13 Minutes to the Moon: 1. ‘We choose to go’, Apollo 11

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So I remember when we first started recording the interviews for this podcast, we'd arrived in the United States, in Florida, on the western side of the Everglades, and I was in a car park of a cheap hotel, getting out of the car on a clear night.

And I looked up into the sky and I could see the moon there hanging a quarter of a million miles away.

And I had this thought that the next day would see me interviewing someone who had actually flown there as part of the first mission to land people on the moon.

That person was Michael Collins.

He, along with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, completed the Apollo 11 crew.

He'd been keeping watch over them in orbit around the moon as they undertook their attempt at a landing on the surface.

And I was excited about meeting this 88-year-old veteran astronaut, but a little nervous too.

And I spent a somewhat restless night tossing and turning, wondering how the whole thing would go.

Where are you guys coming from?

London, England.

So I arrived two days ago.

Andrew arrived yesterday.

But when we got to his house, he had plenty to say.

I never needed to worry about that.

And he was particularly clear about who and what he believed Project Apollo had been for.

The subject of nationalism comes up frequently today, and it is sometimes applied to the Apollo program.

I think that is way wrong.

I'm harkening back to the trip that the crew of Apollo 11, the three of us, took around the world after the flight.

And I thought before the trip, I thought that

the overall reaction would be, well, you Americans finally did it, didn't you?

Instead of that, everywhere we went, it was unanimous.

We did it.

We did it.

That is the part of Apollo that I think is really the wonderful part of it.

No matter where your country, no matter what your religion,

people everywhere, the reception we got was unanimous.

We, humanity, we human beings, we did this wonderful thing.

We choose to go to the moon.

CapCon, we're a go for landing.

Eagle Houston, you're a go for landing.

Overman, plus two feet.

Hold to that 18-foot.

We're going to make it a thing.

Roger.

Low level.

60.

60 seconds.

We've had shut down.

We copy you down, Eagle.

Tranquility base Pier.

The Eagle has landed.

13 minutes before landing on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin lit the engine on Eagle, their cramped, strange-looking spacecraft, beginning their descent from 50,000 feet to the lunar surface.

Cap Conwork, go for landing.

Eagle, you can see the land.

We were challenged to do something nobody thought was possible.

What we're doing is making history in such a strong statement of history.

Discovering new worlds beyond.

An incredible achievement for humankind.

Those 13 minutes were packed with drama.

The mission teetering on the brink of disaster in every moment.

The tension in mission control was through the roof.

There was something happening inside the computer that we did not understand.

My mind was, that's it, we're not going to land.

They were running out of gas.

It did sound like we might not be there.

We might not make it.

But there was always always someone there to snatch victory from the jaws of what looked like certain defeat.

This task had never been done, but they weren't afraid of it.

I know I wasn't.

When we landed on the moon, the average age of the people that were working in the control center and supporting the flights, our average age was about 27.

27.

And they stepped right up to it.

This podcast in 12 episodes is the story of how they stepped up and ensured that the final 13 minutes of Apollo 11's journey to the moon were a success.

We'll learn all about the events during the 13-minute descent, but also what happened through the course of a single decade to deliver that momentous touchdown.

The tireless work of the men and women, scientists, engineers, programmers, and astronauts in the Apollo Moon program, their bravery and dedication, the failures and the frustrations, the extraordinary feats of engineering and technology which came together to achieve that historic moment on July the 20th, 1969.

I'm Kevin Fong and from the BBC World Service, this is 13 Minutes to the Moon.

Episode one:

We choose to go.

The story of Apollo begins in the early 1960s.

For young Americans of that era, entertainment was a drive-in movie and a milkshake.

It was a time before digital watches, let alone home computers, a strictly analog world where jet planes were still something of a novelty.

Against this backdrop, the idea that a nation might set itself on a course to land people on the moon must have seemed like pure fantasy.

But the young, visionary U.S.

President, John F.

Kennedy, had committed the United States to this goal, choosing Rice University campus in Houston, Texas to make one of the most memorable addresses of the 20th century.

This was his rallying call in September 1962.

We choose to go to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things.

Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.

Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone.

and one we intend to win and the others too.

They chose to go to the moon, the most ambitious feat of exploration in the history of our species, and remarkably, they got there within the decade, just as President John F.

Kennedy had promised.

This podcast is about how that incredible achievement was accomplished.

Apollo 11 landed on the moon before I was born, but I grew up in the 1970s surrounded by stories of this amazing adventure.

And to my parents, it was an idea big enough for us to talk about around the dinner table.

And so, like so many others, the Apollo stories set me on course for a life in science and my own adventures.

I studied astrophysics and then medicine, and eventually went to work with NASA at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the home of mission control.

In so many ways, Project Apollo set the direction of my life.

In this episode, I'm going to explore why JFK challenged his country to send people to the moon before the end of the 1960s.

But first, I'll explain why we've chosen to focus on the final few minutes before Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

It's because those 13 minutes are like a showcase for all the hopes and dreams and the technology and the science.

They're like a springboard to any number of stories that when you trace them back help to unpack the mystery of just how we got ourselves to the surface of another world.

Have a listen to this, some of NASA's original recordings made during the mission.

You'll hear the voices of the astronauts and the people in mission control.

The drama of the 13 minutes is about to begin.

That's the voice of one of the characters you'll come to know.

Charlie Duke, sitting in mission control, radioing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, reassuring them that they're okay to proceed.

At this point in the mission, the crew of Apollo 11 had been in space for just over four days.

Two hours earlier, their spacecraft had divided into two separate modules.

One, with Michael Collins on board, remained in orbit.

while the other, the landing craft, was crewed by Armstrong and Aldrin.

In the clip you're about to hear, the mission control team is preparing for the most critical and dangerous stage of the mission, the final 13 minutes before landing.

And now, the moment of truth.

The 13 minutes begin.

50,000 feet above the moon, Armstrong and Aldrin ignite their engine.

That slows Eagle, their spacecraft, down, allowing the Moon's gravity to capture it, marking the start of their descent.

Eagle's engine is now armed and ready to fire.

The voices you can hear belong to Aldrin and the mission control team.

The engine is now firing at 10% of its maximum thrust.

But almost immediately, things start to go wrong.

There are serious problems communicating with mission control.

Spacecraft communications are absolutely absolutely lousy.

We can't communicate to them.

They can't communicate to us.

And almost as soon as they get over that problem, Armstrong spots another.

Looking down at the lunar surface still far below, Armstrong sees that the flight is not going to plan.

They're traveling faster than expected and they're going to overshoot their target landing site.

And back in Houston, the flight controllers responsible for orchestrating the mission are getting nervous.

Stephen Bales is monitoring the guidance system for the lander, and he realizes that something isn't right.

I am in big trouble because

that vehicle is going toward the moon faster than it should be, and it doesn't know it.

Turn on that 20 foot per second residual as it's probably contact air.

If it grows by by another 15 feet per second, I got a report.

Here's some 26-year-old kid.

Kid sitting here at a console who could stop the lunar mission.

Then, about five minutes into the descent, with 30,000 feet to go, the crew and mission control have another problem.

This one with the unique computer controlling the flight, with alarm after alarm flashing up in the cabin.

We get this thing.

1202.

1202.

I was totally in shock.

That was the shocker for me.

That only comes when it's really serious.

There was something happening inside the computer that we did not understand.

And for the first time, there is tension in the voice of the usually unshakable Neil Armstrong.

My mind was, that's it.

We're not going to land.

Let's pause it there, with 30,000 feet to go and a lot more drama still to come.

But by the end of episode 10, we'll have examined the entire final descent to the moment of touchdown.

And by then, you'll have got to know the people whose voices you heard in that sequence, along with many more whose efforts made Project Apollo and the first landing on the moon possible.

But to understand how the story ends, we have to go further back in time to the very beginning, to the events that gave birth to the space race and the shadow of war.

In many ways, that signal sets the stage for Project Apollo.

For Americans in 1957, that was the sound of fear.

Signals from Sputnik, the world's first satellite orbiting the Earth.

