Original subtitles

- I was born in El Paso, Texas,

while my parents were there

under special orders of Congress.

"Operation Paperclip."

They were living in William Beaumont annex housing

at Fort Bliss with the Wernher von Braun team.

About half of the team were taken by bus, daily,

out to White Sands Proving Grounds,

so that they could share with captains of industry

and professors and various ones that were interested

in what is this unique thing, this rocket,

that they built back in Germany during the war.

- There was no answer to the V-2.

It was so fast and very destructive.

I was born in 1936, so I remember the war pretty well.

Grew up through the Blitz in Portsmouth.

Had my first experience with injury when a V-1

came down on my street.

It killed all the neighbors and my uncle.

It's kind of strange.

I'm on the receiving end

of the vengeance weapons of Germany,

and 20 years later I'm sitting with

Wernher von Braun in the block house.

Von Braun was primarily the V-2.

If the Germans had had it a year or more earlier,

it could have made an effect on the results of the war.

- I, myself,

and everybody you see here,

have decided to go west and I think our decision

was not one of expediency, but a moral decision.

We knew that we had created a new means of warfare,

and the question as to what victorious nation

we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours

was a moral decision more than anything else.

- I don't feel they were really happy

working on what they thought was a weapon.

But they saw it that it was

the Americans against the Russians in the Cold War

that was starting to brew.

And in that way, I feel they thought that they could

now maybe make amends for what had occurred before.

- The V-2 was streaks ahead of its time.

That rocket was the foundation for the Redstone rocket.

The Redstone stepped into the Jupiter.

We then took a Jupiter tank and eight Redstone rockets

and built a Saturn One.

Then we took that whole concept and built the Saturn Five.

And Von Braun had his hand in that from day one.

- Amid the fertile farmlands of Northern Alabama,

the Army consolidates its expanding missile activities

late in 1949.

World War II army ammunition

and chemical warfare instillations are joined

and reactivated as Redstone Arsenal.

Early in 1950, the Army moves

the former German missile experts,

other components of its missile team,

and some military personnel here

to continue rocket development.

- When I graduated from Auburn University,

jobs were hard to find.

I ran a service station for a while

trying to make a little money but

one weekend I went home

and a friend of mine told me they were hiring people

over in Huntsville.

- I was interviewed by one of the Germans, Dr. Hensey,

and I was impressed by him.

I was not impressed by the facility though,

nor the equipment they had.

They were very austere.

Quonset huts and concrete block buildings

that had been part of the munitions.

I deliberated over it, and finally I decided,

"Well, I believe it's worth a chance."

And that, of course, was about the best decision

I ever made was to come, and so,

I came in March of '52.

- The Germans had been exposed

to several vehicles when they were at White Sands,

so I think they pretty much had in mind the Redstone.

- What the Russians did we had to counter.

And the Russians, we had heard,

had a 200 mile range guided missile.

- We assembled and checked out

that Redstone vehicle.

And then they would carry it over to the test stand

and do the firing.

- Blast!

- I never saw it in any light except for space.

The army may have but I certainly didn't.

- It became evident quite early

that even though our mission was to develop

a launch vehicle, Dr. Von Braun's vision was space travel.

- I remember going home on weekends talking to guys.

They always asked me the same question,

they thought it was sort of a "Buck Rogers" type thing.

I pretty much convinced them it wasn't Buck Rogers,

we were going to do it.

Moscow newspapers were first.

Then headlines around the world echoed the news.

Russia had blasted a man-made moon into outer space.

On every continent and in every land the story

of Sputnik One dominated the front pages.

In its orbit, 560 miles above the earth,

the satellite reached a speed of 18 thousand miles an hour,

circling the globe once every 96 minutes.

- I was still in graduate school down at LSU

when the Russians put up Sputnik.

It was just a shock to the entire country.

I've never seen it that way before.

The Americans realized that here was technology

they could not stop.

It was almost panic in the street.

- We were all peeved off

because we had just launched a Redstone,

which we had to put a dummy fourth stage in it

to keep it from orbiting.

- Eisenhower didn't want the Germans to put up a satellite.

So, they lent a whole new contract to the Navy.

And the Navy built a completely new rocket

to put up a satellite about the size of a grapefruit.

- The only rationale I can think of is

that they were trying to keep civilian space travel

and military separate.

But, they had extreme difficulties.

- What would have been the difference between

the Navy and the Army, from a military aspect?

It's bad, a bad thing to say, but I think it was

more of a jealousy that had been developed between

Von Braun being a German and the political people.

- Mr. President, Snook,

from the United Press.

Russia has launched an earth satellite.

I ask you, sir, what are we going to do about it?

- The Soviets have proved again, and indeed,

this launching of the satellite proves that they can

hurl an object but there are a lot of other things

in the scientific inquiry that are not yet answered

in which we are pushing ahead to answer.

- Eisenhower thought it was a joke.

But a month later, the Russians put the dog up.

And it was a several ton spacecraft.

And it shocked everybody.

And that's when the army got the go-ahead.

- Good morning, gentlemen, be seated please.

I have a very important announcement for you.

We've been assigned the mission of launching

a scientific earth satellite.

I promised the secretary of the army

that we would be ready in 90 days or less.

Let's go, Wernher.

