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July 16, 2025 38 mins

On this episode of Our American Stories, before Neil Armstrong ever took that famous first step, the Apollo program was a long shot fueled by ambition, sacrifice, and belief in the American spirit. Space historian Steve Kates, known to many as Dr. Sky, takes us behind the scenes of America’s race to the Moon, sharing the near misses, quiet heroics, and moments the world never saw.

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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to share your stories with us, send them to
our American stories dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
We love hearing them and we love playing them.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Up next, a story of perhaps our greatest adventure as
a country, conquering the final frontier and not only getting
a man on the moon, but returning him safely to Earth.
This epic journey began out of a place of fear
in the nineteen fifties. Here to tell the story is
Steve Keates aka Doctor Sky.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Take it away, Steve.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
During this period of time in nineteen fifties, as many
people who were old enough to know, there was great
tension between Russia and the United States and something that
was eventually described as cold board.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
Any attack upon Cuba will be regarded as an attack
upon the Soviet Union be responded to by all the
weapons of their command.

Speaker 5 (01:08):
There is, before all people is a precious chance to
turn the black tide of a Vif if we failed
to strive to see this.

Speaker 6 (01:14):
Champ, the judgment of future ages will be harsh and sad.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
To say, the entire United States military and the Russian military,
or Soviet military at the time, was hell bent on
developing and continuing to build many nuclear weapons. But the
real changer in the game, the game changer that I
like to describe here is what happened when the Soviet
Union launched the very first artificial satellite, known as Sputnik one,

(01:41):
that of course changed everything. It was a small sphere,
maybe twenty four inches in diameter, and it had three
antennas and weighed about one hundred and eighty five pounds.
What it was doing was it was sending and transmitting
radio signals to ground stations on the Earth, just to
test the ability to actually hear or listen to communications

(02:03):
from space. There weren't actual voice communications. This is all
the pre dawn of color communications in space. It was
amazing to people, particularly here in America and say other
free countries around the world, to imagine that their violated
airspace just became that that something from another country was
up over the top of them. And in the spirit

(02:23):
of the Cold War, this obviously brought about ideas that
maybe they could drop a hydrogen bomb or an atomic
weapon from space right on top of your head. And
at that time we had nothing that we could do
about it. Until the continuing evolution of the space program,
we really were in a race. I mean, let's not

(02:46):
say that the United States military was asleep at the
switch or asleep at the wheel. We had plans to
build rockets, and whether they were just for military purposes
or a future space exploration, the sad state of the
affair is that men any of the early American rockets
ended in failure. And there's so many videos had to
say on YouTube that archives every day or other places

(03:08):
around the world where the archival sixteen millimeter films are
still kept, people were actually seeing the explosion pretty regularly,
more the norm than anything else of rockets on the
launch pad. And why did that happen? Was it that
we had bad science? No, it was that the Russians
at the time, the Soviets, they were simply ahead of
the United States at that point in time. They had

(03:29):
the ability to develop these rockets. I would say that
they were at least ten years ahead of the United
States in the ability to actually have a readily available
military vehicle to go into space. But let's also remember
the primary thing, as Nikita Krushchev said many many times over,
and I'm not going to quote him, but I'm going
to give the best general description here so our listeners
can understand it in the simplest way. The primary mode

(03:53):
for them was not necessarily just to put something into space.
They wanted to have superiority within their konninobilistic missiles ICBMs,
and that those launch rockets that they had were simply
the rockets that were to deliver their nuclear weapons that
they had developed. I would repeat it again. Their main
mode of operation there was to build a delivery system

(04:14):
to deliver nuclear weapons to the United States and other
places in the world that weren't friendly to the Soviet Union.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
All right, I left off.

Speaker 5 (04:22):
When the clockets started, any allowed Claire.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
The first American manned spacecraft, of course, was a Redstone rocket,
in which one of the most famous of all astronauts,
Alan Sheppard, launched into space on a small, simple, little
Redstone rocket. But on that historic date of May fifth,
nineteen sixty one, Alan Shepherd does what's called a suborbital flight.

