Confessions from Space: Apollo (2019) Movie Script
1
Duke: If you're gonna
accomplish something,
You gonna have to take risks.
To land a man on the moon
and return him safely to earth
By the end of the decade.
Duke: It was really
a fighter pilot's ride.
We were close to not
being able to come home.
Collins: And then bingo,
the moon was in your window,
Filled your window.
I just looked in awe at this
incredibly beautiful planet.
Armstrong:
It's one small step for man,
One giant leap for mankind.
-- Captions by vitac --
Captions paid for by
discovery communications
[ indistinct conversations ]
Hello. I'm richard garriott.
I'm the first second-generation
american astronaut,
Son of apollo-era astronaut
owen garriott,
Who flew on skylab
and the space shuttle.
And here on the 50th anniversary
of the apollo moon landings,
We are going to bring together
these apollo astronauts
Who almost never get the chance
to get together,
And we will sit down
with each of them...
Well, again,
thank you so much.
[ laughing ]
...And talk about their
amazing experiences
On their journeys
to the moon.
-Yeah.
-Okay.
-Alright, let's roll it.
-Copy mark.
Let me welcome you all today
To what is clearly
a historic gathering
Of six of the apollo astronauts
who are at the tip
Of our national effort to take
humanity from its cradle here
On earth and for the first time,
Extend our reach 240,000 miles
through space
To the surface of the moon.
These six astronauts flew
aboard apollo missions
Which took us
incrementally further
And further until we had
not only landed on the moon,
But we had done it six times.
12 of our astronauts
walked on the moon.
They brought back
842 pounds of moon rocks.
The first three crews walked
4.4 miles across the surface,
And the last three used rovers
to cover about 56 miles.
From apollo 7,
the first apollo
To carry people into space,
lasting 11 days in space.
For the first time,
we also had live tv.
Man: We have liftoff.
Garriott:
Please welcome apollo 7
lunar pilot walt cunningham.
[ cheers and applause ]
From apollo 9, the first
crewed saturn v full stack.
Also performed crewed dockings
and a space walk.
Please welcome apollo 9
lunar module pilot
Rusty schweickart.
[ cheers and applause ]
From apollo 11,
the command pilot
Who was left alone in orbit
around the moon
When his crewmates
descended to the surface,
Becoming
likely the loneliest man
In the universe,
michael collins.
[ cheers and applause ]
Also welcome from apollo 11,
the lunar module pilot,
Who along with neil armstrong,
became the first humans
To walk on the moon.
I give you buzz aldrin.
[ cheers and applause ]
From apollo 15, the fourth
successful landing on the moon
And had a strong focus
on science
For their entire mission,
Please welcome the apollo 15
command module pilot,
Al worden.
[ cheers and applause ]
And finally please welcome
the apollo 16 lunar module pilot
Who drove a long stint
of very rough terrain.
Charlie duke.
[ cheers and applause ]
First to you, walt --
You think of
the early projects,
Mercury and gemini
and apollos 7, 8, 9, 10 --
These were all stepping stones
to reaching the moon.
Can you tell us a little bit
about this drive to get there
And how quickly we tested these
things one after the next?
I think the public today
doesn't realize
The steps it took
to get there.
I think the number was
something like 240,000 people
Who worked on apollo
or something like that,
And we worked 10,
12 hours a day,
Sometimes 24 hours a day
if it took it,
Six days,
seven days a week,
Whatever was required
because of that incredible,
Imaginative goal
that kennedy set.
We choose to go to the moon
in this decade
And do the other things,
not because they are easy
But because they are hard.
Aldrin:
When kennedy gave his talk,
Obviously we had
an objective -- the moon.
We had a time --
before the end of the decade.
We did not have a plan.
That was a wonderful,
wonderful mandate for us.
It was a masterpiece
of simplicity.
We knew exactly
what we had to do
And exactly when
we had to do it.
Now, the how of it,
that was left to us.
Duke: But it was a bold program
And we had eight years
and six months
From kennedy's announcement
to get it done.
So the focus was let's do it.
You were learning all
about the spacecraft.
We were learning geology.
We were learning the science
that we were going
To be doing on the moon.
You wanted to know it,
At least the spacecraft systems,
absolutely perfectly
Because you could kill yourself
if you do something wrong.
Worden:
Over the three-year period,
I got 1,500 hours
of simulator time.
And if you calculate that out,
that's 500 hours a year
So it's like 25% of my time
was in the simulator.
The gemini program was
a lot of fun and it was good
And it was exciting
And maybe a tiny bit
like a sporting event.
The apollo program wasn't
no sporting event, baby.
The eyes of the world
were on you,
And you better have everything
in perfect alignment.
Time's running out and
we're being watched by friends
And by foes as well.
Worden: The whole thing was
a competition between us
And the russians.
We all wanted to
win on our side.
Cunningham: I think the most
significant difference then
And now was the attitude
that we had,
All fighter pilots,
mostly test pilots,
We had confidence in ourselves.
We also had that
feeling, I'm sure,
That you're not gonna get any
place unless you are willing
To stick your neck out.
And that was risky,
because it was the first one,
But that's just the way we did.
Wallace: This is a cbs news
special report.
This is mike wallace at
the cbs news room in new york.
America's first three apollo
astronauts were trapped
And killed by a flash fire
that swept their moon ship
Early tonight during
a launchpad test
At cape kennedy in florida.
I remember that was on a Friday,
and it was late afternoon.
We had performed that
same test on Thursday.
But we had not closed the hatch.
And when you don't
close the hatch,
You don't have to secure
and operate at 100% oxygen.
Man: [ shouts ]
Fire in the cockpit!
[ screaming ]
[ radio chatter ]
Man #2: Get in there
and help them.
Cunningham: Operating at 100%
oxygen and then you have
To over-pressurize that
to keep the hatch closed.
Nobody had really been
as terribly concerned
As we should have.
But what that did,
that initiated changes
In the apollo program and
subsequent other programs too.
On the operations
with 100% oxygen.
Everybody started
operating differently.
And a lot of that came about
because our friends,
Grissom, white, and chaffee,
sacrificed their lives,
Triggered some of that.
It was interesting to me
that at edwards,
They lost several pilots
in experimental aircraft.
They crashed.
Now, the fire showed up
on page one,
And the experimental aircraft
crashes showed up on page 20.
So that's the difference in
how we perceive these things.
But I got to tell you,
the feeling is the same.
I don't care whether you're
sitting at edwards as a pilot
Or you're sitting at the cape
as an astronaut
Getting ready to launch,
When you lose the crew,
it's bad.
And I absolutely believe
that because we had that fire,
We were able to make
changes in the spacecraft
That allowed every flight
after that to be successful.
I think it was because of that.
I really do believe that.
Space flight is not risk-free,
And even after apollo 1 caught
fire and the crew was killed,
We were dead in the water,
but we weren't giving up.
Apollo 7 was the first
manned apollo launch.