- Medaris knew that we had the capability

with our little Redstone, and so he authorized us

to build an extra rocket that would be used specifically

to put up a satellite and we did.

We designed it, built it, and it was all done in secret.

The Secretary of Defense asked him,

"If you really think you can put up a satellite,

"how quick can you do it?"

Medaris said, "Well, we better take three months."

He didn't admit he had it already in the warehouse.

- This is project command.

At my command mark, the time will be X minus 75 minutes.

Mark, X minus 75 minutes.

- We had a lot of confidence, you know,

we had thoroughly tested every part of that vehicle.

Of course, I won't deny that I wasn't a little bit

on the nervous side.

After all, it was a little different then just

putting a vehicle in the air.

I was chief of electrical on the ground.

I just knew that that stuff was ready.

I'm sure that's the same feeling all of them had.

- Five, four,

three, two, one.

Firing command.

Ignition.

Lift-off!

- It took time for me to realize

what a significant night that was.

I was...

16.

We were at a golf course.

It was where all the high schoolers went to make out.

My brother comes roaring in and just shouts,

"We've put up the first American satellite."

Most of us don't use the word "satellite" back then.

"And they're having a celebration downtown!"

The whole idea was, "Let's go downtown and party."

- It was on my birthday.

Here's this one little square

with the old courthouse around it.

- All the firecrackers going off, and I was saying,

"What are they doing there, they're burning that scarecrow?"

They said, "That's Charles E.Wilson,

"our secretary of defense who let the Russians beat us."

But, you know, those old country guys,

they were just as excited as high school kids.

It was just such a,

there was thousands of people down there.

You would think, "Everyone was really aware

"we were striving to get into space this much?"

- It was a big boost for morale,

particularly for those of us involved.

We're in the space business now,

not only military rocket business.

So, it became more and more open that we were

headed for doing some other things in space too.

- There was a sea change

at that point in time.

People knew that space was gonna be where it happened.

And so there was a lot of pressure

to do what needed to be done.

- In the beginning,

it was just too hectic to think about myself.

I had one child right after another.

I didn't have time to think of what I wanted.

But then, when my daughters all got in school,

and I had this time to myself,

I thought, "Gosh, I would really like to be part

"of the space program."

- I got involved in a science fair,

the first ever one, I think,

here at Titusville High School.

And I will tell you that my father had a hand in this

because he did some things to help.

But I had a display of a rocket engine.

And the Army Ballistic Missile Agency

had people at that science fair.

And when that science fair got over, I was offered a job

at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Cape Canaveral.

- My husband looked at me and he said,

"What could you do?

"You couldn't make enough money to buy your own Kotex."

That's all the motivation I needed.

We were divorced shortly after that.

And I was a single mother raising three daughters,

on my own with very little monetary assistance.

And I just knew I had to make it.

- It was a launch every third or fourth day

or a test every day.

I was a civilian employee and I got to be a technician.

My first impression was it was kind of like a big family.

I was really taken in, I was the youngest guy by far,

17 years old.

And I didn't know A from Z.

But they were willing to teach me.

It was special.

They cared about whether

I was going to be successful or not.

- I took a job as a Kelly girl.

And you probably don't know what that is.

It was a temporary position.

And usually it was either a temporary

either typist or secretary.

I got several jobs with different contractors.

They would last anywhere from three months to six months.

And finally I got a job with IBM.

I liked the way they treated people.

I liked the company, the atmosphere.

And they offered me a full-time job.

And that turned out to be a wonderful blessing.

- Ladies and gentlemen,

the President of the Unites States.

- The momentum, thus gained,

accelerates today under the civilian management

of the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Marvel as we will at these technical achievements,

we must not overlook this truth.

All that we have already accomplished,

and all in the future that we shall achieve,

is the outgrowth, not of a soulless, barren technology,

nor of a grasping state imperialism.

It is the product of unrestrained human talent and energy,

restlessly probing for the betterment of humanity.

In this tribute to a revered friend,

I dedicate this the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center.

- I'm in my second year now, I still don't know a lot,

and we all get transferred from

the Army Ballistic Missile Agency

into this new agency called NASA.

And NASA had two major differences from the ABMA.

Number one, it was aimed at peaceful uses of space

right from the beginning.

And number two, exploration, discovery and education.

- I remember my parents having those discussions,

"Do you go? Do you stay with army where it's a sure thing?"

The ultimate decision was

that NASA means going into space.

Rather than the army building missiles

and armaments for war.

- We didn't even initially have any new, specific focus.

We were working on the capability to put man in orbit.

The big event was President Kennedy's decision

that we needed to do something to prove

we were technologically superior to the Russians.

That's really what the genesis

of the whole lunar program is about.

- Well, I was very impressed with him.

I remember when he laid out the goal,

"Let's go to the moon in ten years

"and return safely back to earth."

I mean, that was the kind of goal and the kind of thing

that you could get yourself attached to.

It was a big deal in the South,

and I guess it gave people hope,

which was the biggest thing.

You know, once there's hope,

you can make a lot of stuff happen.

- It was just such an incredibly exciting challenge.

That the country was put on notice to do this,

and to do it within a particular time,

and to commit.

- In May of '61, I think it was.

All we'd flown was Shepard,

on a sub-orbital flight, and here we are,

you know, making plans to go to the moon

within nine years, basically.

