Original subtitles

NARRATOR: At the beginning of the 1960s,

President Kennedy issues an incredible challenge.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY: I believe that this nation should commit itself

to achieving the goal, before this decade is out,

of landing a man on the moon

and returning him safely to the Earth.

DON BINNS: I thought he was nuts!

Technically it was unbelievable.

♪ ♪

DON BRINCKA: There was going to be some serious problems on the way.

NARRATOR: Reaching the moon will require a rocket of immense power:

the mighty Saturn V.

♪ ♪

ANDREW: This is a kind of power

that you really cannot wrap your brain around.

NARRATOR: To succeed, those involved will push engineering

to the limit.

JERRY: It was something bigger than we have ever built before.

NARRATOR: They must overcome catastrophic failures.

[Explosions]

MYRON: There were massive problems with it

that just were overwhelming.

NARRATOR: And do it all within a decade.

The goal: to build a rocket to send men to the moon.

This is the story of the unsung heroes who built the Saturn V.

[♪ theme music ♪]

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: December 21st, 1968.

Astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell

prepare to embark on a daring mission.

They hope to make history by becoming the first humans

to leave Earth and orbit the moon.

That means risking their lives on board the first manned launch

of the giant Saturn V.

ED: We weren’t going just to Earth orbit.

We were going to the moon and back, 240,000 miles away.

NARRATOR: Engineers have built a rocket weighing

6.2 million pounds and containing over 3 million parts.

MISSION CONTROL: 15, 14, 13, 12, 11..

MYRON: If we had a failure the damage could be overwhelming,

and of course the crew’s chance of survival is very minimal.

MISSION CONTROL: 10, 9...

We have ignition sequence. The engines are on...

4, 3, 2, 1, 0. We have lift off.

[Rocket engines roaring]

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The story of the Saturn V begins here in Huntsville, Alabama.

In the 1950s, the city becomes home to a group

of German engineers with a specialist skill: rocketry.

During the Second World War they are responsible

for developing the V-2 rocket,

the world’s first liquid-propelled missile.

They’re led by the charismatic Wernher Von Braun.

But when Nazi Germany collapses,

Von Braun and his team surrender

and are eventually brought to Huntsville

to work on America’s fledgling rocket program.

For 12 years they design rockets for military use,

including the Redstone and Jupiter.

Then, on October 4th, 1957, the Soviets launch Sputnik 1,

the world’s first satellite.

The Space Race has begun -- and the USA is trailing.

For rocket engineers like Don Binns, it’s a bitter blow.

DON BINNS: I remember you’d listen to Sputnik going round

and going beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,

and it says, yes, they beat us,

and we’ll have to really get our nose to the grindstone

and move ahead and see if we can’t catch up.

MISSION CONTROL: [unintelligible]. Lift off!

NARRATOR: In 1958 Von Braun’s team successfully launch

America’s first satellite, Explorer One,

on board their Juno rocket.

But Von Braun is targeting a much bigger goal --

and he believes he has the team to achieve it.

Among them was army engineer Jim Odom.

JIM: Dr. Von Braun was one of the most remarkable men

I’ve ever known.

He was a great leader, he was a very good engineer.

And the team that he brought over here

was absolutely outstanding.

NARRATOR: Von Braun’s team have been developing a pioneering series

of liquid-propelled rockets called Saturn.

ANDREW: Von Braun always had his eye on

bigger and bigger booster rockets

that could launch larger and larger payloads into space.

And he tried to solve that problem by taking

smaller rockets and clustering them together, and that was

the basis for the very early Saturn rockets.

NARRATOR: April 1961.

The Soviets launch the first man into orbit, Yuri Gagarin.

For President John F. Kennedy it’s the final straw.

He ups the stakes dramatically for America’s rocket engineers.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY: I believe that this nation should commit itself

to achieving the goal, before this decade is out,

of landing a man on the moon

and returning him safely to the Earth.

♪ ♪

No single space project in this period

will be more impressive to mankind,

or more important for the long-range exploration of space.

NARRATOR: Don Binns and his colleagues are taken aback.

DON BINNS: When I heard him make that announcement,

we all watched it on TV, and I thought he was nuts.

I mean, it was an amazing challenge.

Technically it was unbelievable.