Speaker 7 (04:43):
And what is that.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Obviously, the Russians, the Soviets at the time, had put
Yurdi Gagarin into space back on April the twelfth of
nineteen sixty one, he actually orbited the Earth for an
hour and forty eight minutes in what they called was
a Vastok spacecraft. Alan Sheppard did his by doing a
suborbital flight. And let me describe that for everybody listening.

(05:04):
Alan Shepherd's flight was not a circumnavigation flight around the Earth.
It was simply launched to a certain altitude, break the
barrier when you get up above what they call the
Carmon line, which depending on who you ask, the beginnings
of space start relatively between fifty and sixty miles above
the Earth. So Alan Sheppard, he of course ignited so
much enthusiasm and success, But there was also a bunch

(05:28):
of guys that were also part of an early program
called the Mercury Project, in which they launched on rocket
similar to that so many of those astronauts, of course,
John Glenn, Wally Sharrah. We could go on and on,
but the important part of what happened with the early
part of the Mercury program is that they used initially,
they used the basic Redstone rocket to get their Mercury

(05:49):
capsules to go up into orbit. And I should say
that's when they did go into orbit around the Earth.
After Alan Shepherd's suborbital flight, so that particular part of
America's space program was called Mercury. And then when it
transpired into something even more phenomenal, we used what was
originally an ICBM type missile called the Titan TiO and

(06:10):
the Gemini, of course, meaning twin you had a two
manned capsule, the Gemini capsule to test out how we
would maneuver in space and do docking in space, but
to answer the question that people are probably wondering out there.
Apollo was the next mission, and that all started with
inspiration by John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy's speech at Rice

(06:31):
University back on September the twelfth of nineteen sixty two,
when the words that I won't quote exactly why some
say the moon?

Speaker 4 (06:41):
Why choose this as our goal? And they may well
ask why climb the highest mountain? Why thirty five years
ago fly the Atlantics? Why does Rice play Texas?

Speaker 6 (06:54):
We choose to go to the moon.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
We choose to go to the moon, and this pay
and do the other things.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Because that goal well served to organize and measure the
theft of our energies and bills, because that challenge is
one that we're willing to accept. One we are willing
to postpone, and one we tend to win and the

(07:22):
others doill.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
So Apollo began our incredible journey to the Moon, and.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
You're listening to the story of Apollo. More of the
story after these messages. Folks, if you love the stories
we tell about this great country, and especially the stories
of America's rich past, know that all of our stories
about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith
are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are

(07:48):
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more. And we
returned to our American stories and the story of the

(08:12):
Apollo missions with Steve Kate's aka Doctor Sky. When we
last left off, Steve was telling us about how the
space race got started.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
After the launch of Sputnik.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
We were behind the Soviet Union by nearly a decade,
but President Kennedy promised that we'd land a man on
the moon by the end of the decade. That year
was nineteen sixty two. What kind of man could go
to the moon? Let's return to the story here again
is Steve Kate.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Well, we all seen the right stuff as a movie,
or at least I hope we have or read the book.
They're looking for people that have discipline. Now that's a
broad based statement. What's a discipline? They want people from
a military background, who know how to solve problems, who
can take orders. That's an important thing too. You not
only had to meet those criteria intellectually. I mean, I'm
sure there were great many IQ tests given, and many

(09:08):
people passed and many people failed.

Speaker 8 (09:10):
Here's Jim Lovell, astronaut on Apollo eight and courtesy of
NASA Johnson's Space Center Oral History Collection with more.

Speaker 9 (09:19):
That physical was nothing like anybody had ever heard of before,
you know it was. What they did to us was
unknown to the medical profession because they knew that they
had GETEA pigs.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
You have to have the ability not to be claustrophobic.
I mean that comes to a personal thing that if
people go into let's say, a large MRI machine for
a medical procedure and they have a difficulty going through
that type tube. Well, you might simply be categorized as
being claustrophobic, but these astronauts have to be able to
handle critical situations.

