Original subtitles

Capcom (over radio): A real good picture we're getting here of commander armstrong.

Nixon: For every american, this has to be the proudest day of our lives.

Armstrong (over radio): Ok, I'm going to step off the lm now.

Cronkite (over tv): Thirty-eight-year-old neil alden armstrong,

the first human being to touch the moon.

In these eight days of the apollo 11 mission,

man's dream and a nation's pledge have now been fulfilled.

Daly (over pa): We welcome our american heroes of space exploration!

Reporter (over tv): Armstrong was an american hero, albeit a reluctant one.

Scott: He had to do things that he had not anticipated.

Reporter: Are you leaving nasa with any sense of dissatisfaction?

Solacoff: He was so hounded, so many times.

Reporter (over tv): For years armstrong has shunned the media and the limelight.

Reporter 2 (over tv): Rarely giving interviews, never signing an autograph that

could be auctioned to the highest bidder.

Bradley (over tv): Now he's about to take a giant leap back into the public view.

He's finally authorized a biography.

Hansen: I ended up having 55 hours of tape-recorded interviews with him.

Hansen: This is his life, told in his own words.

♪ ♪

I first met neil in 1999.

I knew that he had not done his memoir, and so I decided I would give it a shot

and I wrote him a letter.

It took almost two years,

but eventually I got a invitation to come to his home in cincinnati.

I remember very well knocking on his door and neil answered and that's,

there he is!

It's neil armstrong.

He was not a person that you could penetrate very quickly in terms

of understanding the inner workings of the man.

But I think that I was able to develop a certain trust level.

He knew that I was treating him as more than just a "moon man."

I always thought this one story tells you a lot about neil.

This was in may of 1968, fourteen months before the launch of apollo 11.

Neil was flying this lltv, this training vehicle,

that was devised to simulate what it would be like to fly down to a lunar landing.

Hansen: Later that day, al bean who's his office mate comes in,

and then goes out to get a cup of coffee.

Well, at the coffee machine, they're talking about how neil almost died.

So he goes into the office and says, neil,

they're telling this crazy story out here that you ejected from the lltv this morning.

And neil said, "yeah, I, I did."

(laughs).

Hansen: It's so reflective of armstrong.

Here's this guy that can nearly kill himself,

and he just goes back to work on some papers.

He was such a focused mind, and he was so in love and passionate about flying.

And I think to understand him as an adult,

you really need to understand his childhood.

Man (over radio): Highlights of speed at the national air races cleveland!

Man (over radio): And he wins again!

(cheers).

Solacoff: From the very first time that I met him, he was planning on being a pilot

and to design airplanes.

He got his flying license before he had his driver's license.

Hansen: The armstrongs were not a well-to-do family.

Neil's mother was a stay-at-home mom, his dad worked for the state.

And the expectation was that neil was gonna have to

pay for much of his own college education if he was going to go.

So he applied for a naval scholarship.

The day that the letter arrived awarding him a scholarship his mom told

a story about how neil sort of scared her yelling,

he was so excited to be able to have a college education.

Hansen: What he didn't know was that two years into college a major war

was going to develop.

Beauchamp: In 1950 korea broke out.

I was ordered as commanding officer of fighter squadron 51 and neil,

with a brand new set of wings, reported to my squadron for duty.

Subsequently, we went to korea.

Anybody that makes it through navy flight training is a skilled pilot.

But when he really came to our attention was when he saved his own life over north korea.

Beauchamp: This was September 1951.

Neil was on a strafing run.

He was hit by aa and put out of control.

He came very close to the ground.

Hansen: The north koreans would string these thick cables kind of as booby-traps.

Neil flew into one and it sliced off about six feet of wing.

Just about anybody else probably would've been killed.

Beauchamp: But neil was able to fly this damaged airplane so that he was not

in north korea any longer and he ejected.

He landed by a marine occupied base.

He seemed unshaken.

Just amazing.

We recognized from that day forward that he was above average by quite a bit.

Hansen: As a member of fighter squadron 51, neil flew 78 combat missions.