ED: I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe it.

We just needed someone to step up and say,

let’s go to the moon,

because we were competing big-time with the Russians.

Kennedy believed in us.

In fact he came to the Cape,

and Von Braun took the President around

and showed him the Saturn being tested.

NARRATOR: Von Braun comes face to face with the man

who’s set this seemingly impossible goal.

ED: And the question he asked Von Braun was,

"Are we gonna beat the Russians to the moon?"

Von Braun said, "Yes, Mr. President,

we’re gonna beat the Russians to the moon,

and we’re gonna do it within the time frame you said."

End of conversation.

NARRATOR: This is the challenge Von Braun has been waiting for,

and teams of engineers across America begin work

on a mighty moon rocket.

DON BRINCKA: So there were several different approaches,

and each one had some technical disadvantages

and technical advantages,

and I would say Von Braun was probably the primary influence

on what was actually selected.

NARRATOR: The initial plan is to use a method called Direct Ascent.

Assemble an enormous rocket, and fly directly to the moon.

Then land a large spacecraft on the lunar surface...

before blasting off and returning directly to Earth.

It seems simple enough... on paper.

But engineers soon realize that building

such a giant rocket by the end of the decade

simply isn’t feasible.

Von Braun favors a different method, but finally decides

on a technique known as lunar orbit rendezvous.

Head to the moon with a smaller spacecraft --

one that shuttles the astronauts to and from the lunar surface

-- while a mother ship waits in lunar orbit.

The final element is a rocket powerful enough

to take men to the moon.

WERNHER: This is what we call the Saturn V,

and the takeoff weight of this monstrous rocket

will be about 6 million pounds, or 3,000 tons.

NARRATOR: At the Davidson Center in Huntsville,

the rocket’s huge size can be fully appreciated.

This is one of the three Saturn Vs

painstakingly restored to a pristine condition

by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

They are the largest artifacts in the institution’s collection.

After a multi-million-dollar restoration project,

they now take pride of place at displays

in Houston, Huntsville and at the Kennedy Space Center

in Florida.

Looking at them, it’s possible to understand

a key engineering principle Von Braun uses

to create such a powerful rocket.

The Saturn V isn’t one rocket, it’s three --

stacked on top of each other --

known as stages.

ED: Staging was a big deal in rocketry...

NARRATOR: Stage One will use a cluster of five

giant F-1 engines to lift the 3,000-ton rocket

to a height of 42 miles before separating.

ED: The booster drops away and then the second stage ignites.

NARRATOR: Stage Two will use five smaller J-2 engines

boosting the rocket to 115 miles above the Earth.

ED: And it drives the vehicle up near the edge of Earth orbit,

and then the third stage kicks in.

NARRATOR: Stage Three has just one J-2 engine.

ED: That puts the spacecraft and the third stage in orbit.

NARRATOR: Before igniting a second time.

ED: And the reigniting of that third stage was a big deal,

because that puts you on a path to the moon.

NARRATOR: Meeting Kennedy’s deadline

will push the rocket engineers to the breaking point,

as they prepare to take on the one of the

greatest engineering challenges the world has ever seen.

[Rocket engines igniting]

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: At 363 feet tall, even today,

the mighty Saturn V rocket is still the largest rocket

ever built.

[Rocket engines igniting]

♪ ♪

Restored by the Smithsonian Institution,

an example stands with other Apollo artifacts

in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

This fully renovated Saturn shows that the mighty rocket

has a cluster of five F-1 engines

powering the first stage.

Myron Pessin is one of the first stage engineers.

MYRON: The biggest engines we had built up to that time

were 200,000 pounds of thrust.

This was a million and a half pounds of thrust.

NARRATOR: Each engine is 20 feet long, 12 feet across,

and, at 10 tons, heavier than a school bus.

Five of these engines will fire the rocket

and three astronauts to a height of 42 miles.

So they must be rigorously tested, and become man-rated.

MYRON: To qualify the F-1 engine we called man-rated,

we required 500 successful starts,

which means you have to fire a lot of engines.

NARRATOR: Test-firing the cluster of five F-1 engines

presents a huge challenge.

So engineers construct giant stands in Huntsville

and at NASA’s Mississippi test facilities

on the banks of the Pearl River.

