe except for the Earth.
1075
01:38:33,617 --> 01:38:35,827
But it was everything that we
held dear was back there.
1076
01:38:35,994 --> 01:38:37,746
Two hundred and forty-thousand miles away.
1077
01:38:37,871 --> 01:38:43,084
Our families, our country, uh, everything,
and it was, uh, uh, Christmas Eve.
1078
01:38:43,209 --> 01:38:47,339
So it was a very nostalgic moment,
uh, looking back at the Earth.
1079
01:38:49,382 --> 01:38:52,218
We often talk about going to heaven when we die.
1080
01:38:53,219 --> 01:38:59,100
But in reality, don't we go
to heaven when we're born?
1081
01:38:59,225 --> 01:39:05,231
Because, uh, don't we arrive on a, uh,
on a body that has the proper mass,
1082
01:39:06,983 --> 01:39:09,903
uh, that can contain water, and an atmosphere?
1083
01:39:10,820 --> 01:39:13,114
The very essentials of, of life?
1084
01:39:14,157 --> 01:39:19,162
And don't we arrive on a body
that's just at the right distance
1085
01:39:19,287 --> 01:39:25,168
from a star that provides the energy,
the energy to the Earth?
1086
01:39:25,293 --> 01:39:29,673
And that energy is what caused
life to evolve in the beginning.
1087
01:39:30,674 --> 01:39:37,347
In some aspects, God has really given us a stage.
A stage on which to perform.
1088
01:39:38,348 --> 01:39:43,103
And I think that how this play comes out,
uh, is really up to us.
1089
01:39:48,900 --> 01:39:52,862
This is Apollo 8, uh,
coming to you live from the Moon.
1090
01:39:52,988 --> 01:39:55,407
Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and myself
1091
01:39:56,449 --> 01:40:04,040
have spent the, the day before Christmas up here,
and doing experiments, taking pictures.
1092
01:40:04,165 --> 01:40:08,086
And, uh, firing our spacecraft
and just the maneuver around.
1093
01:40:09,254 --> 01:40:12,757
The Moon is a, uh, different
thing to each one of us.
1094
01:40:12,882 --> 01:40:17,345
I think that each one of, uh...
each one, uh, carries his own impressions
1095
01:40:17,470 --> 01:40:19,639
of what, uh, of what he's seen today.
1096
01:40:19,764 --> 01:40:26,771
I know my own impression is that it's a,
a vast, lonely forbidding type...
1097
01:40:28,356 --> 01:40:29,733
existence.
1098
01:40:29,858 --> 01:40:31,776
Like spans of nothing.
1099
01:40:34,446 --> 01:40:38,533
We are, uh, now approaching a lunar sunrise.
1100
01:40:38,658 --> 01:40:42,328
And, uh, for all the people back on Earth,
1101
01:40:42,454 --> 01:40:46,750
the crew of Apollo 8 has a message
that we would like to send to you.
1102
01:40:49,669 --> 01:40:54,090
In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the Earth.
1103
01:40:54,215 --> 01:41:00,138
And the Earth was without form, and void,
and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
1104
01:41:01,181 --> 01:41:04,976
And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters.
1105
01:41:05,143 --> 01:41:10,315
And God said, "Let there be
light."And there was light.
1106
01:41:10,440 --> 01:41:13,651
And God saw the light, that it was good,
1107
01:41:13,777 --> 01:41:16,446
and God divided the light from the darkness.
1108
01:41:17,489 --> 01:41:23,328
And from the crew of Apollo 8,
we close with good night, good luck,
1109
01:41:23,453 --> 01:41:27,207
a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you.
1110
01:41:27,332 --> 01:41:29,250
All of you on the good Earth.
1111
01:41:35,882 --> 01:41:38,426
Ken, we'd like to get all
squared away for TEI here.
1112
01:41:38,551 --> 01:41:40,887
Could you, uh, give us some
good words like you promised?