And, you know, at that stage of the industry,

I don't know how we're ever going to do that.

- Von Braun was essentially dancing in the street.

You know,

he's finally arrived.

He's got a real mission now to get man in space

in a serious way.

But it was interesting, the guys down in the ranks

were saying, "What, what, how are we going to do this?"

- I don't think I was savvy enough to understand

what the real implications were at that point in time.

I was savvy enough to know that that meant

there was a real

thread of power

and ambition and challenge

that would become a part of my life.

- Even though I realize that this is in some measure

an act of faith and vision.

For we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens,

that we shall send to the moon,

two-hundred and forty thousand miles away,

a giant rocket more than three hundred feet tall,

made of new metal alloys, some of which

have not yet been invented.

And do all this and do it right,

and do it first before this decade is out,

then we must be bold.

It will be done.

And it will be done before the end of this decade.

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.

- I went to work for the Army Corps of Engineers.

It was either one of the generals or a colonel

that came out and said: "JFK wants to put a man on the moon.

"They're going to build a space center in Florida.

"Any volunteers?"

My father was in construction.

He ran a transit mix concrete company.

Always said, "Just remember the four 'C's.

"Just be able to communicate, coordinate,

"cooperate and have credibility."

He said, "If you don't have credibility to start with,

"you'll never succeed.

"You might make money,

"but you're not gonna be a success as a human being."

It was just boondocks when we got here.

I mean, two lane road into an awful lot of orange groves.

The Corps of Engineers had a real estate office,

and they were buying a lot of property on Merritt Island.

- It's not actually an island, it's a peninsula.

At the north end of that peninsula is where

the Merritt Island Launch Area was established.

Launch Complex 39.

- Launch Complex 39,

a new operational facility for launching

large space vehicles at a more rapid rate.

This new mobile concept calls for assembly

of the moon rocket in the controlled environment

of a building.

Then, with the rocket mounted on a mobile launcher,

a huge, tracked vehicle transfers it to a distant pad,

ready for launch.

- The mobile concept was different than any concept

they had anywhere else out there.

They calculated the explosive rating of

a fully fueled Saturn Five as being

a circle seven miles in diameter.

They picked the locations for Pad A and Pad B,

so all the inhabitable buildings had to be outside

that seven mile circle.

- It was a huge difference, not just in scale of size,

but in complexity as well.

Hard to put in place.

Expensive,

with lots of growing pains.

- So it got to where you had

to have a master schedule of what was happening overall.

- We had "war rooms" they called it.

- Are there any changes to the schedule?

- The tank pressurization test will not start

until thirteen hundred.

- When do you want to run the leak check?

- First shift, Tuesday.

- You would meet 6:30, quarter to seven.

You tracked every job, whether you were ahead of schedule,

on schedule, behind schedule.

- Everybody knew what the final goal was.

And nobody wanted to be

the cause for having to move that goal.

- We started building launchpads,

having to make channels in two and three hundred feet high

piles of sand to surcharge over the swamp areas.

- Keep in mind now, it was a wildland area.

And the water systems had to be diverted.

We cut off north/south flow.

That didn't go over very well for some of our naturalists.

We put a huge crawler way,

three miles long,

ten feet deep.

And it is the size of a four-lane highway.

- My boss, Mr. Donald Buchanan,

was the design engineer of the crawler transporter.

It was patterned after some of these big steam shovels

that they used to use to dig coal mines and such.

Dimensionally, it was about the size

of a baseball infield.

And the belt on the track, two of them on each one,

was about the size of a Greyhound bus.

I remember the first time we ever moved it.

We started having problems with a little heavier load

than we had designed for.

And the bearings were wearing out.

And that's when this ingenious young engineer decided,

if we canget some river rock,

and put a layer on the crawler ways.

The river rock would act like ball-bearings

between the tracks and the ground.

And you could hear those rocks popping.

They were being pulverized.

And we've used that river rock ever since

to save our bearings.

- That was only a part of it,

the Launch Control Center was apart of it,

the launch pads themselves, 50 feet above sea level,

underneath a whole catacomb of wires and piping.

It's a little city out there.

- And it was all happening at the same time.

It's not step-by-step.

It's somebody's working on the structural,

while somebody's working on the mechanical,

while somebody's working on the electrical.

- Construction people are a bunch of different people.

I tell ya, some of them are a wild group.

But most of them had a lot of pride in their work.

Lot of jobs, worked a lot of overtime.

I really am not trying to be the "rah rah,"

but I think there was a spirit that said,

"We're gonna beat the Russians to the moon."

It wasn't a case of, "Hell it's a job."

Yeah, there were a few people like that, but not very many.

- Today, I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood,

and took an oath to our people.

In the name of the greatest people

that have ever trod this earth,

I draw the line in the dust

and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny,

and I say "segregation now,

"segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever."

- You know, the first time George Wallace ran for governor,

he was I guess a moderate, inclusive type guy

and all that stuff, you know?

And then he lost.

And he made a statement that

"I will never lose another election by supporting blacks."

You know, he used the "N" word.

- We lived on Pulaski Pike.

During that time, all of Huntsville was segregated.

The way we went to school

was going down the railroad track.

You wouldn't be going through anybody's neighborhood.