The satellite had been launched by the Soviet Union, the United States' only superpower rival, and while there was no direct military conflict between the two, their relationship was one of fierce competition in what was known as the Cold War.

With the threat of nuclear conflict ever present, the launch of Sputnik seemed to demonstrate the Soviet Union's technological superiority, and to the Americans, this was a thing of terror.

Apollo flight controller Steve Bales was a schoolboy in small-town Iowa when Sputnik was launched.

We were in a Cold War, we were worried about nuclear exchanges, we were worried about what might happen,

easily could have happened.

And then all of a sudden, there's this beeping ball going around above us that nobody can get to, nobody can stop.

People can see from time to time.

There were little broadcasts that say, hey, go out and look at this time.

You can see a little glimmer of light.

People tried to do it.

I never could, but others did.

It was...

And here it was, beep, beep, beep.

And then about a month later, I believe, they sent a dog into space so not just can they send a piece of iron that can beep and send an animal into space and we think are we that far behind the sense of alarm was shared at the highest levels of the US government here's Robert Siemens who joined NASA as a senior manager in its very first year 1958

this is from an interview he recorded with the Johnson Space Center history office Sputnik got a lot of world publicity and whether the Soviets had planned it or not, to this day, nobody really quite knows, but when they found out the impact this had, and then they played on it, and then they would take another step, like putting a dog in space, or

they went around the moon and took a picture of the backside of the moon.

And then when they finally put a man up there, when Gagarin went into orbit,

all hell broke loose.

That blew everybody's mind.

First Sputnik, and now a man, Yuri Gagarin.

This is how that mind-blowing news was reported to the world by the BBC and Moscow radio.

Half an hour ago, the Russians announced that they'd put the first man into space.

An announcement broadcast from Moscow radio in English said the world's first spaceship, Vostok,

is Airman Major Yuri Gagarin.

An Air Force pilot, a citizen of the Union of the Soviet Socialist.

Here's a Moscow recording of his voice speaking to Russian scientists as he went through space.

David Gagarin said that the flight was going on successfully, normal, visibility was good, and that he himself was feeling good as well.

Gagarin's flight in April 1961 just couldn't go without a response.

The United States began the search for a still more impressive technological feat to try and trump the Soviet Union on the world stage, and President John F.

Kennedy didn't automatically turn his attention to space.

He thought at one point he might try and solve the crisis caused by the worldwide shortage of drinking water by developing the engineering to treat billions of tons of seawater, a massive desalination project.

Tiesel Muir Harmony is a historian at the United States National Air and Space Museum.

Kennedy brought it up a number of times.

Actually, if you listen to the press conference immediately following Gagarin's flight, he brings that up as an area, a potential area to pursue.

But it became very clear very quickly that space was the arena that was going to be the most impressive, had the greatest potential of impressing the world public and asserting American dominance in science and technology.

Here's Robert Siemens again.

I hear stories about the president inviting a newspaper columnist into his office right after the Gagarin flight said, Well, I guess we're going to the moon.

But as far as I knew, the first thing that happened was Kennedy wrote a memorandum to the vice president, as head of the Space Council, and said, I want you to advise me on what steps we ought to take as a result of the Gagarin flight.

The country is sick of having the Russians keep doing things ahead of us.

How can we at least get even with them?

Casting around for advice, Vice President Lyndon Johnson turns to one of NASA's rocket pioneers, a German-born engineer captured at the end of World War II, the hugely influential but controversial figure of Werner von Braun, about whom we'll hear more later.

Von Braun replies to the vice president with this decisive memo.

We have a sporting chance of sending a three-man crew around the moon ahead of the Soviets by 1965 or 1966.

However, the Soviets could conduct a round-the-moon voyage earlier if they are ready to waive certain emergency safety features and limit the voyage to one man.

We have an excellent chance of beating the Soviets to the first landing of a crew on the moon.

The reason is that the performance jump by a factor of 10 over their present rockets is necessary to accomplish this feat.

While today we do not have that rocket, it is unlikely that the Soviets have it.

Therefore, we would not have to enter the race toward this obvious next goal in space against hopeless odds favoring the Soviets.

With an all-out crash program, I think we could accomplish this objective in 1967 or 1968.