1113
01:41:41,012 --> 01:41:43,223
Yes, sir. I have
a Maneuver PAD.
1114
01:41:43,348 --> 01:41:46,559
Uh, I think we'd like
to start by dumping the tape.
1115
01:41:46,684 --> 01:41:50,605
If we can have that, I have
your TEI-10 Maneuver PAD,
1116
01:41:50,730 --> 01:41:52,774
and then we'll run through a systems brief.
1117
01:41:52,899 --> 01:41:57,570
After we had, uh, read from Genesis,
and we prepared to return to the Earth,
1118
01:41:57,695 --> 01:42:01,825
on the backside of the Moon we lit the,
uh, service propulsion engine
1119
01:42:01,950 --> 01:42:05,328
to accelerate, uh, out of lunar gravity.
1120
01:42:05,453 --> 01:42:10,250
But this time, pointing forward,
in order to accelerate the spacecraft
1121
01:42:10,375 --> 01:42:14,337
to a velocity that would now tear the...
itself away from lunar gravity.
1122
01:42:14,462 --> 01:42:19,134
If it hadn't worked, we'd be in big trouble.
I mean, we'd still be there.
1123
01:42:19,259 --> 01:42:25,390
Pretty desiccated, but still be, uh,
uh, monuments to Apollo's failure.
1124
01:42:25,515 --> 01:42:28,810
Okay, Apollo 8. Uh,
we've reviewed all your systems.
1125
01:42:28,935 --> 01:42:32,814
You have a go for TEI.
Three minutes LOS.
1126
01:42:32,939 --> 01:42:35,567
All systems are go. Over.
1127
01:42:35,692 --> 01:42:38,486
Roger. Thank you,
Houston. Apollo 8.
1128
01:42:38,611 --> 01:42:43,241
We came up with, uh, a number.
I think it was 99, 22, I'm not mistaken.
1129
01:42:43,366 --> 01:42:47,537
And that number essentially said to you,
do you really wanna make this maneuver?
1130
01:42:47,662 --> 01:42:49,664
It gave you a little chance to get out of it.
1131
01:42:49,789 --> 01:42:52,208
If you didn't wanna make the
maneuver, you could say cancel.
1132
01:42:52,333 --> 01:42:55,336
And so then, uh, then five seconds later,
1133
01:42:55,461 --> 01:42:59,299
uh, you know, uh, I, I hit
proceed, and then it would go.
1134
01:42:59,424 --> 01:43:03,261
And of course I,
I hesitated after I saw that, for a little bit.
1135
01:43:03,386 --> 01:43:05,513
And of course Borman gave me the elbow.
1136
01:43:05,638 --> 01:43:09,601
He said, you know, "Push the button.
Push the button." So I pushed the button,
1137
01:43:09,726 --> 01:43:12,645
and of course that set up
the thing to fire the engine.
1138
01:43:28,828 --> 01:43:30,079
Apollo 8, Houston.
1139
01:43:37,212 --> 01:43:38,671
Apollo 8, Houston.
1140
01:43:42,050 --> 01:43:44,260
Houston, Apollo 8, over.
1141
01:43:44,385 --> 01:43:46,554
Hello, Apollo 8. Loud and clear.
1142
01:43:46,679 --> 01:43:50,433
Roger.
Please be informed there is a Santa Clause.
1143
01:43:51,601 --> 01:43:52,894
There is a Santa Clause.
1144
01:43:53,019 --> 01:43:58,441
The astronauts' historic confirmation that
on Christmas Day they were headed home.
1145
01:44:30,640 --> 01:44:34,769
As we slowly got closer and closer to Earth,
when everything was fine,
1146
01:44:34,894 --> 01:44:37,605
we jettisoned the service module.
1147
01:44:37,730 --> 01:44:41,567
As it tuckered away,
we made a maneuver to make sure we wouldn't get hit by it.
1148
01:44:48,950 --> 01:44:52,912
Nobody had done a, a
reentry from this high velocity.