- If you didn't have at least eight students

taking a class, the state of Alabama wouldn't pay for it.

So once you got past basic math,

we didn't have enough students for the state

to pay for our teacher.

But we had this one teacher, Frank Harley,

and I give him a lot of credit for being here today.

He came back afterschool to teach us trigonometry,

for free of charge.

- High school I had this teacher,

Mrs. Fields,

and she would tell me,

"You got a good head on your body

"for being a mathematician."

And I guess that stuck.

And that's what I tried to do.

Because of the influx

of highly educated workers, today Huntsville combines

the charm and relaxed atmosphere

of a quiet, Southern community

with the intellectual curiosity and activity

of a major university city.

- We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.

It is as old as the scriptures,

and is as clear as the American Constitution.

The heart of the question is

whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights

and equal opportunities,

whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans

as we want to be treated.

Now the time has come for this nation

to fulfill its promise.

The events in Birmingham and elsewhere

have so increased the cries for equality,

that no city, or state or legislative body

can prudently choose to ignore them.

A great change is at hand,

and our task, our obligation is to make that revolution,

that change, peaceful and constructive for all.

- President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order

"Ten, Nine Twenty-Five,"

establishing a new program of equal employment opportunity

in the federal service.

Its meaning is quite clear.

As federal employees, you should be mindful

that the executive order, like the civil service act,

carries with it a strong injunction

against discriminatory acts in the federal service.

- Marshall got threatened that if they didn't do

a better job of integrating, they was gonna move

the space center somewhere else.

They didn't want to lose all those jobs and all that stuff.

So, money always makes a difference

in getting things changed, you know?

- I think it was a great thing.

A lot of African Americans never think they would

be able to start working for NASA.

Clyde Foster, Richard Hall

and Norman Fletcher, now those were some of the first ones

that were able to get out there.

And I think it opened the door for other

African Americans in our communities.

- You know they helped me a lot.

Especially Clyde, you know,

he kind of helped mentor me along.

My first job was a computer operator.

So, I go into this room.

You know, we had lights flashing and tapes going,

and I was scared to death.

A guy from Auburn started the same day I did

and his major was math.

And I soon found out that I knew as much as he did.

- They did set up this co-op program,

which allowed students from universities and colleges

to apply for summer work.

- I didn't really see it as breaking color barriers.

I just saw it as achieving as much as I could.

When I became Deputy Center Director at Kennedy,

it wasn't like I wanted to be Deputy Center Director

because I was black.

I wanted to be Deputy Center Director

because that was the next job up, you know?

But I always knew that I carried a certain responsibility

by being a black in certain positions.

I couldn't afford to fail.

So, I always did whatever it took to be successful.

I never worked eight hour days.

My hours were like ten to twelve hour days all of my career.

- When I became supervisor,

I had about four African American students,

most of them are female at that, working under me

in the computation lab.

Some of the employees, friends now,

would come up and tell me,

"I'm so glad that you were there to help me.

"If you hadn't been there to put in a good word for me,

"or tell me what to do,

"I probably wouldn't have made it."

- I was in the laboratory.

Somebody came running in,

and said, "Kennedy has been shot."

I just visualized it as a minor wound.

We could hardly believe it.

- Hard to talk about.

- I bet.

- But...

you know, it just...

It just wasn't right.

And we were all affected by it.

- It made me feel

a degree of insignificance.

If people who are in the limelight,

who are doing great things, can be so easily

disposed of,

then who am I?

It just kind of put that in perspective.

There's a price for notoriety.

When you get to be known, there's a vulnerability.

Assassination is one of them.

That's the ultimate vulnerability.

Especially if you're doing something that's

against the grain of a certain set of people.

- You know, this was a guy that we as black people

had hung our hopes on, that was going to change things

and make life better for us.

And all of the sudden, he was gone, you know?

- I don't know, maybe I was so shocked over the event,

I didn't even think a whole lot about its effect

on the space program.

We certainly lost the one man who was our biggest fan.

Because we were all working toward fulfilling his dream.

And his dream had become our dream.

- The greatest leader of our time

has been struck down

by the foulest deed of our time.

No words are sad enough

to express our sense of loss.

No words are strong enough

to express our determination

to continue the forward thrust of American that he began.

Johnson was not gonna let

the program die.

And I think we have to give him credit

for pushing to keep going.

- The dream of conquering the vastness of space.

This is our challenge.

Not to hesitate.

Not to pause.

Not to turnabout and linger over this evil moment.

But to continue on our course,

so that we may fulfill the destiny

that history has set for us.

John Kennedy's death commands what his life conveyed.

That America must move forward.

To honor his memory and the future

of the works that he started, I have today

determined that the NASA launch operations center in Florida

shall hereafter be known as

the John F. Kennedy Space Center.

I have also acted today with the understanding

and the support of my friend, the governor of Florida,

to change the name of Cape Canaveral.

It shall be known hereafter as Cape Kennedy.

- I would have paid for the job, it was so wonderful.

Just the excitement, every time I'd go through the gates

of Kennedy Space Center and show my badge,

I thought I was the luckiest person in the world.

I was called a communication specialist.

I wrote all the press releases.

I interviewed engineers and programmers and top personnel.

It took some education,

but finally I understood that

the IBMers there did the final system testing

for the IU, the Instrument Unit,

which provided the navigation and trajectory

for the Saturn Five.

