 forgotten by the mind of man. Dawn remembers again the magic circle. Stonehenge. Observatory. Temple aligned with the rising of the sun and the turning of the heavens. Moons from afar. Brought by man to this place where no stones were before. More than 3,000 years ago. By 1969, Cape Kennedy, Florida. The night before the great day. Six million pounds of machine. 36 stories tall. Nearly 10 years work of half a million people. Through the night it was checklisted, double checked, electronically monitored, computerized, televised, dehumanized of human error. While the night of celebration was ending, the day began for the astronauts. Breakfast. Medical examination. Suiting up. Neil Armstrong. Commander Apollo 11. Edwin Buzz Aldrin. Lunar module pilot. Michael Collins. Command module pilot. To take them to pad 39A, Slayton said, everything is going as planned there. Across the Indian River, 12 miles away. At 6.32 a.m., three hours before launch, on pad 39A, Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the surface of the earth. The next steps would be on the moon. Spectators rolled in by the thousands. Campers, trailers, cars and pickups filled the campsites and the beaches, lined the highways, lined the parkways, nose to tailgate, Cape Canaveral to Titusville. Digital transmission worldwide tracking. Stabilization and guidance. Radio frequency telemetry and voice communications. Signal conditioner integration. Spacecraft electrical power. Flight control. S-4B propulsion stage monitoring. S-1C, S-2 propulsion stage. Every important valve, gauge and circuit was continually monitored at launch control center throughout the 28-hour countdown. Countdown are still going well. Team on a 55 minutes, 10 seconds and counting. This is Kennedy. Among the 6,000 special guests were a vice president, the next president, two plane loads of the diplomatic corps from Washington, 205 U.S. congressmen, 19 governors, 30 senators, 50 mayors from cities across the country, movie celebrities and television personalities. And another two plane loads of dignitaries from Europe. Another morning. Not so very different from the morning before or tomorrow morning. This day on which man will leave earth to walk on the moon. Three billion people went about their daily lives. Some in the way their ancestors did centuries before. Others in a world shaped by modern technology. It seemed that most people were unaware that this event might change the history of the human race. That this morning would be marked in history books and learned by their children's children. In what age of man will the meaning of this morning be understood? First men on the moon. We're on time at the present time for our plane lift off of 32 minutes past the hour. Coming up shortly that swing arm up at the spacecraft level will come back to its fully retracted position. This should occur at the five minute mark in the count. The swing arm now coming back as our countdown continues. Skip Chauvin informing the astronauts that the swing arm now coming back. Four minutes and counting we are goal for Apollo 11. We'll be coming up in the automatic sequence about 10 or 15 seconds from this time. The vehicle starting to pressurize as far as the propellant tanks are concerned and all is still goal as we monitor our status for it. Firing command coming in now or on an automatic sequence as the master computer supervises hundreds of events occurring over these last few minutes. Two minutes 10 seconds and counting oxidizer tanks in the second and third stages now have pressurized. T-minus one minute 35 seconds the third stage completely pressurized. T-minus 60 seconds and counting. We passed T-minus 60. 55 seconds and counting. The alarm strong reported back when he received the good wishes. Thank you very much. We know it will be a good flight. Good luck and Godspeed. 40 seconds away from the Apollo 11 lift off. All the second stage tanks now pressurized. 35 seconds and counting. We are still goal with Apollo 11. 30 seconds and counting. Astronauts reported feels good. T-minus 25 seconds. 20 seconds and counting. T-minus 15 seconds. Guidance is internal. 12, 11, 10, 9. Ignition sequence start. Six. Apollo was safely underway. Control of the mission was switched to Houston. The months of tightly focused work at the Cape were over. It could honestly be said that this was the culmination of the dreams and fantasies of men and women over 25 centuries of recorded time. Don Hubo, D-Bass, Laplace, Goddance, Descartes, Marie Curie, Allen Shepherd, 8-2-8, and Roy, John F. Kennedy, Perr, Saucers, J.V. Rizom, Pernicus, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Louis Jefferson, Kepler, Konstantin Tilkovski, the American rocket pioneer. Yankee inventor, dreamer. They called him the moon man and laughed. But on his own he went ahead designing, inventing, and testing. His first proving grounds were on his Aunt Effie's farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. The neighbors complained. With a grant from Daniel Guggenheim, he moved to New Mexico with his wife Esther, who