Ron Tepool is involved in the test firings here in Huntsville.

RON: The engines would have gone up on Level 10,

which is at where those two holes are up there.

NARRATOR: But to ensure the test stand isn’t engulfed

by searing rocket exhaust,

engineers construct a giant deflector

that can withstand the blast and direct it sideways.

RON: If they all five fired down through that aspirator,

and the heat came out and deflected up

about 500 feet out, and 100 feet into the air,

this deflector is cooled with water from the pump house

that supports this test stand

that has a capability of 280,000 gallons of water per minute.

NARRATOR: April 1965...

Engineers prepare to test-fire the cluster of five F-1 engines

that will eventually power the Saturn V’s first stage.

Ed Buckbee was NASA’s press officer at the time.

ED: I was called in by my boss, and he said,

magazine is sending their photographer down

to cover this test firing."

He sets up his camera, and I said,

"You know, when it does ignite you’re going to see

this huge ball of fire come out of the engines,

and for a moment there won’t be any noise,

and all of a sudden the sound will hit you

and you’re gonna feel the vibration in your chest

and the heat will come up your pants leg,

and it’s really rather scary when the first time

you see one of these."

He looked at me and said, "Young man,

I’ve covered fires, tornadoes, wars, floods.

I think I can handle this."

[Alarm]

[Booster firing]

I looked at the photographer.

He had turned and was running across the field

away from the firing test,

and he never got one picture of the firing

of the Saturn V booster.

NARRATOR: The firing of these engines has a profound effect

on the people living in neighboring Huntsville.

ED: You could feel the ground vibrate some distance away,

several miles away I’m told,

but if we were getting cloud cover, what would happen was,

the sound would go up, ricochet back down

somewhere in the city.

[Booster firing]

We would have people calling about windows broken,

and chandeliers shaking and coming apart.

NARRATOR: But it’s not just the windows that are shattering.

[Explosion]

Testing quickly uncovers a critical problem with the F-1.

One that’s causing them to catastrophically disintegrate...

in seconds.

Reaching the moon within the decade will remain a dream

unless engineer Sonny Morea and his team can fix this flaw.

SONNY: It was the program’s showstopper.

We would not have gone to the moon until we had a fix on that.

We would not risk the astronauts on that vehicle

when we had an engine that could blow up underneath them.

LEE: This became a big enough issue that we were concerned

that we were going to impact the goal that was set

to get to the moon in the decade.

A team was put together to solve this problem

that put the best minds together, from around the world.

NARRATOR: Sonny and his colleagues pinpoint the cause.

SONNY: Combustion instability is a frequency

that gets set up whenever anything burns.

One of the ways to think about it is,

if they’re familiar with a candle burning in a room,

you know that the candle flickers during the burning.

Part of that flickering is the fact that it’s unstable,

the fire is unstable.

NARRATOR: Like the candle, liquid propellants injected

into the rocket chamber burn in an unstable way,

creating powerful shock waves that rapidly oscillate

until the force shakes the engine apart.

[Explosion]

Finding a solution will take America’s top engineering minds

the best part of two years.

SONNY: We went to a process that involved the use of baffles.

Now if you look at the face of the rocket engine in here,

the face of the injector,

you’ll notice that there are several compartments.

NARRATOR: It works like this:

Instead of the propellants entering the combustion chamber

as regulated jets, the baffles interrupt the flow,

subtly changing the way they ignite

and reducing combustion instability.

The 1st stage of of the Saturn V is back on track.

♪ ♪

The second stage is taking shape on the other side

of the country, at Seal Beach, California.

But the engineers of North American Aviation

are way behind schedule.

ANDREW: The engineers who were building the second stage

of the Saturn V found themselves in a kind of a squeeze.

The first stage of the Saturn V had already been defined,

and the third stage had also been designed

before the second stage was even being developed.

There was this constant battle to save weight,

and the burden fell on the engineers

who were designing the second stage.

NARRATOR: The second stage must lift astronauts

to a height of 115 miles.

It has to be incredibly powerful yet incredibly light.

When complete, just 9% of its total weight is metal;

91% will be liquid propellants.

ANDREW: They had to find every way they could possibly think of

to save weight in that stage,

thinning the metal to the point where you really sort of worry,

is this okay to do?