The longest, most ambitious,
most successful
First test flight of any
new flying machine ever.
Then you've got apollo 8.
And apollo 8,
we broke the barrier
To get away from the
earth's gravitational field.
Apollo 9, we finally got
To where we could test
a lunar module.
Finally, apollo 10,
we got to the point
Where they went
through everything
On that apollo 11 landing,
except the last 50,000 feet.
Then, we get apollo 11 and they
did one hell of a fine job.
[ applause ]
[ chuckles ]
People waving, like goodbye.
Everything was going
[ shakes ]
Duke: It was eerie at first.
Cunningham: We launched on
the 11th of October in 1968.
There was no frightened morning
or anything like that
In getting ready
for that flight.
Schweickart: It was a morning
like any other morning.
Not quite, but
we had our breakfast,
We went down to
the medical office.
The difference, of course,
was as we went out
To the transfer van,
which took us
From the crew quarters
out to the pad,
There were more people
and news cameras and things
And people waving, like goodbye,
and things like that.
Duke: We took a van out
to the launchpad.
Every other time
I had been out there,
There was people
scurrying over it,
Like a colony of ants,
People everywhere
on the vehicle.
And we get out of the van,
and there's nobody around.
It was eerie at first.
Schweickart: Going up to
the top deck where we walked
Across that kind of
a long corridor that led out
To the little white room
docked to the door
Of the command module.
Everybody a little bit more edgy
And quiet than
all the simulations
But you know, you know everyone
that's there helping you
Get in the spacecraft.
You're joking around
with people.
What I had on the back of
my little air conditioning unit
Was an 8.5" by 11" piece
of paper with a piece
Of tape on it and when
guenter wendt leaned over
To put jim mcdivitt
in the spacecraft,
I took that piece of paper off
and put it on guenter's back,
Unknown to him,
taped it to his back
So that when he stood up
and the camera got a picture
Of him, it said, "kick me."
[ both laugh ]
Duke:
What I remember is excitement.
Man, the day has finally arrived
And we're gonna get
our chance to go,
And we got a four-hour window
To get this thing
off the ground.
And so our attitude was,
"keep counting, keep counting.
Let's go. I'm ready. I've
trained two years for this."
You have to convince yourself
it's another simulator exercise.
You've been through that
launch sequence so many times
That you kind of
go through it by rote.
Duke: I think we were strapped
in, ready to go,
Hatch closed maybe an hour
before liftoff
And we were listening
to the count.
Man: 10, 9, 8.
Ignition sequence start.
Engines on.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
All engines running.
Liftoff.
We have liftoff.
Schweickart: Every movie that
you've ever seen about space,
If there's a rocket engine
going,
Everything is going [ shakes ]
like that.
That's not true at all.
It doesn't go "boom."
It goes very slowly.
We had 7.5 million pounds
pushing 6.5 million.
Worden: We didn't even know
we were off the pad.
Launch control had to tell us,
we moved so slow.
Collins:
You can see it as a spectator.
You see how slowly it rises.
What you don't see is in order
To keep it's upward
trajectory perfect
And not bumping into
the launch tower
That's right next to you.
Your five engines are
swiveling back and forth.
You know, like balancing a broom
on the end of your hand.
So the engines are doing this.
Collins:
And all I can think of is,
"I don't mind
the lateral that way,
But the lateral that way,
I don't want any more of that,
Thank you.
We're gonna bump into
the launch tower."
Duke:
The windows are covered over
In apollo so you can't
see outside at this point.
You're just riding along.
Schweickart: And the ground gets
further and further away,
Which is where
the sound comes from.
It doesn't come up
through the stack.
It's the engines
bouncing off the ground
Coming up externally.
So the sound drops very rapidly
To 10 seconds after liftoff,
it's almost totally quiet
And the vibration has
almost completely stopped.
Now the acceleration is
increasing pretty rapidly
To about 6 g's or so
on the first stage.
And the really interesting
thing on our mission was
That dave and I, because we
might've had to get out rapidly
If we had an abort
before liftoff,
We loosened our shoulder straps
after they closed the door.
They had tightened very tight.
At the end of first-stage boost,
The vehicle is compressed
because it's very, very light
At that time, and the 7 million
pounds of thrust.
All of a sudden, the engines
cut off and it expands,
Because it's this tube that's
now empty of all that fuel.
And dave and I
suddenly went like that
And here's the instrument panel
And it was like right there.
And both of us
looked at each other
And went, "whoa, we got to tell
the next guys not to do that."
[ laughs ]
First stage lasted on our flight
for two minutes and 41 seconds,
And we consumed
4.5 million pounds of fuel.
Well over half the weight
of the vehicle.
Second stage ignited,
the vibration went away
And it was, again, a slow
acceleration, about 1 g.
That got us to 100 miles
and then it dropped off,
And then the third stage
accelerated us
To orbital velocity.
We were going in heads down,
So had a beautiful view
of the atlantic.
And we went into
darkness over africa,
And that was spectacular
to see sunset
And the fires of africa
and the lights of africa.
Worden:
I didn't really think about,
"hey, we're going
25,000 miles an hour now."
We didn't even have a toilet.
We never simulated
not getting back.
Garriott: You know, apollo 9 was
the first saturn v launch
With the full stack,
all of the parts
And pieces that were to be
required to land on the moon.
If I can move over
to you, rusty,
What really was apollo 9 and
what did you guys accomplish?
We had the great privilege
Of flying the lunar module
for the first time.
So our mission was to
really test everything
About the lunar module that
could possibly be tested
In orbit around the earth before
we took it out to the moon.
But to enable all
of my buddies here
To actually do the work that
they did out on the moon,
We couldn't drag
an umbilical cord
When guys were running
around the moon
So I had the portable
life-support system on my back.
And in addition, I was wearing
the brand-new apollo space suit,
Which was much more mobile
And flexible than
the earlier gemini suit.
Then following the e.V.A.
That I did on the fifth day
of the mission,
Jim mcdivitt, the commander,
and I left dave scott
And our heat shield in orbit,
And we separated by 100 miles
in the lunar module,
And we used
the rendezvous technique
And procedures that
the guys later would use
Coming up off the moon
to get back.
And we validated all of
those maneuvers in order
To get back to dave
and our heat shield
So we could return
safely to earth.
But we didn't think
about the possibility
Of not getting back.
We'd gotten back 100 times
in the simulation
So, you know,
we'd get back again.
We never simulated
not getting back.
[ laughter ]
It was no problem.
Everything worked beautifully,
I would say.
Worden: Everything worked
perfectly on our flight.
In fact, we did
the t.L.I. Over hawaii
And our recovery ship
was sitting in the water,
And they saw us.
They could see it go.
Duke: We left earth's
orbit over australia,
And we accelerated to
25,000 miles an hour.
So I didn't really
think much about,
"hey, we're going
25,000 miles an hour now."