Speaker 9 (09:52):
They knew we're going to go into an environment that
was completely strange, so they did things just for background
and you know, from data. And I went through there.
But when I got there, the next selection was to
go onto down to a second group at Wright Pattison
Air Force Base for some more tests and things like that.
That doctor caught me and said, well, you're finished, And

(10:14):
I said finished? Why I might not accept it now? Now?
I said, what's wrong? And they said, well, you have
a high billy rubin. I said, I don't even know
what a high billy rubin is. What is it? It
was too much pinkment in your blood.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
And actually you needed to not be too tall. I
know that sounds a little maybe unusual to people, because
well maybe not because the average height of these astronauts
was not six foot four. So many NBA players would
probably be, you know, simply not able to do that,
even if their capabilities mentally and physically, we're there. You
have to be able to fit into the spam can.

(10:51):
So many medical experiments were done on these people, putting
them in pressure situations. They had to sit in a
thing called the centrifuge, which was this small all capsule
intentionally making you feel uncomfortable, and it starts spinning around
in a room in a circle. And that particular object
had three dimensions, so it could start moving, not as
you're going around just in a circle, but it could

(11:13):
start rotating in a different axis like you know, roll,
pitch and yaw and you certainly they wouldn't want to
be the person who obviously had, you know, the most nausea,
because that might disqualify you. But some of the interesting stories,
I thought it appropriate to honor the Apollo one crew
because this is an amazing story and most people never
heard it or they weren't even around at the time

(11:34):
when it happened. Three American astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffey,
and Ed White were put through a series of tests
to test out the small capsule that would be part
of the command module. We find these three astronauts over
and over going through this testing where they had to
get into spacesuits, climb into this small very strange, triangular

(11:56):
looking little spacecraft, the Apollo capsule, And this didn't happen
in space. This happened on the ground and on January
the twenty seventh of nineteen sixty seven, through all this
trial and errors, the astronauts are strapped into their seat.
It's known that Gus Gristm was complaining that they couldn't
talk between their capsule and the command center, which was

(12:18):
about twenty five feet away with wires.

Speaker 5 (12:22):
Get the moon.

Speaker 10 (12:22):
We can't drive.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
How are we going to get to the moon? And
he used a few choice words in there.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
That I'm leaving out.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
How can we get to the moon and communicate if
we can't talk within twenty feet. Well, on that very
same day, something very sad happened, and it's open to
how this really evolved. The three astronauts were strapped into
their chairs and they were breathing at the time one
hundred percent oxygen. And the design on this particular capsule
had two hatches. There was an inner and outer hatch

(12:52):
for brevity, and if you needed to get those hatches open,
it would have taken a lot longer than today, just
opening like a car door or even a few levers
would move out as the modern day capsules, I'm sure have.
Well what happened. Allegedly some sort of wire short or
some kind of a fire broke out underneath their couches,

(13:25):
and sadly, those three astronauts, It's one of the most
horrific things I've ever heard, and they asphyxiated because they
couldn't get them out of the capsule. The Apollo program
might have been canceled in its entirety after this.

Speaker 9 (13:38):
The fire took place in nineteen sixty seven. We had
a commitment made by President Kennedy that we would land
a man on the Moon and bring it back home
safely before the end of the decade. And when the
fire occurred in January of sixty seven and we did
know really what it was going to do, everybody was
really down on the dump sand Holy Cow.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
But the government, NASA and others talked about what their
wishes would be, and they certainly wanted to continue the
space program. But just remember those astronauts and a few
others that died in training accidents in military aircraft to
train are some of the unsung heroes that never really
get to be talked about. Because space can be a
dangerous place, and it's not for everyone. But the positivity

(14:21):
that we've shown as a nation and other nations around
the world is to move away from this planet for
good reasons, to colonize the space like the early explorers
did in the ocean.