NARRATOR: Many months are spent skimming every last ounce

of metal from stage two -- but it’s still not enough.

Engineers need to find another weight saving solution --

quickly.

ANDREW: The stroke of genius that they came up with

was to do what was called the common bulkhead.

If you look inside the second stage,

you’ve got one tank for liquid oxygen

and another tank for liquid hydrogen.

And those two tanks take up a certain amount of space.

Somebody realized,

what if we could merge the two tanks together

and create a single curved divider between them?

NARRATOR: Having a common bulkhead reduces the height

of the stage by almost 10 feet,

and sheds an impressive four tons of weight.

It’s a breakthrough for the Stage Two engineers,

but the schedule has slipped even further.

Kennedy’s deadline looks unachievable.

NARRATOR: And in November 1963, NASA ups the pressure.

Against the wishes of Von Braun, NASA shortens the schedule

by removing several of the team’s test launches.

ANDREW: Their concept was that you would launch

the Saturn rocket with one live stage and two dummy stages

on its first mission.

If that worked, then the next time you would add

a live second stage.

You’d still have a dummy third stage,

and if that worked, well, then you could launch

all three stages as live stages.

NARRATOR: But NASA now want to accelerate the launch schedule

and test the live rockets all at once.

The first batch of launches -- Apollos 1, 2, 3 and 5 --

will use Von Braun’s smaller Saturn IB rocket.

The Saturn V’s first unmanned flight will become Apollo 4,

followed by a second unmanned launch

eventually called Apollo 6.

The first Apollo astronauts will finally fly into Earth orbit

on Apollo 7.

And Apollo 8 will send men to orbit the moon

for the very first time.

JIM: That was a big change for us here in Huntsville.

DON BINNS: I thought, wow, this is gonna be a lot of work,

because that means that we’re gonna have to retest the stage,

we’re gonna have to re-certify it, make it man-rated.

It was a big step forward.

Big step forward.

NARRATOR: The clock is ticking, and the engineers

are about to face disaster.

[Explosion]

Because the Saturn V is so large,

Wernher Von Braun and his team of rocket engineers design it

to be made of three individual rockets, or stages,

stacked on top of each other.

This method of rocket building allows each stage to be built

by a different aerospace company.

But developing space technology means

entering uncharted territory -- and that can be risky.

On January 20th, 1967, the Douglas Aircraft Company

is testing a third stage prior to delivery to Cape Kennedy

in Florida.

Don Brincka is the man in charge.

DON BRINCKA: It was the third vehicle that was

coming through our facility for a static firing.

And that’s when we’d load it with propellants

and we go through our normal countdown.

We were just getting ready,

a few minutes from actually firing the stage.

[Explosion]

NARRATOR: Not only does the team lose an entire third stage,

but also the test stand suffers major damage.

January 27th, 1967...

While engineers investigate the failure of Stage Three,

preparations are made for Apollo 1 --

slated to be the first manned Apollo mission,

and the first in American history to carry

three astronauts into space.

Today they’re performing a routine countdown test.

ED: We’ve got three guys in a spacecraft,

pressurized, suited up.

NARRATOR: Across the country in California, Don Brincka

is investigating his Stage Three failure.

He calls Cape Kennedy.

DON BRINCKA: I was on the phone.

We were talking about some of the things

that we were looking and when he said,

"Whoops, wait a minute, we got a problem.

Something’s going on here on the capsule.

I can’t talk to you anymore." And then blank the phones went.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Unbeknownst to Don, during the call

a fire breaks out in the Command Module.

Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Rodger Chaffee are killed.

NASA concludes that the likely cause of the fire

is faulty wiring, which created a spark.

In the pressurized, oxygen-rich atmosphere

of the Command Module, that spark became a raging fire

in a matter of minutes.

For all involved with Apollo, it’s a brutal reminder

the smallest mistake can have devastating consequences.

ED: I think the Apollo 1 fire was a shock

to the guys that were close to the program.

Again, they were so confident

that these things were gonna fly successfully.

NARRATOR: The Apollo schedule slips again

as NASA redoubles its efforts to improve safety.

But for the engineers at Douglas,

it’s valuable time to understand

what caused the catastrophic failure of their third stage.