And that was his first experience with the danger of flying.

Hansen: This was a very formative time in his life.

And when he came back to purdue, he was a more mature person.

He had a better idea of what he wanted.

That's when he met janet shearon.

Hoffman: She's a very pleasant person, you know.

And very outgoing.

Where neil's quiet, she loved to talk.

Hansen: She was very attractive and she had her choice of guys.

But neil just was a lot different.

He had a military career, he seemed to be a more serious type of guy.

And I think that's what intrigued her.

Hoffman: I remember him bringing her home and it was just so cute.

My grandpa looks over at me, he said,

"she's got nice legs."

(laughs).

After that, she became part of the family.

Hansen: So they marry in 1956.

The job that he takes is working as a test pilot out at

edwards air force base in california.

Hansen: In retrospect this decision was going to lead him down the path

of becoming the first man on the moon.

Scott: This is the roar of a sleek black research plane at edwards, california.

The x-15 is the only pilot-controlled plane in the world to fly in both air and

along the fringes of space.

Hansen: Test-piloting in the 1950s is extremely dangerous.

But I think there's a certain sense of invincibility.

If you do your preparations,

you've got a good shot at surviving it all.

And I think armstrong had that sort of confidence.

Beauchamp: When neil went to work at edwards air force base,

he told me that he had great hopes of flying the x-15.

And eventually he did.

Hansen: I think neil's most enjoyable time in his professional career

was out in california.

Actually, it all seems pretty idyllic, for a while.

Hoffman: He and janet moved to this little cabin up in the mountains.

And ricky was born.

Then karen was born almost two years later.

And she was just the cutest little girl.

Hansen: Neil's nickname for her is "muffie," which is a short for muffin.

Hoffman: My husband jack and I would go see them.

Those were good times.

Hansen: But things get challenging when the little girl is diagnosed with

a very malignant brain tumor at age two.

Hoffman: They gave her radiation treatments, and she improved.

But it didn't last too long.

So they decided that they would try chemo.

But the doctor said that she's such a tiny little girl she could not afford chemo.

Hansen: Neil felt almost personally responsible.

He scoured the medical journals and talked to as many experts as he could,

thinking that he could help.

And he really couldn't.

She died on the day of their wedding anniversary.

For that reason neil and janet never celebrated their wedding anniversary afterwards.

Hoffman: It was extremely hard for both of them.

But, she was able to talk about it more.

He just didn't go there.

Hansen: These are tapes with janet armstrong, a series of tapes.

Hoffman: I think it was just a hurt that you can't explain to anybody.

He just dealt with it the way he could.

Hansen: After muffie's death, neil went right back to flying as quickly as he could.

That was his way of dealing with it.

During this time, neil sees a call for a new class of astronauts,

because president kennedy had made the lunar landing commitment.

So he decided to throw his name into the selection.

Given everything that had happened,

I think he saw this new challenge as something to focus on.

So in September of 1962, when nasa was seriously starting to consider

how to do the moon landing, he entered the astronaut corps.

Hansen: Neil becomes an astronaut in September of 1962,

and the gemini missions are just beginning.

In a nutshell, gemini was about everything that you needed to learn,

that nasa needed to learn, before they could move on to the apollo program.

Man (over tv): The gemini program would develop long duration flights,

re-entry flight path control, extra-vehicular capability,

and rendezvous and docking maneuvers.

Scott: The first time I really got to know neil was when we were assigned to gemini 8.

I went over and met neil in his office, and he said,

"welcome aboard, let's see what we're gonna do."

gemini 8 was to go up and spend four days in space, do the first docking,

with a target vehicle called the agena, and then I was to do an eva,

go outside for almost two hours to sort of simulate a lunar surface exploration.

So it was a very exciting and very complex mission,

and our months of training were pretty intense.

Hansen: Not long after neil becomes an astronaut, another child is born,

another son, mark.

And neil's occupied with his job.

So janet's raising the family pretty much on her own.

Hansen: It was a very demanding job,

but you have a family that's there waiting for him.

