The Last Man on the Moon (2014) Movie Script
A wild new cowboy on the move.
He placed last night, second.
Going for first.
How many y'all
wanna see that replay?
Following cowboy in hot water.
Come on big Jake, show 'em how.
Yeah.
Mission sequence start.
Engines on five, four...
Three, two...
I'm the luckiest
human being in the world.
There... fire going.
I don't go around
living in the past,
for the most part.
But ever once in while
you let yourself
go back in time.
I'll look up there...
And I might just reflect
for a half a minute or so.
I can take myself there
at the speed of thought.
Okay, stand by for pitchover.
Oh, are we coming in?
Pitchover.
There it is. Proceeded.
And there it is Houston.
There's Camelot.
Right on target.
I see it.
We got 'em all.
25 feet per second through 400.
That's a little high, geno.
Okay.
Very little dust.
40 feet. Going down at three.
Stand by for touchdown.
Stand by.
20 feet.
Going down at two.
10 feet.
And contact.
Stop, push. Engine stop.
Engine arm, proceed.
Command override, off.
As soon as you hit the surface,
the dust is gone,
engine is shut down.
There's no noise.
You are magically
in another world.
It was the ultimate
quiet moment in my life.
Pure silence.
Absolutely incredible.
I spent a lot of time growing up
on my grandparents' farm
in Wisconsin.
No electricity.
No tractors, just horses.
So my desire in life was
to sometime have a ranch.
It's where I can just
be who I am.
I keep thinking, "my dad
always would have loved this."
He was a Jack of all trades,
he could fix... rewire your
house or build you a garage,
or fix the plumbing
in your bathroom,
and that's why I learned to
do all those things with him.
He said, "I don't care
whether you're in a classroom,
on a football field,
or whatever you do..."
Barron?
"Just do your best.
And someday, I promise you.
You're gonna surprise yourself."
It's like coming down the l.E.M.
Only if I fall here,
I break my butt.
1170 kcbq, the
legendary gene cernan is with us.
Now about the Navy,
talk a little bit about...
Because this is a big
Navy town, as you know,
and you spent time here.
I tell ya, San Diego is...
Is like another home.
I spent my best years
coming out of pensacola
here in San Diego.
From the time I was 22
until I was 27,
this was my life.
In and out of San Diego,
flying off aircraft carriers.
This is where
it all started for me.
At that point, 22, 25,
you're invincible
and you're bulletproof
there isn't anything
you can't do,
you know, risk be damned.
The fact of life is,
naval aviation
is a risky process.
You don't have
much room for error.
If you get sloppy,
you're gonna kill yourself
You live within
that environment,
you live within that culture,
but you love it,
and you keep doing it,
and it doesn't discourage you,
'cause it's not gonna
happen to me.
You know,
it isn't gonna happen...
It's always gonna
happen to the other guy.
He screwed up.
I'm not gonna screw up.
That was the attitude
you had to have.
- Is that you?
- Course it is.
That is you.
red hot naval aviator.
Invincible, invisible,
and bulletproof
- remember?
- That's a stretch.
There we are. That's it.
The stingers. Here we go,
up over the top.
The diamond roll there it is.
- God, that was fun, baldy.
- Yeah, we were flying.
I made my first cruise with gene
on the old u.S.S. Shangri-la.
It was constant competition.
Who could land better
on the carrier.
Who could bomb better
on the carrier.
We used to grab airplanes
and go up and tail chase
around the clouds.
We were... we were pretty
impressed with ourselves.
We have big egos.
But I think you have
to have a big ego
to be able to do
the intense type of flying
that we were trained to do.
When you land a plane
on a carrier
in the daytime is tricky enough.
But when you do it at night,
you're not thinking
about your girlfriend.
Well, gene might have been,
but I wasn't.
I was... I was dead serious.
Now, cernan, who knows?
Uh, he's kinda loose
sometimes that way.
Jesus. Now we got a fire.
If you think back
when you and I were
in 113 together, okay?
We flew together all the time,
but were we competitive
with each other?
I was a hell of a lot better
left wing man,
than you were right wing man.
No. No, but I was a hell of a lot
better bomber than you were.
You were lucky if you
even hit the damn ground.
Why were you so weak
in bombing, gene?
You were the weapons
training officer.
Baldy, it's 240,000 miles away.
Anybody could hit that.
And my c.E.P. Was 50 miles.
You were average in bombing.
You were pretty good
at getting aboard the boat.
I knew you had
a little fear at night.
Do I have
to listen to this crap?
Do... if I have
to listen to this...
I'm gonna make a circle
over the field.
But I'll come in behind you.
Flying is a big part of my life.
You got to have a passion,
a love for what you're doing,
or you shouldn't be doing it.
I was an airline stewardess
for continental airlines
and I lived in Los Angeles.
And I was in the airport
and he was in the line.
I did not remember him,
but he said I smiled at him
and he just thought
that I was great.
And I thought later...
I thought what he doesn't know,
I have to smile at everybody
because that was part of my job.
The first time
he came to my house.
He had a... I think it was,
like, a '56 Chevrolet
and it had kind of
loud mufflers on it.
I thought, "oh, my lord,
he's a hot rod of some sort."
She says she heard that
when I pulled into the driveway.
And she said, "oh, my god,
what have I gotten into?"
Well...
We were very much in love.
He was everything
I could have asked for.
And so we bought a home,
and I started working.
And I worked and then I worked
up until I had Tracy,
and that was two years
after we were married.
He was great with her.
He was really... he was good,
and crazy about her.
He still is.
That's his "punk."
He calls her "punk."
Man had his first
great success in space,
when the Russians pushed a
man across the threshold.
He was Yuri gagarin,
the astronaut
the Russians lionized
as the first to orbit the earth.
It was the propaganda
coup of the year.
After the Russian flight,
U.S. plans were accelerated.
Commander Alan b. Shepard
was sent into suborbital flight.
Unlike the Russian venture,
this took place
in the white hot glare
of World-Wide publicity.
It was period of time
when America needed
a hero desperately,
and Alan became that hero
of the astronauts.
The Mercury seven
were the real pathfinders
of what was to happen
in the future,
which none of us
really fully anticipated,
especially me.
Many years ago,
the great British explorer
George Mallory,
who was to die on mount Everest,
was asked why did he
want to climb it.
He said, "because it is there."
Well, space is there.
And we're going to climb it.
And the moon and the
planets are there.
And new hopes for knowledge
and peace are there.
And therefore, as we set sail,
we ask god's blessing
on the most hazardous,
and dangerous,
and greatest adventure
on which man has ever embarked.
Thank you.
I had two reactions.
The man just placed
a hell of a responsibility
on wein the space program,
but I was pleased to hear that...
Very pleased to hear that.
On the other hand,
if I looked at what had
to be done to get there,
I thought he was crazy.
We had a total of 20 minutes
manned spaceflight experience.
We had never been to orbit,
and when were challenged
to go to the moon.
And our president
had the confidence
to issue this challenge
and he had the confidence
that we would do it.
I remember he was
so enthralled with that,
and I said to him, "would you
like to do something like that?"
And he said, "oh, I'd love it."
I'd love to do it.
Just give me the chance.
But by the time
I get good enough,
by the time I get qualified,
by the time I meet
all of their requirements,
there won't be anything
left to do.
All the pioneering will be over.
Don't ever shortchange yourself,
you never ever know
what fate has in store.
I got a call out of the blue
that NASA was looking
for new astronauts
and was I interested
in applying?
You bet I was.
I was invited to Houston,
but cautioned
not to speak to anybody.
I jumped into a cab,
drove downtown.
Checked into the old rice
hotel under a fake name.
It was like I just stepped
into some crazy spy movie.
And who did I meet
in the hotel bar,
but a whole bunch
of the greatest test pilots
in the country
all checked in
under the same name...
Max peck.
For the next few days, they threw
mountains of paperwork at us,
and asked us questions
I knew nothing about.
The next step was a
physical at San Antonio.
I've never been subject
to anything like that
in my entire life.
Every cavity in your body
had something stuck into it.
They put cold water in our ears
and spun us around like a top.
I was dizzier
than a grasshopper.
Then they put us
in this idiot box
to see how we could react
to the unknown.
Up was no longer ur,
it was down.
Red was green, green was red.
Left was right.
They did everything
possible to confuse us.
And at the end of it all,
all we were told
to do was go home.
"Don't call us. We'll call you."
When the phone rang,
it was my future boss,
deke slayton.
He said, "geno, we've
got a job for you
in Houston
if you still want it."
And of course
from that point on,
my life was changed forever.
I just was selected
for the space program.
Wow.
J zoom a little zoom
in a rocket ship 2
joffwegoonatripz
j heading for the moon
at a rocket clip &
j we're gonna zoom zoom 2
j rocket 2
jzooma little zoom 2
j now we're almost free 2
j from the earth's gravity 2
j zooming to the moon
at terrific speed... 2;
we did all the
general training going in
before we ever got
assigned to a flight.
We had desert survival.
We did a little water survival.
We did jungle survival.
They gave us
a fishhook and a machete
and dropped us in a helicopter
somewhere out in the
middle of the jungle
in Panama.
All that survival training,
it teaches you something
about yourself.
Most of us had technical
engineering backgrounds
of one kind or another,
but we were starting
school all over again.
Orbital mechanics, which I
knew absolutely nothing about.
Geology, which I really knew
little or nothing about.
We were doing something
somewhere all the time.
They'd go to
work in the mornings
and come home late.
And this was before they
were training for a mission.
They were just getting
their feet wet
at that particular time.
And we were bombarded
with photographers and press,
and, you know,
it was like a whirlwind.
It was fame.
Wasn't necessarily fortune,
but it was fame,
and you had to learn
how to deal with it.
I mean, you walked around with...