Like Apollo 1, the culprit is tiny -- a weak solder weld

on a helium tank.

♪ ♪

January 1967.

The three stages of the first Saturn V

are finally ready for assembly.

They arrive at Cape Kennedy.

The challenge now is stacking them together.

♪ ♪

This is NASA’s giant vehicle assembly building.

LEE: It’s something like about 525 feet tall.

On occasion it had its own weather,

and there were times, and I saw it myself,

where there were clouds up there.

All the stages came in through this south entrance.

Part of the structure are the huge overhead cranes.

They would handle several hundred tons

with such intricacy.

If you were lowering one of them and you touched an egg

laying on the floor it would sense that resistance

before breaking the egg and stop.

NARRATOR: The first Saturn V is assembled

with breathtaking precision -- but it’s still

a three-and-a-half-mile drive to the launch site.

LEE: So, you open those big doors, those 450-foot doors

and roll that thing out!

And now that’s where you really drew a crowd.

NARRATOR: This is the crawler --

the largest-moving land vehicle ever built.

It needs a team of 30 engineers and technicians

to drive the 6.2-million-pound rocket and its launch tower

on a road trip that lasts up to 12 hours

to the furthest launch pad.

♪ ♪

MISSION CONTROL: Houston. Flight now confirmed

that they are a go for the flight,

as are all other aspects of the mission.

NARRATOR: November 9th, 1967 -- Apollo 4 is poised

for the first unmanned launch of the Saturn V rocket.

Engineers have spent millions of man hours

trying to meet Kennedy’s deadline.

MISSION CONTROL: ...15... ignition sequence starts.

5, 4, we have ignition. We have lift off. We have lift off.

[Engines roaring]

♪ ♪

ED: I think people were shocked with this,

with the power and the size of the Saturn V.

♪ ♪

JIM: When you watch a Saturn V launch

and realize that you’ve invested a part of your life,

when you realize that it’s really gonna work,

the gratification level is just outstanding.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: After just two and a half minutes,

the first stage separates perfectly.

The second stage takes over.

DON BINNS: It’s amazing how long you can hold your breath.

We had ignition on the second stage, and ignition was good,

and all our flight parameters were essentially perfect.

After that, you know, I was able to breathe again.

NARRATOR: The spacecraft sends a constant stream of telemetry

from thousands of individual readings

to the flight directors and engineers.

So far it’s working exactly as planned.

Stage Three ignites for the first time,

and then for the second time.

♪ ♪

The mission is a complete success.

The next Saturn V to be launched is Apollo 6,

and, after that, a manned Apollo 8.

After today’s launch, what could possibly go wrong?

MISSION CONTROL: This is Launch Control. T minus 60 seconds and counting.

First stage now pressurizing.

We’re coming up on the power transfer in a matter of seconds.

Status report still indicates all is well.

NARRATOR: Five months after the triumphant launch of Apollo 4,

NASA prepares to bring President Kennedy’s goal

one step closer, with a second unmanned launch

of the Saturn V -- Apollo 6.

MISSION CONTROL: We have ignition sequence start.

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 -- we have commit, we have lift off.

NARRATOR: From the ground, it looks like a perfect launch.

MISSION CONTROL: We have cleared the tower, we have...

NARRATOR: But the engineers know something is very wrong.

MISSION CONTROL: [unintelligible].

NARRATOR: Telemetry shows that the rocket is vibrating

in a violent up and down motion.

It’s known as the pogo problem.

MYRON: I was told we had pogo.

Pogo is this is a vertical oscillation, like a pogo stick.

NARRATOR: Senior Project Engineer George Phelps

has seen the pogo phenomenon before.

GEORGE: The pogo problem was very serious.

The crew module, which was unmanned,

experienced somewhere between 8 and 10 G’s of force,

which, had there been crew aboard, could have killed them.

NARRATOR: Next, Stage Two. Five minutes into its burn,

there’s more bad news.

Engine number two begins to sputter and lose thrust.

Then, it shuts down all together.

Moments later engine number three also shuts down.

MISSION CONTROL: We’ve lost Engine 2 and Engine 3.

NARRATOR: The engineers can only watch in horror.

MALE: We’ve lost the engines? MALE: That’s affirmative.