was also his camera woman. Goddard had invented and launched the world's first liquid propellant rocket in 1926, and in the end he accumulated more than 200 patents for everything from multi-stage rockets to fuel pumps and clustered engines. By the year 1930, his rockets achieved a speed of 500 miles per hour and an altitude of 2,000 feet. This was the year in which the three Apollo astronauts were born. It had a vision of the age of space, but the world was too slow to make it happen before his death. Thank you, Robert Goddard, for your inventiveness and perseverance. For most people, a trip to the planets was easy. All you needed was a 10-cent movie ticket and a nickel bag of popcorn. What science fiction in the childhood of the space age could have guessed the shape of reality. The Saturn V rocket. Three stages, 28 stories tall, with 11 engines as powerful as all the waterfalls in North America combined. Years in the planning, months in the building and testing, the Saturn first stage lived but two minutes 41 seconds. Two minutes 41 seconds, time to throw Apollo 40 miles up into the sky and then an empty shell to fall back into the sea. The launch escape tower separation. Mission control in Houston, Texas had taken over from launch control of Cape Kennedy for the duration of the eight-day mission. The complicated technology of Apollo Saturn evolved from an ingeniously simple concept, lunar orbit rendezvous. This requires a rocket made in many pieces that discards the useless weight of each piece when its function is completed. The flight began with a vertical lift through the heavy lower atmosphere and a tilt to the east. At 6,000 miles per hour, the empty first stage is discarded to save weight. So is an adapter ring and the unused escape tower. With the second stage firing, it reaches 15,000 miles per hour when it too is jettisoned. The third stage places Apollo in Earth orbit at 17,400 miles per hour. When the spacecraft has been thoroughly checked out by the crew, the third stage fires again, its speed now tearing it free from the grip of Earth's gravity. While coasting outward, the command service module separates and docks for access to the lunar module and the empty third stage is left behind. Apollo loses speed throughout nine-tenths of its journey until the moon's gravity overcomes the pull of Earth. Apollo fires in reverse direction, slowing down enough to be captured in orbit about the moon. Armstrong and Aldrin enter the lunar module Eagle, which separates, leaving Collins and the command service module in lunar orbit. Eagle slows still more and breaks to a touchdown on the lunar surface. After the moonwalk, the upper stage of the Eagle lifts off, leaving behind the now useless landing stage and swings into orbit to dock with Columbia once again. When the crew and moon samples are transferred to the command service module, the lunar module is discarded. The command service module fires itself out of lunar orbit and falls back to Earth. As it approaches the reentry speed of nearly 25,000 miles per hour, the service module drops away. The command module plunges into the atmosphere protected by its heat shield, slowed still more by the heavy lower atmosphere it parachutes into the sea. The command module Columbia is all that remains of the original 3,000 tons of rocket fuel and cargo. While in Earth orbit, the Apollo crew had less than two hours to check out all their spacecraft systems. The last chance to discover and correct any malfunction before the third stage engine is restarted to break them free of Earth. The Translunar Injection. We're 10 minutes away from Ignatian Translunar Injection. Apollo 11, this is Houston. You are go for TLI over. Velocity 26,000 feet per second. Limitry and radar tracking both solid. Velocity 27,800 feet per second. Through the window of the command module, the Earth gently slipped away. Still looking good. 29,000 feet per second building up toward 30,000 feet per second. Three and a half minutes. You're still looking good. Your predicted cutoff is right on the nominal. Deep space tracking antennas. A third of a world apart. Listen to Apollo and spoke to Apollo. As the Earth turned, at least one of them would have contact with Apollo at all times except when it passed behind the moon. 4,000 feet per second now. Altitude 152. 35,000 feet per second. Velocity 35,570 feet per second. Altitude 177 nautical miles. At three hours 11 minutes into the mission. Distance from Earth, 3,140 nautical miles. The S-4B is reported in a stable attitude for the separation. Apollo 11, this is Houston. Your go for separation. Okay, I'll burn the separation here on the ground. Goldstone Station reports a very weak signal. The spacecraft position and docking maneuver and the antenna patterns aren't too good at the moment. Also, we have a weak signal strength. The command service module separated and turned around to dock with Eagle the Lunar Module. Houston, how do you read? On board was a fourth brain, a small computer called Disky, which solved problems and helped with a long sequence of systems checks and data exchange with Earth. They found their way across the sea of space, navigating by the same stars that guided Columbus to shore's unknown. 