1149
01:44:53,037 --> 01:44:55,790
Had to make certain that you
were properly positioned.
1150
01:44:55,915 --> 01:45:00,753
We had to hit a quarter,
I think it was something like six or seven degrees wide.
1151
01:45:00,878 --> 01:45:07,010
We were making a night reentry. First night reentry.
First high speed reentry. A lot of firsts.
1152
01:45:07,135 --> 01:45:11,556
Through a set of marks on the commander's window,
1153
01:45:11,681 --> 01:45:14,100
he could then kinda take a look at when the...
1154
01:45:14,225 --> 01:45:16,394
when he would see the Moon at a certain time,
1155
01:45:16,519 --> 01:45:20,815
looking out his window,
that would tell him pretty much that he was on the proper course,
1156
01:45:20,940 --> 01:45:22,900
uh, to come on and, uh, make a landing.
1157
01:45:23,026 --> 01:45:27,947
I mentioned, uh, to, uh, Frank
and Jim, uh, that it looked like
1158
01:45:28,072 --> 01:45:30,325
the, uh... things
were getting pink.
1159
01:45:31,242 --> 01:45:34,746
And they said, oh don't worry,
uh, that's just sunrise.
1160
01:45:34,871 --> 01:45:37,081
These are the experts speaking.
1161
01:45:37,206 --> 01:45:40,918
Turns out that the reentry from
the Moon is exciting for anybody.
1162
01:45:42,962 --> 01:45:45,089
Oh man, we're getting close.
1163
01:45:45,214 --> 01:45:46,841
There's no turning back now.
1164
01:45:47,842 --> 01:45:49,302
Old Mother Earth has us.
1165
01:45:52,597 --> 01:45:55,266
God damn this is going
to be a real ride. Hang on.
1166
01:45:55,391 --> 01:45:57,268
I've never seen it this bright before.
1167
01:45:58,311 --> 01:45:59,270
0.05g!
1168
01:45:59,395 --> 01:46:00,897
- 0.05g!
- Okay, we got it.
1169
01:46:01,022 --> 01:46:02,357
- Put the EMS, On.
- Hang on.
1170
01:46:02,482 --> 01:46:04,108
0.05g switch on.
1171
01:46:05,109 --> 01:46:06,986
- 0.05g Roll to EMS.
- Right.
1172
01:46:07,111 --> 01:46:08,237
Okay, gang.
1173
01:46:09,822 --> 01:46:11,449
They're building up.
1174
01:46:11,574 --> 01:46:13,409
We're 1g.
1175
01:46:13,534 --> 01:46:15,787
Three! Four!
1176
01:46:18,122 --> 01:46:18,998
Okay.
1177
01:46:19,123 --> 01:46:19,999
Five!
1178
01:46:21,084 --> 01:46:21,751
Six!
1179
01:46:24,879 --> 01:46:26,297
Damndest thing I ever saw.
1180
01:46:27,882 --> 01:46:30,218
Gemini was never like that, was it, Jim?
1181
01:46:30,343 --> 01:46:32,053
I assure you I've never seen anything like it.
1182
01:46:33,638 --> 01:46:38,684
Drogue set, uh... You
got them there? 8:16.
1183
01:46:38,810 --> 01:46:40,269
Houston,
Apollo 8. Over.
1184
01:46:54,242 --> 01:46:57,245
Roger, this is a real
fireball. It's looking good.
1185
01:46:57,370 --> 01:46:59,122
Come on, John Glenn.
1186
01:46:59,247 --> 01:47:00,915
We're in real good shape, Houston.
1187
01:47:03,835 --> 01:47:05,086
- ELS logic on.
- Right.
1188
01:47:05,211 --> 01:47:06,796
- ELS. Auto.
- Auto.
1189
01:47:06,921 --> 01:47:10,675
Stand by for RCS to be disabled.
Stand by on the apex cover.
