August 28, 2023 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when President John F. Kennedy declared at Rice University that we would put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, the year was 1962 and, according to those in the know, America was 10 years behind the Soviet Union in terms of our capabilities to do so. Nevertheless, we managed to achieve that goal despite serious setbacks along the way. Steve Kates, AKA "Dr. Sky", and the men who went into the final frontier, tell the story of America's greatest adventure.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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. We love hearing them and
we love playing them. Up next, a story of perhaps
our greatest adventure as a country, conquering the final frontier
(00:33):
and not only getting a man on the moon, but
returning him safely to Earth. Here to tell the story
is Steve Keates aka Doctor Sky, and we're telling this
story because on this day in history in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Neil Armstrong died.
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 the whole.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Wood of 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's a precious chance to turn
the black guide of a If we failed to strive
to see this champs, 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
(01:39):
Sputnik one, 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
(02:02):
to communications from space. There weren't actual voice communications. This
was 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
(02:23):
the spirit 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.
(02:43):
We really were in a race. I mean, let's not
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 any of the early American rockets ended
in failure. And there's so many videos had to say
(03:05):
on YouTube that archives every day or other places 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
(03:27):
at that point in time. They had 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 Nikiita Khrushchev 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
(03:50):
it in the simplest way. The primary mode for them
was not necessarily just to put something into space. They
wanted to have superiority with interconninobilistic 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 will repeat it again. Their main mode of operation
(04:12):
there was to build a delivery system to deliver nuclear
weapons to the United States and other places in the
world that weren't friendly to the Soviet Union.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
All right, now left off when the clocket started Allen Claire.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
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 Sheppard does what's called a suborbital flight.
And what is that. Obviously, the Russians, the Soviets at
(04:46):
the time, had put Yurdigagarin 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 Vostok spacecraft. Alan Sheppard did his
by doing a suborbital flight. And let me describe that
for everybody listening. Alan Shepherd's flight was not a circumnavigation
(05:07):
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 Shepard, he
of course ignited so much enthusiasm and success, But there
was also a bunch of guys that were also part
(05:29):
of an early program called the Mercury Project, in which
they launched on rockets 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 capsules to go up into orbit.
(05:52):
And I should say that's when they did go into
orbit around the Earth. After Alan Sheppard'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 iiO and the Gemini, of course, meaning twin
(06:12):
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 University back on September the twelfth,
(06:33):
nineteen sixty two, when the words that I won't quote exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Why some say the moon?
Speaker 7 (06:41):
Why choose this as our goal? And they may well
ask why climb the highest mountain?
Speaker 6 (06:48):
Why thirty five years ago.
Speaker 8 (06:50):
Fly the Atlantics?
Speaker 7 (06:52):
Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to
the moon.
Speaker 9 (06:57):
We choose to go to the moon.
Speaker 7 (06:59):
In this okay and do the other things not because
they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that
soul well served to organize and measure the theft of
our energies and stills, because that challenge is one that
we're willing to accept.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
One.
Speaker 7 (07:17):
We are willing to both bone and one and the
winds and the others do.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
So.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Apollo again our incredible journey to the more 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
(08:09):
returned to our American stories and the story of the
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. After the launch of Sputnik. We
were behind the Soviet Union by nearly a decade, but
President Kennedy promised that we'd land a man on the
(08:32):
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 (08:46):
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 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
(09:06):
there were great many IQ tests given, and many people
passed and many people failed.
Speaker 10 (09:11):
Here's Jim Lovell, astronaut on Apollo eight and courtesy of
NASA Johnson's Space Center Oral History Collection with more.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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 (09:33):
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 2 (09:53):
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
(10:15):
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's
too much pigment in your blood.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
And actually you need it 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 point 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.
(10:52):
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 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 start
(11:15):
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
(11:35):
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
(11:57):
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
(12:19):
about twenty five feet away with wires.
Speaker 11 (12:23):
Get the moon. We can't drive.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
How are we going to get to the moon? And
he used a few choice words in there that I'm
leaving out. 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
(12:48):
particular capsule had two hatches. There was an inner and
outer hatch 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. But what happened Allegedly some sort of
(13:09):
wire short or some kind of a fire broke out
underneath their couches, and sadly, those three astronauts, It's one
(13:29):
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 2 (13:39):
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 (13:59):
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
(14:22):
that we've shown as a nation and other nations around
the world is to move away from this planet for
good reasons, to commonize the space, like the early explorers
did in the ocean.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
You have to go by faith. You have to believe
in what the people are going to hand you. You know.
