Browse content similar to Horizon: 40 Years on the Moon. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
The moon. To get there you have to fly at 25,000 miles an hour. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:21 | |
You have to travel a quarter of a million miles there... | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
..and a quarter of a million miles back. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:31 | |
And when you return to Earth, your spaceship has to survive | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
re-entry temperatures of 2,500 degrees centigrade. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:42 | |
And we've done it. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:45 | |
I'm Professor Brian Cox. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
I'm a physicist, and as long as I can remember, | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
I've been captivated by the story of our journey to the moon. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:04 | |
Telling that story over the years, and inspiring me along the way, | 0:01:07 | 0:01:11 | |
were BBC presenters like James Burke and Patrick Moore. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:15 | |
-Patrick Moore, what did you think of that? -Quite incredible. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:18 | |
From the early days of animals in space... | 0:01:18 | 0:01:22 | |
I'm at the foot of the ladder. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:24 | |
..to Armstrong's momentous first steps... | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
There is Armstrong... | 0:01:27 | 0:01:29 | |
..to the near tragedy of Apollo 13... | 0:01:29 | 0:01:31 | |
-'OK, Houston, we've had a problem.' -Say again, please? -'Houston, we've had a problem.' | 0:01:31 | 0:01:36 | |
..the BBC covered the whole story. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:39 | |
And we've just heard that all over the world there are | 0:01:39 | 0:01:42 | |
33 countries that have stayed up to take these pictures live. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:46 | |
I believe that the Apollo moon landings were the greatest | 0:01:46 | 0:01:50 | |
achievement in human history, the last time we reached for something beyond our grasp, and made it. | 0:01:50 | 0:01:57 | |
But that was 40 years ago. | 0:01:57 | 0:01:59 | |
So what was it about July 1969 that brought the moon within our reach, | 0:01:59 | 0:02:04 | |
and why haven't we been back for 37 years? | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
This is the story of how we walked on the moon, of the technology | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
that enabled it to happen, the politics that demanded it happen, | 0:02:15 | 0:02:20 | |
and the triumph of the human spirit that made it happen. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:23 | |
We've all got used to the remarkable fact that humans have walked on the moon. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:39 | |
And it's easy to forget that only fifty years ago, | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
the moon was another world, technologically out of reach. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:47 | |
But then the Cold War began. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
It created a climate of fear and insecurity, | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
but also brought about the international competition | 0:02:55 | 0:02:59 | |
that would drive humanity towards the stars. | 0:02:59 | 0:03:02 | |
In 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:09 | |
A new era had begun. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:14 | |
CHIRPING | 0:03:20 | 0:03:22 | |
Until two days ago that sound had never been heard on this Earth. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:26 | |
Suddenly it has become as much a part of 20th century life as the whirr of your vacuum cleaner. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:31 | |
It's a report from man's farthest frontier, the radio signal transmitted by the Soviet Sputnik, | 0:03:31 | 0:03:37 | |
the first man-made satellite as it passed over New York earlier today. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
Right now, it's over Auckland, New Zealand. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:43 | |
According to the latest Soviet announcement the satellite is still | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
maintaining its speed of 18,000 miles an hour, a dozen times faster than any man has ever flown. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:52 | |
But despite the achievement, the public couldn't help but see things through the prism of Cold War fear. | 0:03:54 | 0:04:01 | |
-Do you admire the Russians for doing it? -No, definitely not. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
We should've been the first ones to have it, such things. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
It gets the American people alarmed that a foreign country, especially | 0:04:08 | 0:04:13 | |
an enemy country, can do this, and we fear this. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
We fear that they have something that the majority of people don't know about. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
Definitely alarmed. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:21 | |
What do you think about America not being able to do the same? | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
Well, if I was in military service and fell down on the job like that, I could stand a court martial. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:32 | |
Somebody's falling down on the job, badly. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
Sputnik's mocking beeps marked the beginning of the space race. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:41 | |
The cosy myth of American technological superiority over Soviet Russia was shattered overnight. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:47 | |
The Soviet Union had managed to launch Sputnik into orbit 500 miles | 0:04:47 | 0:04:52 | |
above the surface of the Earth, travelling at 18,000 miles an hour. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:57 | |
It was an enormous challenge to America's pride, and | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
a direct challenge to the supposed supremacy of the capitalist system. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:06 | |
For the next 15 years, space became the frontline of the Cold War, and, | 0:05:06 | 0:05:11 | |
initially at least, America failed to dominate. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:16 | |
This was to be America's answer to Sputnik, the Explorer satellite. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:19 | |
To hurl it into space, the Vanguard, a navy research rocket. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:24 | |
The Soviets had used a military rocket, a missile, for their space shot. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:28 | |
President Eisenhower wanted the American's entry into space to have | 0:05:28 | 0:05:32 | |
the appearance, at least, of a non-military enterprise. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:35 | |
But Vanguard gave the world another image of American technology. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:39 | |
'100 million dollars has just gone up in a huge, red orange ball of smoke. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:54 | |
'We don't know what caused the failure.' | 0:05:54 | 0:05:57 | |
My first reaction, I believe, is the normal reaction of every American. | 0:05:57 | 0:06:01 | |
-I'm disappointed. -Disappointment alone wasn't enough to help them | 0:06:01 | 0:06:05 | |
catch up, as the Russians soon reached another historic landmark. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
The Soviet Union has launched a second Earth satellite. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
The satellite is carrying a dog as experimental passenger. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:25 | |
Laika the dog had been launched into space with no possibility of returning to Earth. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:30 | |
Even in the '50s, animal rights activists were vocal. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
The party from the canine defence league have now come out of the Embassy. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:37 | |
Are you going to take any further steps, Mr Johns? | 0:06:37 | 0:06:41 | |
Well, we are asking dog lovers everywhere to observe a silent | 0:06:41 | 0:06:44 | |
minute at 11 o'clock each morning, while this dog is in outer space. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:51 | |
Laika's loneliness was short-lived. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:54 | |
Though the Soviets claimed she had survived for several days, | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
almost 50 years later, the truth came out. | 0:06:57 | 0:07:00 | |