1190
01:47:10,800 --> 01:47:11,801
Right.
1191
01:47:12,718 --> 01:47:15,138
- There's the apex cover.
- There go the drogues.
1192
01:47:19,308 --> 01:47:20,393
Okay.
1193
01:47:21,894 --> 01:47:23,354
Twenty-thousand.
1194
01:47:23,521 --> 01:47:24,856
Cabin pressure is coming up.
1195
01:47:24,981 --> 01:47:27,733
Nineteen-thousand.
Fifteen.
1196
01:47:27,859 --> 01:47:29,819
Stand by with the mains in one second.
1197
01:47:38,327 --> 01:47:40,163
- You see it?
- Can't see it.
1198
01:47:40,288 --> 01:47:41,789
It should reef pretty soon.
1199
01:47:46,043 --> 01:47:48,379
- Okay, you got them?
- Yeah.
1200
01:47:48,504 --> 01:47:50,506
Float Bag, three, circuit breakers closed.
1201
01:47:50,631 --> 01:47:51,340
Closed.
1202
01:47:51,466 --> 01:47:54,302
VHF antennas, recovery.
VHFAM, simplex.
1203
01:47:55,344 --> 01:47:57,763
Beacons going on.
Get your light on.
1204
01:47:57,889 --> 01:47:59,265
It's on.
1205
01:47:59,390 --> 01:48:01,726
You got your...
You got it, Jim.
1206
01:48:01,851 --> 01:48:02,518
Huh?
1207
01:48:02,643 --> 01:48:03,936
You got the
call. Give them a call.
1208
01:48:04,061 --> 01:48:04,896
Okay.
1209
01:48:05,021 --> 01:48:06,481
Houston, Apollo 8. Over.
1210
01:48:06,606 --> 01:48:09,609
Apollo 8. Airboss 1.
Welcome home, gentlemen.
1211
01:48:09,734 --> 01:48:11,986
And we'll have you aboard in no time.
1212
01:48:17,408 --> 01:48:21,579
When we hit the surface,
we must have hit on an uprising swell,
1213
01:48:21,704 --> 01:48:26,667
because we hit so hard that I
thought the spacecraft had split open.
1214
01:48:29,086 --> 01:48:31,672
And I got inundated with water.
1215
01:48:31,797 --> 01:48:33,424
Uh, we weren't sure where the water came from.
1216
01:48:33,591 --> 01:48:37,303
I thought at first maybe we'd popped a seam,
or a, a vent valve had opened.
1217
01:48:37,428 --> 01:48:40,264
But later on I think it was probably condensation
1218
01:48:40,389 --> 01:48:43,643
from around environmental
control unit that had inundated me.
1219
01:48:43,768 --> 01:48:49,565
We hit so hard that it knocked Frank's finger off the,
uh, parachute release switch.
1220
01:48:49,690 --> 01:48:54,320
So the parachutes were released late.
And it turned us over.
1221
01:48:54,445 --> 01:48:59,450
So here we were floating
upside down in the Pacific.
1222
01:48:59,575 --> 01:49:03,746
And so with pointy end down,
all the trash that had collected in the spacecraft
1223
01:49:03,871 --> 01:49:08,543
and, uh, came raining down
on our faces in the dark.
1224
01:49:08,668 --> 01:49:13,214
And I thought this is not a,
a great way to end this historic adventure,
1225
01:49:13,339 --> 01:49:17,885
as if we were in a New York subway that
somebody turned upside down and shook.
1226
01:49:18,010 --> 01:49:20,763
The spacecraft was going up and down, and around.
1227
01:49:20,888 --> 01:49:25,977
It was a very poor boat.
Uh, a, a wonderful spacecraft, but a very poor boat.
1228
01:49:26,102 --> 01:49:31,607
So we were floating out there. Pretty rough sea.
Uh, poor Frank got sick again.