MALE: Roger. We think we have two engines out.

Don’t get nervous.

MALE: Roger that.

GEORGE: This stage is designed for one engine out,

and there were two engines out...

NARRATOR: The onboard computer tries to save the rocket.

GEORGE: The computer said, "Hey, you guys are in trouble,"

and it started to lift the vehicle back onto a vertical --

more or less vertical trajectory in order to get

this third stage and the crew module into orbit.

MALE: IGM seems to be bringing it in, flight.

MALE: Roger.

MALE: I say it’s look and go flight.

NARRATOR: The team prepares to fire the third stage engine

for the second time to send the Command Module

on its designated trajectory.

But it doesn’t light.

All three stages of the rocket have had critical problems

that must be solved before it can fly again.

The pogo problem with the first stage occurs

when vibrations in the engine’s thrust and combustion chambers

match the natural vibration of the rocket in flight.

They amplify each other, and generate vibrations

up and down the length of the rocket.

Fortunately, the engineers discover a solution.

GEORGE: We put dampeners, a dampener,

to absorb these vibrations, to make them safe.

It doesn’t get rid of them necessarily --

but it minimizes them. It’s like a shock absorber in your car.

NARRATOR: But what went wrong with the second and third stages

is a mystery.

Telemetry reveals a sudden drop in fuel pressure

on both engines.

It’s a telltale sign of a fuel leak.

And it’s traced to the failure

of the engines’ fuel igniter lines.

But how could the engineers have missed this?

ANDREW: What they had missed with those J-2 engines

was that they were always being tested at sea level,

where the moisture in the air would form a coating of ice

around the propellant lines,

and that actually ended up giving them extra resilience,

extra strength against those powerful vibration forces.

Once you got up above most of the atmosphere,

there was no moisture, there was no ice,

and it shook the heck out of those fuel lines

and caused the problems.

NARRATOR: If the Stage Two and Three J-2 engines failed

because of a weak pipe,

why was the number three Stage Two engine shut down?

GEORGE: As engineers, we pulled out all the block diagrams

and the schematics and all that stuff,

and a guy, he says, "You know what happened,

I think those wires were crossed."

NARRATOR: It’s the simplest of mistakes.

The wiring for engine two and engine three has been crossed --

meaning the onboard computer sent a signal

to shut down a perfectly healthy engine.

Von Braun and his team have solved all the problems

discovered by Apollo 6.

October 11, 1968 -- NASA successfully launches Apollo 7.

The first manned Apollo mission uses

the smaller Saturn IB rocket,

placing its three astronauts in Earth orbit for 11 days.

But Von Braun and his team are ready to go much further...

ANDREW: They understood their system.

That’s what allowed them to have the confidence to say,

we’re gonna fly people on the third Saturn V,

and once you put people on it it doesn’t matter

whether you’re gonna go to Earth orbit or go to the moon --

so let’s go ahead and do it.

NARRATOR: December 21st, 1968.

Astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell

are about to put their lives in the hands of the engineers

who’ve built the Saturn V -- as they set out to become

the first humans to fly around the moon.

MISSION CONTROL: Mark T minus three minutes and 30 seconds

and counting.

We’ve completed our communications checks

with the Apollo astronauts in the cabin

and communications are go.

NARRATOR: With the lessons learned from Apollo 6

and the successful first orbital flight of Apollo 7,

NASA is ready to reach for the moon.

Engineers can only sit and wait as the 3-man crew of Apollo 8

prepares to make history.

MISSION CONTROL: 35 seconds and counting...

ED: You know this was the first time that

we had huge turnout of the press.

It was huge because, number one, the first time we had a crew

on the Saturn V ever.

Secondly, we weren’t going just to Earth orbit,

we were going to the moon and back, 240,000 miles away.

MALE: 12, 11, 10, 9 -- we have ignition sequence start.

The engines are on -- 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.

We have commenced, we have, we have lift off...

[Engines roaring]

We have left the tower.

MISSION CONTROL: Apollo 8, you’re looking good.

ASTRONAUT: Roger.

NARRATOR: As Apollo 8 thunders from the pad,

its crew are the first to experience

the awesome accelerating force of the mighty F-1 engines.

MISSION CONTROL: Apollo 8, Houston.