At this point in 1961, the United States is hopelessly behind.

After Yuri Gagarin's glorious flight, the USA responds a few weeks later by sending up their first astronaut.

He was Alan Shepard.

But he spent only a few minutes in space compared to Gagarin's complete orbit around the Earth.

And that's the boldness of Werner von Braun's plan.

He advocates a leveling of the playing field, the setting of a goal in space that's so far beyond the capability of either superpower that no advantage so far gained would matter.

And so in May of that year, JFK goes to Congress to set his nation on course for the moon.

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long-range exploration of space.

And none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

It would certainly be expensive.

Tiesel Muir Harmony.

The risk of national investment, when you think at the time, $25 billion,

which today is just a little less than $200 billion.

$200 billion in adjusted money to that.

And

that's what Apollo cost.

Roughly, yeah, roughly.

A little less than $200 billion.

And then over 4% of the federal budget by the mid-1960s, hundreds of thousands of people working in this program.

It was a mass mobilization of effort and resources to an extent that it was many times the expense of the Panama Canal or the Manhattan Project.

I mean, you can compare it to so many things.

largest civilian technological program in U.S.

history.

That level of risk, it's fascinating.

and to me, it tells you a lot about U.S.

grand strategy and priorities in this moment in history where soft power was seen as critical to national security and global leadership.

With his speech, JFK carries along a bunch of well-informed people, like Apollo 11 crew member Michael Collins, who back in 1961 is a test pilot for the U.S.

Air Force.

He had made our task as simple as possible.

It was a very difficult task, but nonetheless he had pinpointed it by saying, what you're going to do is land a man on the moon by the end of the decade and return him safely to Earth.

That narrowed down our focus and gave us an impetus.

As complicated as the preparations were, he reduced them to what and when

without any doubt, and he allowed us to be very efficient in our pursuit of the moon.

Another cheering Kennedy's goal was Margaret Hamilton.

She was soon to become a leading programmer for the Apollo spacecraft's onboard computers.

You know, most of us were fans of Kennedy.

We all thought he was great.

And if it has to do with exploring, discovering, how could we not?

And how could we not do it by the time he wanted us to do it?

Of course, took a lot of nights and weekends,

but we just had to fulfill that.

But there were skeptics.

Among them was James Lovell.

In 1961, he was a Navy pilot, but seven years later, he'd be an astronaut on the first mission to fly to and then orbit the moon.

I do remember President Kennedy making that famous announcement.

I thought that

he was a little premature on making an announcement

just in 10 years to land on the moon since we hadn't even gone into orbit by that time.

James Lovell's doubts were well-founded.

Amazingly, in June 1961, nobody had any firm idea how they might get get to the moon.

And even into 1962, NASA's space engineers and managers were still arguing about the different options.

A BBC TV news program in 1962.

Well, there are several ways of accomplishing this task.

There were three options for getting to the moon, and the only thing they all had in common was they were all bad.

These we've called the direct method, the Earth orbital rendezvous and the lunar orbit rendezvous.

Now in the direct method a single launch vehicle which we call the Nova and which is somewhat bigger than the one that's been the first and intuitively most obvious was a direct flight to the moon taking the same single massive spacecraft intact from the Earth landing the whole thing on the moon and then bringing all of that back again.

But that would require a gargantuan rocket, the Nova, on a scale barely imaginable.

Then additional propulsion stages would be used for the takeoff from the moon and the return to Earth.

And the Earth orbit rendezvous procedure.

In the Earth orbit rendezvous, two advanced Saturn launch vehicles would be used.

Two of these would be brought into Earth orbit.

Now why two, Mr.

Lauff?

The second option, Earth orbit rendezvous, would get around the need for a massive Nova by launching the vehicle in pieces on two separate rockets and then assembling it in orbit around the earth but the resulting spacecraft that would travel to the moon would still be very large and potentially difficult to land safely now could we go on to explain the third possible method the the lunar orbit rendezvous the lunar orbit rendezvous

makes use of a single advanced saturn vehicle like the the same vehicle where we would use two for the earth orbit rendezvous the final option the lunar orbit rendezvous involved the launch of only a single rocket carrying two small vehicles which, once in orbit around the moon, could split up allowing one of them to land on the lunar surface.