In 2002, they admitted that the dog astronaut | 0:07:00 | 0:07:04 | |
died within a few hours of take-off. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
By now the Americans weren't far behind, | 0:07:07 | 0:07:10 | |
and one year later they sent a chimp named Ham into space. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:14 | |
This was the first big venture of the newly-created | 0:07:14 | 0:07:17 | |
National Aeronautics And Space Administration, NASA. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:21 | |
This time, the Red Stone rocket lobbed Ham safely into space. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:27 | |
He returned after a few minutes in that new environment apparently healthy, if a little confused. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:34 | |
In 1961, the Russians were once again | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
the first to reach a major milestone | 0:07:53 | 0:07:56 | |
when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. | 0:07:56 | 0:08:00 | |
This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news. | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
All Moscow is waiting to give a hero's welcome | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
to the world's first spaceman, Major Gagarin of the Soviet Air Force. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:15 | |
Major Gagarin was sent up in his 4.5 tonne spaceship from somewhere in the Soviet Union. | 0:08:15 | 0:08:21 | |
As he looked down on the Earth from the loneliness of space, | 0:08:21 | 0:08:25 | |
he streaked across Asia, Africa, and South America, | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
controlling the pitch and roll of the ship. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
Shortly after the news was given of the flight, Tom German interviewed Sir Bernard Lovell at Jodrell Bank. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:37 | |
I think this is one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:41 | |
It's remarkable when one realises that this success has been achieved | 0:08:41 | 0:08:45 | |
by a nation that a generation ago was largely illiterate. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:48 | |
The Russians celebrated yet more proof of Soviet superiority. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:55 | |
And, finally, here was an achievement so momentous | 0:08:55 | 0:08:59 | |
that it transcended earthly rivalries. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
-What do you think of the news? -I think it's fantastic. | 0:09:09 | 0:09:12 | |
-I can tell you he's now back, safe and sound. -Really? I didn't think he would get back. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:17 | |
What do you feel about this generally? | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
Do you think the Russians have whacked us? | 0:09:19 | 0:09:22 | |
Definitely, I really do. I think it's a marvellous achievement. | 0:09:22 | 0:09:25 | |
There'll soon be a man on the moon at this rate. | 0:09:25 | 0:09:27 | |
Such was Gagarin's accomplishment that the BBC pushed the televisual | 0:09:27 | 0:09:32 | |
boundaries of the time | 0:09:32 | 0:09:33 | |
with a live broadcast of his triumphant homecoming. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:37 | |
This is Richard Dimbleby in the BBC TV studio in London. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:40 | |
You're looking, if you've just turned on your television sets | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
today, at the first time, perhaps, to a live television picture from Soviet Russia. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:48 | |
And in spite of those flashes now and then, this is remarkable achievement, getting a picture, | 0:09:48 | 0:09:54 | |
through all those different links and short waves, and other waves, and being able to show an aeroplane | 0:09:54 | 0:09:59 | |
propeller whirling round as we were seeing it right in front of our faces just now from such a distance. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
Here is a man who has done and seen things that no other living person has done or seen. | 0:10:06 | 0:10:13 | |
And there is Mr Kruschev. HE SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE | 0:10:17 | 0:10:23 | |
Mr Krushchev embraces him, kissing... | 0:10:26 | 0:10:29 | |
There's certainly enthusiasm, and I can well understand why they feel so enthusiastic. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:35 | |
Once again, America tasted humiliation in the space race. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:40 | |
But perhaps it was what the country needed. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:43 | |
Gagarin's obvious good health after his orbit of the Earth galvanised NASA's doctors. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:48 | |
The fact that Yuri Gagarin flew and flew successfully | 0:10:48 | 0:10:52 | |
from a life scientist's point of view, in the way he'd gone up | 0:10:52 | 0:10:55 | |
and come back and appeared to be in very good shape, | 0:10:55 | 0:10:58 | |
I think was a very positive stimulus to the programme because it | 0:10:58 | 0:11:01 | |
demonstrated clearly that this new environment was perhaps not quite | 0:11:01 | 0:11:05 | |
so bad as everyone had anticipated, | 0:11:05 | 0:11:07 | |
and I think it made it easier to put Alan Shepherd into flight, | 0:11:07 | 0:11:11 | |
although quite frankly we would've done it in any case, | 0:11:11 | 0:11:14 | |
whether Gagarin had flown or not. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
Three weeks after Gagarin's flight, a Red Stone rocket awaited the arrival of American's first astronaut. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:23 | |
It was the early morning of 5 May, 1961. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:26 | |
Alan Shepherd's arrival at the launch pad was conspicuously different from Gagarin's. | 0:11:26 | 0:11:31 | |
America was to conduct its space programme in public. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:34 | |
Taken aback at first by this policy, the man who directed most of | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
American's manned space flights, Christopher Craft. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
For those of us who were working on the programme daily, it was | 0:11:41 | 0:11:44 | |
inconceivable to us that we were going to have real time television | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
of a missile launch from Cape Canaveral because of the dangers associated with that, | 0:11:48 | 0:11:54 | |
the fact that we were going to be in a looking glass of the world, it never crossed our minds. | 0:11:54 | 0:12:00 | |
That's what happened the day we flew Alan Shepherd. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
It was an exciting time, | 0:12:05 | 0:12:07 | |
it was a time of competition with the Russians. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:10 | |
Just before we flew Alan Shepherd the Russians had flown | 0:12:10 | 0:12:14 | |
Gagarin in space and put him in orbit and here we were just putting Shepherd into sub-orbital flight. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:19 | |
We were very disappointed that | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
we'd lost that part of the race but at the same time even | 0:12:22 | 0:12:27 | |
then we couldn't conceive the attention it was going to be given. | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
We thought maybe that'd taken some of the pressure off the situation but it hadn't. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:34 | |
Shepherd's five minute entry into space showed that an American, | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
as well as a Russian, could survive there. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:44 | |
But before the first American even went into orbit around the Earth, the US was committed to the moon. | 0:12:44 | 0:12:49 | |
Kennedy's new administration, only four months old, was in trouble. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
The economy, the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the Gagarin flight. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:59 | |
Kennedy urgently needed proof of his new frontier. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:01 | |
His Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, was an ardent supporter of the space programme. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:06 | |
In a memo to Johnson, Kennedy asked his Vice President to identify a goal in space | 0:13:06 | 0:13:12 | |
that America had the best chance of reaching before the Russians. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:15 | |
Johnson's answer was prompt, the most difficult goal of all, | 0:13:15 | 0:13:19 | |
allowing America time to overtake the Russian lead. | 0:13:19 | 0:13:22 | |
Johnson's response prompted President Kennedy to make one of the most memorable political speeches | 0:13:26 | 0:13:33 | |
