as a manager we would like to amend you
beginning god created heaven in the
earth in the earth without form and void
and darkness was upon the face of the
deep God moved upon the face of the
waters and God said let there be light
and there was light
and God saw the light today was good and
God divided the light from the darkness
and God called the light day and the
darkness he called night and the morning
were the first day
in the beginning the void the darkness
then light then life and from life came
man
joining the caravan for the long slow
journey through a world of discovery
invention exploration
his marks his milestones stretch out
through the centuries his footsteps echo
down through the corridors of time time
July 1969 in Florida the footsteps the
caravan quickened the corridor shortened
as man reached outside his world into
another boy today in Florida they go
about their lives taking only a sideways
glance at the reminders of that
milestone reminders images that vaguely
jog our memory
of 32 minutes past the hour the start of
lunch window on land
it plays tricks on it it smudges and
blurs the sharp edges of reality but we
turn the trick our own reality they came
1 million to dis drawn by the magnet of
history in the making the prime crew
we're away from the proceeded to have a
physical examination in which they were
declared ready they sat down for the
normal astronaut theory on my first
breakfast is concerned islands loose
stoke scrambled eggs toast and coffee
the target for the Apollo 11 astronauts
the moon at liftoff will be at a
distance of 200 18,000 96 miles away the
astronauts departed from their crew
quarters after checking out their suit
State Department reporters at 6:27 a.m.
and some 27 minutes later he's miles
away from the crew quarters at the
Kennedy Space Center atop the launch pad
at complex 39 6:54 a.m. the commander
astronaut Neil Armstrong was the first
to board the space path he was followed
about five minutes later by Mike Collins
and finally resolved and the man who was
sitting in the middle seat
but during liftoff the weather certainly
go it's a beautiful morning for a launch
to the moon we expect the temperatures
about 85 degrees in the Kennedy Space
Center area where a still go on Apollo
11 at this time
t-minus 25 seconds 20 seconds and
counting
t-minus 15 seconds guidance is internal
12 11 10 9 ignition sequence start 32
minutes past the hour liftoff on Apollo
11
tower cleared
you gotta fight the guys about to turn
blue we're bringing it again
thanks a lot Apollo 11 Armstrong Aldrin
and Collins they and millions of others
reached out and in their own way touched
another planet
the images remind us that it happened
but not how it really was in the context
of the time George Lowe one of the
architects of the Apollo program does
remember if you think back at the the
period of the sixties it weren't very
happy you as a general we had well the
ever deepening involvement in Vietnam we
had riots on the campuses riots and
Watson Ellsworth really terrible
assassination a great deal of strife and
turmoil in the country and yet all of
this was overcome by one single event
and there was Apollo 11 the decade ended
with it it was a fantastic adventure
that I believe helped overcome all the
bad things of decades it represented
Americans to ourselves and particularly
to the rest of the world as we like to
see ourselves and as we hope the rest of
the world like Sofia
the equipment of Apollo some of it is
now in museums artifacts from an age of
discovery these strange-looking object
there is reminders that after all it did
happen and it happened the way we
remember the facilities of Apollo now
silent and still in Houston Mission
Control the nerve center of manned
flight operations the chapters of space
history first Mercury's and geminis and
Apollo were written by the people who
sat at these consoles
and these chapters of history came at us
with breakneck speed Christmas Eve 1968
in the beginning Apollo 8 the footsteps
were quickening a few months later
Apollo 9 the long years of preparation
were contracting in today's alphas
minutes the first man flight of the
lunar module the spider Apollo 10 the
dress rehearsal for the real thing in
five months three missions and in the
seventh month the fail then the
celebrations
the images and the sounds fade in our
memories but some things we can't forget
names Apollo 11 Armstrong Aldrin and
Collins other names Grissom white and
Chaffey they remind us that it wasn't
all success and celebration there was
failure tragedy early in 1967 the three
crawled into the command module at Cape
Kennedy for a test
there was a flash fire all three died
after the shock came the long painful
job of picking up the pieces learning
the lessons coming together for a common
goal the remains of the launch structure
stand as a reminder that the goal was
reached
these strange shapes what do they mean
these towers of Steel
what are they monuments or leftovers
from some earlier age of discovery in
the long history of man in the slow
journey of the caravan what point did
these mark historian Arthur Schlessinger
I have no doubt at all that if posterity
remembers the 20th century for anything
historians 500 years from now looking at
the 20th century it will be because it
will be the century when man first began
to break his terrestrial bonds and began
the exploration of space
so that's it
as man learned moved on and discarded
the earlier structures he came to these
they're marked for further milestones
reserved for future missions other
regions two other different boys
historians five centuries from now will
mark this century this place and they
will further know that from the void
life man
it took eons to reach this point but
once there the centuries and years
compressed in the days hours split
seconds of exploration
we'll the engine in the airplane became
slowly at first then with increasing
velocity and then this so huge of
powerful so different that no ordinary
modern name would suffice they reach
backward through antiquity to Roman
mythology and they named it Saturn
Saturn his father was heaven his mother
the complex organizations of mammoth
machines the incredibly detailed
technical knowledge the dedication was
all harness sharpened to a fine edge and
focused the program developed and
matured Apollo 17 was launched at night
and even the old hands the ardent
veterans of the space program couldn't
help but feel them or wonder and
excitement
in the excitement of a split second of
exploration man doesn't stop to freeze
the moment in history to look at it and
ask what it means
he simply lives it out but in the Apollo
program under way to the moon they found
a way to live out their strange moments
in those strange spacecraft it may be
the peculiar nature of Americans to make
history and to have fun in the making
they relaxed and had fun because they we