With a halo over your head.
You were special.
One day, they
say very confidentially,
we're gonna set up an appointment
for you to get fitted
for a suit...
For a space suit.
I mean, all of a sudden.
Wow.
You don't know what
that's going to lead to,
but you know what it means.
In the fall of 1965,
the gemini 9 crew was announced.
Charlie bassett was
going to be the prime pilot
with Elliot see,
and Tom Stafford and I were
gonna be the backup crew.
And Charlie and I were
doing the same thing.
We flew together.
We went places together.
We trained together.
We did everything together
that our side of the
spacecraft had to do.
So we got to be
pretty good friends.
And then in February of '66
the totally unexpected happened.
I heard this big crash.
And then a few seconds
later, this big explosion,
a big black cloud mushroomed up
and parts from the airplane
just flew everywhere.
No chance to do anything
for the two men?
No. None. Not at all.
Minutes after the crash,
the gemini 9 backup crew
of Eugene cernan
and Thomas Stafford
came in safely from Houston
in a similar jet.
And tonight NASA announces
they now become the prime crew
for the gemini 9 flight.
That was just
a devastating time.
It was just horrible.
You just realized then I guess
how close it can be.
Aim.
Aim.
Aim.
It was very
traumatic at the time.
But then we had a job to do,
to go on and fly the mission.
And we had a short period
of time to do it.
I'd had a lot
of experience in gemini.
Gene had
no experience in gemini.
So we had to concentrate
on getting him up to speed
on all the procedures
and techniques
and the duties he had.
Suddenly, after this accident,
I found myself
on my very first flight.
This is gemini launch control.
T-minus ten...
Nine... eight...
Seven... six...
Five... four...
Three...
One... zero.
We have ignition.
The real world's
got a lot of surprises
and we found a great many
of them on gemini 9.
When I stepped out
of that spacecraft,
we were really headed out
into the unknown.
The umbilical was
about 25 feet long
and it was...
It was like a snake.
If it brought me back
to the spacecraft,
I'd hit it
with my foot or my arm
or my helmet or whatever,
and I'd go tumbling back out.
I mean, I was upside
down, sideways...
The earth might
have been up here,
it might have been down there.
I don't know.
I was just helpless.
I'm trying to figure out
what I'm doing
and it isn't working.
And it isn't going to go away
unless something...
I do something about it,
and I wasn't sure what the
next step was going to be.
Once I got
behind the spacecraft,
the umbilical
was not my problem.
My task was to basically
assemble the jetpack.
I had to turn oxygen valves on
and fuel valves.
And every time I turned them,
off would go back into space.
We had no proper handholds.
The foot restraints,
tethers... any of that.
I was working pretty hard.
My heart rate was 160, 170.
I knew it. The ground knew it.
I knew I was driving
the doctors bananas down there
because they've never confronted
this type of thing before.
Don't forget, the spacecraft
is going around the world
once every 90 minutes.
And the moment
the sun went down,
he fogged over,
so he could not see.
It was very frustrating
here on the ground,
listening to gene and
knowing he was in trouble,
but there was nothing
I could do about it.
His body temperature
was increasing.
Deep core temperature
was increasing.
Okay, we have that. Roger.
We concur on the no-go.
It was the process
of really coming to grips
for the first time
that there was something
about this element
of space flight
that we did not have
a good handle on yet.
We had many lessons
to learn along the way.
I was really disappointed,
because I was
sent up to do a job
and I didn't get it done.
Tom Stafford did a great job.
Cernan himself did a great job,
but they did have
some tough moments,
and we learned a lot from that.
It was cernan's failures
that caused us
to eventually do it right.
We moved in this house
when Tracy
was nine months old...
In 1964.
House is almost
this neighborhooqod's
almost 50 years old.
There wasn't much here.
On the corner was Mike Collins.
Charlie bassett, al bean
lived down the street.
Rusty schweickart lived here.
That little house right there
has a lot of history
in the walls,
if they could only talk.
J here we are again j
j happy as can be
j all good pals j
j and jolly good company 2
we were all pretty close,
but I think I was probably
closer to Martha chaffee.
She lived next door to me,
and she and I were very close.
Oh, we were always
back and forth,
I mean, between our houses.
And we did go to the same
hairdresser,
and we'd have lunch,
and the normal things
that women do.
We were like sisters.
J whoops we go again 2
j la-di-da-di-da j
we were already close, I think.
We're all vying to be first guy
to land on the moon, obviously.
But we were very close
in our social activities,
our training activities,
and so it was
a small band of brothers.
J jolly good company 2
we'd have a drink together
occasionally.
I won't go
into any more details.
J such good company 2
j la-di-da-di-da j
j hey, la-di-da-di-Dee 7
I don't want to
sound like they were wild,
but they were a little crazy.
Oh, I don't know about
"the wild bunch" or not,
but I'd like to think
we worked hard
and we played hard.
J jolly good company, hey j
j jolly good company 2
j jolly good company 2
j jolly good company, hey j
j jolly good company 2
we all got along well.
We liked some people
better than others,
just like any group.
We were all trying
to do the same thing.
We were willing
to make sacrifices
to achieve the dream
of getting to the moon.
But we knew going in
that some people
weren't gonna make it.
We do everything we possibly can
to make sure that it is as safe
as we can possibly make it.
But one of these days,
there are going to be
some mistakes made,
either in the systems design
or we on the ground,
which result in an accident
and maybe a fatal one.
We interrupt this program
to bring you a special
report from abc news.
There's been a fire on the pad.
What happened? They're dead.
Top space agency officials
are flying
to cape Kennedy tonight
to begin the official
investigation
into what caused the flash fire
that killed the nation's first
three Apollo astronauts
earlier tonight.
Lieutenant colonel
Gus Grissom, 42;
lieutenant colonel ed white, 36;
and lieutenant commander
Roger chaffee, 31;
all died in moments,
helplessly trapped
inside their spacecraft.
I was sitting
at that console right there
when Grissom, chaffee,
and white were killed.
I listened to them die.
That evening,
January 27th, a Friday,
I was giving my kids hot dogs...
And then somebody said
there'd been an accident.
So when Mike Collins
finally came...
To the door
and I saw him, I knew.
I knew already.
I said, "I know, Mike, but...
You've got to tell me."
And he did.
And I took
my children into the...
I'm sorry.
I took my children
into the bedroom,
and trying to tell...
An eight-year-old
and a five-year-old
that they're dad
wasn't coming home,
it's hard.
And I went home and...
Pulled in my driveway,
still in the flight suit.
Cars all over the street.
NASA security around.
Walked right across the lawn
to Martha's house.
I dreaded...
I dreaded the moment.
Arlington.
Cold January day.
I wasn't sure whether we were
burying three of our colleagues
or whether we were burying
the entire Apollo program.
Because we knew
the chaffees so well,
I was asked to stay with Martha.
And I did.
Sat next to her at the cemetery.
How she held her composure,
I don't know.
Good-bye, my friend.
The Apollo 1 fire
changed us forever...
And we've never forgotten it.
In our business of space flight,
risk is the price of progress.
J and the sign said j
j long-haired freaky people 2
j need not apply... 2
the world was in a mess,
the country was in a mess,
but this was going on
out there somewhere.
Maybe we were a little cocoon
in the middle
of this big world of ours.
J so I took off my hat
and said imagine that...
you know, we
had a mission to do...
Astronauts, engineers,
all sorts of people
working for NASA,
all working towards
the same goal.
J can't you read the sign j
Man, I was working my butt off
and I never really appreciated
what was going on at home.
I think the wives
played an important part
because we did everything
when they weren't there,
which they weren't there
most of the time.
I think he'd be
the first to tell you
that I pulled
my share of the load.
They'd been home
taking care of the kids.
Paying the bills,
seeing the kids get to school
and do their homework.
We were unfair. We were selfish.
We were not very good husbands.
We weren't very good
fathers either.
And sometimes
you can't balance things
like work and family.
Like, we had...
This is how the work is
and the family is way down here.
If you didn't do this,
you weren't gonna stay
as an astronaut.
That's simple.
We weren't interested in this.
We were interested in this.
We're gonna be the second flight
to ever go to the moon...
Stafford, young, and myself.
We're gonna get
on a big ol' saturn v.
It was a big chunk to swallow.
You're sitting on the top
of 2,740 tons of equivalent tnt.
Do you know fear
or apprehension?
I didn't before you told me
it was that much tnt.
The last couple
of days before launch
get pretty intense.
It is a very personal time,
and it was a very loving time.
You realize that
unless god's willing,
I might not ever see you again,
or he might not see us again.
What if doesn't come back?
The night before I flew,
I wrote a letter to Tracy
just in case.
"To my dar...
Darling daughter, Tracy.
Trace, you're almost
too young to understand
what it means to have your
daddy go to the moon.
But someday,
you'll have the feeling
of excitement and pride
that mommy and daddy do.
Punk, we have lots of camping
and horseback riding to do
when I get back.
I want you to look at the moon,
because when
you are reading this,
daddy is almost there.
I love you Tracy.
My wonderful...
And beautiful daughter.
All my love."
You don't sleep that well,
you get up fairly early
in the morning.
You have your
traditional breakfast.
Then you go down
and get suited up.
You've been suited up
a thousand times before
for all kinds of tests
and what have you.
This is for real.
The worst part of it all
is just waiting.
And then at last it's...
It's time to go.
Your adrenaline
is pumping pretty strong
at that point in time.
You know, you can hear yourself
breathe inside that suit.
T-minus 33 minutes
and 30 seconds.
33 minutes until the scheduled
liftoff of Apollo 10.
This saturn v, by the way,
is the most powerful
saturn v ever to fly,
with 7,700,000 pounds
of first stage power...
Two minutes and counting.
Our status board indicates
here in the control room...