11, Houston, we copy. Two good marks over. Three days falling to the moon. Three of the gravity of Earth. No up or down, no day or night. A sense of stillness while traveling at the speed of a meteor. An invisible speck in the night, somewhere between here and there, constantly monitored from Earth. Within this tiny spacecraft, a temporary Earth environment, warmth, air, food, water, everything necessary to sustain life. Beyond these fragile walls, nothingness. Absolute cold. An end to life. The most important function of the spacecraft, life, was also monitored constantly through telemetry. The heartbeat and breathing of each astronaut. Although each breath was 30,000 feet farther from Earth than the breath before it, should one heart flutter, it would at once be a matter of concern to millions worlds away. Unlike any other place man had traveled before, space could provide him with nothing. It is a vacuum, devoid of every element needed for life. To send man into this nothingness, to protect him, it was first necessary to define him. What is the human machine? How does it function? What is the nature of its nervous system? Its respiration. Its circulation. Digestion. Sight. Hearing. Balance. Its endurance. What gases to breathe should he take with him from Earth? What atmospheric pressure suits him best? Is it possible to give him a more efficient atmosphere for space travel than nature provides on Earth? The moon is 250 degrees hot in sunlight and 240 degrees below zero in the middle of its night. How long can a man bake or freeze? What protection will he need from this inhuman environment? What strains will the heart take when the pressure of gravity is removed from the limbs? What protection will the body need from sudden deceleration or acceleration? Man's sense of direction, speed, and balance are easily fooled. Can his mind be trained to ignore false signals from his senses? We're defining the physical man in absolute artificial environment for space travel. Command module was a supreme achievement of the technology of its age. It was a mini-planet, complete with its own environmental control system, telecommunications, electrical power, guidance, navigation, stabilization, propulsion, reaction control. It provided hot and cold water and removed carbon dioxide from the air. Three men could live here for more than a week, eat, work, sleep, shave, exercise, and listen to music. It was micrometeor-proof, burn-proof, and seaworthy, and it could tilt itself in any direction. In short, it was the most intricate and sophisticated machine ever made by man. As for man, however, we're stuck with the original model. All we can do is add an outer layer of things he does not naturally have. Space Medicine showed us where man is vulnerable, and we learned to compensate for most of the weaknesses with technology and careful workmanship. I made boxing gloves before I came here, and the fact is I was an experienced sewer, but I had to learn all over again because it was completely different from what I had so before. This was getting right down to a 64th of an inch, and where I had so before, you just sewed on a production line, and this here is quality more than quantity. We always think our job is the hardest, whatever we're doing, we've got the hardest job. But when they say, well, then maybe do so and so, well, you'll find out that job is harder than yours. And a lot of times we're sewing or making things, and maybe the girl next to me says, or making things, and maybe the girl next to you, she's doing the same thing, but we never see the suit put together. One don't know where this part goes, or the other one don't know where the other part goes. Like the gloves, if they would give you a glove to sew, you wouldn't know where to start. Well, when they're up there in space, you know what parts you've worked on, and you just say, well, I hope that part don't fail because I feel it was my fault if it did. My sentiment is what Hazel said. Well, I just wanted if my pair of gloves was what he had on. If you make a mistake, if you don't admit it, you have to think about the astronaut, too. If you make a needle hole in the bladder or something like that, well, we don't admit that. That would be on your conscience all the time, seems to me. Because I remember Armstrong and all them used to come in, and they would look around and see what we were doing. They must have wanted to talk to us, and we'd get them to sign their autograph. Some of them were real comical. We got to kick out them. We all want to talk to them again. I mean, when I'm going down the aisle, everybody looked at them, looked at them, prayed, talked, I said, Hi, buddy. Oh, I'd love to go into space. I think we'd be really thrilling just to get in there and just blast off. I'd love to go to space and just live there. Every day you get up, you come to work, you go home, you clean the house. If