Speaker 9 (14:31):
You have to go by faith. You have to believe
in what the people are going to hand you.

Speaker 10 (14:37):
You know.

Speaker 9 (14:37):
Al Shepherd's old old joke was, you know, how does
the field have sit on top? Is help built by
the lowest better, But the lowest better is pretty expensive.
But you have to believe that whole thing.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
And I did Apollo Weight is quite fascinating.

Speaker 9 (14:51):
We're going to do four thousand miles so that we
could test the linum module of the command module and
then come back in a high rate of speed so that,
you know, we could test the each shield and things
like that. I recall this very vividly. The three of
us were out testing our spacecraft and Frank got a
call to go back to Houston. We so Bill and

(15:11):
I still stayed out there. We were working out there,
and Frank came back again back to Downy and said
things have changed, And we said, they said what he said?
Where if everything goes all right with Apollo seven. Pollowight,
we'll go to the moon.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Nacimated decision that they would send three astronauts on a
journey around the Moon for ten lunar orbits in nineteen
sixty eight, around Christmas time.

Speaker 9 (15:34):
I was elated. I thought, man, this is great. I mean,
I already spent two weeks and it's basing geventy seven
with Frank Borman. I didn't want to spend another eleven
days or something like that. You're going around the Earth again.
I said, this is fantastic. And on the way back,
on the way back of the T thirty eight, when
it was by a turn to sit in the backseat
and either Bill or Frank or flying, I drew the

(15:54):
Apollo eate Insignia.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
Apollo seven was to test out the entire Apollo capsule
to come out module where you live, the appetation module,
and then to be able to maybe move and separate
that little spacecraft in eventual missions, which is the Lunar Lander.

Speaker 9 (16:09):
The lunar module wasn't ready, and the lunar module was
supposed to go up there, you know, and be tested on.
And we had intelligence and information that the Russians were
going to put people around the Moon. They were really
attempting to land people on the Moon and had tried
all sorts of things to get there. And we're building
a huge rocket called the n one built ten of them,

(16:31):
flew four. None was really successful. But they were very
persistent people, and they were very close to actually doing that.
They had sent a couple of spacecraft up went around
the Moon. One was not successful, one was partially successful,
the next one. The two cosmonauts and I know them
wanted to go. And then they hesitated back and forth.
The hierarchy argued should we had another unmanned or should

(16:54):
we not? And when they did that, this side of
the Atlantic bold leadership at this time they said, al's
not ready the command service bojule if it proves out
and Pollow seven will be okay. Hustville thinks the booster
it could be okay, and so they said, let's send
Apollo eight to the boat. And so that's how it
came to pass.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
There was a lot of objections in some of the
higher offices of NASSA that this might not have been
the right thing to do, because we only tested Apollo
seven in Earth orbit, and yet we haven't sent a
Paulo spacecraft to the Moon. Yet so Frank Borman, Jim Lovell,
and William Anders did that most incredible feat.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
And we've been listening to a heck of a story
of how America got to the Moon and how we
got there before our competitors, our primary competitor being the
Soviet Union.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
When we come back more of this remarkable.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Story with Steve Kate's aka Doctor Sky after these messages,

(18:07):
and we're back with our American stories and the story
of the Apollo missions in our incredible journey to the
Moon with Steve Kate's. When we last left off, Steve
was telling us about the tests that the astronauts selected
to be in the Apollo program had to go through,
tests that could be deadly like Apollo one. After the

(18:27):
fire and Apollo one, the Apollo missions could have been canceled,
but they weren't. We pushed forward and after a few
successful flights, decided to send a group of astronauts into
space around Christmas time. That mission Apollo eight. Here again
is Steve Kates.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Apollo eight nacinated decision that they would send three astronauts
on a journey around the Moon for ten lunar orbits
in nineteen sixty eight, around Christmas time. There was a
lot of objections in some of the higher offices of
NASA that this might not have been the right thing
to do because we only tested Apollo seven in Earth orbit,

(19:07):
and yet we haven't sent a Paulo spicecraft to the
Moon yet. So Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders
did that most incredible feat.