It's no longer
something you're gonna do.
It's something that's happening.
It's happening right now to you.
Everything intensifies.
Lseconds and counting.
We are go for our mission
to the moon at this time...
But the clock keeps going.
All systems are performing
satisfactorily.
All the last minute countdown
checks are proceeding okay.
This is it. This is for real.
That thing's gonna
light off under you
and you're gonna
head on out to the moon.
13... 12... 11...
Ten... nine...
We have ignition sequence start.
And five... four...
Three... two...
All engines running.
Launch, commence liftoff.
We have liftoff,
49 minutes past the hour.
You're go staging 10.
Roger. 10 is go.
Inboard shutdown.
What a ride. What a ride.
That's gene
cernan reporting, "what a ride."
It was America
that was going to the moon,
but the fact of life,
it was 20th century humanity
that was going to the moon.
The entire world was on board
that spacecraft with us.
Roger.
Looking good intermediate zone.
Apollo 10, Houston, do you read?
Roger.
10, you're go for pyro arm
and go for sep.
Roger.
We have sep
the world is incredible.
I sure hope we can show
it to you, I really do.
You're part of this
big thing that's going on,
and yet you don't realize
how big a thing it is,
quite frankly.
You don't fully
comprehend it all.
29 looks good to us.
I gotta check
the thrusters here now.
You look out the window,
your whole window
is filled up with the earth.
How's that for the front porch?
Oh, boy, that's beautiful.
10, it's looking
real stable to us.
We show you closing slightly.
Charlie, we can't be
more than about 5, 10 feet away.
Roger.
Snap, snap, and we're there.
- Got two grays.
- Roger.
You capture that lunar module
and we're on our way.
You now regain consciousness
as to where you are
and where you're going.
Abc news presents
the flight of Apollo 10,
brought to you by tang,
the energy breakfast drink
for astronauts in outer space.
Good morning or good evening,
depending on where
you are in the country.
From abc space headquarters
in New York...
I guess, after one mission
you feel a little bit
more confident,
because you think, "oh, well,
I've been there, done that.
So maybe I'll be
better this time.
I'll do... I know kind of
what to expect."
You had all these people
in your home.
You had all these press
out there.
It's trying, believe me.
It's very, very trying.
You do sweat it out
till they're home.
Apollo 10 is
reported to be maneuvering
to burn attitude at this time.
Its distance from the moon
is 681 nautical miles.
Apollo 10, Houston.
Two minutes to l.O.S.
Everybody here says godspeed.
Okay, we'll see them
right on the other side
in orbit.
We wouldn't see
the moon until we got there.
And finally, we got close.
We could finally see
a little scimitar of the moon,
that was all.
And then the sun went
and disappeared.
The moon is
between you and the sun,
and it blocks out that light.
You are now immersed,
yourself, in this blackness.
And then all of a sudden...
Boom...
Someone turns on the lights.
There's the moon.
Roger, Houston, Apollo 10.
You can tell the world
that we have arrived.
As you come out,
you're still in sunlight.
You come around
the horizon of the moon,
and here comes the earth.
Earth rise.
Charlie, it might sound corny,
but the view is really
out of this world.
Charlie brown and snoorpy.
You're going over the hill.
All the systems are go.
We're all go here on the ground.
It's looking great. Over.
Roger. 56, 22, 55. Snoopy going.
We is go, and we is
down among them, Charlie.
Roger. I hear you
weaving your way up the freeway.
Can you give me
a post-burn report? Over.
Yeah, as soon
as I get my breath.
As we circled the moon
in a lunar lander... snoopy...
We knew we were vulnerable
to a whole host
of unknown problems.
And our goal was to identify
and then solve those problems
so that Neil
and his crew would have
just that much less
to worry about.
And one of the problems
we encountered
was pilot induced.
We were going to simulate
from 47,000 feet,
as if we were on the moon,
lift off from the assent stage,
and then go up into a rendezvous
mode with the mothership.
But in preparing to do so,
Tom and I misplaced a switch,
we have you go
for staging. Over.
Okay, Tom.
What's that?
Okay, let's...
God damn.
Son of a bitch.
We're in trouble.
I saw that lunar
horizon go by my window
eight times in some 15 seconds.
Snoop, Houston...
The thing spun
around at Max rate
to this new attitude.
That got our attention
in mission control.
And we got...
Certainly got his attention
as he relayed it over the...
Over the comm.
Tom got this rotation stopped.
How we did it,
I don't know.
Yeah, okay. Something
went wild there on that staging.
We're all set.
We didn't lock it.
We're going ahead
to the auto maneuver.
It was frightening
when they did have
that one mishap.
If you think going
to the moon is hard,
you ought to try staying home.
Apollo 10 really came
home in a Blaze of glory.
Rolling, twisting, turning...
These flecks of fire
were just snapping at us.
We're on our backs
coming in backwards.
The heat shield's behind us.
It would just come over
the top of my window,
and just come over there
right in front
of my eyes and snap
a sheet of fire completely
immerses you and surrounds you.
I know what it's like
to be that comet.
The shooting star.
It is a spectacular
fireworks show.
It...
I wish it had happened
on fourth of July.
We had just been to the moon.
So you can imagine
how it felt to come home.
Home. Your real home.
Not just your home away from...
This home. Your family.
And the response of people
you have known a lifetime
was so overwhelming.
You could tell it meant
something to them.
Nothing but pride.
Nothing but pride.
And so proud of him,
so proud of him
that he could go out
and do something like that.
And proud of the country.
Not many people
remember Apollo 10,
but I do.
And I'll tell you someone else
who remembered it,
and that's Neil Armstrong.
Okay, Neil,
we can see you coming
down the ladder now.
I'm gonna
step off the lander now.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
Would I have liked to been
at a first landing?
You bet your life I would've.
But as it turned out,
I think fate shined
down upon us,
and got the right people
in the right place
at the right time.
How does one,
adequately express his feelings
about a special friend
when that friend
is also a world icon
whose name will live
in history long after
all here today
have been forgotten.
Neil, you can now finally
put out your hands
and touch the face of god.
Farewell, my friend.
You have left us far too soon.
God bless you, Neil.
Oh!
Hey, daddy.
How are you?
- Okay, here.
- Come here, baby.
- Remember when I came back from...
- Mm-hmm.
Apollo 10 and I tried
to impress you?
- Yeah.
- You know, daddy's been to the moon.
- Been here, done this.
- He flew snoopy closer,
and was way out in the...
In... in the heavens
where god lives.
And I never will forget it,
you just stood,
and listened to me.
I brought you
back down to earth.
All the sudden, it got quiet
and I had nothing else to say,
and you looked upr, and said,
"daddy, now that you've been
to the moon and back,
- when you gonna take me camping...
- Camping.
- We used to go camping.
- Like you promised me."
That's right.
And you know
what that brought home?
All the times,
during that period
of our lives together
that I couldn't take
you camping,
that I was gone.
I was gone somewhere.
I was gone and gone,
and gone and gone.
It was a very selfish
life on my part,
and on the part of all the guys.
The rim on this little crater
seems to be all white.
This is gonna be some
kind of different ride.
Dick Gordon
had a crew with Jack Schmitt.
Jack Schmitt
was a lunar geologist.
It made sense, at least to me,
and I was afraid
it made a lot of sense
to too many other people,
that they should keep
that crew together.
Well, the national
academy of sciences
wanted a geologist
to fly to the moon.
They've always wanted that.
So here's their last opportunity
to put a ph.D. Geologist
on a flight crew.
And so it was gonna come down
to dick's crew or my crew,
and he had an Ace in a hole.
He had Jack Schmitt.
I knew if I had
any chance at all,
I'd better not
do something stupid.
We do a lot of training
in simulators,
and we had this lunar
landing training vehicle.
We also used the helicopter.
I had an urge to fly low
over the Indian river,
and the little skid that you
land on with this helicopter
touched the water.
This is the helmet
that I was wearing
when I was flying
that helicopter,
and when I unstrapped it,
it floated to the surface,
and it picked
an equilibrium position.
Probably floated,
I guess about like that,
and everything above the
surface is charcoal.
I thought he'd, as the
saying goes in the Navy,
that he'd screwed the pooch.
I thought
he'd done it to himself,
because, you know, hell,
nobody flies a damn
helicopter into the water
unless there's a couple bikinis
there you're looking at.
How can anyone do something
so dumb as I just did
and be given the responsibility
of flying a jillion-dollar
spacecraft to the moon...
Being responsible for the crew,
the safety,
the success of the mission?
And I knew, absolutely,
when the time came,
it would not be me.
Scene four, take one.
Sound for Apollo 17
astronaut cernan.
Gene cernan, Harrison
Schmitt, and Ronald Evans
have been named for the finish
Apollo flight, Apollo 17.
Schmitt is a first
among flying astronauts.
He's primarily a geologist
rather than a pilot.
When we made the final
selection of the crew
for Apollo 17,
that was done in concert
with deke slayton,
who was head of the flight crew
operations at the time.
And I was never too pleased
with the process
that was followed there,
because I thought
it was too much
in the hands of Mr. slayton.
Jack was taken off of my crew
and assigned to Apollo 17.
I didn't think
that was very fair.
And I said, "they can't take
Jack Schmitt off my crew
and give him to somebody else."
He may have had a
right to be somewhat bitter
I got the flight and he didn't.
And, uh, you know, he said...
Tells me that today,
because he said,
"you took my flight."
And I may have.
You know, sitting on a pad
waiting for launch,
it's a long time to...
To contemplate
where you've come from,
where you're going.
It's one of those real moments
that you take
an introspective look
at what is now in front of you.
This is what I asked for.
This was my personal
moment of reckoning.