in history, and set America on course to a new world. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:37 | |
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:42 | |
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon, | 0:13:42 | 0:13:46 | |
and returning him safely to the Earth. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:49 | |
No single space project in this period will be more impressive | 0:13:49 | 0:13:52 | |
to mankind, or more important for the long range exploration of space. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:57 | |
And none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. | 0:13:57 | 0:14:01 | |
While Congress applauded, and agreed to the moon commitment without even taking a vote, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
NASA now had a clear goal, and for the moment at least, a blank cheque. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:10 | |
NASA had pushed for the moon programme, | 0:14:10 | 0:14:12 | |
but when Kennedy's challenge came, many in the Agency were aghast. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:16 | |
When he said that we were going to go land men on the moon and | 0:14:16 | 0:14:20 | |
bring them back safely by the end of the decade, | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
some of us thought that was biting off a little bit more than we could tolerate. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:29 | |
Here we were in the throws of still trying to fly our first orbital | 0:14:29 | 0:14:33 | |
flight, and someone said we were going to go land men on the moon. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:36 | |
Kennedy's speech in 1961 was, in my opinion, one of the great political speeches. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:43 | |
"We choose to go to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's hard." | 0:14:43 | 0:14:48 | |
How many politicians today can you imagine aiming for an almost unachievable goal? | 0:14:48 | 0:14:55 | |
The plan was stunningly ambitious, and it presented NASA with numerous | 0:14:55 | 0:15:00 | |
challenges, not least finding men who were made of the right stuff. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:05 | |
I'm going, I'm going! It's fantastic! | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
It's unbelievable! | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
It's the most extraordinary feeling! | 0:15:11 | 0:15:13 | |
In 1979, James Burke, the face of BBC Science, looked back at the selection criteria. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:20 | |
Back in December 1958 if you had wanted to be an astronaut, the announcement made it sound simple. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:25 | |
Basic requirements, aged between 25-40, under 5'11", it was going to be a small spacecraft, | 0:15:25 | 0:15:31 | |
science degree qualifications, qualified jet test pilot, healthy, | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
experienced in dangerous and stressful situations. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:37 | |
The selectors also said they were looking for high intelligence, | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
ability to command, ability to take orders, motivation, | 0:15:40 | 0:15:42 | |
creativity, mathematical ability, sociability, adaptability, maturity, | 0:15:42 | 0:15:46 | |
decency, psychological stability. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
Could you sit absolutely still in a dangerous situation? How are you doing so far? | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
But then candidates, and there were 508 of them, had to go through | 0:15:51 | 0:15:55 | |
exhaustive interviews in Washington, followed by every known medical test, including sperm count, | 0:15:55 | 0:16:00 | |
at the interestingly named Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:04 | |
That cut them down to 31, and then it was off to secret midnight rendezvous in groups of five | 0:16:04 | 0:16:09 | |
in Dayton, Ohio for what was known as stress testing. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
Your foot was in a bucket of ice water, there was a flash of light | 0:16:12 | 0:16:16 | |
in your eye, very painful, you spent ten hours in a darkened room. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:20 | |
Some of the stuff, today we realise was unnecessary. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:24 | |
I think, though, that the doctors didn't know what the people would get | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
into in space so they were trying to make sure we were immune to just about anything. | 0:16:28 | 0:16:32 | |
They also dropped them, spun them, heated them, tilted them, | 0:16:32 | 0:16:35 | |
made them run on treadmills, and vibrated them until they indicated that they'd had enough. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:40 | |
As somebody said at the time, once you've chosen your supermen, | 0:16:45 | 0:16:49 | |
that only leaves you about 10,000 other problems to solve. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:52 | |
Let's take a look at some of the major ones. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:55 | |
Not least, how do you get men to the moon? | 0:16:55 | 0:16:57 | |
The trouble with that is that what goes up tends to come down. | 0:16:57 | 0:17:02 | |
At the time they were doing a bigger version of that with inter-continental ballistic missiles, | 0:17:04 | 0:17:08 | |
which is why they thought they could go to the moon at all. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
All they had to do was to stop the rocket falling back to Earth. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
And that's where the idea of an orbit comes in. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:18 | |
If you fire with sufficient power, | 0:17:18 | 0:17:20 | |
the rocket will come down halfway across the world but at an angle. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
Reach a speed of over 17,000 miles an hour and the rocket will fall, | 0:17:23 | 0:17:28 | |
but miss the Earth and go on missing it like this. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:31 | |
Next, you boost your speed to over 25,000 miles an hour, and the rocket will follow a new orbit, | 0:17:34 | 0:17:40 | |
still trying to fall to Earth, but going out over 250,000 miles into space before doing so, like this. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:46 | |
If the rocket's intercepted at this point by the moon, the moon's gravitational field attracts | 0:17:46 | 0:17:51 | |
the rocket just enough to change its orbit, swing it round the back of the moon and head to Earth. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:56 | |
A touch on the break pedal, as it were, and you stay in orbit around the moon. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:05 | |
Another touch, and you land. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:07 | |
All you have to have to be able to do that is one of these, a Saturn V. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:14 | |
And that is your next major problem. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:16 | |
How do you build one of these monsters safe enough and accurate | 0:18:16 | 0:18:20 | |
enough to risk putting men on top and shooting them at the moon? | 0:18:20 | 0:18:24 | |
The answer to that question is that you give it | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
to many different people to each build and test one part. | 0:18:30 | 0:18:33 | |
The figures on the Saturn V were astronomical. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
This first stage, made by Boeing, carried 530,000 gallons of fuel | 0:18:36 | 0:18:41 | |
and accelerated to 6,000 miles an hour in two and half minutes. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
Stage two, built by North American Aviation, increased the speed | 0:18:48 | 0:18:52 | |
to over 15,000 miles an hour and went up to 600,000 feet. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:55 | |
The third stage, built by McDonnell Douglas, would eventually | 0:18:57 | 0:19:01 | |
take the speed up to 25,000 miles an hour, escape velocity. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:05 | |
With the housing for the lunar module, the mother spacecraft and the launch escape tower, | 0:19:05 | 0:19:10 | |
the whole stack reached a mind-boggling 363 feet end to end. | 0:19:10 | 0:19:15 | |
In 1967, there was still a long way to go before anyone would land | 0:19:15 | 0:19:19 | |
on the moon, and as the space race stepped up a gear, corners were cut. | 0:19:19 | 0:19:25 | |
As training was underway for the first manned Apollo mission, | 0:19:25 | 0:19:28 | |
there were already concerns about the dangers. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:31 | |
Apollo 1. Its crew, Gus Grissom, veteran of Mercury and Gemini, | 0:19:31 | 0:19:36 | |
Ed White, the space walker of Gemini IV, novice astronaut Roger Chaffee. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:41 | |