They want his love, they want his attention.

And when he returns, it was hard for him to give them what they really want from him.

Reporter (over tv): How do you feel about the fact that one day,

in any test program as you know neil, something's going to go wrong.

Armstrong (over tv): Well, uh, that certainly, certainly is true.

But I think the secret to success is continued work,

trying to make our spacecraft just as safe

and reliable as they've proved to be in the past.

Lodge (over radio): 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, zero.

We have ignition.

Control (over radio): And we have a liftoff at...

Man (over radio): There it goes.

Control (over radio): Three seconds.

Man (over radio): Here across the sand comes the roar of those tremendous engines.

Lifting off into a nearly cloudless sky.

Beautiful!

Control (over radio): This is gemini control houston.

There's the word we've been waiting for.

Neil armstrong came back that we're about 150 feet apart from the agena.

Control (over radio): And now there the word is they have docked,

they've achieved the dock.

Neil armstrong's only comment, "it was a real smoothie."

scott: Neil did the first docking in space.

All that worked quite well.

And then we ran into a problem in that the spacecraft started rolling to the left.

Haney (over radio): This is gemini control houston.

Trouble has developed in the flight of gemini 8.

We do not know whether the problem developed in the agena or in the spacecraft.

We will pass along additional information as it develops.

Just send in command 400 to turn it off and take control with the spacecraft.

Did you, uh, copy that?

Armstrong (over radio): We understand.

Scott: Before the spacecraft started rolling, mission control had told us that if we

lose control somehow, turn the agena off and take over with gemini.

So we did that a number of times, but it didn't work.

Control (over radio): We can't seem to get any valid data here.

It seems to be in a pretty violent tumble rate.

Scott: We finally decided that we better undock from the agena.

Hansen: But instead of solving the problem, the spinning just gets worse.

Capcom (over radio): Gemini 8, how do you read?

Scott (over radio): Uh, we got serious problems here.

We're rolling up and we can't turn anything off.

Hansen: Unless dave and neil can find a way to get it to stop,

they're gonna black out and they're gonna die.

Scott: We ended up about almost one revolution per second when neil turned on the

little re-entry control system,

shut off the main thrusters.

Capcom (over radio): Okay, relax, everything's okay.

Hansen: The problem is, those thrusters and that fuel is needed in order

to get back to earth safely.

Once you open up the re-entry control system, you've got to come down.

Haney (over radio): This is gemini control houston.

The flight director has determined to terminate the flight.

We plan to bring the flight down in the third zone,

which is approximately 500 miles east of okinawa.

A destroyer named the mason is proceeding toward the point.

They have the spacecraft in sight.

It's on the water.

Turner (over radio): Astronauts armstrong and scott are safe back on earth,

but as yet flight directors don't know what caused

gemini 8 to go out of control for a time

and necessitate bringing it back ahead of schedule.

Armstrong (over tv): Well it's a great pleasure to be back in houston

among all our friends here.

We had a exciting ride.

We accomplished a lot of things.

We wish we could have, uh, done a few more.

We'll be spending this week completing our debriefings.

Scott: There had been conjecture that we had made a mistake.

But it turned out that the thruster on the gemini spacecraft had been shorting.

It would fire when we didn't want it to fire,

and it wouldn't fire when neil commanded it to fire.

So neil's performance was actually brilliant.

Man: I think it's important to note that neil played a key role,

not only in recovering the spacecraft, but in salvaging valuable data.

Hansen: In the end I think it added to his reputation within nasa leadership.

Man: Gemini 8 did include a flawless rendezvous and docking,

this being so important to our manned lunar landing program.

Hansen: They knew this was a guy that had a cool head that could take care of

an emergency and do the right thing.

Ignition.

Commit liftoff.

We have liftoff.

Hansen: In 1968, nasa launched the first manned apollo mission.

Control (over radio): We have cleared the tower.

Hansen: Two months later was our first flight out of earth orbit.

Cronkite (over tv): Everything seems to be going exceedingly well.

That of course is very good news in houston, texas.