There's nothing
going by the window,
So you have no idea at all
how fast you're going.
We did a lot of housekeeping,
Just living in a spacecraft,
Three guys for three days
going out to the moon.
When I speak at
my grandkids' class,
That's the one question --
"how do you go to the bathroom?"
And I tell everybody,
"very, very carefully."
[ laughs ]
We did not -- it was not
a triumph of technology.
We didn't even have
a toilet in apollo.
It was a bag that you had
to stick in the right place.
Nothing goes to the bottom
of the bag in zero gravity,
So it was a real chore.
We had some laughs
and some accidents.
But it was three guys,
no big deal.
Collins: On the way to the moon,
They worried about temperature,
So if your spacecraft
just sat there,
Everything boiled over
on that side,
And everything froze stiff
on that side.
So you had to rotate,
like a chicken on a barbecue.
And not only were you rotating,
But the moon was
in the wrong place.
You were canted
so you didn't see
The moon going by your window.
You saw just black space.
And then bingo,
the moon was in your window,
Filled your window.
It was a very spectacular thing
Because it looked,
not like a flat plate,
But it looked three-dimensional.
Its belly bulged
out toward you.
The lights were lighter.
The darks were darker.
Part of it was almost obscured.
The sun was behind you, and it
was cascading around the rim,
The golden rim.
You had this, what an artist
would have given a fortune for,
This beautiful spectacle
of this thing
About to hit you practically.
Mine were the first
words from the moon.
John young told me,
"don't touch this handle.
I'm the driver."
It was the only time in a flight
I had a moment of fear.
Buzz, going down
in the lunar module
And preparing to
land on the ground,
You had a series of
off-nominal situations,
A series of malfunctions, a
series of alarms that went off.
Kranz was debating whether
you had enough comm
To actually continue
the landing.
You had the spotty radar data
in the lem and mission control.
You had a 1202
computer overload.
You landed long,
Well past
your rehearsed landing sites.
Well, we did land long,
but that was neil's fault.
[ laughter ]
When you were putting
that thing down,
You were 15 seconds from
running out of fuel.
Yeah.
Where was your mind
between elation
That you still had
a little fuel left
Or fear that you were
approaching the end
Of your fuel supply?
Peaceful at 16 seconds.
Mine were the first words
from the moon --
"contact light.
Engines stop."
My remembrance is I patted
him on the shoulder.
He says we shook hands.
Who knows?
When neil set buzz down there
on the surface of the moon,
They set down so gently
that the planned compression
Of hydraulic shocks underneath
it failed to compress,
And that made that first step
a true giant leap.
At the bottom of the ladder
is not the lunar surface.
There's a big pad.
Now, when you come
down the ladder
And you get to the last rung
and you jump down from there,
You're not on the moon yet.
You're down on this
landing gear pad.
Now, neil, he said, because
we may get tired out there,
That we ought to see if
we can jump back up
To that bottom rung
on the ladder.
Good thought, neil.
[ laughter ]
So I got down to
the bottom of the ladder.
And then jumped up
and I missed.
[ laughs ]
so I had to do it again.
Geez, come on, buzz.
You started out
doing a mistake.
[ laughter ]
And, charlie, give us a little
sense of what it was like
To drive a lunar rover,
this kind of dune buggy.
John young told me,
"don't touch this handle.
I'm the driver."
[ laughter ]
-yeah.
So I was the navigator,
and it was bouncy.
The lunar rover only weighed
80 pounds up on the moon.
Sometimes, both front wheels
were off the surface.
It was real squirrelly.
The back end, it's like driving
on ice and breaking loose.
But it was a lot of fun,
and john had to really focus
On the surface because
you'd go over a ridge
And there'd be a rock or
a crater or something out there,
And he'd have to
scoot around.
There's not any
roads on the moon.
Fortunately,
no traffic either,
So john said we set
the moon speed record.
Cernan said he set
the moon speed record on 17,
But we don't argue because
the speedometer went
To 17 kilometers an hour,
and it was off-scale high
On both systems, so whatever
we went was a lot of fun.
You know, everybody does
something on the moon.
You know,
shepard hit a golf ball.
And the hammer feather trick.
So we thought it would be nice
To celebrate the olympics
in '72.
And it was the only time in
a flight I had a moment of fear.
As I jumped, my center of
gravity went backwards
Because of the backpack
and I went over it like this,
On my back.
Tv cameras watching.
You can see me scrambling
for my balance.
The backpack's a fragile system,
And it's your
life-support system.
And if it breaks, you're dead.
And so I had to do something
And I roll right
and broke my fall,
Bounced onto my back.
And john young came over first.
He said, "that wasn't
very smart, charlie.
Are you okay?"
And I said, "I think so.
Help me up."
You could hear
the pumps running,
You could check
your pressure gauges
And everything,
and I began to calm down.
I'm gonna be okay.
But it was scary.
You don't give up.
We almost did not get off.
I had bet a case of beer
they were dead men.
Wow.
Here's a question for
mike or al or both of you
If you have
thoughts on that.
I presume that you all had
procedures for what would happen
If your crewmates could not
Get back up off the surface
of the moon,
And so I'm just curious
how that felt.
And you must've rehearsed it,
right?
You must've at least
gone through the procedures
Of "what am I going to do if
I'm going to leave two people
On the surface of the moon."
When I was by myself
in the command module,
I had on a string
around my neck,
An 8" by 12" loose leaf
notebook with 18 pages in it.
And the 18 pages were the
various rendezvous possibilities
Should things have gone
slightly awry on the moon.
Did you prepare
for the extreme
Of them not being able
to get off, mike?
-No.
-No.
No, if they couldn't get off,
they were dead men.
You didn't
need them anyway.
[ chuckles ]
We needed him.
Well, I kind of
got used to them.
I prefer the white mice,
to tell you the truth.
But they were alright.
[ applause ]
In my mind, there were two
situations that we faced.
One is if they couldn't
get off the surface at all.
That's a simple decision --
you come home.
If they got off
the moon's surface
And it took me all my fuel
to get to them,
I would still do that.
You just keep going until
you get 'em if you can.
And if all three of you
stay there forever,
That's the way it is.
We almost
did not get off.
We had the flight plan
that we were gonna land,
And then there was
a sleep period after.
So we went outside,
we come back in again.
Now we're getting ready to sleep
so I said to neil,
"I take dibs on the floor."
There was only one flat place
in that thing,
And it was the floor.
So I laid down on the floor,
And there's this
little black object.
Didn't look like
it belonged there.
This was a circuit breaker
that was broken.
So I looked at the row
of circuit breakers
And it says "engine arm."
Wow.
So, you get ready to land,
you push that thing in,
The descent engine lights,
You get on the surface of
the moon,
And you pull that out.
Well, if you want
to come home,
You got to push that thing in
again, but it's broken off.
So we missed the greatest line
that lovell had later on.
"houston, we got a problem."