- I was in awe, to tell you the truth.

I was in awe because I had no sense

before getting to Kennedy Space Center

what it would be like.

I was apart of the telemetrics department.

And Doctor Blaine Sweat, I'll never forget him.

He was my department manager.

He made it very clear.

He says, "I love excellence.

"I want people who are gonna come in here

"and not only help us to achieve our objective,

"but to bring what wisdom you have

"to help us improve upon that."

- Now I'm biased.

I did my masters and my doctorate in management, okay?

And I will tell you that the technical feats were fabulous.

The organization feats were equally fabulous.

To be able to put together a team,

made up of all these different companies

and organizations, that would function together.

And that happened during Apollo.

It had to, how would you grow it at the size and speed

that it needed to without bringing a lot

of different people in?

- You know, I wasn't the swinging single of course.

But back when my wife and I first got here in '65

for the Apollo program,

we really wanted to live in Cocoa Beach.

- It was a little rowdy.

We had entertainment at a lot of these motels.

We had the astronauts here obviously.

- Did the astronauts

have kind of a free reign?

- You betcha.

It was commonplace for those guys to get in that sports car

and run these roads around here.

A lot of them, us workers included, we'd work hard

during the daytime.

But at night, when we wanted to relax, we'd play hard.

- Our adventure was the Mouse Trap.

- The Mouse Trap. - The Mouse Trap.

- The Rat House.

- The Mouse Trap. - The Mouse Trap.

- Mouse Trap, yeah.

- I wasn't in that crowd.

But I was aware of what was happening.

- It was like a who's who in the space program.

- On Fridays, anyone that came in with their ties still on,

got it cut off.

There would be a lot of hooping and hollering.

- We talked about things and we laughed about things.

It never occurred to me that an environment

could be so caught up in this commitment

because I hadn't seen it like that before.

The dynamics of Kennedy Space Center was unity.

Everybody said, "You're a team member.

"You play a role in helping us to be successful."

North American Aviation

won two contracts on Apollo.

They had the second stage, the S-II.

And they had the Command and Service Module.

So, you know, they had a tremendous part

of the whole Apollo vehicle.

- You know, one of the things about the Command Module

is its limited space.

It's extremely crowded.

I mean, you had three guys.

So we did an awful lot of simulation work.

And the problem was knowing the latest configuration

with regards to the interior of the capsule.

Because one minute an instrument would be over here.

And study would show that that was not

the proper place for it, it should have been over here.

And they would move it.

- We were a month away from launch.

We were still doing modifications to the vehicle.

We had been trampling in and out of that vehicle

for six months.

And that does generate mistakes,

it generates foolish decisions.

It's almost like you're running too fast

and you're starting to lose your balance.

I think that's what we felt a little bit back in 1967.

That night, I was on station.

And I just finished running a simulated static fire

with Gus Grissom and Skip Showvan, the test conductor.

And the communications were really bad.

Gus was getting ticked.

He'd been in the cockpit all afternoon and evening.

- Hey, how are we going to get to the moon

if we can't talk between three buildings?

- They can't hear a thing you're saying.

- Jesus Christ.

- And Skip said, "Let's take a break here

and see if we can't square this comm system away

"before we go into the terminal count."

- Somehow or other, a spark started

in one of the lower areas underneath one of the couches.

And unfortunately, we had saturated the atmosphere

inside that capsule with one hundred percent oxygen.

- That was based on the heritage

of both Mercury and Gemini.

Even though Mercury and Gemini were very small volume

compared to the Apollo capsule.

And when you're at one hundred percent oxygen

and something ignites,

it's almost like an explosion.

- We had discussed the procedure for getting out

of the capsule in an emergency,

and the NASA wanted a redundant system;

they wanted a hatch on the outside

that opened to the outside.

And they wanted a hatch on the inside

that opened to the inside.

When the fire started, however, the pressure was so great

that it just made it seal that much tighter.

Ed White was a strong man.

There was no way in the world

that he could possibly get that hatch off.

- The pressure vessel actually ruptured.

And the fire blew out of all of the ports

on the outside of the Command Module.

Burned technicians outside.

Set papers on fire.

- It didn't last very long.

But they knew, they knew they were in trouble.

- After the pad fire

that killed the three astronauts, NASA says,

"If we have another disaster of like nature that kills crew,

"Congress will cutoff our funding,

"that will be the end of the Program."

And that was true.

Everybody had that attitude.

They knew that it was that close to the end of the program.

- It didn't take long before our orders came through.

This isn't going to happen again.

We're going to take another look at everything.

And "everything," I mean everything.

We spent almost an entire year looking back over

all of the things we had drawn and built,

all of the management decisions that were made.

- I was requested by NASA to join a group

called the Sneak Circuit Analysis Program.

To learn how to identify hidden catastrophes

and find them before they occur.

If you've never seen engineering drawings,

you've been blessed.

Because they don't show what any group needs,

they show a composite all mashed together.

And nobody can visualize the total effect of what that does.

So I was allowed to try something different.

I thought, "If I'm an electron traveling on that wire,

"that wire can be a hundred miles long and I don't care,

"I can see the end of it from the beginning.