Hansen: Neil was in mission control when deke slayton, head of the astronaut corps,

told him he was going to command apollo 11 and if everything went right,

then 11 would be the landing mission.

Man: It's my considerable pleasure to introduce our apollo 11 crew, mr. Armstrong,

of course, the command pilot, colonel collins and colonel aldrin.

Hansen: Once it was announced that 11 was going to be the attempt at landing,

and that neil and buzz were gonna be onboard the lunar module,

the issue became well,

which one is gonna come out onto the surface first.

Knowing that this person is going to be an iconic world hero, there was a discussion

inside of higher nasa management.

We've got armstrong: Modest, no ego.

And then we've got buzz aldrin,

who likes to be the center of attention.

And there was total consensus this has gotta be armstrong.

However, it wasn't like they could go out in a press conference and say, well,

we've decided that armstrong's gonna go out first on the moon

and the reason is we don't trust buzz to do it.

You can't say that.

So what they did say is that the egress order was determined,

by how the astronauts were positioned inside the lunar module,

and how the hatch opened.

Cronkite (over tv): Man embarks today on history's greatest adventure.

Armstrong, aldrin, and collins

are to lift off on the voyage man always has dreamed about.

Control (over radio): This is apollo-saturn launch control.

We are a go for apollo 11.

Neil armstrong reported back when he received the good wishes,

"thank you very much, we know it will be a good flight."

t minus 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.

12, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence starts.

♪ ♪

capcom (over radio): Hello apollo 11.

Houston.

A real good picture we're getting here of commander armstrong.

Capcom (over radio): Neil, how does it look?

Armstrong (over radio): Looking good. The eagle has wings.

Control (over radio): Ok, all flight controllers, gonna go for landing. Retro?

Retro (over radio): Go!

Control (over radio): Fido? Fido (over radio): Go!

Control (over radio): Guidance? Guidance (over radio): Go!

Control (over radio): Control? Flight control (over radio): Go!

Control (over radio): Telcom? Telcom (over radio): Go!

Control (over radio): Gnc? Gnc (over radio): Go!

Control (over radio): Eecom? Eecom (over radio): Go!

Control (over radio): Surgeon? Surgeon (over radio): Go!

Control (over radio): Capcom, we're go for landing.

Capcom (over radio): Eagle, houston, you're a go for landing. Over.

Aldrin (over radio): Roger. Understand. Go for landing. 3,000 feet.

Capcom (over radio): Eagle, houston.

We'll monitor your delta-h.

Things look real close.

Aldrin (over radio): Four forward.

Drifting to the right a little.

Hansen: So he's in there flying the machine in ways that they really

didn't expect him to.

Capcom (over radio): 30 seconds.

Armstrong (over radio): Forward.

Hansen: And they used more fuel than they thought.

Capcom (over radio): We got an alarm.

Hansen: And then there were these computer alarms that went off.

Capcom (over radio): We got an alarm.

Hansen: Computers were getting overloaded.

Capcom (over radio): Roger. 1201 alarm.

Capcom (over radio): 1201.

Capcom (over radio): 1201. Roger. 1201 alarm.

Same type. We're go. Flight.

Ok we're go. We're go. Same type. We're go.

Hansen: They finally get the word.

Capcom (over radio): Right on. Real good.

Hansen: And somehow he has to fly this thing down.

Aldrin (over radio): 30 feet. 2 and a half down.

Picking up some dust.

Armstrong (over radio): Tranquility base here.

The eagle has landed.

Capcom (over radio): Roger, tranquility.

Be advised there are lots of smiling faces in this room.

Armstrong (over radio): Are you getting a tv picture now houston?

Capcom (over radio): Neil, yes, we are getting a tv picture.

Armstrong (over radio): Ok, I'm going to step off the lm now.

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

Armstrong (over radio): It has a stark beauty all its own,

it's like much of the high desert of the united states.

It's different, but it's very pretty out here.

Capcom (over radio): Okay, that looks good, neil.

Armstrong (over radio): Isn't that something?