Speaker 8 (19:15):
Here's Jim Levell, astronaut on Apollo eight with more.

Speaker 9 (19:19):
Well, my first sensations, Courus was not too far from
the Earth because when we turned around we could actually
see the Earth start to shrink. Now, the highest anybody
had ever been I think had been either I think
it was Apollo or Gemy eleven up about eight hundred
miles or something like that, and back down again, and
all of a sudden, you know, we're just just going down.
And it was It reminds me of driving a car

(19:42):
looking out the back window, going inside a tunnel and
seeing the tunnel entrance shrink as it gets as you
go farther into the tunnel. It was quite a quite
a sensation to think about, you know, and you had
to pinch yourself, Hey, we're really going to the Moon.
I mean, you know, this is it. I was a
navigator and it turned out that they have a gation
equipment was perfect. I mean, it was just you couldn't

(20:03):
ask for a better piece of navigation equipment coming into
the Moon itself. The last day, our blunt end was
towards the Moon, and we didn't see it as it
got bigger. But the ground called up and the Michigan
Control said, now it's such and such a time, and
they named it. Right down to the second you lose
communication with us because the Moon's gradual swinging around on
the far side. Right to the second, there were static

(20:25):
in our earphones, no comm Then, of course we lit
the engine to slow down and we got into lunar orbit,
and this is where we started to look at the moon,
you know, and we all those nice things we said
and that Christmas message. When we determined first of all
that we would get and burn into the lunar orbit

(20:50):
on Christmas Eve, we thought, boy, we something's got to
be appropriate to say. We ought to say something. What
can we say? And we couldn't think of anything. Then
there was a fellow that I think Borman knew. His
name is cybergane, Well.

Speaker 7 (21:02):
It's another example of the wonderful country live in we go.
Julian Cheer, who was the head of public information for
NASA in Washington, call me one day and so you're
going to have the largest audience that's ever listened to
or seen a television picture of a human on Christmas
Eve and you've got I don't know, five or six minutes.
And I said, well, that's great, Julian, what do we do?

(21:23):
And he said, do whatever is appropriate. That's the only instructions.
Then that's the exact word. Do whatever is appropriate, whatever
you feel is appropriate, and be honest with you. We
were so involved in the mission and this was a
peripheral one, so I just kind of farmed that out
to a friend of mine, cyborgan And from Washington.

Speaker 9 (21:46):
He was with the US Information Agency I think had
gone with them some of the astronauts an around their trips.
Frank asked him, could he come up with something appropriate? Well,
he could, but he knew another person I think those
newspaper man, I forget his name that he said, Okay,
I'll think it over. I'll try to see what I
can do. And he was working almost all night trying

(22:07):
to think out appropriate words, and his wife came down
and said, why don't you have them read something from
the Bible, And they said, well, that's, you know, the
New Testament. Now, she says, the.

Speaker 7 (22:17):
Old Testament reading from Genesis.

Speaker 9 (22:20):
Because you know, this would be very appropriate.

Speaker 7 (22:22):
And I discussed it with Bill and Gemmen, and we
had it typed on the fight pline, and that's I
didn't give any more thought than that.

Speaker 9 (22:29):
So that's how it came to pass. They said, the
first ten verses of Genesis, which is really the foundation
of many of the world's religions. And that's how it
got started.

Speaker 5 (22:39):
Now brooking Lunar for Ryan and for all the people
back on earth, the crew of Apollo eight haven't met
that we would like to then you. In the beginning,
God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth
without form and Lloyd and darkness was upon the face

(23:02):
of the heap, and the spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters. And God said, let there
be light. And there was light, and God saw the light.
They went good. And God divided the light from the darkness,
and God called the light day, and the darkness he

(23:24):
called night. And then in the morning. With the first day,
God said, let her be a perpot in the midst
of the water. Let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the prom and the might of the
waters which were under the from the waters which were
both the persons. And it was so, and God called

(23:47):
the movement heaven.