"If I can just depict that the way the electron sees it,

"a simples ketch of a circuit that has power at the top,

"ground at the bottom,

"I'll know everywhere current can flow,

"and under what circumstance."

All together, I don't know how many true sneak circuits

we found on all the Apollos.

It was in the neighborhood of a thousand.

- I guess the change I saw was that people became

even more dedicated to doing

what needed to be done correctly.

If there were any doubt,

you would want to go back and look again.

These three guys gave their lives.

We owe them our very best efforts.

- On the spacecraft side of the house,

we did a real good assessment.

"What did we need to change to make a safer vehicle?"

And we did.

- It took quite a while to accomplish it,

but we went to a single hatch.

A device which we call an over-center lock

makes it possible to actually have the internal pressure

seal the hatch that much tighter.

- And we had to start looking at all of our components

that we used in the breathing systems.

Some things that we had no idea that would be flammable

or explosive when they were in a pure o2 environment,

would burn.

We got a wealth of knowledge from that accident

that we have used to redesign every oxygen system

in the world since then.

- In retrospect, you look back now and you realize

that maybe if we hadn't had that fire that night

and lost those three guys,

we wouldn't have got to the moon.

What I'm afraid of is that somewhere downstream,

we may have had another fire.

Or another situation where we lost the crew in orbit,

or on the way to the moon.

And I think the program would have stopped right there.

- Mind-boggling.

I have always seen it piecemeal.

The first day, when they drove me out to the pad

as part of my introduction,

and I went up on the 180 foot level, and I looked down,

and I looked up,

I thought, "You know, there ain't no way in the world

"this thing is going to get off the ground.

"Seven million pounds.

"How could it ever get off the ground?"

- I took one look from the top of the pad.

And this is the pad where Apollo 11

was going to lift off someday.

It was just such a magnificent sight

and I'm sure only a few women have seen it.

- Early in the Saturn Five program,

the decision was made to go to an "all up" testing.

- This was kind of pushed on us

by Dr. Mueller from headquarters.

He said, "Hell, you Germans, you're too slow.

"You just do one stage at a time.

"Fly it all."

- So rather than: "S" one "C" only.

"S" one "C", "S" two.

"S" one "C", "S" two, "S" four "B".

Right from the very beginning, "fire them all."

- It was a nerve-wracking situation,

you might say to some extent.

To think that your particular hardware, your area,

might cause a catastrophic failure.

I just have to say, yes it was a constant dread.

You know, this was an extremely complex vehicle.

- When we started the countdown for the actual launch,

I walked into this HOSC building.

And I never came out for three days and three nights.

Von Braun did a tour.

Here's all these engineers asleep on the console.

Von Braun said, "Let 'zem sleep.

"I want them to be ready when the time comes."

- I was at a control console with my boss.

And we got down to about T-minus 30 seconds,

and I thought, "Excuse me, I'll be right back."

I went down the stairs and out in front

of the Launch Control Center,

and stood there watching the launch.

- 12, 11,

10.

Ignition sequence, start.

Five,

four,

we have ignition.

All engines are go.

- The reverberation was just pounding my chest.

- Imagine 350 horse-power cars, bumper-to-bumper,

from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast,

pressing that pedal to the metal.

That's seven and a half million pounds of thrust.

That's a lot of juice.

- And when it did finally go,

it was so frustratingly slow.

It's not like a shuttle

that leaps off that's doing a hundred miles an hour

by the time it gets past the tower.

You begin to wonder if it's even moving.

It's just barely climbing.

- You watch it through staging.

You think of all the hours that went into that,

all the work, all the contemplation,

the arguments, the changes.

And it worked.

- I looked at the records.

Looked just like I had done them on my simulator.

Nothing was wrong.

First time it had ever flown.

- A lot of people don't realize

that that was the same year as the fire.

That we went from the absolute lowest point

in terms of program morale and spirit,

to launching that giant rocket.

And we put an unmanned spacecraft on it.

Literally the Phoenix rising out of the fire.

- Once that was completed,

I think an awful lot of people said, "We can do this."

And I think it set the stage for all the ones that followed.

- That, for me, was the most exciting launch because

essentially we had arrived.

Everything was progressing like it should be,

and the future looked brighter than ever.

- Do they know about Martin Luther King?

Could you lower those signs please?

I have some very sad news for all of you,

and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens

and people who love peace all over the world.

And that is that Martin Luther King

was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

- It was an awful year.

We had the assassinations.

Vietnam was stoking up.

We had the riots.

And yet, I won't say we were captured by the program.

But that's all we were worried about was,

"Okay, we can't take care of all these issues outside,

"but at least we can see if we can get man on the moon."

And that was our focus.

- You did whatever needed to be done.

And you didn't watch the clock.

There were times when I spent more than a 24 hour shift

at the Kennedy Space Center.

So, I missed some of my kids' up bringing.

- People weren't being forced to work these long hours.

But they did so by choice.

And I think they were so engrossed

with what they were doing,

and the need to accomplish the work,

when eight hours ended, they didn't want to quit.

- I loved my job.

It came first and foremost.

Especially those of us that had families, it was hard.

And I regret not being able to be there more.

- Well, probably the most dramatic change

was in my personal life.

It was almost like I was married to Apollo.

Eventually, it resulted in a divorce.

My former wife and my two daughters went back to England.