When it lifted off,
it was just... I mean,
I'll never, ever, forget
how that was because the whole
ground rumbled underneath your feet
and all the fish jumped
out of the lake.
The entire sky
just totally lit up
it was just beautiful.
Oh, my golly!
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable,
but it is bright in the sun.
It was the most proud moment
of my entire life.
I had proved to myself
that I was capable
of coming this far.
I couldn't get out of my mind...
This almost
science fiction world
I was living in.
Now we had a little
more than three days
to make use of the time
we had on the moon,
and that's when
the work really began.
So we set experiments out there,
seismic experiments,
experiments of all kinds.
The next thing we did
was unload the lunar rover.
We had the rover to facilitate
our ability to move around,
and try to explore
this entire valley.
We never would have been able
to do that on foot.
It didn't go very fast,
but it went fast enough
on the moon in 1/6 gravity.
Okay, and gene,
you might get the...
Okay, now shove it.
That's too much. Wait a minute.
But our major objective
was to try and establish
the history of that valley.
- Oh, hey! Wait a minute.
- What?
There is orange soil!
Well, don't move it
until I see it.
It's all over.
Orange!
Don't move it until I see it.
I've stirred it up with my feet.
How can there be orange
soil on the moon?
Look at it.
I'll be a son of a...
That's the volcanic...
They're up against
a constraint anyways,
so they gotta leave at a certain
time regardless of what we got.
I'm willing to give up
all the light mantle stuff,
and stay up another...
That's the priority
right up there, huh?
There it is. Look at that.
That change at all?
Oh, thank you, geno.
It looks much better.
When you get out
there and look back...
As small as it is
compared to the earth,
when you're the only
two guys out there,
it can be pretty lonely
at times.
Once we got in,
we took our suits off
and we had to dry them out.
We had to eat.
We had to rest.
I remember specifically
pulling up the shade
before we tried to get some rest
and looking out at the earth.
Maybe I just had to make
sure it was still there.
Oh, that ought
to be a beautiful shot
if 1 can see what
my settings are.
That whole period of time,
that's the time I call
sitting on god's front porch.
I was out there somewhere
with the opportunity
to see something
and be somewhere
and do something
that only 12 human beings
in the history of mankind
have been able to do,
or be, or see.
Tracy, did he promise to
bring you anything back?
Well, I asked him to bring
a rock back from the moon.
But he said if he could,
he'd bring me one back.
And he said if he could,
he'd bring me a moonbeam.
- A what?
- A moonbeam.
A moonbeam?
He's either pulling your leg
or you're pulling mine.
That's what he said.
I parked the rover
about 3/4 of a mile
behind the l.E.M.
So that they could operate
the television camera
and watch our liftoff.
And I don't know
what possessed me to do it,
I just scratched Tracy's
initials in the lunar surface.
I put "t.D.C."
And someday, sometime,
I can only believe...
Not just hope, but believe...
That someone will go back,
and that's what they'll find.
I guess you appreciate
things the older you get.
Always.
You understand them better,
you appreciate them more.
And you know, the older I get,
I'm gonna roll it
downhill so we can work on it,
well, I'll document it first.
Walking up the ladder,
was probably one of the most
memorable moments for me,
because I looked down
at my footprints
and I knew I wasn't
coming this way again.
Why we were here?
What did it mean?
I looked over my shoulder,
and there's the earth,
there's reality. There's home.
I wanted to press
the freeze button.
I wanted to stop time.
I really wanted to reach out,
put it in my hand,
stick it in my spacesuit,
and bring it home
and show it to everybody.
This is what it feels like.
This is what it looks like.
This is Apollo control
and 187 hours, 31 minutes.
Now approaching 30 minutes
until time for lunar liftoff
the countdown toward liftoff
going very smoothly.
Control, telmu, g.N.C, eecomm,
surgeon, inco.
I was the flight director
on this console
for gene cernan's
liftoff from the moon.
Rog. We're go for
liftoff here, capcom.
So that when it came time,
we recognized the triumph of
the work that we had done,
but we also lost
some very good friends.
So it was a celebratory mood,
but it was also one that we
looked very somberly at our past.
And we hoped that somewhere,
somehow, someday,
we would be able to carry the
work that we had been doing
into the future.
Three, two, one, ignition.
Burn away, Houston.
Could I have imagined
that it would come to this?
I don't want to remember
it this way.
I'm just disappointed.
I almost wish
I didn't come here today.
You go to the moon
and you're everybody's hero.
You're sort of caught up
in it yourself
People everywhere of every
color, of every religion,
every ethnic background
were overwhelmed.
"Let me touch you.
Let me talk to you."
And you live
that kind of activity
for four or five years,
that's a big change
in your life.
Our life did change a lot.
He was so engrossed
in all of this notoriety,
and traveling, and speaking,
and I got so tired of it.
And I thought,
"1 just want a normal life.
I want to be
a normal housewife."
And I remember when gene and I
were on a private jet,
I was sitting in one aisle,
he was sitting
across the aisle from me.
And I looked at him,
and I thought,
"you know, cernan, this is your
life, this is what you want.
But I don't want it."
I guess a couple years
after that
we ended up separating,
and going our different ways.
Some 60% of us got divorced,
and I'm not proud of it.
We were so tunnel-visioned
when we were going to the moon,
that we never had time
to get off
that big white horse
we were riding
until it was too late.
I lived a single life for,
I don't know,
seven or eight years.
And that sounds like
a lot of fun
when you're 40,
but sooner or later, you've gotta
come to grips with who you are
and what's important in life.
I was invited to a friend's home
for a cocktail party,
and gene happened to be there.
And I just happened to see
the best looking chick
at the party, and it was her,
and someone said,
"would you take her home?"
And I said,
"well, I'd be glad to."
But after taking her home,
I'm not sure I was ever
gonna see her again.
That's true.
I just liked gene's...
I thought he was more
down to earth
than a lot of the other ones.
Mm-hmm.
And at that time, I didn't
think he had such a big ego.
- Give me a break.
- But I have since...
I'm learning more about me.
Give me a break.
You know we're gonna be
married 25 years?
- 24.
- Five.
It's five.
Jan became something
very special in my life.
And from that relationship,
came a family again,
and grandkids.
Kids.
- Give me a break.
- Take a seat. Come on.
This is a beautiful...
Someone take a picture.
We are! Sit down, come on.
- Okay.
- Fix your hair.
- Ow.
- You're about to sit on me?
Ow. That's...
You put me in the middle.
Wait. You're sitting on me.
Ow, my shirt.
- Okay, am I all right?
- Yes.
Okay.
7.6 billion dollars.
I'm here for a couple days and
I'm going to San Diego,
so I could do something...
Oh, brother.
It's a very high energy level.
He... you know,
he just doesn't stop.
He doesn't take a moment
to catch his breath.
He's got a million things
on his mind at one time.
I don't know that retirement
is really in his vocabulary.
And there are people here
that are listening today
who will see humans
walk on Mars.
I won't, but they will.
While we're still here,
and there's
an opportunity to share
what the space program
has meant,
particularly in this day and age
when we're talking
to a generation
who weren't even around
when we went to the moon,
we have an obligation
to do that.
Okay. We get it?
You came all the way
from France?
Yes.
Oh, boy.
Oh, yeah. That's a good one.
Thank you. Thank you.
Take care.
Whew!
All of the
fame, and the speeches,
- and the traveling...
- What's your name?
I'm on him a lot now.
"Gene, shut it down."
Shut down your schedule.
This is October.
Here was September.
Here was August.
Throttle back, you know?
Slow down, baby.
You gotta smell
the roses a little bit.
But he drives himself.
The bad part about it is,
I'm realizing that,
like when we were
in the space program,
when we're going full bar,
eight days a week,
I ignored my family.
We... we all did.
But I'm finding I'm getting
innuendos from my family,
from the grandkids,
from my wife,
that I'm doing
the same thing now.
And maybe...
Maybe I'm finally
coming to a realization
that I gotta think
of somebody else.
I do. I...
I don't think I'm selfish.
I think I do think
of somebody else.
I think of those people
who want a piece of you,
who you somehow owe a piece to,
but there is a limit.
Now I think maybe I owe
a piece of me to my family.
- You got... okay.
- Here you go.
You know, this is a lot of work
- for old guys like us.
- Tell me about it.
These two horses together
can go like the wind.
We ain't gonna do that today.
I know damn well I'm not.
You fly right wing,
I'll fly left wing.
Okay.
We're gonna go across
and go back in
through that gate.
- Okay.
- Unless you want to run the barrel?
No. I don't want to run
any barrels.
Hey, baldy,
are you ready to admit
we ain't got
what we used to got?
Yeah.
Easy, now.
Let's not have a wreck here.
I got it. I'll get it.
If 1 can get my leg
over this saddle, anyway.
There.
All right, I think we survived.
Come on. Oh, shit.
Oh, baldy! I can't walk!
I can't either.
We're still here.
- That's right.
- How many more years?
We got a pact to make it to 85
and then we'll reevaluate.
I gotta pact...
I gotta pact with my dog.
You know what?
When we got him, I said,
"if you go ten, I'll go ten."
That was barron,
and I've gotta
renegotiate with him.
We only got three and a half
of those ten years left.
- I'm not ready!
- Well, bless.
- I love you, babe.
- I love you, too, man.
Just standing here,
getting a little nostalgic.
Sort of gives me a chance
to wonder whether
this all happened in my life.
Whether it was a reality
or whether it was a dream.
Is that dummy in there
with my name on really me?
And I also stand here
and I'm wondering
what people are gonna think,
not in another 40 years,
but maybe another 100 years.
Who knows?
Maybe another 1,000 years.
I often tell young kids,
and particularly my grandkids,
don't ever count yourself out.
You'll never know how good
you are unless you try.
Dream the impossible,
and go out and make it happen.