A few weeks before the first test of Apollo in Earth orbit, the Apollo 1 crew meets the press at Pad 34. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:48 | |
They show off their new space suits in front of the Saturn Rocket already on the Pad. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:56 | |
Three years remain before the decade is out, and the moon now seems very close. | 0:19:56 | 0:20:01 | |
Grissom, White and Chaffee clown self-consciously | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
with the water wings built into their suits, | 0:20:04 | 0:20:07 | |
but not everyone at NASA was happy. | 0:20:07 | 0:20:09 | |
A scathing assessment of the quality of the work being done on the Apollo spacecraft had been delivered | 0:20:10 | 0:20:16 | |
to the industry contractor a year earlier by Apollo programme director, General Samuel Phillips. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:21 | |
General Phillips had pointed out | 0:20:21 | 0:20:23 | |
a number of deficiencies in the spacecraft. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:25 | |
There isn't any engineering development some areas that are not | 0:20:25 | 0:20:30 | |
designed as well or do not function as well as others. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:34 | |
These were not being changed | 0:20:34 | 0:20:37 | |
mainly because of a schedule that had to be maintained. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
And the schedule was dictated by political pressure to beat the Russians to the moon. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:45 | |
-We must always keep this in focus. -And now the price was to be paid. | 0:20:45 | 0:20:48 | |
On Pad 34, the Apollo 1 crew was nearing the end of a simulated countdown. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:54 | |
This film of the crew was taken a few days earlier during a similar test of the spacecraft. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:59 | |
During the countdown several minor but irritating problems had cropped up. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:04 | |
Then, there was a surge of electrical current, | 0:21:04 | 0:21:06 | |
followed by voices in the spacecraft calling out that a fire had started. | 0:21:06 | 0:21:09 | |
We interrupt this programme for a special CBS news report. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:14 | |
Astronauts Virgil Grissom, | 0:21:14 | 0:21:16 | |
Edward White and Roger Chaffee, | 0:21:16 | 0:21:20 | |
were killed tonight in flash fire, | 0:21:20 | 0:21:22 | |
during tests of the Apollo Saturn 204 Vehicle | 0:21:22 | 0:21:26 | |
at Cape Kennedy Air Force base. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:29 | |
The fire occurred while the astronauts were in the spacecraft, | 0:21:29 | 0:21:33 | |
at T minus 10 minutes prior to the planned simulated lift-off. | 0:21:33 | 0:21:38 | |
When the hatch was opened you could see just a void, it was dark. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:42 | |
The Pad leader reported to me that he could see no-one in there. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:48 | |
What had happened was that the... | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
..fire, which had... | 0:21:53 | 0:21:55 | |
reached a pressure point in 19 seconds and burst | 0:21:55 | 0:21:58 | |
the bottom part of the spacecraft, had blackened everything. | 0:21:58 | 0:22:02 | |
We tried to get the medics up there but there really wasn't anything we could do. It was over so fast. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:10 | |
Smoke and fire had erupted through the wall of the spacecraft. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
Workers on the platform struggled to open the hatches | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
and to fight the fire with hopelessly inadequate equipment. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:19 | |
It took five minutes to get the hatches open. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
Inside the charred smoke-filled interior, Grissom, White, and Chaffee lay dead of asphyxiation. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:29 | |
The charred spacecraft, wrapped to keep it from the eyes of newsmen, | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
was removed from Pad 34 a few days later. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:35 | |
At the moment the fire happened, the craft was being filled | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
with the atmosphere of pure oxygen the crew would breathe in space. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:42 | |
It was incredibly vulnerable to fire. | 0:22:42 | 0:22:46 | |
It wasn't only Americans who were dying for their lunar dream. | 0:22:56 | 0:23:00 | |
Just three months later, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov crash-landed | 0:23:00 | 0:23:05 | |
when his parachutes failed to deploy. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:07 | |
The first announcement of the cosmonaut's death came from the Taj Press Agency. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:13 | |
Moscow Radio interrupted its early morning bulletin to read it | 0:23:13 | 0:23:17 | |
and followed the reading by solemn music. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:21 | |
Despite the tragedies, the space race continued. | 0:23:22 | 0:23:25 | |
In 1968, the Russians seemed about to take a last-minute gamble on sending someone to the moon, | 0:23:25 | 0:23:32 | |
despite the fact that their space programme had been lagging behind. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:36 | |
It wasn't until 1990 | 0:23:38 | 0:23:40 | |
that Horizon was allowed a glimpse inside a 1960s Soviet lunar lander. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:46 | |
It looked more like the inside of a steam train than a spaceship. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:49 | |
This was where the cosmonaut would stand, clutching two levers. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:56 | |
It was surprisingly primitive. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:58 | |
But rumours of a Russian lunar voyage were enough to scare | 0:23:58 | 0:24:02 | |
the Americans, who accelerated their own plans. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
The Russian intention, proclaimed on the front page of Pravda, was one reason for a change of plan. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:10 | |
This was another, work on the lunar landing module, the LEM, had fallen behind schedule. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:16 | |
The LEM had been due to fly on the Saturn V and be tested in Earth orbit. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:21 | |
With the LEM not ready, and the Russians threatening, NASA re-thought the mission. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:25 | |
The first Saturn V to carry men would take them not just around the Earth, but around the moon. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:31 | |
That initial suggestion was sort of awesome to think about, | 0:24:31 | 0:24:38 | |
because we had not been working to go to the moon at that point, | 0:24:38 | 0:24:41 | |
we were going to at best another six months later. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
Just a few days before Christmas in 1968, | 0:24:55 | 0:24:58 | |
Apollo 8 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:02 | |
Three, two, one, zero. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
We have lift-off, lift-off at 7:51 am Eastern Standard Time. | 0:25:09 | 0:25:14 | |
Now until that time, the furthest any human had been from the surface of the Earth was a few hundred | 0:25:34 | 0:25:40 | |
miles, but Apollo 8 was to journey a quarter of a million miles further. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:45 | |
And as the spacecraft passed behind the dark side of the moon, | 0:25:45 | 0:25:50 | |
Borman, Lovell and Anders would become the first humans | 0:25:50 | 0:25:54 | |
to lose sight completely of their home. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
The journey to the moon would take almost three days. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
In mission control in Houston, Director of Flight Operations Craft | 0:26:02 | 0:26:06 | |
and his colleagues could do little but wait and watch. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:09 | |
On board, Jim Lovell's navigation was pinpoint accurate. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:14 | |
At 4am, Houston time, the 24 December, Apollo 8 | 0:26:14 | 0:26:17 | |
went behind the moon and fired its engine to drop into lunar orbit. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:21 | |
We've got it, we've got it, Apollo 8 now in lunar orbit, | 0:26:21 | 0:26:25 | |
there's a cheer in this room, this is Apollo Control Houston, | 0:26:25 | 0:26:29 | |
switching to the voice of Jim Lovell. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:32 | |
Apollo 8, Houston, what does the old moon look like from 60 miles? Over. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:40 | |