1229
01:49:31,732 --> 01:49:35,319
Jim and I were somewhat
merciless, maybe a little mean,
1230
01:49:35,444 --> 01:49:39,115
because we were both Naval Academy
graduates and he was a West Point guy.
1231
01:49:39,240 --> 01:49:42,493
All you did was push another
switch and started a compressor,
1232
01:49:42,618 --> 01:49:43,953
blew up a couple balloons,
1233
01:49:44,078 --> 01:49:48,666
and the buoyancy of the balloons below
the surface flipped us back right upside.
1234
01:49:48,791 --> 01:49:52,712
Waited there quite a few
hours for the sun to come up,
1235
01:49:52,837 --> 01:49:57,800
because the rescue crews, uh,
were somewhat reluctant to jump in the dark.
1236
01:49:57,925 --> 01:50:02,221
Uh,
and there were apparently sharks swimming around the spacecraft.
1237
01:50:02,346 --> 01:50:04,307
And so they had to, uh...
1238
01:50:04,432 --> 01:50:09,312
I think they dispatched a few sharks,
so that NASA didn't make a release about that.
1239
01:50:09,437 --> 01:50:13,733
But then, uh, jumped in and, uh...
put a, uh, stabilization ring,
1240
01:50:13,858 --> 01:50:16,611
like a big life ring, around the spacecraft.
1241
01:50:19,488 --> 01:50:24,910
We ope... started opening the hatch.
And, uh, this young man poked his head in,
1242
01:50:25,036 --> 01:50:26,787
and immediately fell backwards.
1243
01:50:29,248 --> 01:50:32,001
So anyway, we got out.
And I noticed there was a strange smell.
1244
01:50:32,126 --> 01:50:33,419
Turned out to be fresh air.
1245
01:50:33,544 --> 01:50:36,839
Things had gotten pretty ripe in that spacecraft.
1246
01:50:36,964 --> 01:50:38,674
This is Apollo Control.
1247
01:50:38,799 --> 01:50:43,888
Houston, we've just been advised that the hatch of Apollo 8,
the hatch is now open.
1248
01:50:47,391 --> 01:50:53,731
And we, uh,
we are advised that the first astronaut is in the helicopter.
1249
01:50:53,856 --> 01:50:57,985
No more identification than that,
just the first astronaut in a helicopter.
1250
01:50:58,110 --> 01:51:01,155
And I kept thinking,
this has to be the most dangerous part of the flight,
1251
01:51:01,280 --> 01:51:06,786
because whereas we had triple
redundancy on most things during the flight,
1252
01:51:06,911 --> 01:51:08,454
here was just one cable.
1253
01:51:10,456 --> 01:51:13,167
Second astronaut's on his way up.
1254
01:51:13,292 --> 01:51:17,338
Uh, second astronaut in the sling and on his way.
1255
01:51:19,090 --> 01:51:25,805
Right, the third astronaut is in the sling and is being,
uh, brought up into the helicopter.
1256
01:51:25,930 --> 01:51:30,643
Recovery 3 has been given
permission to land first.
1257
01:51:38,484 --> 01:51:45,074
And touchdown at, uh, twenty minutes, uh, for the hour.
11:20 Central Standard Time.
1258
01:51:45,199 --> 01:51:50,621
Astronaut Borman, and Lovell,
and Anders, standing on the steps.
1259
01:51:52,415 --> 01:51:57,086
And a great cheer goes up from
the sailors out here on the flight deck.
1260
01:51:57,211 --> 01:52:03,050
Roar in here, the North American people are in.
The room is awash with cigar smoke.
1261
01:52:03,175 --> 01:52:09,557
Every console operator is displaying a flag at his desk.
And I have never seen,
1262
01:52:09,682 --> 01:52:15,438
uh,
the degree of this emotional outpouring in any previous mission,
1263
01:52:15,563 --> 01:52:17,857
including Alan Shepard's.
1264
01:52:17,982 --> 01:52:21,902
I've seen, uh,
rallies in locker rooms after championship games.