I walked on the moon.
What can't you do?
He placed last night, second.
Going for first.
How many y'all
wanna see that replay?
Following cowboy in hot water.
Come on big Jake, show 'em how.
Yeah.
Mission sequence start.
Engines on five, four...
Three, two...
I'm the luckiest
human being in the world.
There... fire going.
I don't go around
living in the past,
for the most part.
But ever once in while
you let yourself
go back in time.
I'll look up there...
And I might just reflect
for a half a minute or so.
I can take myself there
at the speed of thought.
Okay, stand by for pitchover.
Oh, are we coming in?
Pitchover.
There it is. Proceeded.
And there it is Houston.
There's Camelot.
Right on target.
I see it.
We got 'em all.
25 feet per second through 400.
That's a little high, geno.
Okay.
Very little dust.
40 feet. Going down at three.
Stand by for touchdown.
Stand by.
20 feet.
Going down at two.
10 feet.
And contact.
Stop, push. Engine stop.
Engine arm, proceed.
Command override, off.
As soon as you hit the surface,
the dust is gone,
engine is shut down.
There's no noise.
You are magically
in another world.
It was the ultimate
quiet moment in my life.
Pure silence.
Absolutely incredible.
I spent a lot of time growing up
on my grandparents' farm
in Wisconsin.
No electricity.
No tractors, just horses.
So my desire in life was
to sometime have a ranch.
It's where I can just
be who I am.
I keep thinking, "my dad
always would have loved this."
He was a Jack of all trades,
he could fix... rewire your
house or build you a garage,
or fix the plumbing
in your bathroom,
and that's why I learned to
do all those things with him.
He said, "I don't care
whether you're in a classroom,
on a football field,
or whatever you do..."
Barron?
"Just do your best.
And someday, I promise you.
You're gonna surprise yourself."
It's like coming down the l.E.M.
Only if I fall here,
I break my butt.
1170 kcbq, the
legendary gene cernan is with us.
Now about the Navy,
talk a little bit about...
Because this is a big
Navy town, as you know,
and you spent time here.
I tell ya, San Diego is...
Is like another home.
I spent my best years
coming out of pensacola
here in San Diego.
From the time I was 22
until I was 27,
this was my life.
In and out of San Diego,
flying off aircraft carriers.
This is where
it all started for me.
At that point, 22, 25,
you're invincible
and you're bulletproof
there isn't anything
you can't do,
you know, risk be damned.
The fact of life is,
naval aviation
is a risky process.
You don't have
much room for error.
If you get sloppy,
you're gonna kill yourself
You live within
that environment,
you live within that culture,
but you love it,
and you keep doing it,
and it doesn't discourage you,
'cause it's not gonna
happen to me.
You know,
it isn't gonna happen...
It's always gonna
happen to the other guy.
He screwed up.
I'm not gonna screw up.
That was the attitude
you had to have.
- Is that you?
- Course it is.
That is you.
red hot naval aviator.
Invincible, invisible,
and bulletproof
- remember?
- That's a stretch.
There we are. That's it.
The stingers. Here we go,
up over the top.
The diamond roll there it is.
- God, that was fun, baldy.
- Yeah, we were flying.
I made my first cruise with gene
on the old u.S.S. Shangri-la.
It was constant competition.
Who could land better
on the carrier.
Who could bomb better
on the carrier.
We used to grab airplanes
and go up and tail chase
around the clouds.
We were... we were pretty
impressed with ourselves.
We have big egos.
But I think you have
to have a big ego
to be able to do
the intense type of flying
that we were trained to do.
When you land a plane
on a carrier
in the daytime is tricky enough.
But when you do it at night,
you're not thinking
about your girlfriend.
Well, gene might have been,
but I wasn't.
I was... I was dead serious.
Now, cernan, who knows?
Uh, he's kinda loose
sometimes that way.
Jesus. Now we got a fire.
If you think back
when you and I were
in 113 together, okay?
We flew together all the time,
but were we competitive
with each other?
I was a hell of a lot better
left wing man,
than you were right wing man.
No. No, but I was a hell of a lot
better bomber than you were.
You were lucky if you
even hit the damn ground.
Why were you so weak
in bombing, gene?
You were the weapons
training officer.
Baldy, it's 240,000 miles away.
Anybody could hit that.
And my c.E.P. Was 50 miles.
You were average in bombing.
You were pretty good
at getting aboard the boat.
I knew you had
a little fear at night.
Do I have
to listen to this crap?
Do... if I have
to listen to this...
I'm gonna make a circle
over the field.
But I'll come in behind you.
Flying is a big part of my life.
You got to have a passion,
a love for what you're doing,
or you shouldn't be doing it.
I was an airline stewardess
for continental airlines
and I lived in Los Angeles.
And I was in the airport
and he was in the line.
I did not remember him,
but he said I smiled at him
and he just thought
that I was great.
And I thought later...
I thought what he doesn't know,
I have to smile at everybody
because that was part of my job.
The first time
he came to my house.
He had a... I think it was,
like, a '56 Chevrolet
and it had kind of
loud mufflers on it.
I thought, "oh, my lord,
he's a hot rod of some sort."
She says she heard that
when I pulled into the driveway.
And she said, "oh, my god,
what have I gotten into?"
Well...
We were very much in love.
He was everything
I could have asked for.
And so we bought a home,
and I started working.
And I worked and then I worked
up until I had Tracy,
and that was two years
after we were married.
He was great with her.
He was really... he was good,
and crazy about her.
He still is.
That's his "punk."
He calls her "punk."
Man had his first
great success in space,
when the Russians pushed a
man across the threshold.
He was Yuri gagarin,
the astronaut
the Russians lionized
as the first to orbit the earth.
It was the propaganda
coup of the year.
After the Russian flight,
U.S. plans were accelerated.
Commander Alan b. Shepard
was sent into suborbital flight.
Unlike the Russian venture,
this took place
in the white hot glare
of World-Wide publicity.
It was period of time
when America needed
a hero desperately,
and Alan became that hero
of the astronauts.
The Mercury seven
were the real pathfinders
of what was to happen
in the future,
which none of us
really fully anticipated,
especially me.
Many years ago,
the great British explorer
George Mallory,
who was to die on mount Everest,
was asked why did he
want to climb it.
He said, "because it is there."
Well, space is there.
And we're going to climb it.
And the moon and the
planets are there.
And new hopes for knowledge
and peace are there.
And therefore, as we set sail,
we ask god's blessing
on the most hazardous,
and dangerous,
and greatest adventure
on which man has ever embarked.
Thank you.
I had two reactions.
The man just placed
a hell of a responsibility
on wein the space program,
but I was pleased to hear that...
Very pleased to hear that.
On the other hand,
if I looked at what had
to be done to get there,
I thought he was crazy.
We had a total of 20 minutes
manned spaceflight experience.
We had never been to orbit,
and when were challenged
to go to the moon.
And our president
had the confidence
to issue this challenge
and he had the confidence
that we would do it.
I remember he was
so enthralled with that,
and I said to him, "would you
like to do something like that?"
And he said, "oh, I'd love it."
I'd love to do it.
Just give me the chance.
But by the time
I get good enough,
by the time I get qualified,
by the time I meet
all of their requirements,
there won't be anything
left to do.
All the pioneering will be over.
Don't ever shortchange yourself,
you never ever know
what fate has in store.
I got a call out of the blue
that NASA was looking
for new astronauts
and was I interested
in applying?
You bet I was.
I was invited to Houston,
but cautioned
not to speak to anybody.
I jumped into a cab,
drove downtown.
Checked into the old rice
hotel under a fake name.
It was like I just stepped
into some crazy spy movie.
And who did I meet
in the hotel bar,
but a whole bunch
of the greatest test pilots
in the country
all checked in
under the same name...
Max peck.
For the next few days, they threw
mountains of paperwork at us,
and asked us questions
I knew nothing about.
The next step was a
physical at San Antonio.
I've never been subject
to anything like that
in my entire life.
Every cavity in your body
had something stuck into it.
They put cold water in our ears
and spun us around like a top.
I was dizzier
than a grasshopper.
Then they put us
in this idiot box
to see how we could react
to the unknown.
Up was no longer ur,
it was down.
Red was green, green was red.
Left was right.
They did everything
possible to confuse us.
And at the end of it all,
all we were told
to do was go home.
"Don't call us. We'll call you."
When the phone rang,
it was my future boss,
deke slayton.
He said, "geno, we've
got a job for you
in Houston
if you still want it."
And of course
from that point on,
my life was changed forever.
I just was selected
for the space program.
Wow.
J zoom a little zoom
in a rocket ship 2
joffwegoonatripz
j heading for the moon
at a rocket clip &
j we're gonna zoom zoom 2
j rocket 2
jzooma little zoom 2
j now we're almost free 2
j from the earth's gravity 2
j zooming to the moon
at terrific speed... 2;
we did all the
general training going in
before we ever got
assigned to a flight.
We had desert survival.
We did a little water survival.
We did jungle survival.
They gave us
a fishhook and a machete
and dropped us in a helicopter
somewhere out in the
middle of the jungle
in Panama.
All that survival training,
it teaches you something
about yourself.
Most of us had technical
engineering backgrounds
of one kind or another,
but we were starting
school all over again.
Orbital mechanics, which I
knew absolutely nothing about.
Geology, which I really knew
little or nothing about.
We were doing something
somewhere all the time.
They'd go to
work in the mornings
and come home late.
And this was before they
were training for a mission.
They were just getting
their feet wet
at that particular time.
And we were bombarded
with photographers and press,
and, you know,
it was like a whirlwind.
It was fame.
Wasn't necessarily fortune,
but it was fame,
and you had to learn
how to deal with it.
I mean, you walked around with...
With a halo over your head.
You were special.