Speaker 11 (23:49):
In the evening.

Speaker 5 (23:49):
In the morning the second day, God said, let the
waters un going to Heaven be gethered together into one plate,
and let the dry land appear.

Speaker 12 (24:00):
That would go.

Speaker 5 (24:02):
God called the dry land Earth. And the gathering together
of the water and calling God thought that it was good.

Speaker 11 (24:12):
And from the.

Speaker 5 (24:15):
Good night, good luck, and God live all of you,
all of you on the good Earth.

Speaker 7 (24:25):
Looking back at the Earth on Christmas Eve had a
great effect, I think on all three of us. I
can only speak for myself, but it had for me
because the wonderment of it and the fact that the
Earth looks so lonely in the universe. It's the only
thing with color. All of our emotions were focused back
there with our families, and so that was the most

(24:47):
emotional part of the flight for me.

Speaker 9 (24:50):
We were so curious, so excited about being at the
moon that we are like three school kids looking into
a candy story window, watching those ancient old created go
by from and we're already sixty miles above the service.
We didn't have any kind of feeling, at least myself,
of you know, fear or if you know, are we

(25:10):
going to get back or not. It was just just
to be there. Was such an exciting moment that you know,
would have done it all the time. I felt very,
very honored and lucky to be there.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
There was a little bit of concern as to how
that would be you know, received in the world, but
NASA gave them the permission to do that. I mean,
it wasn't something that was really that controversial, but in
many circles they thought that, hey, this is inappropriate thing
to do as we celebrate the birth of the Christ
Child Christmas and read from the Book of Genesis and
talk about the creation according to the Bible, of how

(25:45):
the universe was formed, and God in his wonderful ways,
of how we manifest beauty and love to all the
people of the world and probably to all people in
the other civilizations outside of this world.

Speaker 9 (25:56):
At the time, we didn't know what the effect of
the flight would be. He didn't know whether the flight
was going to be successful or not, but you know,
with riots and assassinations and the war going on, I
was part of a thing that Foley gave an uplift
to the American people about doing something positive, which was
really That's why I say Pollo Wait was really the

(26:16):
high point of my Space career.

Speaker 3 (26:18):
Their neutrality in politics was always number one, but reading
from the Bible was just in their opinion, and I
approve of it. I think it was a beautiful thing
because at that time, there's a way to send a
message about peace and love, and why not do that
during a time when everybody need up palming. It was
probably one of the most watched shows ever in the

(26:39):
history of television. And I don't know the exact number
of people that were watching, but it's in the hundreds
of millions. And it was so well done. And I
thought that the reading of the Bible and the Book
of Genesis was an apropos for the time. Intentions were
very high in America.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
And you've been listening to Steve Kate's aka Doctor Skeart,
and you're also listening to Frank Borman and Jim Lovell
tell the story of that Christmas Eve reading of Genesis
and what it was like to be up there in
space sixty miles from the Moon's surface. The story of

(27:16):
how America got to the Moon. First here on our
American story, and we're back with our American stories and

(27:38):
the final portion of our story on the Apollo missions.
When we last left off, Americans had successfully orbited the
Moon on Apollo eight and read from Genesis while doing
it with a mission of success. It was time to
put a man on the moon. That mission it would
be Apollo eleven. The year was nineteen sixty nine. Here

(28:00):
again is Steve cats but first audio from Neil Armstrong
at the post landing press conference. You'll also hear from
Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in this segment. Let's return
to the story.

Speaker 6 (28:17):
Was our pleasure to have participated in one great adventure.
It's an adventure that took place not just in the
month of July, but rather one that took place in
the last decade. We all here and the people listening
in today had the opportunity to share that adventure that

(28:37):
was certainly the highlight for the three of us of
that decade. We're going to divert a little bit from
the format of past press conferences and talk about the
things that entered It interested us most, in particular the

(28:59):
the things that occurred on and about the Moon.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
The road to the stars has always been difficult.