You are a go for staging, over

ASTRONAUT: Roger.

NARRATOR: This time both stages work perfectly.

ASTRONAUT: Houston, it’s Apollo 8.

MISSION CONTROL: Yeah, we hear you loud and clear, Apollo 8.

ASTRONAUT: Okay. Well, the first stage was very smooth,

and this one is smoother.

MISSION CONTROL: Understand -- smooth and smoother, looks good here.

ED: Hearing the crew talk while on that rocket

was a really moving experience.

We had to keep telling ourselves

these guys are going to the moon.

This rocket’s taking these guys to the moon,

and this had never happened before.

NARRATOR: All five J-2 engines fire flawlessly,

accelerating the astronauts to four miles a second.

MISSION CONTROL: Apollo 8, Houston.

Your trajectory and guidance are go, over.

ASTRONAUT: Thank you, Michael.

MISSION CONTROL: Yeah, you’re looking real good, Frank.

ASTRONAUT: Very good.

ED: We’d begin to hear things like second stage shut down.

Okay, so you know second stage is shut down.

And then they announce separation third stage.

♪ ♪

GEORGE: It actually is another one of those, "Phew,"

a sigh of relief.

ASTRONAUT: [unintelligible] the ignition. Guidance, initiate.

NARRATOR: After less than two Earth orbits,

the engineers take another deep breath.

It’s time for the three men to be fired to the moon.

The critical maneuver, called trans-lunar injection -- or TLI.

GEORGE: We’re sort of uptight because you have to

accelerate the vehicle to 24,000 miles an hour

to escape the gravitational forces of the Earth.

NARRATOR: If the burn is a success,

the path of humanity will change forever

as the crew of Apollo 8 become the first people

to leave Earth’s orbit.

MISSION CONTROL: Apollo 8, Houston.

ASTRONAUT: Go ahead, Houston.

MISSION CONTROL: Apollo 8, you are a go for TLI, over.

ASTRONAUT: Roger, we understand. We are a go for TLI.

NARRATOR: The whole program now rests on this single engine burn.

ASTRONAUT: Ignition.

MISSION CONTROL: Roger ignition.

♪ ♪

Apollo 8, Houston.

You’re looking good here right down the center line.

ASTRONAUT: Roger, Apollo 8.

♪ ♪

Okay, we got [unintelligible], right on the money.

MISSION CONTROL: Roger, understand [unintelligible].

DON BRINCKA: That was a very profound moment,

because it was a major step in what we hoped

was going to be space exploration.

NARRATOR: As Apollo 8 and its crew head for the moon,

the engineers on Earth who dedicated their lives

to building the Saturn V reflect on an historic achievement.

DON BINNS: I had given birth to that baby.

I remember looking out at the pad, and it was gone,

and I thought, God, the love of my life has gone away from me.

And she’ll never come back.

NARRATOR: The success of Apollo 8 paves the way

for the first lunar landing, Apollo 11, in July, 1969.

The Saturn V engineers had beaten Kennedy’s deadline.

But the Saturn V’s work isn’t over.

It successfully launches seven more missions --

six to the moon --

as well as America’s first space station, Skylab, in 1973.

Today the Saturn V rockets,

restored by the Smithsonian Institution, draw large crowds.

But preserving their engineering legacy

has another important mission --

to inspire a new generation of rocket engineers.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Pushing out into the solar system --

not just to visit, but to stay.

Last month we launched a new spacecraft

as part of a re-energized space program

that will send American astronauts to Mars.

NARRATOR: To achieve these bold ambitions

requires the development of an extraordinary new rocket.

Called the Space Launch System, or SLS for short,

it will be even more powerful than the mighty Saturn V.

R.H. Coates is one of the engineers working on its design.

R.H.: The Space Launch System owes a great deal

to the legacy of the Saturn V.

One of the key enablers for the Saturn V was to utilize

lightweight liquid hydrogen propellent.

That legacy, that learning to design

those high- performance upper-stage engines

also went into the Space Launch System.

We are definitely standing on the shoulders of giants

by what we learn from Saturn Apollo.

NARRATOR: Only a few of the original engineers are left

to appreciate the impact of their achievements,

as mankind continues its quest to break free

from the confines of our planet -- and head out to the stars.