The men would then be on the surface, would perform the exploration, then they would re-enter their smaller vehicle, go back into orbit around the moon in that vehicle, and their rendezvous with their mothership.

So the two vehicles would need to get back together again after the landing.

To do that, they'd have to fly together in formation around the moon and then dock before returning to Earth, performing the equivalent of an aerobatic display in space hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth with nowhere to go and no one to help them should something go wrong.

At first, this method seemed by far the most outlandish of the three and had almost no supporters.

But there was one persistent advocate, a middle-ranking NASA engineer by the name of John Hobolt.

And at first, he found himself isolated with his proposal out of favor.

Here's Robert Siemens again, who at the time was one of NASA's highest ranking administrators.

He had a lot of tr difficulty,

even when he was invited to meetings.

You know, people would tend to walk out of the room or they wouldn't listen or they'd say, well, you know, that's just crazy to try to do something as dangerous as that around the moon.

I received two letters from John.

The first one was fairly mild and it just said that he hoped that we're still considering lunar orbit rendezvous.

And I think I wrote back and said, oh, yes.

But the second one was a pretty stiff letter.

Somewhat as a voice in the wilderness, do we want to go to the moon or not?

Why is Nova with its ponderous size simply just accepted?

I fully realize that contacting you in this manner is somewhat unorthodox, but the issues of the world.

He said that he realized it was not protocol to to jump over, I don't know how many echelons to write me the letter.

But he said, then he went on to say it was just stupid for everybody to be building, considering these great, big, giant things like NOVA, when by a much simpler process,

namely Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, you could much more easily and much more cheaply and much more quickly go to the moon.

You know, I first read it.

You know, my hackles went up.

I thought,

I'm getting sick of this guy.

He's a pest, you know.

And I thought, but, you know, I think maybe he's right.

In the months that followed, the whole organization came round to Hobold's way of thinking.

And by June 1962, NASA was finally convinced that lunar orbit rendezvous was the only way that NASA would get to the moon before the decade was out.

We choose to go to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things Not because they are easy, but because they are hard because that goes But it had taken more than 12 months to make that vital decision eating well into Kennedy's already challenging timeline and the hard decisions were only just beginning Having decided how they would get to the moon they now had to decide what it was that might get them there.

And for that, the Americans had to rely upon World War II rocket science and technology derived from the darkest days of the 20th century.

The first thing I knew, the floor gave way, the roof came down, I covered my head with my hands and wondered, frankly, whether this was the end.

This was the aftermath of a V-2 rocket strike on London during World War II.

There was no alert and we had no warning at all.

The first thing we knew was the sound of the explosion.

One of the problems of this type of missile is that people do not and cannot take shelter.

It must have traveled a terrific height into the atmosphere in order to come down as it did without us having any prior warning by sound of its approach.

It was a terrible weapon, which struck without warning, causing thousands of civilian casualties.

This weapon built by scientists and engineers of the Third Reich to assist the Nazi war effort was designed by the man we heard from earlier advising President Kennedy on how to win the space race, Werner von Braun.

I think that when you remember von Braun you have to remember both sides.

That is the great achievements, the success, the charisma and his compromises with the Nazi system.

That's Michael Neufeld.

He's a senior curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

And he's also written a biography of Werner von Braun.

There's no easy answers with him.

A black-white hero villain and his involvement with the Third Reich is complicated.

For von Braun rockets and space travel were childhood obsessions which in his adult life he pursued blindly.

Here's the man himself talking in an interview in 1959 rather casually about his part in the V2 rocket programme.

Throughout 1940 and 1941 the components of the V2 were developed and captive tests were carried out but up to the first successful flight of the V2

we really never had any high level support for the V-2 program.

The thought was widespread, and Hitler himself felt that way about it, that this would be impossible to build a thing like the V-2.

Now, after we demonstrated that the thing did work, all of a sudden we were directed to go into mass production, for which we were not ready either.

Von Braun talks about mass production almost casually there.