One day, they
say very confidentially,
we're gonna set up an appointment
for you to get fitted
for a suit...
For a space suit.
I mean, all of a sudden.
Wow.
You don't know what
that's going to lead to,
but you know what it means.
In the fall of 1965,
the gemini 9 crew was announced.
Charlie bassett was
going to be the prime pilot
with Elliot see,
and Tom Stafford and I were
gonna be the backup crew.
And Charlie and I were
doing the same thing.
We flew together.
We went places together.
We trained together.
We did everything together
that our side of the
spacecraft had to do.
So we got to be
pretty good friends.
And then in February of '66
the totally unexpected happened.
I heard this big crash.
And then a few seconds
later, this big explosion,
a big black cloud mushroomed up
and parts from the airplane
just flew everywhere.
No chance to do anything
for the two men?
No. None. Not at all.
Minutes after the crash,
the gemini 9 backup crew
of Eugene cernan
and Thomas Stafford
came in safely from Houston
in a similar jet.
And tonight NASA announces
they now become the prime crew
for the gemini 9 flight.
That was just
a devastating time.
It was just horrible.
You just realized then I guess
how close it can be.
Aim.
Aim.
Aim.
It was very
traumatic at the time.
But then we had a job to do,
to go on and fly the mission.
And we had a short period
of time to do it.
I'd had a lot
of experience in gemini.
Gene had
no experience in gemini.
So we had to concentrate
on getting him up to speed
on all the procedures
and techniques
and the duties he had.
Suddenly, after this accident,
I found myself
on my very first flight.
This is gemini launch control.
T-minus ten...
Nine... eight...
Seven... six...
Five... four...
Three...
One... zero.
We have ignition.
The real world's
got a lot of surprises
and we found a great many
of them on gemini 9.
When I stepped out
of that spacecraft,
we were really headed out
into the unknown.
The umbilical was
about 25 feet long
and it was...
It was like a snake.
If it brought me back
to the spacecraft,
I'd hit it
with my foot or my arm
or my helmet or whatever,
and I'd go tumbling back out.
I mean, I was upside
down, sideways...
The earth might
have been up here,
it might have been down there.
I don't know.
I was just helpless.
I'm trying to figure out
what I'm doing
and it isn't working.
And it isn't going to go away
unless something...
I do something about it,
and I wasn't sure what the
next step was going to be.
Once I got
behind the spacecraft,
the umbilical
was not my problem.
My task was to basically
assemble the jetpack.
I had to turn oxygen valves on
and fuel valves.
And every time I turned them,
off would go back into space.
We had no proper handholds.
The foot restraints,
tethers... any of that.
I was working pretty hard.
My heart rate was 160, 170.
I knew it. The ground knew it.
I knew I was driving
the doctors bananas down there
because they've never confronted
this type of thing before.
Don't forget, the spacecraft
is going around the world
once every 90 minutes.
And the moment
the sun went down,
he fogged over,
so he could not see.
It was very frustrating
here on the ground,
listening to gene and
knowing he was in trouble,
but there was nothing
I could do about it.
His body temperature
was increasing.
Deep core temperature
was increasing.
Okay, we have that. Roger.
We concur on the no-go.
It was the process
of really coming to grips
for the first time
that there was something
about this element
of space flight
that we did not have
a good handle on yet.
We had many lessons
to learn along the way.
I was really disappointed,
because I was
sent up to do a job
and I didn't get it done.
Tom Stafford did a great job.
Cernan himself did a great job,
but they did have
some tough moments,
and we learned a lot from that.
It was cernan's failures
that caused us
to eventually do it right.
We moved in this house
when Tracy
was nine months old...
In 1964.
House is almost
this neighborhooqod's
almost 50 years old.
There wasn't much here.
On the corner was Mike Collins.
Charlie bassett, al bean
lived down the street.
Rusty schweickart lived here.
That little house right there
has a lot of history
in the walls,
if they could only talk.
J here we are again j
j happy as can be
j all good pals j
j and jolly good company 2
we were all pretty close,
but I think I was probably
closer to Martha chaffee.
She lived next door to me,
and she and I were very close.
Oh, we were always
back and forth,
I mean, between our houses.
And we did go to the same
hairdresser,
and we'd have lunch,
and the normal things
that women do.
We were like sisters.
J whoops we go again 2
j la-di-da-di-da j
we were already close, I think.
We're all vying to be first guy
to land on the moon, obviously.
But we were very close
in our social activities,
our training activities,
and so it was
a small band of brothers.
J jolly good company 2
we'd have a drink together
occasionally.
I won't go
into any more details.
J such good company 2
j la-di-da-di-da j
j hey, la-di-da-di-Dee 7
I don't want to
sound like they were wild,
but they were a little crazy.
Oh, I don't know about
"the wild bunch" or not,
but I'd like to think
we worked hard
and we played hard.
J jolly good company, hey j
j jolly good company 2
j jolly good company 2
j jolly good company, hey j
j jolly good company 2
we all got along well.
We liked some people
better than others,
just like any group.
We were all trying
to do the same thing.
We were willing
to make sacrifices
to achieve the dream
of getting to the moon.
But we knew going in
that some people
weren't gonna make it.
We do everything we possibly can
to make sure that it is as safe
as we can possibly make it.
But one of these days,
there are going to be
some mistakes made,
either in the systems design
or we on the ground,
which result in an accident
and maybe a fatal one.
We interrupt this program
to bring you a special
report from abc news.
There's been a fire on the pad.
What happened? They're dead.
Top space agency officials
are flying
to cape Kennedy tonight
to begin the official
investigation
into what caused the flash fire
that killed the nation's first
three Apollo astronauts
earlier tonight.
Lieutenant colonel
Gus Grissom, 42;
lieutenant colonel ed white, 36;
and lieutenant commander
Roger chaffee, 31;
all died in moments,
helplessly trapped
inside their spacecraft.
I was sitting
at that console right there
when Grissom, chaffee,
and white were killed.
I listened to them die.
That evening,
January 27th, a Friday,
I was giving my kids hot dogs...
And then somebody said
there'd been an accident.
So when Mike Collins
finally came...
To the door
and I saw him, I knew.
I knew already.
I said, "I know, Mike, but...
You've got to tell me."
And he did.
And I took
my children into the...
I'm sorry.
I took my children
into the bedroom,
and trying to tell...
An eight-year-old
and a five-year-old
that they're dad
wasn't coming home,
it's hard.
And I went home and...
Pulled in my driveway,
still in the flight suit.
Cars all over the street.
NASA security around.
Walked right across the lawn
to Martha's house.
I dreaded...
I dreaded the moment.
Arlington.
Cold January day.
I wasn't sure whether we were
burying three of our colleagues
or whether we were burying
the entire Apollo program.
Because we knew
the chaffees so well,
I was asked to stay with Martha.
And I did.
Sat next to her at the cemetery.
How she held her composure,
I don't know.
Good-bye, my friend.
The Apollo 1 fire
changed us forever...
And we've never forgotten it.
In our business of space flight,
risk is the price of progress.
J and the sign said j
j long-haired freaky people 2
j need not apply... 2
the world was in a mess,
the country was in a mess,
but this was going on
out there somewhere.
Maybe we were a little cocoon
in the middle
of this big world of ours.
J so I took off my hat
and said imagine that...
you know, we
had a mission to do...
Astronauts, engineers,
all sorts of people
working for NASA,
all working towards
the same goal.
J can't you read the sign j
Man, I was working my butt off
and I never really appreciated
what was going on at home.
I think the wives
played an important part
because we did everything
when they weren't there,
which they weren't there
most of the time.
I think he'd be
the first to tell you
that I pulled
my share of the load.
They'd been home
taking care of the kids.
Paying the bills,
seeing the kids get to school
and do their homework.
We were unfair. We were selfish.
We were not very good husbands.
We weren't very good
fathers either.
And sometimes
you can't balance things
like work and family.
Like, we had...
This is how the work is
and the family is way down here.
If you didn't do this,
you weren't gonna stay
as an astronaut.
That's simple.
We weren't interested in this.
We were interested in this.
We're gonna be the second flight
to ever go to the moon...
Stafford, young, and myself.
We're gonna get
on a big ol' saturn v.
It was a big chunk to swallow.
You're sitting on the top
of 2,740 tons of equivalent tnt.
Do you know fear
or apprehension?
I didn't before you told me
it was that much tnt.
The last couple
of days before launch
get pretty intense.
It is a very personal time,
and it was a very loving time.
You realize that
unless god's willing,
I might not ever see you again,
or he might not see us again.
What if doesn't come back?
The night before I flew,
I wrote a letter to Tracy
just in case.
"To my dar...
Darling daughter, Tracy.
Trace, you're almost
too young to understand
what it means to have your
daddy go to the moon.
But someday,
you'll have the feeling
of excitement and pride
that mommy and daddy do.
Punk, we have lots of camping
and horseback riding to do
when I get back.
I want you to look at the moon,
because when
you are reading this,
daddy is almost there.
I love you Tracy.
My wonderful...
And beautiful daughter.
All my love."
You don't sleep that well,
you get up fairly early
in the morning.
You have your
traditional breakfast.
Then you go down
and get suited up.
You've been suited up
a thousand times before
for all kinds of tests
and what have you.
This is for real.
The worst part of it all
is just waiting.
And then at last it's...
It's time to go.
Your adrenaline
is pumping pretty strong
at that point in time.
You know, you can hear yourself
breathe inside that suit.
T-minus 33 minutes
and 30 seconds.
33 minutes until the scheduled
liftoff of Apollo 10.
This saturn v, by the way,
is the most powerful
saturn v ever to fly,
with 7,700,000 pounds
of first stage power...
Two minutes and counting.
Our status board indicates
here in the control room...
It's no longer
something you're gonna do.