OK, Houston, the moon is essentially grey, | 0:26:42 | 0:26:46 | |
no colour, looks like plaster of Paris, | 0:26:46 | 0:26:50 | |
the craters are all rounded off, there's quite a few of them, some of them are newer. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:54 | |
I think that each one of us carries his own impression of what he's seen today. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:59 | |
I know my own impression is | 0:26:59 | 0:27:01 | |
that it's a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:08 | |
It certainly would not appear to be an inviting place to live or work. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:12 | |
And BBC One have just joined us, I'd like to welcome their viewers. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
As you heard, they're signing off in order to get on with preparations for the second burn | 0:27:19 | 0:27:23 | |
on the other side of the moon to bring them into circular orbit and much closer to the moon. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:27 | |
Patrick Moore, what did you think of that? | 0:27:27 | 0:27:29 | |
Quite incredible. One thing we've got to bear in mind, | 0:27:29 | 0:27:32 | |
they were magnificent pictures, I'm not sure they show us more detail than the orbiters, probably not. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:37 | |
But people were seeing them for the first time, and this is bound to add to our knowledge. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:41 | |
-Sir Bernard, a comment from you? -It was absolutely marvellous. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:45 | |
I did hear that description and I thought it was quite extraordinary, | 0:27:45 | 0:27:50 | |
one of the most remarkable few minutes that I've ever lived through, | 0:27:50 | 0:27:53 | |
the realisation that there was a human being there only 60 or 70 miles above the lunar surface | 0:27:53 | 0:27:59 | |
giving that wonderful description of what he was seeing. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:02 | |
On Christmas Eve, 1968, the world received a message | 0:28:02 | 0:28:07 | |
and a set of images, the likes of which we had never seen before. | 0:28:07 | 0:28:11 | |
For centuries we had peered into space from the Earth. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:16 | |
Now, we could see ourselves as the rest of the universe would see us. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:20 | |
We're now approaching a lunar sunrise. | 0:28:29 | 0:28:33 | |
And for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 | 0:28:33 | 0:28:37 | |
has a message that we'd like to send to you. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:38 | |
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth, | 0:28:41 | 0:28:45 | |
and the Earth was without form and void, | 0:28:45 | 0:28:48 | |
and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God | 0:28:48 | 0:28:54 | |
moved upon the face of the waters and God said, | 0:28:54 | 0:28:57 | |
"Let there be light," and there was light, | 0:28:57 | 0:29:01 | |
and God saw the light, that it was good. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:05 | |
And from the crew of Apollo 8, | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas, | 0:29:08 | 0:29:13 | |
and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:17 | |
The largest TV audience to date watched the transmission. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:22 | |
The world was hooked on the story of the moon. | 0:29:22 | 0:29:27 | |
But the year ends for America, and come to that the world, | 0:29:27 | 0:29:31 | |
with the staggering triumph of the Apollo 8 moonshot. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:35 | |
So despite the disappointments and frustrations, 1968 culminated in one great success. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:41 | |
Maybe this will be the signpost for 1969. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:46 | |
Perhaps when the final assessment is made of 1968, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:50 | |
it will go down as the year when the reality of scientific achievement | 0:29:50 | 0:29:55 | |
at long last caught up with the fiction. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:58 | |
From Stanley Kubrick's dazzling cinematic release | 0:30:17 | 0:30:21 | |
to pop music to children's TV, space was the latest craze. | 0:30:21 | 0:30:26 | |
Certainly wouldn't like to meet him on a dark night in space! | 0:30:29 | 0:30:33 | |
Possibly the first man on the moon will be an American and it's nice to think that we've helped him | 0:30:33 | 0:30:38 | |
on his way with our specially made British cooling suit. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:42 | |
The side doors open and out comes the astronaut, takes a look, quick | 0:30:42 | 0:30:47 | |
bit of filming, back in he goes, up goes the hatch, and away we go. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:51 | |
Well, I feel quite comfortable and free in this suit. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:55 | |
It is getting a bit cold and I'm going to switch it off before I freeze to death | 0:30:55 | 0:30:58 | |
because it's not too warm in here at the moment. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:01 | |
Off the table he goes, this is the sort of thing that can happen to astronauts. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:07 | |
Even some scientists started getting carried away. | 0:31:07 | 0:31:10 | |
We'll develop what you might call space communities, | 0:31:10 | 0:31:14 | |
branches of the human civilisation which are no longer | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
located on Earth, but are located in orbits around Earth or even orbits | 0:31:17 | 0:31:22 | |
around the sun or other planets. | 0:31:22 | 0:31:24 | |
But who is going to want to live out there, it seems such an alien environment? | 0:31:24 | 0:31:28 | |
That is very true, but who on Earth wanted to go to Australia? | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
Research had already begun on the practicalities | 0:31:31 | 0:31:35 | |
of how humans could survive in space for long periods of time. | 0:31:35 | 0:31:38 | |
It's hygiene which is most affected by weightlessness. | 0:31:38 | 0:31:42 | |
The confined conditions require such things as a vacuum razor, | 0:31:42 | 0:31:46 | |
which does not fill the cabin with choking stubble dust. | 0:31:46 | 0:31:49 | |
A special technique for clipping fingernails, and extremely short hair to reduce problems of dandruff. | 0:31:49 | 0:31:56 | |
Recovery of waste matter has also not been necessary for short missions, | 0:31:56 | 0:32:00 | |
but now urine has to be purified to conserve water. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:05 | |
Filtering it through this wick is so successful | 0:32:05 | 0:32:08 | |
that during a blind trial the result was preferred to tap water. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:11 | |
The preparation of food also presented problems, | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
and scientists were working on alternatives | 0:32:14 | 0:32:17 | |
to the freeze-dried meals of earlier missions. | 0:32:17 | 0:32:20 | |
This is bacon-flavoured protein, strawberry-flavoured protein, | 0:32:20 | 0:32:25 | |
chicken, and here's pepperoni-flavoured protein. | 0:32:25 | 0:32:30 | |
To this we can add, let's say, a glycerol solution... | 0:32:30 | 0:32:34 | |
..to produce a rather soft, | 0:32:38 | 0:32:40 | |
somewhat tasty, material. | 0:32:40 | 0:32:43 | |
And it doesn't taste particularly sweet either, | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
it tastes quite a bit like regular pepperoni. | 0:32:47 | 0:32:50 | |
We could provide the astronauts with just pure flavour and they could take the sugar | 0:32:50 | 0:32:54 | |
and convert it into a starch material and end up with things like pancakes | 0:32:54 | 0:32:59 | |
or spaghetti, or even bread for that matter, that they manufacture | 0:32:59 | 0:33:04 | |
or cook for themselves on these very long duration missions. | 0:33:04 | 0:33:08 | |
It might even be fun to do that on a boring trip to Mars, shall we say. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:14 | |
Mars could wait. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:17 | |
The moon could not. | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
Only a few months remained before Kennedy's deadline would expire. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:24 | |
This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, | 0:33:26 | 0:33:32 | |
of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. | 0:33:32 | 0:33:36 | |
By the end of the '60s, even though it was engaged | 0:33:36 | 0:33:39 | |
in an increasingly unpopular and expensive war in Vietnam, | 0:33:39 | 0:33:44 | |
America stood ready to achieve Kennedy's dream. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:48 | |
We set sail on this new sea | 0:34:17 | 0:34:20 | |
because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:24 | |
We choose to go to the moon! We choose to go to the moon! | 0:34:27 | 0:34:34 | |