Al Shepherd's old old joke was, you know, how does
the field of 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 (14:48):
And I did, and Apollo weight is quite fascinating.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
We're going to do four thousand miles so that we
could test the lunar module of the command module and
then come back in a high rate of speed so that,
you know, we could test the ECH 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 I still
(15:13):
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 (15:27):
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 2 (15:35):
I was elated. I thought, man, this is great. I mean,
I already spent two weeks and it's based at 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
(15:55):
apollowate Insignia.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Apollo seven was to test out the entire APA capsule,
the command 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 2 (16:10):
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,
(16:32):
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
(16:55):
we not? And when they did that, this side of
the Atlantic bold leadership at this time they said, little
Bogile's not ready. The Command Service bogle 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 (17:13):
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, and yet we haven't sent a
Pollo spacecraft to the Moon yet, so Frank Borman, Jim Lovell,
and William Anders did that most incredible feat.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
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. When we come back more of this remarkable
story with Steve Kate's aka Doctor Sky after these messages,
this is our American stories, and we're back with our
(18:09):
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 fire and Apollo one, the
(18:30):
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 (18:48):
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 high offices of
NASA that this might not have been the right thing
to do because we only tested Apollo seven in Earth orbit,
(19:08):
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 10 (19:16):
Here's Jim Levell, astronaut on Apollo eight, with more.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Well, my first sensations course 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
(19:43):
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 the navigation equipment was perfect.
I mean it was just you couldn't ask for a
(20:04):
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 in our earphones,
(20:27):
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 Christmas eve,
(20:52):
we thought, boy, 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 was Cybergane.
Speaker 12 (21:03):
Well it's another example of the wonderful country live in
we go.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Julian Cheer, who was the head.
Speaker 12 (21:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
What do we do?
Speaker 12 (21:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
And be honest with you.
Speaker 12 (21:35):
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 2 (21:47):
He was with the US Information Agency I think had
gone with 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 it
was a 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
(22:08):
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 Old.
Speaker 12 (22:18):
Testament reading from Genesis.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Because you know, this would be very appropriate.
Speaker 12 (22:23):
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 2 (22:30):
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 I got.
Speaker 11 (22:37):
Started now brooking Lunar Ryan. And for all the people
back on Earth, the crew of Apollo eight haven't met.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That we would like to then you.
Speaker 11 (22:53):
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,
and the earth move without form and void and darkness
with upon the face of the deep, and the spirit
of God moved upon the face of the waters. And
God said, let there be light. And there was light,
(23:14):
and God saw the light. They was good. And God
divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
Day, and the darkness he called night, and the inning
in the morning. With the first day, God said, let
her be the perpot in the midst of the water.
Let it divide the waters from the waters. And God
made the proven and the might of the waters which
were under the from the waters, which were both the persons.
(23:45):
And it was so, and God called the moroven heaven.
Speaker 11 (23:50):
In the evening.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
In the morning of the second.
Speaker 11 (23:52):
Day, God said, left the waters under to heaven be
gethered together into one plate, and let the dry on
the pier, and it would go. And God called the
dry land Earth and the getthering the getner of the water,
and calling the God.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
Thought that it was good.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
And from the.
Speaker 11 (24:16):
Good night, good luck, and God live all of you,
all of you on the good Earth.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Looking back at.
Speaker 12 (24:27):
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 emotional part of the
(24:49):
flight for me.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
We were so curious, so excited about being at the
moon that we are like three school kids looking into
a candy story way to watch those ancient old creators
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
(25:11):
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 (25:24):
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
(25:46):
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 2 (25:57):
At the time, we didn't know what the effect of
the flight would be. We 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 folly gave an uplift
to the American people about doing something positive, which was
really That's why I say Pollo Wait was really the
(26:17):
high point of my Space career.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
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 meet up palming. It was
probably one of the most watched shows ever in the
(26:40):
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 of apropos for the time, intentions were
very high in America.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And you've been listening to Steve Kates a Sky 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 how
(27:17):
America got to the Moon. First here on our American story,
(27:37):
and we're back with our American stories and 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.
(28:00):
It was nineteen sixty nine. Here 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 5 (28:18):
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
(28:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Entered It interested us most.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
In particular the the things that occurred on and about
the Moon.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
The road to the stars has always been difficult.
Speaker 8 (29:11):
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, so
none of them did, None of those little links broke,
And to me that was the amazing part that everything
(29:31):
worked in some as well as it did.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
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 simply by a small
(29:55):
computer that if many people go out and go to
one of their dollar stores right now, a 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 5 (30:10):
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 4 (30:24):
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
(30:44):
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 the 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 in a great roar. An
(31:06):
offer of momentous event.