It's something that's happening.
It's happening right now to you.
Everything intensifies.
Lseconds and counting.
We are go for our mission
to the moon at this time...
But the clock keeps going.
All systems are performing
satisfactorily.
All the last minute countdown
checks are proceeding okay.
This is it. This is for real.
That thing's gonna
light off under you
and you're gonna
head on out to the moon.
13... 12... 11...
Ten... nine...
We have ignition sequence start.
And five... four...
Three... two...
All engines running.
Launch, commence liftoff.
We have liftoff,
49 minutes past the hour.
You're go staging 10.
Roger. 10 is go.
Inboard shutdown.
What a ride. What a ride.
That's gene
cernan reporting, "what a ride."
It was America
that was going to the moon,
but the fact of life,
it was 20th century humanity
that was going to the moon.
The entire world was on board
that spacecraft with us.
Roger.
Looking good intermediate zone.
Apollo 10, Houston, do you read?
Roger.
10, you're go for pyro arm
and go for sep.
Roger.
We have sep
the world is incredible.
I sure hope we can show
it to you, I really do.
You're part of this
big thing that's going on,
and yet you don't realize
how big a thing it is,
quite frankly.
You don't fully
comprehend it all.
29 looks good to us.
I gotta check
the thrusters here now.
You look out the window,
your whole window
is filled up with the earth.
How's that for the front porch?
Oh, boy, that's beautiful.
10, it's looking
real stable to us.
We show you closing slightly.
Charlie, we can't be
more than about 5, 10 feet away.
Roger.
Snap, snap, and we're there.
- Got two grays.
- Roger.
You capture that lunar module
and we're on our way.
You now regain consciousness
as to where you are
and where you're going.
Abc news presents
the flight of Apollo 10,
brought to you by tang,
the energy breakfast drink
for astronauts in outer space.
Good morning or good evening,
depending on where
you are in the country.
From abc space headquarters
in New York...
I guess, after one mission
you feel a little bit
more confident,
because you think, "oh, well,
I've been there, done that.
So maybe I'll be
better this time.
I'll do... I know kind of
what to expect."
You had all these people
in your home.
You had all these press
out there.
It's trying, believe me.
It's very, very trying.
You do sweat it out
till they're home.
Apollo 10 is
reported to be maneuvering
to burn attitude at this time.
Its distance from the moon
is 681 nautical miles.
Apollo 10, Houston.
Two minutes to l.O.S.
Everybody here says godspeed.
Okay, we'll see them
right on the other side
in orbit.
We wouldn't see
the moon until we got there.
And finally, we got close.
We could finally see
a little scimitar of the moon,
that was all.
And then the sun went
and disappeared.
The moon is
between you and the sun,
and it blocks out that light.
You are now immersed,
yourself, in this blackness.
And then all of a sudden...
Boom...
Someone turns on the lights.
There's the moon.
Roger, Houston, Apollo 10.
You can tell the world
that we have arrived.
As you come out,
you're still in sunlight.
You come around
the horizon of the moon,
and here comes the earth.
Earth rise.
Charlie, it might sound corny,
but the view is really
out of this world.
Charlie brown and snoorpy.
You're going over the hill.
All the systems are go.
We're all go here on the ground.
It's looking great. Over.
Roger. 56, 22, 55. Snoopy going.
We is go, and we is
down among them, Charlie.
Roger. I hear you
weaving your way up the freeway.
Can you give me
a post-burn report? Over.
Yeah, as soon
as I get my breath.
As we circled the moon
in a lunar lander... snoopy...
We knew we were vulnerable
to a whole host
of unknown problems.
And our goal was to identify
and then solve those problems
so that Neil
and his crew would have
just that much less
to worry about.
And one of the problems
we encountered
was pilot induced.
We were going to simulate
from 47,000 feet,
as if we were on the moon,
lift off from the assent stage,
and then go up into a rendezvous
mode with the mothership.
But in preparing to do so,
Tom and I misplaced a switch,
we have you go
for staging. Over.
Okay, Tom.
What's that?
Okay, let's...
God damn.
Son of a bitch.
We're in trouble.
I saw that lunar
horizon go by my window
eight times in some 15 seconds.
Snoop, Houston...
The thing spun
around at Max rate
to this new attitude.
That got our attention
in mission control.
And we got...
Certainly got his attention
as he relayed it over the...
Over the comm.
Tom got this rotation stopped.
How we did it,
I don't know.
Yeah, okay. Something
went wild there on that staging.
We're all set.
We didn't lock it.
We're going ahead
to the auto maneuver.
It was frightening
when they did have
that one mishap.
If you think going
to the moon is hard,
you ought to try staying home.
Apollo 10 really came
home in a Blaze of glory.
Rolling, twisting, turning...
These flecks of fire
were just snapping at us.
We're on our backs
coming in backwards.
The heat shield's behind us.
It would just come over
the top of my window,
and just come over there
right in front
of my eyes and snap
a sheet of fire completely
immerses you and surrounds you.
I know what it's like
to be that comet.
The shooting star.
It is a spectacular
fireworks show.
It...
I wish it had happened
on fourth of July.
We had just been to the moon.
So you can imagine
how it felt to come home.
Home. Your real home.
Not just your home away from...
This home. Your family.
And the response of people
you have known a lifetime
was so overwhelming.
You could tell it meant
something to them.
Nothing but pride.
Nothing but pride.
And so proud of him,
so proud of him
that he could go out
and do something like that.
And proud of the country.
Not many people
remember Apollo 10,
but I do.
And I'll tell you someone else
who remembered it,
and that's Neil Armstrong.
Okay, Neil,
we can see you coming
down the ladder now.
I'm gonna
step off the lander now.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
Would I have liked to been
at a first landing?
You bet your life I would've.
But as it turned out,
I think fate shined
down upon us,
and got the right people
in the right place
at the right time.
How does one,
adequately express his feelings
about a special friend
when that friend
is also a world icon
whose name will live
in history long after
all here today
have been forgotten.
Neil, you can now finally
put out your hands
and touch the face of god.
Farewell, my friend.
You have left us far too soon.
God bless you, Neil.
Oh!
Hey, daddy.
How are you?
- Okay, here.
- Come here, baby.
- Remember when I came back from...
- Mm-hmm.
Apollo 10 and I tried
to impress you?
- Yeah.
- You know, daddy's been to the moon.
- Been here, done this.
- He flew snoopy closer,
and was way out in the...
In... in the heavens
where god lives.
And I never will forget it,
you just stood,
and listened to me.
I brought you
back down to earth.
All the sudden, it got quiet
and I had nothing else to say,
and you looked upr, and said,
"daddy, now that you've been
to the moon and back,
- when you gonna take me camping...
- Camping.
- We used to go camping.
- Like you promised me."
That's right.
And you know
what that brought home?
All the times,
during that period
of our lives together
that I couldn't take
you camping,
that I was gone.
I was gone somewhere.
I was gone and gone,
and gone and gone.
It was a very selfish
life on my part,
and on the part of all the guys.
The rim on this little crater
seems to be all white.
This is gonna be some
kind of different ride.
Dick Gordon
had a crew with Jack Schmitt.
Jack Schmitt
was a lunar geologist.
It made sense, at least to me,
and I was afraid
it made a lot of sense
to too many other people,
that they should keep
that crew together.
Well, the national
academy of sciences
wanted a geologist
to fly to the moon.
They've always wanted that.
So here's their last opportunity
to put a ph.D. Geologist
on a flight crew.
And so it was gonna come down
to dick's crew or my crew,
and he had an Ace in a hole.
He had Jack Schmitt.
I knew if I had
any chance at all,
I'd better not
do something stupid.
We do a lot of training
in simulators,
and we had this lunar
landing training vehicle.
We also used the helicopter.
I had an urge to fly low
over the Indian river,
and the little skid that you
land on with this helicopter
touched the water.
This is the helmet
that I was wearing
when I was flying
that helicopter,
and when I unstrapped it,
it floated to the surface,
and it picked
an equilibrium position.
Probably floated,
I guess about like that,
and everything above the
surface is charcoal.
I thought he'd, as the
saying goes in the Navy,
that he'd screwed the pooch.
I thought
he'd done it to himself,
because, you know, hell,
nobody flies a damn
helicopter into the water
unless there's a couple bikinis
there you're looking at.
How can anyone do something
so dumb as I just did
and be given the responsibility
of flying a jillion-dollar
spacecraft to the moon...
Being responsible for the crew,
the safety,
the success of the mission?
And I knew, absolutely,
when the time came,
it would not be me.
Scene four, take one.
Sound for Apollo 17
astronaut cernan.
Gene cernan, Harrison
Schmitt, and Ronald Evans
have been named for the finish
Apollo flight, Apollo 17.
Schmitt is a first
among flying astronauts.
He's primarily a geologist
rather than a pilot.
When we made the final
selection of the crew
for Apollo 17,
that was done in concert
with deke slayton,
who was head of the flight crew
operations at the time.
And I was never too pleased
with the process
that was followed there,
because I thought
it was too much
in the hands of Mr. slayton.
Jack was taken off of my crew
and assigned to Apollo 17.
I didn't think
that was very fair.
And I said, "they can't take
Jack Schmitt off my crew
and give him to somebody else."
He may have had a
right to be somewhat bitter
I got the flight and he didn't.
And, uh, you know, he said...
Tells me that today,
because he said,
"you took my flight."
And I may have.
You know, sitting on a pad
waiting for launch,
it's a long time to...
To contemplate
where you've come from,
where you're going.
It's one of those real moments
that you take
an introspective look
at what is now in front of you.
This is what I asked for.
This was my personal
moment of reckoning.
When it lifted off,
it was just... I mean,
I'll never, ever, forget
how that was because the whole
ground rumbled underneath your feet
and all the fish jumped
out of the lake.
