 Hello, I'm Lynn Bonderant, and this is the second show of our four-part moonwalk series. Today's program is called Adapting to a Space Environment. As the title suggests, this episode shows procedures Apollo operators used in order to make sure the astronauts would be able to survive in outer space. This show explains the function of the different stages of the moon rocket, how the stages separate, and what becomes of them. We pick up the moonwalk story by looking back at some old classic space films that were a Hollywood perspective on future space travel. 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. 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. Minutes 41 seconds, time to throw Apollo 40 miles up into the sky and then an empty shell to fall back into the sea. Launch escape tower separation. Houston, your guidance is converged. You're looking good. 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 has restarted to break them free of Earth. The trans-lunar injection. We're 10 minutes away from Ignatian trans-lunar injection. Apollo 11, this is Houston. Here you are. Go for TLI over. The thrust is go. Looking good. Velocity 26,000 feet per second. The limiter and radar are tracking both solid. Velocity 27,800 feet per second. Through the window of the command module, the Earth gently slipped away. Houston, thrust is good. Everything's still looking good. 9,000 feet per second building up toward 30,000 feet per second. Half a minute, they're still looking good. The upper they could cut off 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. Feet per second now, altitude 152. Velocity 35,570 feet per second. Altitude 177, nautical miles. 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. You're getting better at being patient of separation. Affirm the separation here on the ground. Goldstone station reports a very weak signal. We believe that my con is now maneuvering the spacecraft in the transposition and docking maneuver and the antenna patterns aren't too good at the moment. So 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? Give us a status report, please. On board was a fourth brain, a small computer called Diskey 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. Okay. The drug removal is coming next. Three days falling to the moon. Free 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. About how long it'll be before you start closing the limb back up over. 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. 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? When 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? And sense of direction, speed and balance are easily fooled. Can his mind be trained to ignore false signals from his senses? Two man's limitations. We could build him an artificial environment for space travel. Columbia, the 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 sewed before. This was getting right down to a 64th of an inch, and where I had sewed before, you just sewed on a production line, and this here is quality more than quantity. Like, 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 then a lot of times where it's sewing 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 sentiments is what Hazel said, while I was just wondering 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, them used to come in and they would look around and see what we were doing. It was a while they'd talk to us and we'd get them to sign their autograph. Some of them were real comical. We got a kick out of them. We all wouldn't talk to them again. I mean, when I'm going down the aisle, everybody looked at them, looked at them, afraid to talk. 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. Now, 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 father. 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. The 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. It cools the suit's oxygen. It cools and circulates water through the water-cooled underwear and provides radio communication. 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. No 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, three days. Now the stage is set for man to venture onto the moon. The many space simulations prove to be most effective. Now it is time to take the knowledge gained from these tests out into space. And this is exactly what happens in next week's program called One Small Step. I'm Lynn Bondarino.