you go out there, there's no house, no kids, no problems. I like to ride an airplane, and I think I'd like to go into space. And I'd like to wear our own suit that we make. I think I could depend on it. After body electrodes have been attached to monitor heartbeat and breathing, the first items of clothing are the water-cooled underwear and a urine collector. A space suit is basically a sealed bag of atmosphere, a stiffened balloon, pumped up to counteract the vacuum of space. It might be called a one-man spaceship of the smallest possible dimensions. The pressure suit has to guard against extreme temperatures, hard radiation from the sun, and tiny meteorites. Yet it must have the flexibility to allow man to function as he would in his natural earth environment. Bag cleans and cools the suit's oxygen, cools and circulates water through the water-cooled underwear, and provides radio communication. Over the pressure helmet is a clear visor, then a gold-coated visor to protect against micrometeors and solar radiation. The final test was, how would the suit work in the silent, weightless world of space? Weightlessness on earth can be experienced only under water, or in an airplane following a parabolic flight path. The only true test was in space itself. Go up or down, no day or night. Only the slow creeping of the harsh sunlight through the windows, as the spacecraft rotates to keep from getting too hot on one side, too cold on the other. They carried with them the biological day of the earthling, three meals, a snack or two, eight hours of sleep. Time to work, time to relax, time to reflect. Three days, falling upward to the moon. Down 44 is NA Delta VP, 001 at 9 or 7, 003, 00152. I've got the morning news here, if you're interested, over. It's going to be impossible to get away from the fact that you guys are dominating all the news back here. The mission calls Neil. I think maybe they got the wrong mission. President Nixon is planning to come. He was later in the week enthusiastically welcomed at the Jackie Gleason Golf Match in Miami, Florida, where local residents celebrate. As air pollution reached critical levels, the Senate unanimously backed a National Environmental Policy Act to make the safeguarding of the physical environment. Astronauts are not the only explorers in the news. San Diego awaits the arrival of Mrs. Sharon Adams on her solo crossing of the Pacific. Seen here, leaving Yocca, California couple said they planned to marry at the precise moment Armstrong sets foot on the lunar... In Vietnam, things are relatively quiet with only a few firefights. 814 men of the third battalion's 60th infantry. GIs north of Saigon were evacuating villagers. In the Mekong Delta, a South Vietnamese force was... Apollo went into orbit around the moon. The journey that had taken the lifetime of mankind was nearing its crucial moment. The lunar module Eagle was again given a thorough checkout to ensure the functioning of all systems as Armstrong and Aldrin prepared to seal themselves off from Collins in the Command module and for the two craft to pull apart. The Eagle has wings. On its own now, but with Columbia near at hand, it coasted around to the back side of the moon and there while out of direct communication with the Earth, it fired its engine to slow its descent to a touchdown on the near side of the moon. Collins in Columbia continued in orbit awaiting their return. Guidance you happy? Go, Fido! Go! 2000 feet, 2000 feet, into the ag, 47 degrees, Roger, 47 degrees. Still looking very good. Here go, get 1201 alarms. 121 alarms, that's high for go flight. Okay, we're go. We're go, same tide, we're go. Altitude 1600. Eagle looking great, 1202, we copy it. 35 degrees, 750, coming down to 23, 540 feet and a 15, 10 and 50 feet down at four. Altitude velocity light, three and a half down, 220 feet, coming down nicely, 200 feet, four and a half down, five and a half down, 100 feet, three and a half down, nine forward, eight 75 feet, guys looking good, down a half, six forward, 60 seconds, lights on, 40 feet down, two and a half, picking up some dust, right shadow, four forward, drifting to the right level, 30 seconds, four inches, on backlight, okay, engine stop, we copy it down, Eagle. We're at the Tangulity base here, the Eagle has landed. And the world waited. July 20th, 1969. It is said that 500 million people gathered at TV sets around the world to wait for the first earthling to set foot on the moon. Countless millions more listened on the radio to the voices from the moon. Never before had so many people been attuned to one event at one time. The world waited, curious, wondering, aware, like a sleeper wakened in the night by a faraway sound. A moment sensed, more than understood. The moon is on the moon, at four seven o'clock in the night, eight at a time, and an arctic note in front of the night. The moon is on the moon, at 22.50, on the 4th of July, the moon has arrived. At four seven o'clock in the night, eight at a time, eight at a time, eight at a time, eight at a time, eight at a time, eight at a time, eight