[ laughter ]
So they said, "we're gonna
work at this down here,
So you guys up there
just go to sleep."
[ laughter ]
So we get
up in the morning,
And they say,
from mission control,
"we couldn't find
any way to get around
That circuit breaker."
So, I looked,
"what can I use?"
I looked at my little finger,
And there's electricity
behind there.
I'm not sure that
that's gonna work.
So I used the felt-tipped pen
two hours before,
"hey, we got circuit.
We got power!"
So, we were coming pretty close
to not being able to come home.
Stage, engine arm basket.
Good liftoff, automatic.
[ "the air force song" plays ]
Collins: Coming back, when you
approach the atmosphere,
You have very little latitude.
If you're a little bit too high,
You go off into
a 30-day orbit,
But you run out of oxygen
maybe 25 days before that.
If you go down a little
too steep, you come in,
You burn up, so all these
things are on your mind
And you kind of check them off
as you go through them.
And whoosh,
we're down on the water,
We're elation.
I had bet a case of beer
with neil
That when the spacecraft
hit the water,
It would remain
right-side up.
We had two positions --
it could flip over,
They called that stable two.
It wasn't dangerous,
but it was a mess inside.
You were hanging upside down
by your straps and everything.
So buzz's responsibility
was to push in a couple
Of circuit breakers
that enabled the circuit
For me to disconnect
the parachute
As soon as we touched down
so it wouldn't flip over.
Well, whomp, we hit,
and buzz's hand slipped
Off the circuit breaker
panel.
[ laughter ]
And by the time
he could get back to it,
Crap, over we came into it.
So that was the end
of apollo 11 for me.
When you started
this whole thing,
You talked only about the
12 guys who walked on the moon.
And I just want to put
in a plug for cmps,
The six
who stayed in orbit.
Yeah, here, here.
Okay?
Here, here.
[ applause ]
One of the bad things
about flying in space was
We had press conferences.
The entire focus of the press
Was on me
and that orbit.
"well, now you were
the loneliest man
In the only lonely
history of history,
And you were in that
lonely little spacecraft,
So lonely, behind the lonely
moon, weren't you lonely?"
Oh, god, no, I was happy.
I had my happy little home.
I had coffee.
Geez, I had hot coffee.
I had music, even,
if I wanted it.
On the backside,
I didn't have to listen
To mission control
yakking at me.
It was commodious.
It was safe.
I was accustomed, anyway,
To being in flying machines
by myself.
That part was no big deal.
So I had a happy little home.
Worden: Yeah, I loved it.
Got rid of those guys
for while. [ laughs ]
It was kind of interesting --
No matter what I was doing
or where I was,
When I came around
the far side of the moon,
I always got to a window
to watch the earth rise.
That's the most spectacular
thing
You can see from out there.
And so I'm just copying
stuff from houston
And giving burn reports
and stuff like that,
And into my window
floated the earth.
There's that jewel of earth
Just suspended
in the blackness of space.
It's about 20,000 miles away,
And you can see the whole
circle of the earth.
And you could see
the arctic circle,
Down across canada, the u.S.,
mexico, central america.
Big swath of
the eastern pacific.
It was breathtaking.
It was so beautiful.
People say, "oh, tell me
about what you remember
About the moon?"
But the most
impressive sight to me
Of the whole flight
was the earth.
Literally, the size
of your thumbnail,
But if you take your hand away,
It kept popping back into view.
It kind of insisted that
it wanted to be looked at.
It was the main thing,
the one and only show.
There's home, there's
everything I've ever known.
And gorgeous little thing,
blue and white, very shiny,
Very bright.
Little smear of tan.
You know,
we call them continents.
By accident,
when I'm on my e.V.A.,
Dave scott was taking movies
of my traverse.
The movie camera that
he was using
Failed after two seconds,
and he said,
"hey, I'd like to
try to fix this."
Jim mcdivitt, who was
the commander, said,
"you got five minutes, dave.
Rusty, stay right there."
I was partway up the handrail.
I let go with my right hand,
swung around like this,
And saw that whole earth
behind the command module,
The sun up here, off my shoulder
and the horizon
Of this incredibly
beautiful earth over there.
And I said to myself,
explicitly,
"I'm not an astronaut.
I'm a human being.
Let this come in."
I just looked in awe at this
incredibly beautiful planet.
And all of these
questions came in
As I was looking at it
in total silence.
How did I get here?
Why am I here?
What's going on?
What do I mean when I say,
"am I me or am I us?"
It took several years to really
process all those questions,
But the recognition
that we, life --
We're the only life anywhere
we know in the universe,
But certainly in our little
corner of the universe --
We have a responsibility
to preserve life
And to continue this
unbelievable process
Of evolution
that we are a part of.
And that was the real message
that came in.
I was just, at that moment,
a sensing element for humanity
As we begin moving out from
mother earth into the cosmos.
I referred to that moment
as cosmic birth.
That's the moment of birth
out of mother earth.
And if you think
about human birth,
It's only after birth
that we love our mother.
Before that, we're just
totally dependent on her,
But after birth,
We recognize not only
do we love our mother,
But we also have
responsibility for our mother.
Collins:
When I returned to earth,
We were privileged to make
a trip around the world.
Visited 29 countries or so,
and I was flabbergasted
Because I thought
wherever we went,
They'd say, "oh, you americans.
Congratulations,
you americans finally did it."
Unh-unh.
Everywhere we went, people said,
"we did it, we did it!"
So, it was a remarkable example
Of how countries
can be brought together,
Perhaps under
extraordinary circumstances,
But nonetheless,
it's possible.
Duke: I had that thought
that, you know,
We're all down there on earth,
And you don't see any europe
Or asia or north america.
You just see earth.
And we got to learn to try
to get along with everybody.
We all share everything.
And so in the long run,
it was the beginning
Of our environmental revolution,
if you will,
To wake up about our planet.
I'm just humbled
and eternally grateful
That I had a chance to
participate in apollo
In such a significant way.
Garriott: If you think of
all the great milestones
Of human history that might be
remembered 1,000 years from now,
This is gonna be
the cream of the crop.
It will be very hard
to overestimate
How difficult it was
To go from never having
flown an object into space,
And in less than 10 years,
Landing humans safely on
the surface of the moon
And returning them
back to earth,
A feat which has
never been repeated
Since the retirement of apollo.
To have the political will,
To have the financial
And industrial complex
to pull it off,
To invent all
the computing systems,
Navigation systems,
Alloys of metals to hold
and pump cryogenic fuels,
To create heat shields
To stand the searing
heats of re-entry,
To navigate 240,000 miles
away from the earth,
And to go into orbit,
much less land,
On the surface of
an alien body --
All of those things
were done and done well
During that 10-year period
that I believe was one
Of the greatest
advancements of scientific
And industrial capability
that the earth has ever seen.
I would like to thank
our amazing panelists,
These six astronauts who took
us from the earth to the moon!