Speaker 9 (31:08):
In threequent five in book five four three two one burrow.
Speaker 11 (31:17):
All engine running look off, we have a look off
thirty four minutes five three hour looked off on a
follow eleven.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
Well, I think the impressions of the moon started thousands
of miles. As we get closer and closer, we could.
Speaker 6 (31:34):
See more and more.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
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 (31:45):
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 four legs. You're going
around the Moon in a horizontal position, and then you
(32:05):
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
(32:26):
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
(32:47):
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 it didn't just
perfectly soft land as if you never felt it. And
then those famous words, and here the.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Ankle land landed, rocket crank quality.
Speaker 11 (33:13):
We copy on the ground. We got a bunch of
guys about to turn blue.
Speaker 6 (33:17):
We're breathing again.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Tank a lot.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
The most amazing story.
Speaker 9 (33:22):
I'd like to ask Neil Armstrong and a buzz ald it.
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 sort of what your
inner feelings were, whether you felt you were standing in
a desert, or this was really another world, or how
(33:43):
you felt at that point, Well.
Speaker 13 (33:45):
There was no question in our minds where we were.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
We've been orbiting around the Moon.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
And now comes the most amazing part of the story
is the actual egress from the Lunar module, and stories
have it that Buzz z Aldron 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
(34:15):
handle one. When he was in the Gemini program. Him
and Dave Scott were 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, to those astronauts to perish. But
(34:37):
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 spacesuit, he had a small little bag, a collection
bag for lunar material. And as we heard on the
Earth Paran the truth story is this true wording should
(35:07):
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
(35:27):
were to have 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 Apollo 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
(35:48):
magnificent desolation. He and 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 standards, 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,
(36:10):
was placed onto the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 13 (36:13):
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 (36:27):
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
(36:47):
button or switch that you've hit to get yourself to
blast off the moon actually broke. And it's described by
Aldrin that what he used, even before we called him sharpies,
he actually used this 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
(37:08):
stage took off. Many people don't know that 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
(37:29):
that speech never had to be given collectively. 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 4 (37:50):
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 visited.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
The story of the Apollo missions, we're telling them because
on this day in history, in twenty twelve, Neil Armstrong
died here on our American stories
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. We love hearing them and
we love playing them. Up next, a story of perhaps
our greatest adventure as a country, conquering the final frontier
(00:33):
and not only getting a man on the moon, but
returning him safely to Earth. Here to tell the story
is Steve Keates aka Doctor Sky, and we're telling this
story because on this day in history in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Neil Armstrong died.
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 the whole.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Wood of 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's a precious chance to turn
the black guide of a If we failed to strive
to see this champs, 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
(01:39):
Sputnik one, 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
(02:02):
to communications from space. There weren't actual voice communications. This
was 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
(02:23):
the spirit 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.
(02:43):
We really were in a race. I mean, let's not
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 any of the early American rockets ended
in failure. And there's so many videos had to say
(03:05):
on YouTube that archives every day or other places 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
(03:27):
at that point in time. They had 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 Nikiita Khrushchev 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
(03:50):
it in the simplest way. The primary mode for them
was not necessarily just to put something into space. They
wanted to have superiority with interconninobilistic 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 will repeat it again. Their main mode of operation
(04:12):
there was to build a delivery system to deliver nuclear
weapons to the United States and other places in the
world that weren't friendly to the Soviet Union.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
All right, now left off when the clocket started Allen Claire.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
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 Sheppard does what's called a suborbital flight.
And what is that. Obviously, the Russians, the Soviets at
(04:46):
the time, had put Yurdigagarin 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 Vostok spacecraft. Alan Sheppard did his
by doing a suborbital flight. And let me describe that
for everybody listening. Alan Shepherd's flight was not a circumnavigation
(05:07):
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 Shepard, he
of course ignited so much enthusiasm and success, But there
was also a bunch of guys that were also part
(05:29):
of an early program called the Mercury Project, in which
they launched on rockets 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 capsules to go up into orbit.
(05:52):
And I should say that's when they did go into
orbit around the Earth. After Alan Sheppard'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 iiO and the Gemini, of course, meaning twin
(06:12):
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 University back on September the twelfth,
(06:33):
nineteen sixty two, when the words that I won't quote exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Why some say the moon?
Speaker 7 (06:41):
Why choose this as our goal? And they may well
ask why climb the highest mountain?
Speaker 6 (06:48):
Why thirty five years ago.
Speaker 8 (06:50):
Fly the Atlantics?
Speaker 7 (06:52):
Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to
the moon.
Speaker 9 (06:57):
We choose to go to the moon.
Speaker 7 (06:59):
In this okay and do the other things not because
they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that
soul well served to organize and measure the theft of
our energies and stills, because that challenge is one that
we're willing to accept.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
One.
Speaker 7 (07:17):
We are willing to both bone and one and the
winds and the others do.
Speaker 6 (07:24):
So.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Apollo again our incredible journey to the more 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
(08:09):
returned to our American stories and the story of the
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. After the launch of Sputnik. We
were behind the Soviet Union by nearly a decade, but
President Kennedy promised that we'd land a man on the
(08:32):
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 (08:46):
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 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
(09:06):
there were great many IQ tests given, and many people
passed and many people failed.
Speaker 10 (09:11):
Here's Jim Lovell, astronaut on Apollo eight and courtesy of
NASA Johnson's Space Center Oral History Collection with more.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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 (09:33):
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 2 (09:53):
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
(10:15):
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's
too much pigment in your blood.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
And actually you need it 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 point 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.
(10:52):
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 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 start
(11:15):
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
(11:35):
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
(11:57):
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
(12:19):
about twenty five feet away with wires.
Speaker 11 (12:23):
Get the moon. We can't drive.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
How are we going to get to the moon? And
he used a few choice words in there that I'm
leaving out. 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
(12:48):
particular capsule had two hatches. There was an inner and
outer hatch 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. But what happened Allegedly some sort of
(13:09):
wire short or some kind of a fire broke out
underneath their couches, and sadly, those three astronauts, It's one
(13:29):
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 2 (13:39):
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 (13:59):
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
(14:22):
that we've shown as a nation and other nations around
the world is to move away from this planet for
good reasons, to commonize the space, like the early explorers
did in the ocean.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
You have to go by faith. You have to believe
in what the people are going to hand you. You know.
Al Shepherd's old old joke was, you know, how does
the field of 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 (14:48):
And I did, and Apollo weight is quite fascinating.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
We're going to do four thousand miles so that we
could test the lunar module of the command module and
then come back in a high rate of speed so that,
you know, we could test the ECH 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 I still
(15:13):
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 (15:27):
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 2 (15:35):
I was elated. I thought, man, this is great. I mean,
I already spent two weeks and it's based at 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
(15:55):
apollowate Insignia.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Apollo seven was to test out the entire APA capsule,
the command 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 2 (16:10):
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,
(16:32):
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
(16:55):
we not? And when they did that, this side of
the Atlantic bold leadership at this time they said, little
Bogile's not ready. The Command Service bogle 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 (17:13):
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, and yet we haven't sent a
Pollo spacecraft to the Moon yet, so Frank Borman, Jim Lovell,
and William Anders did that most incredible feat.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
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. When we come back more of this remarkable
story with Steve Kate's aka Doctor Sky after these messages,
this is our American stories, and we're back with our
(18:09):
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 fire and Apollo one, the
(18:30):
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 (18:48):
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 high offices of
NASA that this might not have been the right thing
to do because we only tested Apollo seven in Earth orbit,
(19:08):
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 10 (19:16):
Here's Jim Levell, astronaut on Apollo eight, with more.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Well, my first sensations course 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
(19:43):
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 the navigation equipment was perfect.
I mean it was just you couldn't ask for a
(20:04):
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 in our earphones,
(20:27):
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 Christmas eve,
(20:52):
we thought, boy, 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 was Cybergane.
Speaker 12 (21:03):
Well it's another example of the wonderful country live in
we go.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Julian Cheer, who was the head.
Speaker 12 (21:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
What do we do?
Speaker 12 (21:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
And be honest with you.
Speaker 12 (21:35):
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 2 (21:47):
He was with the US Information Agency I think had
gone with 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 it
was a 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
(22:08):
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 Old.
Speaker 12 (22:18):
Testament reading from Genesis.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Because you know, this would be very appropriate.
Speaker 12 (22:23):
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 2 (22:30):
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 I got.
Speaker 11 (22:37):
Started now brooking Lunar Ryan. And for all the people
back on Earth, the crew of Apollo eight haven't met.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
That we would like to then you.