I sometimes wonder how my children grew up.

I just don't remember a lot of events in their lives.

- I too suffered from having to go through a divorce.

I hate to think it was the space program,

and again, we each have our reasons

to having to go through that event.

But...

There were a lot of divorces here.

- At almost midday eastern time,

NBC news projected Richard Nixon

the 37th president of the United States

when it became evident he had carried Illinois.

- Having lost a close one eight years ago,

and having won a close one this year,

I can say this, winning is a lot more fun.

- We had four kids in five years.

So a lot fell on my wife.

When she was pregnant with our fourth child,

I was in the countdown for Apollo 8.

This would have been December the 20th, 1968

and we launched on December the 21st, the morning of.

I go home at the built-in hold

while we're fueling the vehicle.

She delivers our fourth child in about 45 minutes.

I congratulate her and me, and I go back to the firing room,

and we launch Apollo 8.

I called it the best scheduling I have ever heard of.

- Well, I'll start with what I was doing.

When Apollo 8 was getting ready to launch,

I was doing testing off of the VAB.

And, I got the news that my father died.

- We'd flown the Saturn 5 twice.

And now, we're going to put men on top of it.

And we weren't just going to go into low-earth orbit,

we were going to go around the moon.

We'd never sent men out of earth orbit,

and we're going to do all this on this first manned flight.

- When they went around and came out on the other side

and renewed communication, we knew we'd made it.

And then they gave us an image of the earth,

the first time it had ever been seen by human eyes

from outer space you might say.

I mean, even in earth orbit you don't get the full concept.

- Just to see the earth rise.

It just builds you up.

You know,

what I'm doing is worthwhile.

- We are now approaching lunar sunrise.

And for all the people back on earth,

the crew of Apollo 8 has a message

that we would like to send to you,

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

"And the earth was without form, and void,

"and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

"And the spirit of God--"

- That was on Christmas Eve, 1968.

- The whole country seemed to be coming apart at the seams.

Apollo was about the only bright spot.

It was a bright spot in all of our lives.

- Maybe nothing compares to the actual man on the moon.

But, I'd say that instant stands out as one

that I'll never forget.

- Apollo 11 was special because we knew

we were going to land on the moon.

But it wasn't really very different

from a launch vehicle standpoint.

- I was on the backup crew, which meant I was done

just as things were beginning to get exciting.

I left to see what kind of crowds were there.

All along the roadway, from the edge of the gate,

on into town, I could hardly get through.

There were people everywhere.

- I was in the control room.

It was just another launch.

I don't recall anything standing out about it.

- Liftoff on Apollo 11.

- Obviously, we still had some trepidation,

"Will it all go right?"

But it was surprisingly similar to the prior ones.

Each time we did it, we felt more confident

that we could do it again.

- Apollo 11, this is Houston.

You are go for TLI, over.

Ignition.

We confirm ignition and the thrust is go.

- Roger, things look real close.

- I was at work,

and I knew it was gonna happen that day.

So I told my manager I was going home.

He didn't argue with me.

I went home and I was watching on TV,

all through the sequence.

- Roger, throttle down.

Better than in the simulator.

- The main thing I remember is,

"Why in heaven's name did they choose to do it

"sometime after midnight?"

Which was very much a personal sort of thing.

- 40 feet down, two and a half.

Picking up some dust.

Contact light.

Okay, engine stop.

APA at a descent.

Both auto descent command override off.

- I don't recall the exact hour,

but it was like three o' clock in the morning.

The daughters were, you know, already in bed.

And were saying, "No, they can't miss this."

So we dragged them out, put them in front of the TV

and said, "You've got to watch this.

"This is history in the making."

- Okay, Neil,

we can see you coming down the ladder now.

- I think they're thankful.

But at the time, all they wanted to do was sleep.

- I'm at the foot of the ladder.

The LEM footpads are only depressed in the surface

about one or two inches.

Although the surface appears to be

very, very fine grained, as you get close to it.

It's almost like a powder.

I'm going to step off the LEM now.

That's one small step for man.

One giant leap for mankind.

- I was actually at the space center.

We were on the top floor of

the central instrumentation facility.

And I tell you what,

it was like an eruption of joy.

- Man.

Great admiration for the people who were willing

to go do that.

The whole purpose was to put two men on the moon

and get them back safely,

and we couldn't have done that if they hadn't gotten

in that spacecraft and said, "Let's go."

I really admire our astronauts.

- But you helped get them there.

- Yeah, I did but

it wouldn't have mattered if they hadn't gone.

- Tell me if you get a picture, Houston.

- We got a beautiful picture, Neil.

It was the climax, yeah.

Like winning the championship.

- I pat myself on the back.

- And then go back to work the next day?

- That's right.

- The fact that we landed successfully

was one of the highlights of my life,

as far as having the feeling that

I had a little something to do with it.

I was proud.

And I cried in the happiness of it all, you know?

In the accomplishments of what these men had done.

And then I started worrying about the return trip.

- Apollo 11, Apollo 11, this is Hornet,

Hornet, over.

- This is Apollo 11

reading you loud and clear.

Our position: one, three, three, zero.

Six, five, one, five.

- I didn't really take

a deep breath until that.

I think everybody felt that,

"Get 'em back on ground, and let 'em have their parade."