[ cheers and applause ]
Duke: If you're gonna
accomplish something,
You gonna have to take risks.
To land a man on the moon
and return him safely to earth
By the end of the decade.
Duke: It was really
a fighter pilot's ride.
We were close to not
being able to come home.
Collins: And then bingo,
the moon was in your window,
Filled your window.
I just looked in awe at this
incredibly beautiful planet.
Armstrong:
It's one small step for man,
One giant leap for mankind.
-- Captions by vitac --
Captions paid for by
discovery communications
[ indistinct conversations ]
Hello. I'm richard garriott.
I'm the first second-generation
american astronaut,
Son of apollo-era astronaut
owen garriott,
Who flew on skylab
and the space shuttle.
And here on the 50th anniversary
of the apollo moon landings,
We are going to bring together
these apollo astronauts
Who almost never get the chance
to get together,
And we will sit down
with each of them...
Well, again,
thank you so much.
[ laughing ]
...And talk about their
amazing experiences
On their journeys
to the moon.
-Yeah.
-Okay.
-Alright, let's roll it.
-Copy mark.
Let me welcome you all today
To what is clearly
a historic gathering
Of six of the apollo astronauts
who are at the tip
Of our national effort to take
humanity from its cradle here
On earth and for the first time,
Extend our reach 240,000 miles
through space
To the surface of the moon.
These six astronauts flew
aboard apollo missions
Which took us
incrementally further
And further until we had
not only landed on the moon,
But we had done it six times.
12 of our astronauts
walked on the moon.
They brought back
842 pounds of moon rocks.
The first three crews walked
4.4 miles across the surface,
And the last three used rovers
to cover about 56 miles.
From apollo 7,
the first apollo
To carry people into space,
lasting 11 days in space.
For the first time,
we also had live tv.
Man: We have liftoff.
Garriott:
Please welcome apollo 7
lunar pilot walt cunningham.
[ cheers and applause ]
From apollo 9, the first
crewed saturn v full stack.
Also performed crewed dockings
and a space walk.
Please welcome apollo 9
lunar module pilot
Rusty schweickart.
[ cheers and applause ]
From apollo 11,
the command pilot
Who was left alone in orbit
around the moon
When his crewmates
descended to the surface,
Becoming
likely the loneliest man
In the universe,
michael collins.
[ cheers and applause ]
Also welcome from apollo 11,
the lunar module pilot,
Who along with neil armstrong,
became the first humans
To walk on the moon.
I give you buzz aldrin.
[ cheers and applause ]
From apollo 15, the fourth
successful landing on the moon
And had a strong focus
on science
For their entire mission,
Please welcome the apollo 15
command module pilot,
Al worden.
[ cheers and applause ]
And finally please welcome
the apollo 16 lunar module pilot
Who drove a long stint
of very rough terrain.
Charlie duke.
[ cheers and applause ]
First to you, walt --
You think of
the early projects,
Mercury and gemini
and apollos 7, 8, 9, 10 --
These were all stepping stones
to reaching the moon.
Can you tell us a little bit
about this drive to get there
And how quickly we tested these
things one after the next?
I think the public today
doesn't realize
The steps it took
to get there.
I think the number was
something like 240,000 people
Who worked on apollo
or something like that,
And we worked 10,
12 hours a day,
Sometimes 24 hours a day
if it took it,
Six days,
seven days a week,
Whatever was required
because of that incredible,
Imaginative goal
that kennedy set.
We choose to go to the moon
in this decade
And do the other things,
not because they are easy
But because they are hard.
Aldrin:
When kennedy gave his talk,
Obviously we had
an objective -- the moon.
We had a time --
before the end of the decade.
We did not have a plan.
That was a wonderful,
wonderful mandate for us.
It was a masterpiece
of simplicity.
We knew exactly
what we had to do
And exactly when
we had to do it.
Now, the how of it,
that was left to us.
Duke: But it was a bold program
And we had eight years
and six months
From kennedy's announcement
to get it done.
So the focus was let's do it.
You were learning all
about the spacecraft.
We were learning geology.
We were learning the science
that we were going
To be doing on the moon.
You wanted to know it,
At least the spacecraft systems,
absolutely perfectly
Because you could kill yourself
if you do something wrong.
Worden:
Over the three-year period,
I got 1,500 hours
of simulator time.
And if you calculate that out,
that's 500 hours a year
So it's like 25% of my time
was in the simulator.
The gemini program was
a lot of fun and it was good
And it was exciting
And maybe a tiny bit
like a sporting event.
The apollo program wasn't
no sporting event, baby.
The eyes of the world
were on you,
And you better have everything
in perfect alignment.
Time's running out and
we're being watched by friends
And by foes as well.
Worden: The whole thing was
a competition between us
And the russians.
We all wanted to
win on our side.
Cunningham: I think the most
significant difference then
And now was the attitude
that we had,
All fighter pilots,
mostly test pilots,
We had confidence in ourselves.
We also had that
feeling, I'm sure,
That you're not gonna get any
place unless you are willing
To stick your neck out.
And that was risky,
because it was the first one,
But that's just the way we did.
Wallace: This is a cbs news
special report.
This is mike wallace at
the cbs news room in new york.
America's first three apollo
astronauts were trapped
And killed by a flash fire
that swept their moon ship
Early tonight during
a launchpad test
At cape kennedy in florida.
I remember that was on a Friday,
and it was late afternoon.
We had performed that
same test on Thursday.
But we had not closed the hatch.
And when you don't
close the hatch,
You don't have to secure
and operate at 100% oxygen.
Man: [ shouts ]
Fire in the cockpit!
[ screaming ]
[ radio chatter ]
Man #2: Get in there
and help them.
Cunningham: Operating at 100%
oxygen and then you have
To over-pressurize that
to keep the hatch closed.
Nobody had really been
as terribly concerned
As we should have.
But what that did,
that initiated changes
In the apollo program and
subsequent other programs too.
On the operations
with 100% oxygen.
Everybody started
operating differently.
And a lot of that came about
because our friends,
Grissom, white, and chaffee,
sacrificed their lives,
Triggered some of that.
It was interesting to me
that at edwards,
They lost several pilots
in experimental aircraft.
They crashed.
Now, the fire showed up
on page one,
And the experimental aircraft
crashes showed up on page 20.
So that's the difference in
how we perceive these things.
But I got to tell you,
the feeling is the same.
I don't care whether you're
sitting at edwards as a pilot
Or you're sitting at the cape
as an astronaut
Getting ready to launch,
When you lose the crew,
it's bad.
And I absolutely believe
that because we had that fire,
We were able to make
changes in the spacecraft
That allowed every flight
after that to be successful.
I think it was because of that.
I really do believe that.
Space flight is not risk-free,
And even after apollo 1 caught
fire and the crew was killed,
We were dead in the water,
but we weren't giving up.
Apollo 7 was the first
manned apollo launch.
The longest, most ambitious,
most successful
First test flight of any
new flying machine ever.
Then you've got apollo 8.
And apollo 8,
we broke the barrier
To get away from the
earth's gravitational field.
Apollo 9, we finally got
To where we could test
a lunar module.
Finally, apollo 10,
we got to the point
Where they went
through everything
On that apollo 11 landing,
except the last 50,000 feet.
Then, we get apollo 11 and they
did one hell of a fine job.
[ applause ]
[ chuckles ]
People waving, like goodbye.
Everything was going
[ shakes ]
Duke: It was eerie at first.
Cunningham: We launched on
the 11th of October in 1968.
There was no frightened morning
or anything like that
In getting ready
for that flight.
Schweickart: It was a morning
like any other morning.
Not quite, but
we had our breakfast,
We went down to
the medical office.
The difference, of course,
was as we went out
To the transfer van,
which took us
From the crew quarters
out to the pad,
There were more people
and news cameras and things
And people waving, like goodbye,
and things like that.
Duke: We took a van out
to the launchpad.
Every other time
I had been out there,
There was people
scurrying over it,
Like a colony of ants,
People everywhere
on the vehicle.
And we get out of the van,
and there's nobody around.
It was eerie at first.
Schweickart: Going up to
the top deck where we walked
Across that kind of
a long corridor that led out
To the little white room
docked to the door
Of the command module.
Everybody a little bit more edgy
And quiet than
all the simulations
But you know, you know everyone
that's there helping you
Get in the spacecraft.
You're joking around
with people.
What I had on the back of
my little air conditioning unit
Was an 8.5" by 11" piece
of paper with a piece
Of tape on it and when
guenter wendt leaned over
To put jim mcdivitt
in the spacecraft,
I took that piece of paper off
and put it on guenter's back,
Unknown to him,
taped it to his back
So that when he stood up
and the camera got a picture
Of him, it said, "kick me."
[ both laugh ]
Duke:
What I remember is excitement.
Man, the day has finally arrived
And we're gonna get
our chance to go,
And we got a four-hour window
To get this thing
off the ground.
And so our attitude was,
"keep counting, keep counting.
Let's go. I'm ready. I've
trained two years for this."
You have to convince yourself
it's another simulator exercise.
You've been through that
launch sequence so many times
That you kind of
go through it by rote.
Duke: I think we were strapped
in, ready to go,
Hatch closed maybe an hour
before liftoff
And we were listening
to the count.
Man: 10, 9, 8.
Ignition sequence start.
Engines on.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
All engines running.
Liftoff.
We have liftoff.
Schweickart: Every movie that
you've ever seen about space,
If there's a rocket engine
going,
Everything is going [ shakes ]
like that.
That's not true at all.
It doesn't go "boom."
It goes very slowly.
We had 7.5 million pounds
pushing 6.5 million.
Worden: We didn't even know
we were off the pad.
Launch control had to tell us,
we moved so slow.
Collins:
You can see it as a spectator.
You see how slowly it rises.
What you don't see is in order
To keep it's upward
trajectory perfect
And not bumping into
the launch tower
That's right next to you.
Your five engines are
swiveling back and forth.
You know, like balancing a broom
on the end of your hand.
So the engines are doing this.
Collins:
And all I can think of is,
"I don't mind
the lateral that way,
But the lateral that way,
I don't want any more of that,
Thank you.
We're gonna bump into
the launch tower."
Duke:
The windows are covered over
In apollo so you can't
see outside at this point.
You're just riding along.
Schweickart: And the ground gets
further and further away,
Which is where
the sound comes from.
It doesn't come up
through the stack.
It's the engines
bouncing off the ground
Coming up externally.
So the sound drops very rapidly
To 10 seconds after liftoff,
it's almost totally quiet
And the vibration has
almost completely stopped.
Now the acceleration is
increasing pretty rapidly
To about 6 g's or so
on the first stage.
And the really interesting
thing on our mission was
That dave and I, because we
might've had to get out rapidly
If we had an abort
before liftoff,
We loosened our shoulder straps
after they closed the door.
They had tightened very tight.
At the end of first-stage boost,
The vehicle is compressed
because it's very, very light
At that time, and the 7 million
pounds of thrust.
All of a sudden, the engines
cut off and it expands,
Because it's this tube that's
now empty of all that fuel.
And dave and I
suddenly went like that
And here's the instrument panel
And it was like right there.
And both of us
looked at each other
And went, "whoa, we got to tell
the next guys not to do that."
[ laughs ]
First stage lasted on our flight
for two minutes and 41 seconds,
And we consumed
4.5 million pounds of fuel.
Well over half the weight
of the vehicle.
Second stage ignited,
the vibration went away
And it was, again, a slow
acceleration, about 1 g.
That got us to 100 miles
and then it dropped off,
And then the third stage
accelerated us
To orbital velocity.
We were going in heads down,
So had a beautiful view
of the atlantic.
And we went into
darkness over africa,
And that was spectacular
to see sunset
And the fires of africa
and the lights of africa.
Worden:
I didn't really think about,
"hey, we're going
25,000 miles an hour now."
We didn't even have a toilet.
We never simulated
not getting back.
Garriott: You know, apollo 9 was
the first saturn v launch
With the full stack,
all of the parts
And pieces that were to be
required to land on the moon.
If I can move over
to you, rusty,
What really was apollo 9 and
what did you guys accomplish?
We had the great privilege
Of flying the lunar module
for the first time.
So our mission was to
really test everything
About the lunar module that
could possibly be tested
In orbit around the earth before
we took it out to the moon.
But to enable all
of my buddies here
To actually do the work that
they did out on the moon,
We couldn't drag
an umbilical cord
When guys were running
around the moon
So I had the portable
life-support system on my back.
And in addition, I was wearing
the brand-new apollo space suit,
Which was much more mobile
And flexible than
the earlier gemini suit.
Then following the e.V.A.
That I did on the fifth day
of the mission,
Jim mcdivitt, the commander,
and I left dave scott
And our heat shield in orbit,
And we separated by 100 miles
in the lunar module,
And we used
the rendezvous technique
And procedures that
the guys later would use
Coming up off the moon
to get back.
And we validated all of
those maneuvers in order
To get back to dave
and our heat shield
So we could return
safely to earth.
But we didn't think
about the possibility
Of not getting back.
We'd gotten back 100 times
in the simulation
So, you know,
we'd get back again.
We never simulated
not getting back.
[ laughter ]
It was no problem.
Everything worked beautifully,
I would say.
Worden: Everything worked
perfectly on our flight.
In fact, we did
the t.L.I. Over hawaii
And our recovery ship
was sitting in the water,
And they saw us.
They could see it go.
Duke: We left earth's
orbit over australia,
And we accelerated to
25,000 miles an hour.
So I didn't really
think much about,
"hey, we're going
25,000 miles an hour now."
There's nothing
going by the window,
So you have no idea at all
how fast you're going.