were confident of success but the
program teaches lessons confidence is a
transitory thing
Apollo 13 by 13 we're looking at it
three days out barreling toward the moon
an explosion no one would see the
problem for some time but they went to
work on it
the people of Apollo coalesced into a
single dedicated unit linked themselves
with their technology and cheated
tragedy a new chapter in space history
was written in Mission Control
Eugene crash was the flight director
when the problem developed a threat this
entire next several days there was one
dominant thought in the minds of all of
the flight controllers we teach him that
between God country and your own
capability that you can solve any
problem that may occur in flight
throughout the entire course of Apollo
13 there was never any death that we'd
get the crew back so there was a very
positive approach and with this kind of
approach you can solve just about any
problem
solve any problem country capability
old-fashioned words during a time when
some said the old-fashioned virtues were
forgotten well they weren't forgotten
they were translated into action into
programs which took man soaring above
the surface of the Moon away from Earth
but always looking back
these divided thoughts the moon deer run
through the Apollo program a sort of
theme they went there flying in a
graceful machines but they always
thought back to where they came from
perhaps that's natural the moon is a
strange place for men to be flying to
you
it's strange for men for mankind
exchanger still for the individual man
Harrison Schmitt
dr. Harrison Schmitt a geologist
he touched the moon and remembers how it
was when Apollo 17 was making its
descent the last flight to the moon the
last time the man walked on the surface
Schmitt remembers how it was once first
feelings are a mixture a very complex
mixture of humility excitement because
of something you had plan to do was
being accomplished but of a great
attention to detail to the to the detail
that you had thought about and learned
about for so many years prior to the
actual event that detail keeps you
occupied with where your hands are and
where your feet are which rung they
might be you try to remember well am i
at the bottom of the rung and then
there's one moves away and tests its way
on the surface of the Moon and looks
around and in my case looked around a
very magnificent valley you see a
rolling hilly country that is
interspersed with some blocky
fields of rocks that you know because
you've studied the photographs and you
saw them as you descended surround large
craters that have been formed in that
rolling countryside
seed rolling dark hills urge in the
distance a few kilometers away with the
very smooth but very bright colored
slopes of the Massif and they rise with
a majesty - rocky tops that are almost
beyond description because there's
nothing like this that we have seen on
earth
The Sea of Tranquility hadley rill
taurus-littrow
they were once strange names on the map
of the moon but the men of Apollo gave
reality to the names by being there and
showing us the places they explored 60
miles of its surface and their travels
took them to craters foothills to
explore to observe and to sample the
hard rock proof of the power enshrined
in the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington DC for 78.8 grams of micro
breccia under glass for mere earthlings
to see and whisper about other rocks
from the moon eight hundred and forty
pounds are being studied and talked
about by scientists in laboratories
around the world not only rocks tens of
thousands of photographs of those
strange exotic features of the moon and
telemetry data on tape facts figures the
studies will go on for years and the
answers will come slowly answers to
questions about the moon and the solar
system the science of Apollo is not
really concerned with samples from past
milestones yesterday's missions in a
special room in Houston men sit at
consoles and command instruments on the
moon to send them today's data and they
receive it today
within eight seconds of the command
science that's the key and technology
and something else in the drama of the
moment if you stop to think of the
essential element the one thing that
made it happen people came to this
program government people university
people contractor people they brought to
Apolo skills and knowledge and
determination this source of human
intellectual energy was Marshall focused
challenged what came out of the effort
was not just a very successful program
but a rich national resource of vast
proportions
crystals from the moon the symbols of
the science of Apollo behind it causing
it was the spirit we saw something of
this spirit we shared in the adventure
the excitement the euphoria of being
there we shared it with a man who
bounced across the surface of the Moon
and the surprise of discovery we were
there to all of us watching
explorers and the meaning the
significance of an occasion back to King
Lewis flashed into our living rooms on
our 19-inch window on the universe will
be a temple over our feelings are put
the feelings of the Apollo program power
and a simple Amman time if we can't live
it paints in harmony in the future
there was also pride they put up the
flag and posed for pictures as any
visitor to a foreign place might do the
flag of each mission stood there as a
reminder that we have been there but
there was the realization that in truth
it belonged to all the people there are
no boundaries on the moon
the focus was the moon that's what it
was all about but by reaching up there
we in a sense came back here as one
stands and scans a 360 degree panorama
of his own one of the first objects in
the dark lunar sky that you see is a
bright and beautiful bluish globe that
we call earth this globe represented to
all of us I think not only home but a
very fragile place that we have come
back and felt that needed not only
protection but understanding they first
went there in 1969 they last left there
in late 1972 between the beginning and
the conclusion they came to feel to
dimly perceive what it was all about you
come to a perspective on the meaning of
it all
poet Archibald MacLeish is said it
better than most to see the earth as it
truly is small and blue and beautiful in
that eternal silence where it floats is
to see ourselves as riders on the earth
together brothers who know now they are
truly brothers
the excitement of the mission the
tension and drama of the splashdown they
remain only in our memories and in time
they'll be replaced in the future by
other missions other memories the
moments of Apollo may be over but the
understanding and the discovery they go
on and the full meaning the real meaning
may yet be in the future too but for now
for the present the images and the
sounds provide meaning enough to each in
his own way and to each in his own time