Hansen: He understood the magnitude of the achievement.

But on a personal level, I think what pleased him most was the fact that he was the

first one to fly a machine down onto the lunar surface.

I mean, it was kind of like the wright brothers for him.

Hansen: It wasn't that he didn't have deep thoughts.

Armstrong (over radio): The responsibility for this flight lies first with, with history.

And with the giants of science who have preceded this effort.

Hansen: But he felt like it was his job to fly the lunar module

and he was just doing his duty.

Armstrong (over radio): God bless ya. Good night from apollo 11.

Cronkite (over tv): Thirty-eight-year-old neil alden armstrong,

the first human being to touch the moon.

Many things will never be the same again.

Scott: After apollo 11, there was a great media attention, great public attention.

They had a world tour.

(cheers).

It was very hard work.

Place after place after place.

Very intense.

Probably more challenging than flying the mission.

Hansen: Given the kind of person that he was, he did not enjoy the celebrity.

Not that you can say, I'm sorry I went to the moon.

But it problematized his life in ways that were especially disdainful to him.

Solacoff: He told me he would like to go ahead and fly more,

but he knew that he, he couldn't.

Because of who he was, they wouldn't take a chance of something happening to him.

Hansen: So nasa moved him over into a position as

an associate administrator for aeronautics.

Armstrong: I will well and faithfully discharge the duties.

Man: Of the office on which I am about to enter.

Armstrong: Of the office on which I am about to enter.

Man: So help me god. Armstrong: So help me god.

(applause).

Hansen: But instead of letting him run the aeronautical programs like they should have,

they kept calling him to show up for photographs and autographs.

And they wouldn't leave him alone.

Hope: And now to give us a hand, the man whose skill and courage won the admiration of

the world, the best salesman america ever had, neil armstrong.

Armstrong: I'll never forget that first step on the moon.

And speaking of steps, the first one you should take

in planning your family's future is to save.

I recommend united states savings bonds.

Money set aside...

Hansen: Eventually he said heck with that and he just decided I'm moving back to

ohio and he got a teaching job at the university of cincinnati

teaching aerospace engineering.

Solacoff: He always said,

"I'm just a pilot, I don't deserve all these accolades."

I remember someone offered him a million dollars if he would autograph 100 pictures,

and he turned it down.

That's the kind of person that he was.

Hansen: It just got to a level of frustration for her that after 38 years of marriage,

she wrote him a note, said she wanted a divorce, and she left the note on the kitchen table

for him to read when he got back from work.

Solacoff: He was disappointed, and especially I think he was hurt.

But his personality is such that you really couldn't really get into

what his heart is like.

Hansen: In 1992, neil was at a local golf club in suburban cincinnati.

And there he met carol.

Carol: He said to me once,

"you're the only person I've met that talks less than I do."

so, I think we were comfortable with each other.

We were married in a little ceremony.

Just the family, just the kids.

Hansen: I think she brought him out of his shell a little bit.

She was probably the love of his life.

Carol: You know, with the grandchildren, it was a quieter time of life.

I have pictures of jack, the youngest, playing beauty parlor with neil.

(laughs).

Which isn't a picture that most people would conjure up

when they're thinking about neil.

He was happy.

Hoffman: Over here is a picture of just neil by himself.

Just two weeks before he, he died.

It was...

Something you think you don't have to go through,

but you have to go through it sometimes.

Holt: There was great sadness today when we learned neil armstrong was dead

at the age of 82 from complications related to a recent heart operation.

Hansen: When I started all of this,

I didn't really comprehend how much he could mean to me.

There's a lot to admire about him.

Scott: He was always a good friend.

Just an exceptional person.

Beauchamp: I feel privileged to have had the ah,

experiences that I had with him.

Hoffman: I wrote something about him that I'll read to you:

"he had a pleasant childhood.

He told funny jokes and would laugh.

He fought for us.

He was an astronaut.

He had two interesting boys.

He had a small daughter he loved.

He smiled at me and he listened to the rain."

and that's kind of him.

Captioned by cotter captioning services.