But the circumstances of the V-2 rocket's manufacture are the darkest stain on the engineer's life and career.

V-2 production was, the final assembly was in an underground plant near the town of Nordhausen in north-central Germany.

And it was in a former mine and

included concentration camp workers who did part of the assembly work.

There were several thousand deaths, at least 10,000 at Nordhausen, connected to the V-2 production.

To what extent would he have known what the conditions were of the people working there?

He was very well aware of that.

He was inside the tunnels.

He saw the many of the conditions.

I mean, if he was not fully aware of how many people were dying, he certainly was aware of it, of the mistreatment of the prisoners, of the threat of sabotage, and of the fact that when workers were accused of sabotage, they were hanged.

So, you know, he had to have been quite aware of many of the conditions.

In 1945, with the war coming to an end and defeat of the Nazi regime imminent, von Braun chose to flee from his rocket research facility in Pine Munde in northeast Germany.

At that point, it was pretty evident that if we wanted to get out there before the Russian armies moved in, we had to move fast and try to move towards the west in the direction of where the American army was moving in.

But we finally managed to move about 5,000 people and 12,000 tons of equipment out of Pine Munde.

And finally, we were captured by the American Army practically two days after the hostilities had ended.

We virtually surrendered.

Uh we came down from the hills and said here we are.

The war is over.

Anticipating that rocket technology would play a decisive role in future conflicts, the Americans were only too pleased to accept Wernher von Braun's surrender.

Von Braun and many engineers working under him were secretly airlifted to the United States.

After World War two, the Cold War set in, and a new battle for supremacy began.

Through this, von Braun once again had the chance to indulge his long-held passion for rocketry and space flight.

During his youth and during his early middle, up to his middle age, he wanted to go to the moon himself.

He wanted to lead a moon expedition.

And so for him, I guess, the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States becomes a huge opportunity.

What role does he play in that?

Well, von Braun was

important first in promoting the idea of space travel before there was a space race and before the Cold War really produced the space race.

Of course, before the space race that started with Sputnik, you had a guided missile race.

So the nuclear arms race was driving the development of rocket technology and von Braun played a very important part in the development of ballistic missiles in the United States.

And so when Sputnik came around, it was just an opportunity to try to make real all these ideas he'd been pushing for at least five years in public.

John F.

Kennedy's vision gave Werner von Braun a chance to turn his own dreams into reality and to start work on what would become the most powerful rocket ever built, the launcher that would eventually take Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon.

Today, only three Saturn V rockets remain and one of them is kept in Houston, next door to the home of NASA's Mission Control.

So we're rolling down Saturn Lane which leads up to the front gates of Johnson Space Center.

This is where I used to work.

Next to Johnson Space Center is an old Saturn V rocket.

in all its glory at full scale.

It used to be laid out in the open.

I always try and make time to go and see the Saturn V whenever I I visit Johnson Space Center.

On this occasion, I had my producer, Andrew, with me, and we'd arranged to meet up with a former colleague and an old friend of mine, John Charles.

He used to be head of NASA's human research program, but he's now retired and has become a keen space historian.

But first, we had to get past the security guards.

So I'd be really careful with that recorder that it doesn't get mistaken for something else because those guys guys are armed.

Oh my goodness, okay, I'm going to secrete it, I'm going to be very careful.

This is probably the best part of

the experience, Kevin, because when you walk in from outside, you are suddenly confronted with a huge Saturn V rocket laying accessible horizontal in front of you.

And I mean, I never, never tire of the sense of enormous scale that you get get walking in that door.

Because we're looking now from what would have been the foot of the rocket up its full length, you know, 100, more than 100 meters.

I think the total length is like 111 meters.

And

it's difficult to explain.

It's enormous.

I mean, it's, you know, the size of 10 or 12 houses lined up together next to one another.

The Saturn V

was...

was the largest rocket ever launched successfully.

The Russians had a comparable vehicle which launched four times but never made it past the first stage phase of the flight.

And this one, the Saturn V, flew 13 times, all successfully, through the use of some of the largest power plants, the engines that have ever been built.

Each engine generating a million and a half pounds of thrust for a total of seven and a half million pounds.