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, | 0:34:34 | 0:34:39 | |
not because they are easy, but because they are hard. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:43 | |
Well, another perfect launch of the kind we've come to expect. | 0:34:56 | 0:35:00 | |
I think it's really rather to staggering to remember the first men | 0:35:00 | 0:35:03 | |
on the moon are really on their way. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:05 | |
A few days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left Michael Collins | 0:35:11 | 0:35:16 | |
alone in the command module | 0:35:16 | 0:35:18 | |
and made their final descent in the lunar lander. | 0:35:18 | 0:35:21 | |
It would later emerge that the mission nearly ended in catastrophe. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:26 | |
Unfortunately, we had started the LEM guidance computer off | 0:35:26 | 0:35:29 | |
with a navigational error. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:31 | |
It was approximately 14 mph. | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
What that means is the guidance computer thinks that it is going | 0:35:34 | 0:35:38 | |
toward the moon 14 miles an hour slower than it really is. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:42 | |
-'Capcom we're go for landing' -Eagle Houston, you're go for landing. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:46 | |
-'12:01 alarm.' -12:01 alarm. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:48 | |
'Set time for go flight.' | 0:35:48 | 0:35:50 | |
We're go. We're go. | 0:35:50 | 0:35:52 | |
When they looked out of the LEM window, Armstrong and Aldrin expected to see a flat landing area. | 0:35:52 | 0:35:59 | |
Instead, they found themselves looking at a boulder field. | 0:35:59 | 0:36:02 | |
In mission control, the flight surgeon watched Armstrong's heart rate jump from 77 to 156. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:13 | |
The LEM would have to clear the boulders to avoid a crash landing. | 0:36:16 | 0:36:21 | |
Armstrong fired his thrusters to look for somewhere to touch down. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:25 | |
But this wasn't part of the plan, and the Eagle had limited fuel. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:29 | |
Eventually they found a site, | 0:36:32 | 0:36:34 | |
but by now they had only 30 seconds to land, or they would have to abort. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:39 | |
-'30 seconds.' -30 seconds. | 0:36:39 | 0:36:41 | |
'Contact light. OK, engine stop.' | 0:36:45 | 0:36:49 | |
We copy you down, Eagle. | 0:36:51 | 0:36:54 | |
'Houston, er... | 0:36:54 | 0:36:57 | |
'Tranquillity Bay here, the Eagle has landed.' | 0:36:58 | 0:37:01 | |
Roger, Tranquillity, we copy you on the ground. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:05 | |
You've got a bunch of guys here about to turn blue, we're breathing again, thanks a lot. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:09 | |
I was one year old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and I watched it. | 0:37:09 | 0:37:14 | |
Now, I don't whether there are any of the tiniest fragments | 0:37:14 | 0:37:18 | |
of the memories that still remain, | 0:37:18 | 0:37:20 | |
but I still find it an incredibly powerful experience | 0:37:20 | 0:37:23 | |
to watch it back today. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:24 | |
That night, all around the world, | 0:37:26 | 0:37:28 | |
televisions were ready to screen the final step in a journey that began | 0:37:28 | 0:37:32 | |
with Kennedy's speech eight years previously. | 0:37:32 | 0:37:37 | |
Well, this is the moment, if there ever was a moment, for Patrick Moore. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:42 | |
I really feel overcome. I've lived with this idea all my life. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
Now that it's really happened I can hardly believe it. | 0:37:45 | 0:37:47 | |
No admiration can be too great for those magnificent men | 0:37:47 | 0:37:51 | |
who brought this strange, spidery module down on the moon. | 0:37:51 | 0:37:54 | |
This, obviously, is a moment that humanity is never going to forget. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:58 | |
-Here's the picture! -We're getting a picture on the TV. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:07 | |
There's a great deal of contrast, | 0:38:13 | 0:38:15 | |
and currently it's upside down on our monitor, | 0:38:15 | 0:38:19 | |
but we can make out a fair amount of detail. | 0:38:19 | 0:38:22 | |
There is Armstrong, | 0:38:22 | 0:38:25 | |
you can see him moving. | 0:38:25 | 0:38:27 | |
'I'm at the foot of the ladder. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:30 | |
'The LEM footbeds are only... | 0:38:30 | 0:38:33 | |
'depressed in the surface about one or two inches. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:39 | |
'I'm going to step off the LEM now. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:43 | |
'That's one small step for man, | 0:38:53 | 0:38:57 | |
'one giant leap for mankind.' | 0:38:57 | 0:39:00 | |
There's Aldrin. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:04 | |
Armstrong's going to try and guide Aldrin out as he comes backwards. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
'How far are my feet from the edge?' | 0:39:10 | 0:39:12 | |
'You're right at the edge of the porch.' | 0:39:12 | 0:39:14 | |
'Making sure not to lock it on my way out.' | 0:39:14 | 0:39:17 | |
-HE LAUGHS -'There you go.' | 0:39:17 | 0:39:20 | |
-'Beautiful view.' -'Isn't that something?' | 0:39:22 | 0:39:26 | |
-'Magnificent sight out here.' -'Magnificent desolation. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:32 | |
'OK, Houston I'm going to change lenses on you.' | 0:39:33 | 0:39:38 | |
A moment while Neil Armstrong changes lens on the television camera. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:44 | |
When he takes it out to its distant position, we'll get a wide view of everything that's going on. | 0:39:44 | 0:39:51 | |
NASA covered their spacecrafts with cameras, | 0:39:51 | 0:39:53 | |
allowing an adoring audience to follow every minute of the story. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:57 | |
It turned astronauts into heroes, and their voyages into dramas. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:04 | |
'Why don't you turn around and let them get a view from there? | 0:40:08 | 0:40:12 | |
'Let them see what the view looks like.' | 0:40:12 | 0:40:14 | |
There it is. | 0:40:17 | 0:40:19 | |
The lunar module. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:21 | |
The sea of tranquillity. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:25 | |
-'OK, I'm going to move it.' -'OK, here's another good one.' | 0:40:25 | 0:40:29 | |
-The blackness of the sky. -'OK, we got that one.' | 0:40:32 | 0:40:36 | |
'Roger, and we see Buzz going about his work.' | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
'OK, it looks good there, Neil.' | 0:40:44 | 0:40:47 | |
We've just heard that all over the world there are 33 countries | 0:40:51 | 0:40:55 | |
that have stayed up to take these pictures live. | 0:40:55 | 0:40:58 | |
Once again, an Apollo mission notched up the largest ever | 0:40:58 | 0:41:02 | |
TV audience, with over half a billion people tuning in. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:06 | |
After less than 24 hours on the moon's surface, the lunar module | 0:41:09 | 0:41:14 | |
blasted off to rendezvous with the command module in lunar orbit. | 0:41:14 | 0:41:19 | |
We've come to the conclusion that this has been far more than three men on a voyage to the moon. | 0:41:20 | 0:41:27 | |
We feel that this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity | 0:41:29 | 0:41:35 | |
of all of mankind to explore the unknown. | 0:41:35 | 0:41:39 | |
The acceptance of this challenge was inevitable. | 0:41:39 | 0:41:42 | |
Upon their return, the Apollo 11 heroes were placed in quarantine due to fears of lunar germs. | 0:41:45 | 0:41:51 | |
But that didn't stop President Nixon from personally welcoming them home | 0:41:51 | 0:41:55 | |
and reaping the political rewards of the seeds sown | 0:41:55 | 0:41:58 | |
by his Democrat predecessors, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
Gee, you look great. Do you feel as good as you look? | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
We feel just perfect, Mr President. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:07 | |
I was thinking as you came down, and we knew it was a success, | 0:42:07 | 0:42:12 | |
and it'd only been eight days, just a long week... | 0:42:12 | 0:42:18 | |
..that this is the greatest week | 0:42:20 | 0:42:21 | |
in the history of the world since the creation. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:25 | |
As a result of what you've done, | 0:42:25 | 0:42:27 | |
the world's never been closer together before. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:30 | |
The crew of Apollo 11 had achieved something | 0:42:30 | 0:42:33 | |
that united the world in admiration. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