1265
01:52:22,027 --> 01:52:24,905
I've seen happy politicians after elections.
1266
01:52:25,030 --> 01:52:29,535
But I...
none of them do justice to the spirit pervading this room.
1267
01:52:30,786 --> 01:52:36,959
Someone suggested we've set the American
Cancer Society's anti-smoking campaign back,
1268
01:52:37,084 --> 01:52:39,044
uh, several light years.
1269
01:52:49,096 --> 01:52:53,642
Being the kind of men they are,
they certainly have no taste for being heroes.
1270
01:52:53,768 --> 01:52:59,356
But even in this age of cynicism, and skepticism,
when we almost don't have any heroes,
1271
01:52:59,482 --> 01:53:01,317
they may have a hard time escaping.
1272
01:53:05,404 --> 01:53:10,326
I think Apollo 8 was perhaps,
of all the Apollo missions to the Moon,
1273
01:53:10,451 --> 01:53:14,663
uh, was the one that was the most perfect.
1274
01:53:14,789 --> 01:53:16,582
Least amount of problems.
1275
01:53:16,707 --> 01:53:23,464
Uh, things worked as planned, uh, and,
uh, there were no bits of the mission
1276
01:53:23,589 --> 01:53:26,467
that we didn't know about, we didn't plan for,
1277
01:53:26,592 --> 01:53:30,095
uh, for the follow on, uh, lunar landing flights.
1278
01:53:30,221 --> 01:53:36,060
I think Apollo 8's legacy is
really a, uh, turning point
1279
01:53:36,185 --> 01:53:41,440
in the history of exploration, uh, from Columbus,
1280
01:53:41,565 --> 01:53:47,154
uh, to Lewis and Clark, uh, to Apollo 8.
This was the forerunners.
1281
01:53:47,279 --> 01:53:54,537
This was the people who put their first step forward into,
uh, the, uh final frontier.
1282
01:53:54,662 --> 01:54:00,209
I think it helped to unify the country, and to...
to give us some, uh, cohesiveness
1283
01:54:00,334 --> 01:54:04,296
in the space of the terrible problems of Vietnam.
1284
01:54:04,421 --> 01:54:09,760
The greatest accomplishment was
doing what the president had asked us to do
1285
01:54:09,885 --> 01:54:14,515
within the time frame that he asked us to.
That was an... a heck of an achievement.
1286
01:54:14,640 --> 01:54:19,311
We got tons of telegrams
and letters after the flight.
1287
01:54:19,436 --> 01:54:23,065
And I reme- The one that sticks out in
my mind more than any other was it said,
1288
01:54:23,190 --> 01:54:27,695
"Congratulations, Apollo 8.
You saved 1968."
1289
01:54:27,820 --> 01:54:34,243
Apollo 8 will go down in history as
the first flight away from the Earth,
1290
01:54:34,368 --> 01:54:39,540
and to another body in the
solar system, uh, our moon.
1291
01:54:39,665 --> 01:54:44,712
Uh, it will go down in the technical
history as the first flight on the Saturn V,
1292
01:54:44,837 --> 01:54:46,755
and setting the world speed record.
1293
01:54:47,673 --> 01:54:51,760
I frankly think that Apollo 8
will be remembered more
1294
01:54:51,886 --> 01:54:55,097
by the Earthrise picture a
hundred years from now.
1295
01:54:55,222 --> 01:55:00,019
And the fact that this was our
first, uh, view of looking back,
1296
01:55:00,144 --> 01:55:03,188
uh, at the Earth from relatively deep space.
1297
01:55:03,314 --> 01:55:08,569
And I said at the time, and, uh,
uh, it certainly affects me today,
1298
01:55:08,694 --> 01:55:12,031
that I think it's ironic that we
went all the way to the Moon,
1299
01:55:12,156 --> 01:55:16,160
and to explore the Moon, what we
really discovered was the Earth.