And the vehicle weighed six and a half million pounds, which means when it launched, it was just barely moving to

get off the launch pad.

These are the nozzles of these enormous thrusters on the end of these engines.

You could easily, I mean you're pretty tall, John.

What are you?

You're sort of six foot.

I'm two meters.

Two meters, so

you could fit a couple of you almost inside that standing up

head to tone.

If you think about it, you could put an entire Apollo spacecraft inside each of those nozzles.

11, 10, 9.

Ignites.

So what was the experience of a Saturn V launch for the astronauts who flew on it?

3,

Apollo 11's Michael Collins and then Charlie Duke who walked on the moon in 1972.

If you saw one being launched from the ground as I did one time from a vantage point of three miles away across a lagoon, At first it just looked like a tiny little pencil ascending in the sky and it was no big deal.

But when the shock wave from it came all the way across the lagoon, your viscera told you something gigantic was going on.

Your entire body was shaking.

The ground below you was shaking and you knew you were in the presence of a gigantic machine.

As a crewman, you're sitting there strapped in.

I don't recall hearing any sound, but as you lift off,

the vibration was intense from side to side.

It wasn't pogo up and down, but it was a side-to-side vibration.

And it would, to me, my first thought, I don't believe anybody ever told me it was supposed to shake this hard.

And I'm sitting there shaking like crazy.

And I said, and my thoughts are, I hope this thing holds together.

When we got back, I asked the flight surgeon, I said, what was my heartbeat at liftoff?

He said, you were really excited.

I said, I know that.

I could tell I was.

He said, your heartbeat was 144.

Yeah, you were psychologically or physically jogging, you know, at 140.

When Alan Shepard, America's first man in space, took off in 1961, the Mercury Redstone rocket that launched him generated a mere 78,000 pounds of thrust.

By contrast, the Saturn V, which propelled the Apollo astronauts to the moon, was 100 times more powerful, delivering a staggering 7.5 million pounds of thrust.

And by making this giant leap in rocket power, NASA and Werner von Braun hoped to pull the United States ahead of their Soviet rivals.

But to win the race to the moon, engineering, science, and technology were not enough.

You needed an army of people controlling and guiding it at every instant.

People who were as vital to the mission as the rocket engines themselves.

Hallelujah, this is Houston.

The booster is a family booster.

In episode two, we'll be looking at the making of mission control and the extraordinary team of young flight controllers barely out of college but entrusted by the astronauts and their NASA bosses to guide the spacecraft and troubleshoot their way through the perilous 13 minutes to the moon.

When we landed on the moon, our average age was about 27.

We didn't know what we didn't know, and we didn't know we couldn't do it, so we just did it.

We're about to do something that nobody's ever done.

We're going to do it.

But I want to tell you all something: no matter how this turns out, when we walk out of this room, we walk out as a team, not as individuals.

And then he said, lock the doors.

13 Minutes Minutes to the Moon is an original podcast from the BBC World Service.

Roger Tranquility, we copy you on the ground.

You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.

We're breathing again.

Thanks a lot.

13 Minutes to the Moon is produced by Andrew Luck Baker.

Our theme music is by Han Zimmer.

Additional research and production by Sue Norton and Madeleine Finley.

The series editor is Rami Zabar, and the podcast editor is John Minnell.

Thanks to NASA and the Johnson Space Center History Office for archive material.

Actor Kerry Schale read Werner von Braun's memo and actor Christopher Harper read the words of John Hobold.

This is a new podcast and we'd love you to spread the word.

So if wherever you get your podcast lets you, please leave ratings and reviews.

It would be great to know what you think.

On social media, our hashtag is 13 Minutes to the Moon.

That's all one word.

Our digital team, Stephanie Constantine, Catherine Campbell and the digital editor Anadoval are putting videos, photos, and documents on our website.

There'll be more as the series goes on.

Go to bbcworldservice.com/slash 13 minutes.

I'm Kevin Fong.

Thanks for listening.

This is History's Heroes.

People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

Join me, Alex von Tunselmann, for History's Heroes.

Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

Suffs!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be hurt!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We demand to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.