at a time, eight at a time, Isn't it fine? You know, didn't I say we might see some purple rocks? Find the purple rocks? Yep. Very small, sparkly, uh, pigments. Okay, Houston, I'm gonna change lenses on you. One too fast on the Panorama sweep, you're gonna have to stop for... Set it down, yeah. First picture in the Panorama. Okay, I'm gonna move it. Got a picture, Houston. We've got a beautiful picture now. We've got that one. For a final orientation, we'd like it to come left about five degrees over. Good there, Neil. Buzz is erecting the solar wind experiment now. Every precious minute of their two and a half hours on the surface was programmed. Rock and soil samples were to be collected, photographs taken, experiments set up to catch unfiltered particles from the sun to record moonquakes, to measure precisely by laser beam reflection the exact distance between moon and earth. This means a lot to all the countries, not just for America. And being out of it and being close to the moon makes us realize that we're all human beings together. I hope this brings unity amongst all countries. And I just hope it won't help you from solving all internal problems you may have. Well, I think it's a waste of a lot of money that could be used for something else. They holler about the people that are being on starvation. This huge amount of money Americans spend to see what the moon is like. What's wrong? It's disgusting. It's a pity they haven't got something else to do. It'd be better if they'd done something for the olden. What if Columbus had decided he couldn't get the money from Isabella? That's one of God's celestial planets. And he put it in sky for purpose and he didn't put it up for people to clutter up like they have the earth. Myself, I'm really interested to see what's up there. And we must open all secrets that are opening to us throughout the ages. Eyes is coming now. Alone, 45 miles above the moon's surface, Michael Collins completed an orbit every two hours. He listened to the progress of the moonwalk and awaited the moment when his companions on the surface would lift off to rendezvous with him. For 30 times he saw the earth rise over the horizon of the moon. 12,000 miles of twilight, a line that divides night from day for three billion people on spaceship earth. It is good to see the whole earth, to see the earth whole. The eagle had left the moon and returned to Columbia. Within this strange ship, two astronauts and a treasure, triple-sealed vacuum boxes of rocks and soil from the surface of the moon. Locked within these rocks were secrets of the ages to be studied and deciphered by the scientists of earth. The age of the moon, the age of the sun. How the moon was formed. How life began. Was there ever life on the moon? Was the moon once molten and volcanic or has it always been cold and dead? Was it once part of the earth? Or was it a wandering planet captured by the earth eons ago? How hot was the sun three billion years ago? When Armstrong and Aldrin, with their precious load of moon rocks, had transferred to Columbia, the faithful eagle, its task completed, could be cut adrift. Columbia fired out of lunar orbit to begin its three-day fall back to earth, where the recovery fleet was waiting for its splash down in the Pacific. Fragile bubble of life float on a sea of nothing. And the president of the United States was aboard. Re-entry into the earth's invisible atmosphere carries with it one of the most critical moments. Traveling nearly 25,000 miles per hour, the command module can miss the angle of re-entry by only several degrees and disintegrate into flames or bounce off into space, never to return. Three men who had done what no man before had done. A technological feat was believed beyond the realm of possibility. The fulfillment of an age-old dream. Were we celebrating simply because it had been a long time since we'd had anything to celebrate? Or was this something that touched an irrational unthinking instinct in us all? The treasure of the ages. Stones from across the night. By wind. Unwashed by rain. Scattered on tranquility. Bombarded by solar particles for billions of years, but unchanged in any other way. A moon rock is like a diary of the sun. An eye unblinking since time began. That stared across the sea of space. That watched the blue planet when life began. Remembered in these rocks are ancient sunspots, solar flares, solar storms whose fiery arms reached out a million miles. By making ourselves very small, like Alice. Perhaps we will see what these rocks have seen. And remember back those billions of years to decipher the life of the sun. Locked within our sun, our answers to mysteries that have confounded man since time began. We have reached out with our telescopes. We have reached in with our microscopes. Seeking what is the source of life? What combination of energies and elements brought it into existence? What is the relationship between the non-living and living things? How delicate is the balance? Man slowly begins to realize how fragile is his bubble of life, universe.