There is a great deal of interest here in the flight of Apollo 11. | 0:42:43 | 0:42:46 | |
The half million American servicemen on duty in South Vietnam have been reading about it | 0:42:46 | 0:42:52 | |
for weeks in Stars and Stripes, the daily military newspaper, | 0:42:52 | 0:42:56 | |
and in several English language Saigon papers. | 0:42:56 | 0:42:59 | |
It really didn't impress me too much until today, when I was talking | 0:42:59 | 0:43:02 | |
to a former Vietcong who works for my company. | 0:43:02 | 0:43:05 | |
I was talking to him through an interpreter, and we were trying | 0:43:05 | 0:43:07 | |
to explain to him that the United States is putting a man on the moon. | 0:43:07 | 0:43:10 | |
As much as we explained to him, he just refused to believe it was possible, | 0:43:10 | 0:43:15 | |
and it really hit home at this time that the United States is accomplishing a fantastic feat. | 0:43:15 | 0:43:19 | |
'Soyuz, this is Apollo. | 0:43:19 | 0:43:21 | |
'Three metres... One metre... | 0:43:21 | 0:43:24 | |
'Docking completed.' | 0:43:24 | 0:43:27 | |
For a brief moment in time, it seemed as though the vision | 0:43:27 | 0:43:30 | |
of Earth from space might really allow earthly rivalries to be transcended. | 0:43:30 | 0:43:35 | |
In 1975, at the height of the Cold War, | 0:43:35 | 0:43:38 | |
America and Russia extended a hand of peace in space. | 0:43:38 | 0:43:43 | |
I want to express my very great admiration for your hard work, | 0:43:43 | 0:43:49 | |
your total dedication in preparing for this first joint flight. | 0:43:49 | 0:43:54 | |
(FOREIGN ACCENT) Old philosopher says the best part of a good dinner | 0:44:00 | 0:44:06 | |
is not what you eat, but with whom you eat. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:09 | |
# You may say I'm a dreamer | 0:44:14 | 0:44:17 | |
# But I'm not the only one | 0:44:20 | 0:44:23 | |
# I hope someday you'll join us | 0:44:26 | 0:44:30 | |
# And the world will live as one. # | 0:44:33 | 0:44:38 | |
Once we had got to the moon, | 0:44:41 | 0:44:43 | |
interest in space exploration began to fade. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
But in 1970, a drama would unfold | 0:44:47 | 0:44:50 | |
that would once again put Apollo centre stage. | 0:44:50 | 0:44:53 | |
This is the crew of Apollo 13, wishing everybody there a nice evening. | 0:44:53 | 0:44:58 | |
Altogether there were seven attempts to land men on the moon. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:02 | |
And they all went pretty much according to plan, except one, | 0:45:02 | 0:45:07 | |
when for a few days, the world waited with bated breath | 0:45:07 | 0:45:11 | |
to see what fate would befall the three astronauts of Apollo 13. | 0:45:11 | 0:45:15 | |
-'Houston, we have a problem here.' -This is Houston. Say again, please. | 0:45:15 | 0:45:20 | |
'Houston, we have a problem. We've had a main B Bus undervolt. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:23 | |
Roger, main B undervolt. | 0:45:23 | 0:45:25 | |
'We had a pretty large bang associated with the warning there.' | 0:45:25 | 0:45:30 | |
OK, now let's everybody keep cool. | 0:45:30 | 0:45:33 | |
We got LEM still attached. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:34 | |
Let's make sure we don't blow the whole mission. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:38 | |
One of Apollo 13's oxygen tanks had exploded, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:42 | |
and the other was leaking into space. | 0:45:42 | 0:45:45 | |
The lunar landing was abandoned, | 0:45:45 | 0:45:47 | |
but there wasn't enough air to get the crew back to Earth. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:51 | |
The pressure in O2 tank one is all the way down to 297. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:55 | |
You better think about getting in the LEM. | 0:45:55 | 0:45:57 | |
Their only hope was to move into the attached lunar module, which had a separate oxygen supply. | 0:45:57 | 0:46:02 | |
They would have to spend the four-day journey back to Earth using as little power as possible. | 0:46:02 | 0:46:07 | |
I want you to get some guys figuring out minimum power | 0:46:07 | 0:46:11 | |
in the LEM to sustain life. | 0:46:11 | 0:46:13 | |
For a reason as yet unknown, | 0:46:13 | 0:46:15 | |
some kind of explosion occurred in the spacecraft's main engine. | 0:46:15 | 0:46:19 | |
Houston says they'll get back to Earth alive | 0:46:19 | 0:46:22 | |
only if the lunar module's systems work perfectly all the way. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:25 | |
So for the first time in the history of American space flight, | 0:46:25 | 0:46:30 | |
there is no back-up system to save them if anything goes wrong. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
The lunar landing has, of course, been called off. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:35 | |
At this moment, about 30,000 miles out from the moon, and accelerating fast towards it, the crew are aiming | 0:46:35 | 0:46:41 | |
to curve in behind the moon, and out of contact with Earth, and fire the only engine they have left... | 0:46:41 | 0:46:46 | |
the lunar module's descent engine. | 0:46:46 | 0:46:49 | |
We're now coming to the moment, the last moments of Apollo 13 | 0:47:04 | 0:47:07 | |
as it comes in, as it begins its re-entry. | 0:47:07 | 0:47:10 | |
The best thing we can do now is just to listen and hope. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
We'll only know whether or not that heat shield was damaged | 0:47:13 | 0:47:17 | |
by the explosion three days ago when they come out of radio blackout. | 0:47:17 | 0:47:21 | |
All anyone can do now is cross their fingers. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:25 | |
This is Houston. | 0:47:25 | 0:47:26 | |
We've just had loss of signal from Honeysuckle with Apollo 13. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:32 | |
Just about now they should be going through the moment of maximum heat. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:36 | |
30 seconds to go...for blackout. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:40 | |
We will attempt to | 0:47:43 | 0:47:45 | |
contact Apollo 13 through one of the Oria aircraft. | 0:47:45 | 0:47:49 | |
Continuing to monitor, this is Apollo Control Houston. | 0:47:49 | 0:47:53 | |
Apollo 13 should be out of blackout at this time. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:05 | |
We're standing by for any reports of Oria acquisition. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:10 | |
It should be out. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:15 | |
We've had a report that Oria four aircraft has acquisition of signal. | 0:48:17 | 0:48:21 | |
There they are! They've made it! | 0:48:25 | 0:48:28 | |
Extremely loud applause here in Mission Control... | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
Extremely loud applause for Apollo 13 now the main chutes come through on the television display here. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:42 | |
# A rat done bit my sister Nell | 0:48:57 | 0:48:59 | |
# With Whitey on the moon | 0:48:59 | 0:49:01 | |
# Her face and arms began to swell, and Whitey's on the moon | 0:49:01 | 0:49:04 | |
# I can't pay no doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon | 0:49:06 | 0:49:09 | |
# Ten years from now I'll be paying still, while Whitey's on the moon... # | 0:49:09 | 0:49:13 | |
Throughout the Apollo programme, | 0:49:13 | 0:49:15 | |
America was a nation in social turmoil. | 0:49:15 | 0:49:18 | |
With many Americans fighting for basic human rights on Earth, | 0:49:18 | 0:49:22 | |
the idea of spending billions of dollars | 0:49:22 | 0:49:24 | |
travelling to the moon was, for many, offensive. | 0:49:24 | 0:49:27 | |
And in Vietnam, the Cold War had turned bloody. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:34 | |
The spirit of exploration and possibility of the '60s had faded, | 0:49:34 | 0:49:38 | |
replaced by the grim reality of young men in coffins. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:42 | |
Amidst such problems, Americans were becoming disillusioned with space exploration. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:48 | |
There's a state of apathy in the United States now. People just don't care one way or another. | 0:49:48 | 0:49:51 | |
I think we're spending too much money on the moon. | 0:49:51 | 0:49:56 | |
They could use the time, the energy and the money to better advantage here in the United States. | 0:49:56 | 0:50:00 | |
There's lots of room for improvement here. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:02 | |
Rather than spend all that money exploring space | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
when people are starving here and that money could be put to very good use improving life here. | 0:50:05 | 0:50:11 | |
Against a background of these chronic social problems | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
and the needs of a violent war, | 0:50:18 | 0:50:20 | |
the apparent short-term goals in space seem flimsy, | 0:50:20 | 0:50:24 | |
the long-term ones too far off to be relevant. | 0:50:24 | 0:50:28 | |