We did a lot of housekeeping,
Just living in a spacecraft,
Three guys for three days
going out to the moon.
When I speak at
my grandkids' class,
That's the one question --
"how do you go to the bathroom?"
And I tell everybody,
"very, very carefully."
[ laughs ]
We did not -- it was not
a triumph of technology.
We didn't even have
a toilet in apollo.
It was a bag that you had
to stick in the right place.
Nothing goes to the bottom
of the bag in zero gravity,
So it was a real chore.
We had some laughs
and some accidents.
But it was three guys,
no big deal.
Collins: On the way to the moon,
They worried about temperature,
So if your spacecraft
just sat there,
Everything boiled over
on that side,
And everything froze stiff
on that side.
So you had to rotate,
like a chicken on a barbecue.
And not only were you rotating,
But the moon was
in the wrong place.
You were canted
so you didn't see
The moon going by your window.
You saw just black space.
And then bingo,
the moon was in your window,
Filled your window.
It was a very spectacular thing
Because it looked,
not like a flat plate,
But it looked three-dimensional.
Its belly bulged
out toward you.
The lights were lighter.
The darks were darker.
Part of it was almost obscured.
The sun was behind you, and it
was cascading around the rim,
The golden rim.
You had this, what an artist
would have given a fortune for,
This beautiful spectacle
of this thing
About to hit you practically.
Mine were the first
words from the moon.
John young told me,
"don't touch this handle.
I'm the driver."
It was the only time in a flight
I had a moment of fear.
Buzz, going down
in the lunar module
And preparing to
land on the ground,
You had a series of
off-nominal situations,
A series of malfunctions, a
series of alarms that went off.
Kranz was debating whether
you had enough comm
To actually continue
the landing.
You had the spotty radar data
in the lem and mission control.
You had a 1202
computer overload.
You landed long,
Well past
your rehearsed landing sites.
Well, we did land long,
but that was neil's fault.
[ laughter ]
When you were putting
that thing down,
You were 15 seconds from
running out of fuel.
Yeah.
Where was your mind
between elation
That you still had
a little fuel left
Or fear that you were
approaching the end
Of your fuel supply?
Peaceful at 16 seconds.
Mine were the first words
from the moon --
"contact light.
Engines stop."
My remembrance is I patted
him on the shoulder.
He says we shook hands.
Who knows?
When neil set buzz down there
on the surface of the moon,
They set down so gently
that the planned compression
Of hydraulic shocks underneath
it failed to compress,
And that made that first step
a true giant leap.
At the bottom of the ladder
is not the lunar surface.
There's a big pad.
Now, when you come
down the ladder
And you get to the last rung
and you jump down from there,
You're not on the moon yet.
You're down on this
landing gear pad.
Now, neil, he said, because
we may get tired out there,
That we ought to see if
we can jump back up
To that bottom rung
on the ladder.
Good thought, neil.
[ laughter ]
So I got down to
the bottom of the ladder.
And then jumped up
and I missed.
[ laughs ]
so I had to do it again.
Geez, come on, buzz.
You started out
doing a mistake.
[ laughter ]
And, charlie, give us a little
sense of what it was like
To drive a lunar rover,
this kind of dune buggy.
John young told me,
"don't touch this handle.
I'm the driver."
[ laughter ]
-yeah.
So I was the navigator,
and it was bouncy.
The lunar rover only weighed
80 pounds up on the moon.
Sometimes, both front wheels
were off the surface.
It was real squirrelly.
The back end, it's like driving
on ice and breaking loose.
But it was a lot of fun,
and john had to really focus
On the surface because
you'd go over a ridge
And there'd be a rock or
a crater or something out there,
And he'd have to
scoot around.
There's not any
roads on the moon.
Fortunately,
no traffic either,
So john said we set
the moon speed record.
Cernan said he set
the moon speed record on 17,
But we don't argue because
the speedometer went
To 17 kilometers an hour,
and it was off-scale high
On both systems, so whatever
we went was a lot of fun.
You know, everybody does
something on the moon.
You know,
shepard hit a golf ball.
And the hammer feather trick.
So we thought it would be nice
To celebrate the olympics
in '72.
And it was the only time in
a flight I had a moment of fear.
As I jumped, my center of
gravity went backwards
Because of the backpack
and I went over it like this,
On my back.
Tv cameras watching.
You can see me scrambling
for my balance.
The backpack's a fragile system,
And it's your
life-support system.
And if it breaks, you're dead.
And so I had to do something
And I roll right
and broke my fall,
Bounced onto my back.
And john young came over first.
He said, "that wasn't
very smart, charlie.
Are you okay?"
And I said, "I think so.
Help me up."
You could hear
the pumps running,
You could check
your pressure gauges
And everything,
and I began to calm down.
I'm gonna be okay.
But it was scary.
You don't give up.
We almost did not get off.
I had bet a case of beer
they were dead men.
Wow.
Here's a question for
mike or al or both of you
If you have
thoughts on that.
I presume that you all had
procedures for what would happen
If your crewmates could not
Get back up off the surface
of the moon,
And so I'm just curious
how that felt.
And you must've rehearsed it,
right?
You must've at least
gone through the procedures
Of "what am I going to do if
I'm going to leave two people
On the surface of the moon."
When I was by myself
in the command module,
I had on a string
around my neck,
An 8" by 12" loose leaf
notebook with 18 pages in it.
And the 18 pages were the
various rendezvous possibilities
Should things have gone
slightly awry on the moon.
Did you prepare
for the extreme
Of them not being able
to get off, mike?
-No.
-No.
No, if they couldn't get off,
they were dead men.
You didn't
need them anyway.
[ chuckles ]
We needed him.
Well, I kind of
got used to them.
I prefer the white mice,
to tell you the truth.
But they were alright.
[ applause ]
In my mind, there were two
situations that we faced.
One is if they couldn't
get off the surface at all.
That's a simple decision --
you come home.
If they got off
the moon's surface
And it took me all my fuel
to get to them,
I would still do that.
You just keep going until
you get 'em if you can.
And if all three of you
stay there forever,
That's the way it is.
We almost
did not get off.
We had the flight plan
that we were gonna land,
And then there was
a sleep period after.
So we went outside,
we come back in again.
Now we're getting ready to sleep
so I said to neil,
"I take dibs on the floor."
There was only one flat place
in that thing,
And it was the floor.
So I laid down on the floor,
And there's this
little black object.
Didn't look like
it belonged there.
This was a circuit breaker
that was broken.
So I looked at the row
of circuit breakers
And it says "engine arm."
Wow.
So, you get ready to land,
you push that thing in,
The descent engine lights,
You get on the surface of
the moon,
And you pull that out.
Well, if you want
to come home,
You got to push that thing in
again, but it's broken off.
So we missed the greatest line
that lovell had later on.
"houston, we got a problem."