The entire sky
just totally lit up
it was just beautiful.
Oh, my golly!
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable,
but it is bright in the sun.
It was the most proud moment
of my entire life.
I had proved to myself
that I was capable
of coming this far.
I couldn't get out of my mind...
This almost
science fiction world
I was living in.
Now we had a little
more than three days
to make use of the time
we had on the moon,
and that's when
the work really began.
So we set experiments out there,
seismic experiments,
experiments of all kinds.
The next thing we did
was unload the lunar rover.
We had the rover to facilitate
our ability to move around,
and try to explore
this entire valley.
We never would have been able
to do that on foot.
It didn't go very fast,
but it went fast enough
on the moon in 1/6 gravity.
Okay, and gene,
you might get the...
Okay, now shove it.
That's too much. Wait a minute.
But our major objective
was to try and establish
the history of that valley.
- Oh, hey! Wait a minute.
- What?
There is orange soil!
Well, don't move it
until I see it.
It's all over.
Orange!
Don't move it until I see it.
I've stirred it up with my feet.
How can there be orange
soil on the moon?
Look at it.
I'll be a son of a...
That's the volcanic...
They're up against
a constraint anyways,
so they gotta leave at a certain
time regardless of what we got.
I'm willing to give up
all the light mantle stuff,
and stay up another...
That's the priority
right up there, huh?
There it is. Look at that.
That change at all?
Oh, thank you, geno.
It looks much better.
When you get out
there and look back...
As small as it is
compared to the earth,
when you're the only
two guys out there,
it can be pretty lonely
at times.
Once we got in,
we took our suits off
and we had to dry them out.
We had to eat.
We had to rest.
I remember specifically
pulling up the shade
before we tried to get some rest
and looking out at the earth.
Maybe I just had to make
sure it was still there.
Oh, that ought
to be a beautiful shot
if 1 can see what
my settings are.
That whole period of time,
that's the time I call
sitting on god's front porch.
I was out there somewhere
with the opportunity
to see something
and be somewhere
and do something
that only 12 human beings
in the history of mankind
have been able to do,
or be, or see.
Tracy, did he promise to
bring you anything back?
Well, I asked him to bring
a rock back from the moon.
But he said if he could,
he'd bring me one back.
And he said if he could,
he'd bring me a moonbeam.
- A what?
- A moonbeam.
A moonbeam?
He's either pulling your leg
or you're pulling mine.
That's what he said.
I parked the rover
about 3/4 of a mile
behind the l.E.M.
So that they could operate
the television camera
and watch our liftoff.
And I don't know
what possessed me to do it,
I just scratched Tracy's
initials in the lunar surface.
I put "t.D.C."
And someday, sometime,
I can only believe...
Not just hope, but believe...
That someone will go back,
and that's what they'll find.
I guess you appreciate
things the older you get.
Always.
You understand them better,
you appreciate them more.
And you know, the older I get,
I'm gonna roll it
downhill so we can work on it,
well, I'll document it first.
Walking up the ladder,
was probably one of the most
memorable moments for me,
because I looked down
at my footprints
and I knew I wasn't
coming this way again.
Why we were here?
What did it mean?
I looked over my shoulder,
and there's the earth,
there's reality. There's home.
I wanted to press
the freeze button.
I wanted to stop time.
I really wanted to reach out,
put it in my hand,
stick it in my spacesuit,
and bring it home
and show it to everybody.
This is what it feels like.
This is what it looks like.
This is Apollo control
and 187 hours, 31 minutes.
Now approaching 30 minutes
until time for lunar liftoff
the countdown toward liftoff
going very smoothly.
Control, telmu, g.N.C, eecomm,
surgeon, inco.
I was the flight director
on this console
for gene cernan's
liftoff from the moon.
Rog. We're go for
liftoff here, capcom.
So that when it came time,
we recognized the triumph of
the work that we had done,
but we also lost
some very good friends.
So it was a celebratory mood,
but it was also one that we
looked very somberly at our past.
And we hoped that somewhere,
somehow, someday,
we would be able to carry the
work that we had been doing
into the future.
Three, two, one, ignition.
Burn away, Houston.
Could I have imagined
that it would come to this?
I don't want to remember
it this way.
I'm just disappointed.
I almost wish
I didn't come here today.
You go to the moon
and you're everybody's hero.
You're sort of caught up
in it yourself
People everywhere of every
color, of every religion,
every ethnic background
were overwhelmed.
"Let me touch you.
Let me talk to you."
And you live
that kind of activity
for four or five years,
that's a big change
in your life.
Our life did change a lot.
He was so engrossed
in all of this notoriety,
and traveling, and speaking,
and I got so tired of it.
And I thought,
"1 just want a normal life.
I want to be
a normal housewife."
And I remember when gene and I
were on a private jet,
I was sitting in one aisle,
he was sitting
across the aisle from me.
And I looked at him,
and I thought,
"you know, cernan, this is your
life, this is what you want.
But I don't want it."
I guess a couple years
after that
we ended up separating,
and going our different ways.
Some 60% of us got divorced,
and I'm not proud of it.
We were so tunnel-visioned
when we were going to the moon,
that we never had time
to get off
that big white horse
we were riding
until it was too late.
I lived a single life for,
I don't know,
seven or eight years.
And that sounds like
a lot of fun
when you're 40,
but sooner or later, you've gotta
come to grips with who you are
and what's important in life.
I was invited to a friend's home
for a cocktail party,
and gene happened to be there.
And I just happened to see
the best looking chick
at the party, and it was her,
and someone said,
"would you take her home?"
And I said,
"well, I'd be glad to."
But after taking her home,
I'm not sure I was ever
gonna see her again.
That's true.
I just liked gene's...
I thought he was more
down to earth
than a lot of the other ones.
Mm-hmm.
And at that time, I didn't
think he had such a big ego.
- Give me a break.
- But I have since...
I'm learning more about me.
Give me a break.
You know we're gonna be
married 25 years?
- 24.
- Five.
It's five.
Jan became something
very special in my life.
And from that relationship,
came a family again,
and grandkids.
Kids.
- Give me a break.
- Take a seat. Come on.
This is a beautiful...
Someone take a picture.
We are! Sit down, come on.
- Okay.
- Fix your hair.
- Ow.
- You're about to sit on me?
Ow. That's...
You put me in the middle.
Wait. You're sitting on me.
Ow, my shirt.
- Okay, am I all right?
- Yes.
Okay.
7.6 billion dollars.
I'm here for a couple days and
I'm going to San Diego,
so I could do something...
Oh, brother.
It's a very high energy level.
He... you know,
he just doesn't stop.
He doesn't take a moment
to catch his breath.
He's got a million things
on his mind at one time.
I don't know that retirement
is really in his vocabulary.
And there are people here
that are listening today
who will see humans
walk on Mars.
I won't, but they will.
While we're still here,
and there's
an opportunity to share
what the space program
has meant,
particularly in this day and age
when we're talking
to a generation
who weren't even around
when we went to the moon,
we have an obligation
to do that.
Okay. We get it?
You came all the way
from France?
Yes.
Oh, boy.
Oh, yeah. That's a good one.
Thank you. Thank you.
Take care.
Whew!
All of the
fame, and the speeches,
- and the traveling...
- What's your name?
I'm on him a lot now.
"Gene, shut it down."
Shut down your schedule.
This is October.
Here was September.
Here was August.
Throttle back, you know?
Slow down, baby.
You gotta smell
the roses a little bit.
But he drives himself.
The bad part about it is,
I'm realizing that,
like when we were
in the space program,
when we're going full bar,
eight days a week,
I ignored my family.
We... we all did.
But I'm finding I'm getting
innuendos from my family,
from the grandkids,
from my wife,
that I'm doing
the same thing now.
And maybe...
Maybe I'm finally
coming to a realization
that I gotta think
of somebody else.
I do. I...
I don't think I'm selfish.
I think I do think
of somebody else.
I think of those people
who want a piece of you,
who you somehow owe a piece to,
but there is a limit.
Now I think maybe I owe
a piece of me to my family.
- You got... okay.
- Here you go.
You know, this is a lot of work
- for old guys like us.
- Tell me about it.
These two horses together
can go like the wind.
We ain't gonna do that today.
I know damn well I'm not.
You fly right wing,
I'll fly left wing.
Okay.
We're gonna go across
and go back in
through that gate.
- Okay.
- Unless you want to run the barrel?
No. I don't want to run
any barrels.
Hey, baldy,
are you ready to admit
we ain't got
what we used to got?
Yeah.
Easy, now.
Let's not have a wreck here.
I got it. I'll get it.
If 1 can get my leg
over this saddle, anyway.
There.
All right, I think we survived.
Come on. Oh, shit.
Oh, baldy! I can't walk!
I can't either.
We're still here.
- That's right.
- How many more years?
We got a pact to make it to 85
and then we'll reevaluate.
I gotta pact...
I gotta pact with my dog.
You know what?
When we got him, I said,
"if you go ten, I'll go ten."
That was barron,
and I've gotta
renegotiate with him.
We only got three and a half
of those ten years left.
- I'm not ready!
- Well, bless.
- I love you, babe.
- I love you, too, man.
Just standing here,
getting a little nostalgic.
Sort of gives me a chance
to wonder whether
this all happened in my life.
Whether it was a reality
or whether it was a dream.
Is that dummy in there
with my name on really me?
And I also stand here
and I'm wondering
what people are gonna think,
not in another 40 years,
but maybe another 100 years.
Who knows?
Maybe another 1,000 years.
I often tell young kids,
and particularly my grandkids,
don't ever count yourself out.
You'll never know how good
you are unless you try.
Dream the impossible,
and go out and make it happen.
I walked on the moon.
What can't you do?