Yet still the National Aeronautics And Space Administration NASA | 0:50:28 | 0:50:32 | |
retain a budget higher than that for the rest of the country's scientific research put together. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:38 | |
More and more Americans who had been elated at the Saturn launchings | 0:50:38 | 0:50:42 | |
and the Apollo landings are now obsessed by American failures | 0:50:42 | 0:50:46 | |
on Earth, ands proclaim themselves bored by space. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:49 | |
Fewer and fewer congressmen feel free to make lyrical speeches about | 0:50:49 | 0:50:54 | |
the challenge of outer space to that blue gem, planet Earth. | 0:50:54 | 0:50:58 | |
More and more are inclined to listen to colleagues like the New York | 0:50:58 | 0:51:02 | |
congressman who said this year that he couldn't justify voting | 0:51:02 | 0:51:06 | |
funds to find out whether there were microbes on Mars so long as he knew | 0:51:06 | 0:51:10 | |
that there were rats and cockroaches alive in the apartments of Harlem. | 0:51:10 | 0:51:15 | |
In the face of budget cuts, | 0:51:16 | 0:51:18 | |
the final three Apollo missions were cancelled. | 0:51:18 | 0:51:21 | |
When Apollo 17's lunar lander took off on December 15 1972, | 0:51:22 | 0:51:27 | |
the camera operator in Houston | 0:51:27 | 0:51:29 | |
timed it perfectly to film man leaving the moon for the last time. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:34 | |
If NASA hadn't paid such attention to filming, | 0:51:44 | 0:51:47 | |
it's possible we would never have got to the moon. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:50 | |
It was the television images of heroes and their unfolding dramas | 0:51:50 | 0:51:55 | |
that appealed to the public. | 0:51:55 | 0:51:57 | |
Without TV, we may never have fallen in love with the story. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
And without public support, | 0:52:00 | 0:52:03 | |
Congress would never have committed the funding. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:06 | |
It was over a decade later, in the mid-80s, | 0:52:06 | 0:52:10 | |
that a new mission was announced | 0:52:10 | 0:52:11 | |
with the hope of recapturing the public's imagination. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:15 | |
America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:19 | |
We can reach for greatness again. | 0:52:19 | 0:52:21 | |
We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space | 0:52:21 | 0:52:25 | |
for peaceful economic and scientific gain. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:28 | |
Tonight I'm directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station, | 0:52:28 | 0:52:33 | |
and to do it within a decade. APPLAUSE | 0:52:33 | 0:52:37 | |
NASA claimed that one advantage of the space station | 0:52:39 | 0:52:42 | |
would be its use as a base to service satellites in orbit. | 0:52:42 | 0:52:47 | |
During a test run repair of the Solamax satellite, | 0:52:49 | 0:52:52 | |
using the shuttle, | 0:52:52 | 0:52:53 | |
NASA produced more incredible images for the world's TV screens. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:57 | |
Nelson on his way, one hour and two minutes. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
But it wasn't enough to persuade the public that space travel was worthwhile. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:28 | |
There was still no story to rival the lunar missions. | 0:53:28 | 0:53:33 | |
Reagan's space station was never completed as envisaged. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:39 | |
He just couldn't get the money from Congress. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:41 | |
And perhaps those journeys into near-Earth orbit would never capture | 0:53:41 | 0:53:46 | |
the public imagination in the way that the Apollo journeys | 0:53:46 | 0:53:50 | |
to another world always did. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:52 | |
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:56 | |
In 2004, a new President would finally | 0:53:56 | 0:53:58 | |
try to reignite the lunar dreams originally inspired by Kennedy. | 0:53:58 | 0:54:04 | |
Please, be seated. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:08 | |
Today I announce a new plan | 0:54:10 | 0:54:12 | |
to extend a human presence across our solar system. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:16 | |
Beginning no later than 2008, | 0:54:16 | 0:54:19 | |
we will send a series of robotic missions | 0:54:19 | 0:54:22 | |
to the lunar surface to research and prepare | 0:54:22 | 0:54:26 | |
for future human exploration... | 0:54:26 | 0:54:28 | |
..with the goal of living and working there | 0:54:30 | 0:54:35 | |
for increasingly extended periods of time. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:39 | |
Bush's announcement committed NASA to returning a man to the moon | 0:54:46 | 0:54:51 | |
by 2020 and building long-term lunar settlements. | 0:54:51 | 0:54:54 | |
We're talking about going back to the moon. | 0:54:56 | 0:54:58 | |
We're not just talking about going there to stay three days | 0:54:58 | 0:55:01 | |
and come home with some scientific samples, | 0:55:01 | 0:55:04 | |
we're talking about the idea of staying, learning to live there, | 0:55:04 | 0:55:07 | |
learning to actually live off the land using the resources we find, | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
and expanding the whole sphere of influence where human activity | 0:55:10 | 0:55:16 | |
exists, not only to be on the Earth, but to be in the solar system. | 0:55:16 | 0:55:19 | |
I'm coming out of there. Too high, too high... | 0:55:19 | 0:55:23 | |
That's fundamentally different | 0:55:25 | 0:55:26 | |
to the missions we flew during the Apollo era. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:29 | |
We've literally only scratched the surface on the moon. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:35 | |
We've gone there, we've dug little trenches, we've made cores a few | 0:55:35 | 0:55:39 | |
metres deep, but we don't know what the moon is really about. | 0:55:39 | 0:55:42 | |
We don't know what's in the permanently sheltered craters | 0:55:42 | 0:55:46 | |
at the south pole, we don't know what's more than a few metres below the surface. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:51 | |
We don't even know if the core of the moon is liquid or solid. | 0:55:51 | 0:55:54 | |
As America begins the process of colonising the moon, the rest | 0:56:02 | 0:56:05 | |
of the world has also realised | 0:56:05 | 0:56:07 | |
it might be missing out on something important. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
One country with very definite plans of its own is China. | 0:56:23 | 0:56:26 | |
The Chinese have already successfully launched | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
two manned space missions, | 0:56:35 | 0:56:38 | |
and are talking about putting astronaut on the moon by 2025. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:42 | |
Russia has also expressed interest. | 0:56:46 | 0:56:48 | |
For nearly 50 years it's been one of the world's leading space powers. | 0:56:48 | 0:56:54 | |
And there are well developed lunar missions | 0:56:54 | 0:56:57 | |
from India, Japan, and Europe. | 0:56:57 | 0:56:59 | |
The race to the moon is back on. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:08 | |
The question is, do we have the public appetite to pay for it? | 0:57:12 | 0:57:17 | |
I hope so, because going to the moon isn't just a great story, | 0:57:17 | 0:57:21 | |
and it doesn't matter that we've already done it. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
It's worth doing, like Kennedy said, | 0:57:24 | 0:57:27 | |
not because it's easy, but because it's hard. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:31 | |
It tests us and it drives our civilisation forward. | 0:57:31 | 0:57:34 | |
For me, the moon represents so much more than just a piece of rock to go and stand on. | 0:57:36 | 0:57:40 | |
It represents the frontier, it represents the spirit of exploration. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:45 | |
Apollo was the inspiration for me to become a scientist. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:51 | |
I feel like our pioneering spirit died with Apollo, | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
and that immeasurably diminishes us. | 0:57:57 | 0:57:59 | |
So I'm delighted that we're going back to the moon, | 0:57:59 | 0:58:03 | |
and I'd like to see it as the first step to the exploration | 0:58:03 | 0:58:07 | |
of a new frontier out into the solar system and beyond. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:10 | |
'OK, Houston. As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown, | 0:58:10 | 0:58:16 | |
'I realise there's a fundamental truth to our nature. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:19 | |
'Man must explore, and this is exploration at its greatest.' | 0:58:20 | 0:58:24 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:44 | 0:58:47 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:47 | 0:58:50 |