Speaker 10 (29:10):
There's so many things that can go wrong on a
trip to the Moon and back. It's sort of a
long and fragile daisy chain of events. And I can
remember being in the little house trailer aboard the aircraft
carrier after we landed in the Pacific and thinking, sane,
none of them did, None of those little links broke,
And to me that was the amazing part that everything

(29:30):
worked in some as well.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
As it did. You have to be able to live
in this environment, and you have to obviously have a
steady flow of oxygen to continue the obvious understatement of
the entire program to survive in space. You have to
make sure that your landing craft, the lunar module, was
going to work perfectly. You have to have a flight
path to the surface of the Moon that works very

(29:53):
simply by a small computer that if many people go
out and go to one of their dollar stores right now,
little handheld calculator that costs less than maybe a couple
of dollars, had more so called processing power than the
entire lunar module itself.

Speaker 6 (30:09):
Well, every launch day is a time of excitement, enthusiasm,
and apprehension, but I think in most circumstances you always
feel that the chances have actually lift an offer are
fairly distant or remote.

Speaker 12 (30:23):
I think the momentous, most memorable thing that I can
recall about that particular day was the opportunity, while my
two friends here were being put into the spacecraft, to
stand alone by myself out there and look at the
rocket and the quietness and see the sun come up

(30:43):
and the waves rolling in, and the evidence of the
millions of people watching, but nothing specific, and just so quiet,
And to realize that indeed it was such a contrast
was going to take place all a frantic activity preparing
the rocket, but it was so quiet up there for
me personally ended in a very few moments. So we're
going to be departing in it in a great roar

(31:05):
and offer of momentous signed in pea length five.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
In book five four three two.

Speaker 5 (31:14):
One zero all engine running looked off. We have a
looked off thirty two minutes five three hour looked up
in Apollo eleven.

Speaker 6 (31:27):
Well, I think the impressions of the Moon started thousands
of miles.

Speaker 5 (31:31):
As we get closer and closer, we could see more
and more.

Speaker 12 (31:34):
There are many different moons to remember, the one that
we see from the earth, the one that's in root.
You look down on it and it's a rather rough, lonesome,
foreboding location.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
And then this object is hurtling around the Moon and
you have to have a series of burns in which
you're firing the descent motives. They don't have unlimited fuel,
so as they get into a certain angle of attack,
as they call it. Remember, the little lunar module is
like a little spider with the or legs. You're going
around the Moon in a horizontal position, and then you

(32:04):
slowly have to fire these little tiny If anybody's seen
the lunar module, you notice that it has these little
bell shaped areas around it which are actually a little
rocket motors, and they're steerable. And that descent has to
be done in an orchestrated way, because not only are
you looking to go to the surface, you're actually looking
to go to a location on the Moon. So as

(32:25):
Neil Armstrong and buzz Aldron are going down, they're getting
a series of these alarms master alarms on the computer
with the buzzing sounds meaning an override. The computer was overridden.
And this little computer, think about it. It was this
big box, big beautiful polish, metallic box. And that's fascinating
that in those days they even had something I think
it was like seventy three K and the description was

(32:46):
that most emails take up more space than the Apollo
computer had. On the descent, came close to having to abort.
They overrode all this, and I'm keeping it very simple.
It's a long process. Then they have to drop down.
It didn't drop down very hard, but he didn't. Just
perfectly soft land as if you never felt it. And
then those famous words and they appear the.

Speaker 12 (33:09):
Ankle landed, rocket crank quality.

Speaker 5 (33:12):
We got be on the ground. We got a bunch
of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thank
a lot.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
The most amazing story.

Speaker 11 (33:21):
I'd like to ask Neil Armstrong and a buzz Aldrin
and I'm not quite sure i'd ask this question, but
when you first stepped down the moon, did it strike
you as you were stepping that you were stepping on
a piece of the earth or a sort of what
your inner feelings were, whether you felt you were standing
in a desert or this was really another world, or

(33:42):
how you felt at that point, Well, there was no question.