- I was standing on the courthouse square.

- A couple of the city elders

picked Von Braun up and carried him on their shoulders.

- That vision sticks with me.

Great excitement.

Pride.

Knowing that Saturn, the propulsion system,

the community had been such an integral part of that.

- It demonstrated that with the will of the people,

and the backing of the politicians and the money,

the nation can accomplish wonderful things.

That's the way most of us look back on it and say,

"Indeed, we made it happen.

"We were part of that and we're proud of it."

- Oh, we're going some places.

- You've got a go orbit,

you're looking good.

- I tell you one thing,

this is a first class ride, Houston.

- In '69,

when we landed on the moon, things started to close down.

And I saw a lot of friends and contractors lose their jobs,

and have to move away.

- You wanna know how I feel?

I'm pissed.

Pure and simple.

We were working on this second stage in the VAB.

We had a page "to report to your office."

And there was one of our personnel people

with a list of pink papers.

And it said, "Pack up your personal effects,

"and be ready to surrender your badge in 30 days.

"You're outta here."

We've had a problem here.

- Say again, please.

- Houston, we've had a problem.

- Like all things,

there's a beginning and there's an end.

When I was given the word that my services

were no longer needed,

I left with a heavy heart.

And yet, with a sense of accomplishment

that we had done what we set out to do.

- And on the surface.

Not bad for an old man.

- In my left hand

I have a feather.

In my right hand, a hammer.

And hopefully they'll hit the ground at the same time.

How about that?

Man, we've come a long way.

Look at the size of that rock.

- There was already

the waning public sentiment.

My father took my sister and me down to Apollo 15 launch.

The excitement you could tell had already died off

from what it had been before.

- I think you have to put it all in context.

The Russians were beaten.

We had fulfilled Kennedy's audacious goal,

and we did it in style.

We were using about four and a half percent

of the nation's overall budget.

We didn't have a good vision of what to do next.

- I remember going back into my boss's office.

He said, "Apollo is eventually coming to an end."

I said, "No, no.

"We're gonna build bigger rockets and go to Mars."

He said, "Well, I want you to start thinking

"about something other than Apollo."

I said, "Okay, boss."

And,

Apollo did come to an end.

I'd always worked in

the Huntsville Operations Support Center.

I'd never seen a Saturn fly.

So, I took annual leave,

and I took my son to see the last shot to the moon.

Miles away, sitting out on all this wasteland,

here was this tall, slim Saturn.

Pure white, so white you could hardly look at it.

- The countdown continuing

to move along smoothly.

T-minus 90--

- There were tens of thousands

of people out there.

No matter how late it was, or if there was a delay,

nobody cared.

- Eight, seven, ignition sequence started.

All engines are started.

- When the countdown went down to zero,

you could see all the fire and the smoke.

Fire as bright as a welding torch.

And smoke just blowing for miles.

People were silent.

They were just stunned.

And then, unexpectedly,

a wall of sound hits us.

People were staggering, trying to stand up

like they were on a ship, rocking in the waves.

You could see their lips moving.

But even from that distance, it was so loud

that you could hear nothing but that sound.

And then it starts tilting downrange.

- 30 seconds, we're going up.

And away.

30 seconds and 17 is go.

- 17, you're go.

- And then it was over.

We didn't know it was all over, but it was all over then.

Stand by for the report.

- Okay.

- We all realize that the first lunar landing

will be a hard act to follow.

There's only one moon,

and I'm afraid we can't offer many more spectaculars

like that in the years to come.

The interest and the attention of the space program

will now be turned to put all that new capability to use,

for earth-related applications,

for the benefit of man, for the benefit of the taxpayer

and his less favorite brother,

an underdeveloped and hungry country.

- When it ended, this brilliant team,

this one-of-a-lifetime team,

was split up.

And we had brilliant engineers

who started selling typewriters.

- When you lose the team,

you start from zero.

We lost the team.

People with the correct educational backgrounds.

People with the right characteristics

in terms of their dedication.

People with a lot of hope

in their hearts to want to succeed.

- And the young people.

You know, Apollo was done by people 30 and under primarily.

So you had all these folks that's willing to work

12, 18 hours a day to make this happen.

And I just don't see another project out there like that.

- You know, I wasn't an integral part of it.

I had my job, which was to

write about these brilliant people.

And I do, I felt like I was the witness.

I was the voice.

I think it's the greatest technological team

that's ever been formed.

- I have no hesitation in saying

the Apollo Program was good for the nation.

- It created new management philosophies,

new management approaches,

a lot of technical breakthroughs.

- And camaraderie.

The nation came together.

There were half a million people involved.

- That's what we need.

We need national goals, not unlike the Apollo Program.

Apply it to health.

Apply it to education.

Bring everybody in on the act.

They can have a sense of pride, a sense of belonging,

a sense of ownership and a sense of responsibility.

- I think the potential is there.

I don't know how to make the case for enough people.

Because we have, currently I guess,

a real focus on individuals.

That attitude is not gonna cut it

if we're trying to reach beyond ourselves.

And so you go back to Apollo and say,

"What made it special?

"Why did it happen?

"What can we do today that puts us back

"on a track like we had?"

And maybe one of us will come up with an answer.

It may not be the answer but it's one of them.

Let's go down that road and see what we find.