In the Shadow of the Moon Page #2

and we didn't know how things would work.

It was just a matter of

putting them together,

making them work

and then correcting deficiencies.

And as pilots, astronauts,

why, we participated

in all of these things,

along with management

and the engineers.

Collins:

What we did in the early days

was take the overall spacecraft

and divide it up like a pie.

We sliced that pie up

into 10 or 15 different pieces

and we handed each slice

to one of the astronauts

and said, "This is yours,

we want you to learn that slice."

Kennedy:

We shall send to the Moon,

a giant rocket

more than 300 feet tall,

made of new metal alloys,

some of which have

not yet been invented,

fitted together with a precision

better than the finest watch,

on an untried mission

to an unknown celestial body,

and then return it safely to Earth,

re-entering the atmosphere

at speeds of over

causing heat about half that

of the temperature of the Sun,

Almost as hot as it is here today.

And do all this...

And do all this

and do it right and do it first,

before this decade is out,

then we must be bold.

Cernan:

I look back at Kennedy,

was he a visionary,

was he a dreamer,

was he politically astute?

The chances are, yes,

he was probably...

probably all three.

We'll never know.

Nor will we ever know

whether he really fully appreciated

The challenge that he had laid down

in front of... the American people.

Kennedy:

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.

[Music playing]

Scott:

Things were moving very quickly

and I was assigned as a back-up crew

to the first Apollo mission.

Things were in sort of a turmoil,

there were a lot of problems,

and Gus Grissom was

doing the best he could,

with his crew of Ed White and Roger Chaffee,

to straighten them out,

try to get the spacecraft

ready to fly.

Collins:

We were incredibly intelligent

about some of

the hazards that we faced.

And we thought long

and hard about them

and we did everything we could

to ward them off,

but the business of 100% oxygen environment

inside the spacecraft,

we really had not thought that through.

Man:

And the wires were really bad in there.

I'd asked Gus, I said,

"Gus, why don't you say something

about this wiring? "

I said, "It's really terrible,

they ought to do something about this wiring,

it's really bad."

and he said, "l don't..."

And he said, "l can't say anything about it

or they'll fire me."

That's what he told me.

I couldn't believe it.

Cernan:
The crew were conducting

this test on the ground,

they weren't going to fly.

I guess we, and I think of all of us

in the NASA family,

never gave it a second thought.

what would happen if you got a spark

in a 16 psi,

[Music playing]

Bean:

I picked up the phone

and they said... "Who's this? "

I told them Alan Bean,

he said, "Well, we're down here,

we're doing this test

and we've lost the crew."

And I said...

"Where'd they go?

You've lost them? "

Because I thought

they just needed to run the test

and they can't find them.

"No" they said,

"We've lost the crew."

I said, "Maybe they're

down at the beach house."

And they said,

"No, there was a fire."

And then it dawns on me

that maybe they're talking about

something different than I think.

Newsreader:

We interrupt our regular programming

to bring you this special report.

Here's ABC's science editor,

Jules Bergman.

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.

They died at t-minus ten minutes

into a simulated launch countdown,

[Voice breaking]

helplessly trapped inside their spacecraft.

[Music playing]

Cernan:

The accident occurred in January,

the end of January 27th.

And we're burying

our guys at Arlington

and I wasn't sure whether we were

burying the entire Apollo program

or three... of our buddies.

[Music playing]

Bean:

That was the period, the late '60s,

when we were fighting in Vietnam

and when a lot of racial

issues were going around.

Collins:

I was not really in tune

with what was going

on in the country.

Our whole culture was changing

markedly in this period.

[Music playing]

The Civil Rights Movement,

the Women's Movement,

the whole movement

toward a greater openness of society.

Collins:
I think we were very aware

of the situation in Vietnam

because a lot of our friends

were flying airplanes in combat in Vietnam.

And there would we have been,

had we not been in

the space program.

I guess I can sort of admit it now,

I've admitted it a little

bit to a few friends.

That... I've always had a guilt complex

to some degree.

That was my war, good or bad.

Whether it was a good war

or a bad war,

we're not discussing that,

but that was my war, to fight for my country,

and my buddies were getting shot at

and shot down

and in some cases captured.

And I was getting my picture

on the front page of the paper.

And I've always felt

that they fought my war for me.

They look at it totally different.

They said, "You were

doing something

that this country needed

more than anything else at the time.

You were part of a program,

the only thing we had

to hold our head high and be proud of."

[Music playing]

Lovell:

was a disastrous year.

We had several assassinations,

Uh, not too good...

[Mouthing]

So we needed something

really to cap it up that was positive,

to give the American people

a sense of... of accomplishment

or at least satisfaction

of something.

If you were a scriptwriter

for the movies,

you couldn't have picked

a better scenario than Apollo 8!

[Music playing]

We hear from the CIA

that the Russians

are going to send a spacecraft

around the Moon with a person in it

and upstage us.

If they orbit the Moon

before we land on the Moon,

then they've gotten there first.

Lovell:

We changed our plans on Apollo 8.

They changed the mission

from an Earth orbital type

to a flight to the Moon.

And it was a bold move,

it had some risky aspects to it,

but it was a time when

we made bold moves.

Capcom:

The engines are off.

Four, three, two, one, zero.

We have commenced...

[Radio chatter]

Capcom:

Apollo 8, Houston.

Your trajectory and

guidance are go, over.

Man:

Thank you, Michael.

Capcom:

Yeah, you're looking real good...

Lovell:

It wasn't until we rolled over

that we actually saw the Moon

for the first time.

We were just 60 miles

above the craters,

and, you know...

we were sort of like three school kids

looking in a candy store window,

and we forgot the flight plan,

here we are, just 60 miles away.

Man:
Oh my God,

look at that picture over there!

Wow, is that pretty!

[Shutter clicking]

You got a colour film, Jim?

Hand me a roll of colour, quick.

[Mixed chatter]

Just grab me a colour.

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