Speaker 11 (22:53):
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,
and the earth move without form and void and darkness
with upon the face of the deep, and the spirit
of God moved upon the face of the waters. And
God said, let there be light. And there was light,
(23:14):
and God saw the light. They was good. And God
divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
Day, and the darkness he called night, and the inning
in the morning. With the first day, God said, let
her be the perpot in the midst of the water.
Let it divide the waters from the waters. And God
made the proven and the might of the waters which
were under the from the waters, which were both the persons.
(23:45):
And it was so, and God called the moroven heaven.
Speaker 11 (23:50):
In the evening.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
In the morning of the second.
Speaker 11 (23:52):
Day, God said, left the waters under to heaven be
gethered together into one plate, and let the dry on
the pier, and it would go. And God called the
dry land Earth and the getthering the getner of the water,
and calling the God.
Speaker 6 (24:10):
Thought that it was good.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
And from the.
Speaker 11 (24:16):
Good night, good luck, and God live all of you,
all of you on the good Earth.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Looking back at.
Speaker 12 (24:27):
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 emotional part of the
(24:49):
flight for me.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
We were so curious, so excited about being at the
moon that we are like three school kids looking into
a candy story way to watch those ancient old creators
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
(25:11):
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 (25:24):
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
(25:46):
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 2 (25:57):
At the time, we didn't know what the effect of
the flight would be. We 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 folly gave an uplift
to the American people about doing something positive, which was
really That's why I say Pollo Wait was really the
(26:17):
high point of my Space career.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
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 meet up palming. It was
probably one of the most watched shows ever in the
(26:40):
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 of apropos for the time, intentions were
very high in America.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
And you've been listening to Steve Kates a Sky 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 how
(27:17):
America got to the Moon. First here on our American story,
(27:37):
and we're back with our American stories and 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.
(28:00):
It was nineteen sixty nine. Here 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 5 (28:18):
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
(28:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Entered It interested us most.
Speaker 5 (28:58):
In particular the the things that occurred on and about
the Moon.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
The road to the stars has always been difficult.
Speaker 8 (29:11):
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, so
none of them did, None of those little links broke,
And to me that was the amazing part that everything
(29:31):
worked in some as well as it did.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
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 simply by a small
(29:55):
computer that if many people go out and go to
one of their dollar stores right now, a 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 5 (30:10):
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 4 (30:24):
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
(30:44):
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 the 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 in a great roar. An
(31:06):
offer of momentous event.
Speaker 9 (31:08):
In threequent five in book five four three two one burrow.
Speaker 11 (31:17):
All engine running look off, we have a look off
thirty four minutes five three hour looked off on a
follow eleven.
Speaker 5 (31:28):
Well, I think the impressions of the moon started thousands
of miles. As we get closer and closer, we could.
Speaker 6 (31:34):
See more and more.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
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 (31:45):
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 four legs. You're going
around the Moon in a horizontal position, and then you
(32:05):
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
(32:26):
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
(32:47):
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 it didn't just
perfectly soft land as if you never felt it. And
then those famous words, and here the.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Ankle land landed, rocket crank quality.
Speaker 11 (33:13):
We copy on the ground. We got a bunch of
guys about to turn blue.
Speaker 6 (33:17):
We're breathing again.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Tank a lot.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
The most amazing story.
Speaker 9 (33:22):
I'd like to ask Neil Armstrong and a buzz ald it.
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 sort of what your
inner feelings were, whether you felt you were standing in
a desert, or this was really another world, or how
(33:43):
you felt at that point, Well.
Speaker 13 (33:45):
There was no question in our minds where we were.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
We've been orbiting around the Moon.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
And now comes the most amazing part of the story
is the actual egress from the Lunar module, and stories
have it that Buzz z Aldron 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
(34:15):
handle one. When he was in the Gemini program. Him
and Dave Scott were 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, to those astronauts to perish. But
(34:37):
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 spacesuit, he had a small little bag, a collection
bag for lunar material. And as we heard on the
Earth Paran the truth story is this true wording should
(35:07):
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
(35:27):
were to have 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 Apollo 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
(35:48):
magnificent desolation. He and 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 standards, 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,
(36:10):
was placed onto the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 13 (36:13):
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 (36:27):
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
(36:47):
button or switch that you've hit to get yourself to
blast off the moon actually broke. And it's described by
Aldrin that what he used, even before we called him sharpies,
he actually used this 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
(37:08):
stage took off. Many people don't know that 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
(37:29):
that speech never had to be given collectively. 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 4 (37:50):
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 visited.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
The story of the Apollo missions, we're telling them because
on this day in history, in twenty twelve, Neil Armstrong
died here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.