[ laughter ]
So they said, "we're gonna
work at this down here,
So you guys up there
just go to sleep."
[ laughter ]
So we get
up in the morning,
And they say,
from mission control,
"we couldn't find
any way to get around
That circuit breaker."
So, I looked,
"what can I use?"
I looked at my little finger,
And there's electricity
behind there.
I'm not sure that
that's gonna work.
So I used the felt-tipped pen
two hours before,
"hey, we got circuit.
We got power!"
So, we were coming pretty close
to not being able to come home.
Stage, engine arm basket.
Good liftoff, automatic.
[ "the air force song" plays ]
Collins: Coming back, when you
approach the atmosphere,
You have very little latitude.
If you're a little bit too high,
You go off into
a 30-day orbit,
But you run out of oxygen
maybe 25 days before that.
If you go down a little
too steep, you come in,
You burn up, so all these
things are on your mind
And you kind of check them off
as you go through them.
And whoosh,
we're down on the water,
We're elation.
I had bet a case of beer
with neil
That when the spacecraft
hit the water,
It would remain
right-side up.
We had two positions --
it could flip over,
They called that stable two.
It wasn't dangerous,
but it was a mess inside.
You were hanging upside down
by your straps and everything.
So buzz's responsibility
was to push in a couple
Of circuit breakers
that enabled the circuit
For me to disconnect
the parachute
As soon as we touched down
so it wouldn't flip over.
Well, whomp, we hit,
and buzz's hand slipped
Off the circuit breaker
panel.
[ laughter ]
And by the time
he could get back to it,
Crap, over we came into it.
So that was the end
of apollo 11 for me.
When you started
this whole thing,
You talked only about the
12 guys who walked on the moon.
And I just want to put
in a plug for cmps,
The six
who stayed in orbit.
Yeah, here, here.
Okay?
Here, here.
[ applause ]
One of the bad things
about flying in space was
We had press conferences.
The entire focus of the press
Was on me
and that orbit.
"well, now you were
the loneliest man
In the only lonely
history of history,
And you were in that
lonely little spacecraft,
So lonely, behind the lonely
moon, weren't you lonely?"
Oh, god, no, I was happy.
I had my happy little home.
I had coffee.
Geez, I had hot coffee.
I had music, even,
if I wanted it.
On the backside,
I didn't have to listen
To mission control
yakking at me.
It was commodious.
It was safe.
I was accustomed, anyway,
To being in flying machines
by myself.
That part was no big deal.
So I had a happy little home.
Worden: Yeah, I loved it.
Got rid of those guys
for while. [ laughs ]
It was kind of interesting --
No matter what I was doing
or where I was,
When I came around
the far side of the moon,
I always got to a window
to watch the earth rise.
That's the most spectacular
thing
You can see from out there.
And so I'm just copying
stuff from houston
And giving burn reports
and stuff like that,
And into my window
floated the earth.
There's that jewel of earth
Just suspended
in the blackness of space.
It's about 20,000 miles away,
And you can see the whole
circle of the earth.
And you could see
the arctic circle,
Down across canada, the u.S.,
mexico, central america.
Big swath of
the eastern pacific.
It was breathtaking.
It was so beautiful.
People say, "oh, tell me
about what you remember
About the moon?"
But the most
impressive sight to me
Of the whole flight
was the earth.
Literally, the size
of your thumbnail,
But if you take your hand away,
It kept popping back into view.
It kind of insisted that
it wanted to be looked at.
It was the main thing,
the one and only show.
There's home, there's
everything I've ever known.
And gorgeous little thing,
blue and white, very shiny,
Very bright.
Little smear of tan.
You know,
we call them continents.
By accident,
when I'm on my e.V.A.,
Dave scott was taking movies
of my traverse.
The movie camera that
he was using
Failed after two seconds,
and he said,
"hey, I'd like to
try to fix this."
Jim mcdivitt, who was
the commander, said,
"you got five minutes, dave.
Rusty, stay right there."
I was partway up the handrail.
I let go with my right hand,
swung around like this,
And saw that whole earth
behind the command module,
The sun up here, off my shoulder
and the horizon
Of this incredibly
beautiful earth over there.
And I said to myself,
explicitly,
"I'm not an astronaut.
I'm a human being.
Let this come in."
I just looked in awe at this
incredibly beautiful planet.
And all of these
questions came in
As I was looking at it
in total silence.
How did I get here?
Why am I here?
What's going on?
What do I mean when I say,
"am I me or am I us?"
It took several years to really
process all those questions,
But the recognition
that we, life --
We're the only life anywhere
we know in the universe,
But certainly in our little
corner of the universe --
We have a responsibility
to preserve life
And to continue this
unbelievable process
Of evolution
that we are a part of.
And that was the real message
that came in.
I was just, at that moment,
a sensing element for humanity
As we begin moving out from
mother earth into the cosmos.
I referred to that moment
as cosmic birth.
That's the moment of birth
out of mother earth.
And if you think
about human birth,
It's only after birth
that we love our mother.
Before that, we're just
totally dependent on her,
But after birth,
We recognize not only
do we love our mother,
But we also have
responsibility for our mother.
Collins:
When I returned to earth,
We were privileged to make
a trip around the world.
Visited 29 countries or so,
and I was flabbergasted
Because I thought
wherever we went,
They'd say, "oh, you americans.
Congratulations,
you americans finally did it."
Unh-unh.
Everywhere we went, people said,
"we did it, we did it!"
So, it was a remarkable example
Of how countries
can be brought together,
Perhaps under
extraordinary circumstances,
But nonetheless,
it's possible.
Duke: I had that thought
that, you know,
We're all down there on earth,
And you don't see any europe
Or asia or north america.
You just see earth.
And we got to learn to try
to get along with everybody.
We all share everything.
And so in the long run,
it was the beginning
Of our environmental revolution,
if you will,
To wake up about our planet.
I'm just humbled
and eternally grateful
That I had a chance to
participate in apollo
In such a significant way.
Garriott: If you think of
all the great milestones
Of human history that might be
remembered 1,000 years from now,
This is gonna be
the cream of the crop.
It will be very hard
to overestimate
How difficult it was
To go from never having
flown an object into space,
And in less than 10 years,
Landing humans safely on
the surface of the moon
And returning them
back to earth,
A feat which has
never been repeated
Since the retirement of apollo.
To have the political will,
To have the financial
And industrial complex
to pull it off,
To invent all
the computing systems,
Navigation systems,
Alloys of metals to hold
and pump cryogenic fuels,
To create heat shields
To stand the searing
heats of re-entry,
To navigate 240,000 miles
away from the earth,
And to go into orbit,
much less land,
On the surface of
an alien body --
All of those things
were done and done well
During that 10-year period
that I believe was one
Of the greatest
advancements of scientific
And industrial capability
that the earth has ever seen.
I would like to thank
our amazing panelists,
These six astronauts who took
us from the earth to the moon!
[ cheers and applause ]