Speaker 12 (33:45):
In our minds where we were.

Speaker 5 (33:47):
We've been orbiting around the Moon.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
And now comes the most amazing part of the story
is the actual egress from the lunar module, and stories
have it that buzz Aldrin wanted to be the first
man onto the surface of the Moon, but NASA looked
too Neil Armstrong because of his ability to handle problems
if something were to happen. They wanted him to be
able to handle any situation, and boy did he handle

(34:14):
one when he was in the Gemini program, him and
Dave Scott orbiting the Earth in one of the Gemini capsules,
and somehow, I don't know the answer. I don't think
they did either. The spacecraft started to roll as if
you held a pen in your hand and just start
turning it horizontally, and it got faster and faster and faster,
and that may have caused that whole mission for Gemini,

(34:34):
to those astronauts to perish. But Neil actually handled the
problem cool, calm and collected. Neil Armstrong exits the lunar
module comes down the ladder, and here's a story that
most people do not know. Inside his space suit he
had a small little bag, a collection bag for lunar materium.

(34:55):
And as we heard on the Earth.

Speaker 5 (34:58):
Perm in the part ty A, the.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
Truth story is this true wording should be and was
that's one small step for a man. We had garbled
when we heard the communications, and it sounded like that's
one small step for man, not to go on technicalities.
But the first thing he did when he got onto
the surface was to bend over and gather a sample
of lunar material. Why because if anything were to have

(35:27):
gone wrong with the lunar module at that time and
they had to go away and blast off from the Moon,
they at least had the money spent of the Hipollo
program to bring back a sample of lunar material. We
also noticed that there's not as many pictures of Armstrong
on the surface of the Moon. As buzz Aldrin comes
out and describes his words, where magnificent desolation. He and

(35:50):
Neil are so busy trying to do everything they had
to do, set up science experiments, check and see that
the camera worked. And yes, those camera images were by
today's stay or it's rather poor. If you were rating
them on a grading scale, you'd probably give them a D.
But that was the best technology we had at the
time to even show The flag, of course, was placed
onto the surface of the moon.

Speaker 13 (36:12):
To me, it was one of the prouder moments of
my life to be able to stand there and quickly
salute the flag. So many people have done so much
to give us this opportunity to place this American flag
on the surface.

Speaker 3 (36:26):
They did their EVAs, they collected lunar samples. They had
to tuck all those samples back in and now it's
time to go home. And here comes a very interesting story.
What happened is is the time was to go. Apparently,
Buzz says that he turns around and somehow, whether it's
because of his suit or some other object, the ascent

(36:46):
button or switch that you've hit to get yourself to
blast off the moon actually broke. And it's described by
Aldrin that he what he used, even before we called
him sharpies. He actually used his little felt tip pen
and stuck it into the hole where the switch or
the relay had been broken. And thank goodness that lunar
module ascent stage took off. Many people don't know that

(37:10):
the ascent from the Moon was an interesting thing and
pretty harrowing because President Nixon actually had a second speech
that he was prepared to deliver if indeed the two
astronauts were stranded on the Moon because of the inability
of their ascent motor on the lunar module to fire.
But luckily that speech never had to be given. Collectively.

(37:32):
It said this that if we put our minds to
a problem and try to solve it, we can do it.
And it came with great expense, It came at the
loss of human life. But the simple legacy is American exceptionalism.
Proud to say this did something that was really incredible.

Speaker 12 (37:49):
It was a stranger to me before the mission, but
I now look back at it as somewhat of a friend,
a place that I Visitedrrific.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Job on the production and storytelling by Monte Montgomery and
especial thanks to Steve Kate's aka Doctor Sky The

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Ultimate Adventures story here on our American Stories
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Host

Lee Habeeb

Lee Habeeb

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