In the Shadow of the Moon Page #3

A colour exterior.

Lovell:
We took photographs

as much as we could

and, of course,

we took the photograph

of the famous

Earth rise around the Moon

and I have to credit Bill Anders

for taking the picture.

Uh, he claims it

all the time, anyway!

Man:

Calm down, Lovell!

Lovell:

Well, I got it right...

Oh, it's a beautiful shot!

Lovell:

And of course, Christmas Eve,

being around the Moon

on Christmas Eve,

we thought this would be

a very auspicious time to say something.

The three of us selected to read

from the Old Testament,

and we had it in fireproof paper

in the back of our flight manual.

Man:

"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

moved upon the face of the waters

and God said,

'let there be light'.

And there was light."

Collins:

I thought it was a very nice touch,

it fit very nicely into getting away

from all this machinery,

and let's get down into,

sort of, the fundamentals

of what makes all this happen,

why are we here.

I liked it.

Man:
We close with

good night, good luck;

A merry Christmas and

God bless all of you,

all of you on the good Earth.

Lovell:

When we came back,

there was a lady in Dallas, Texas,

who was an atheist,

and I don't have

anything against atheists,

but she sued us.

For the mixing of...

Church and State,

and she said that

was inappropriate.

Maybe it was, I don't know.

[Music playing]

Bean:

At that time, we were all practicing

to go to the Apollo 11 site,

Sea of Tranquillity.

Because we had

three different crews training.

Apollo 11

was going to make the try in July

and then two months later,

we'd make it if they didn't make it,

and then if we didn't make it,

two months later

in November, Apollo 13.

So we had three chances to get to the Moon

by the end of the decade.

And so when Neil and Buzz and Mike

were assigned to Apollo 11

we knew they were going to make

the first shot.

They were a really,

really good crew,

they got along really well.

Aldrin:

Mike was always the easy-going guy

who brought levity into things.

And I felt kind of bad that he wasn't going to have

the opportunity of being to...

Being able to be in a Lunar Lander

and make a landing,

but that was a decision that...

[Clears throat]

certainly was way over my head.

One guy had to stay

in the command module

and the other two were

going to go to the Moon

and I was... Pigeonholed,

if that's the right word,

as a command module pilot

and so that...

I lost my chance of...

of walking on the Moon

but in return for that,

I gained a chance to...

A:
Fly to the Moon

and perhaps be a member

of the first crew to land on the Moon.

Bean:

One thing I know about Buzz,

he's one of these guys

that's a lot smarter than most of us.

He had a nickname,

Dr. Rendezvous.

He loves to talk

about technical stuff,

particularly rendezvous.

I mean, he'll get this

orbit going this way

and that orbit

going the other way

and he really grooved

on those things.

You didn't want to sit

near him in a party

because he would start

talking about rendezvous.

And you would want to be talking

about that good-looking

girl across the room.

He could care less,

he wanted to talk about rendezvous.

And he'd been talking

to you about it all... all week long.

That's right, that was what

I was really interested in.

Duke:
I always respected

Neil Armstrong highly.

He was probably

the coolest under pressure

of anyone that I had

ever had the privilege of flying with.

[Engines power up]

He was just Mr. Coolstone,

if you will.

One of the oddities

in Neil's training

was this thing we lovingly called

"the flying bedstead".

It was an ungainly-

looking contraption

and it was meant

to imitate the L.M., the Lunar Module.

Neil, he and I were

in adjoining offices, same secretary.

I remember one day I came in

in the morning,

I run into a couple of guys, they say,

"Do you know that Neil bailed

out of the LLTV this morning? "

Bean:
I said, "no way."

He said, whoever it was,

Two or three guys said, "Yeah!"

I said, "Okay, I'm going

in there and ask him."

So I go in there and Neil...

Neil's fooling around,

nothing going on.

I said, "those guys

out in the office

Said you bailed out of

the LLTV this morning."

He said, "Yeah."

That was all he said, "Yeah."

I mean this guy had been

a second and a half

from being killed

and that was it.

He didn't say,

"l nearly got killed",

"l nearly, you know..."

I don't know what we...

"Yeah." that was it, that was it!

I mean, what was he

supposed to do?

I mean, maybe

he could have gone out

and gotten roaring

drunk or something

but that's not Neil, you know?

He went back and shuffled paper.

That's what you had to do.

You know, the program goes on!

[Music playing]

Tomorrow we, the crew

of Apollo 11, are...

privileged to represent

the United States

in our first attempt

to take Man to another

heavenly body.

[Sigh]

Um...

Well, I'd given up smoking the pipe

maybe three weeks before launch.

That's my best recollection,

maybe having a drink,

three days before.

I don't think anybody

really slept too well

the night before,

you're just wondering

about whether you can...

get enough rest

for what you need

to possibly do.

[Music playing]

Newsreader:
This is CBS News

colour coverage of...

Sponsored by Kellogg's.

Kellogg's puts more

in your morning.

Here from CBS News

Apollo headquarters

at Kennedy Space Center,

correspondent Walter Cronkite.

Good morning.

It's t-minus one hour,

In just an hour and a half,

if all goes well,

Apollo 11 astronauts

Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins

are to lift off from

pad 39-a out there,

on the voyage Man always

has dreamed about.

Next stop for them: The Moon.

[Music playing]

[Applause]

Collins:

Well, on launch days, it's kind of strange,

you go out in a van to the launch pad,

and you're... you're kind of used to that.

Riding in a van is the American way,

so that's not a problem.

When you get out to the base

of this gigantic gantry,

it's... it's empty,

there's nobody there, it's deserted.

And you're accustomed

to scores of workers,

you know, swarming like ants

all up and down and around it,

and, you know, you're in

with a crowd of people.

And then suddenly

there's nobody there

and you think, "God, you know,

maybe they know something I don't know!"

Aldrin:
We got out there

to the launch pad.

So I had about ten minutes to look out

and see the Sun rise,

see the waves coming in

and see the evidence

of the people out on the side.

Just... And thinking about the fact

that this was something

I wanted to remember.

So it is now, before they go,

as their gleaming vehicle

sits poised and peaceful

out there behind me on pad 39-a,

that there is time to

think of those three men

and the burdens and the hopes

that they carry on

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes