All language subtitles for Mission.Control.The.Unsung.Heroes.of.Apollo.2017.720p.NF.WEB-DL.800MB.MkvCage

[Astronaut over radio]
Roger, we see it, Jack.

And, uh, we got
a reading of, uh,

minus two degrees
in the docking index.

We'd like to know if that's
2.0 precise or if it's 2.1 or 1.9.

[radio beeps]

[Jack]
No, it's minus 2.0 precisely.

[Flight Controller over radio] CAPCOM
looks like the last item we need to hear

is a stir on the H2 and O2
at their convenience.

[Astronaut over radio]
Okay.

[radio beeps]

[Flight Controller over radio]
13, we've got one more item for you,

when you get a chance, we'd like
you to stir up your cryo tank.

In addition,
have a shaft in front of you...

[Astronaut]
Okay.

[Flight Controller over radio] ...for
a look at the center if you need it.

[Astronaut over radio]
Okay, stand by.

[radio static]

[Astronaut over radio]
Hey, Houston, we've had a problem here.

We've got more of a problem.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Okay, listen. Listen, you guys.

We've lost fuel cell one
and two pressure.

[Astronaut over radio]
Uh, Houston, we've had a problem,

[Flight Controller over radio]
Stand by. They got a problem.

[Astronaut over radio]
Main B bus undervolt.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Roger. Main B undervolt.

Stand by, 13.
We're looking at it.

[Astronaut over radio]
We had a pretty large bang

associated with
the caution and warning lamp.

[John Aaron] What was going
through our mind is,

"We're a long ways from home."

We were hit with
something we didn't expect,

we were hit with
something that we just,

in our wildest imagination or what
if thinking, they never expected.

[Chris Kraft] That damn room
was in serious confusion.

And it took me a while to come to
that conclusion, but it was true,

and I'm not sure that Mission Control
knew what to do at that point.

[Gene Kranz] I says, "Chris,
we're in deep shit."

We were still trying to grasp
the total scope of this problem.

One of our fuel cells had died,

the second one was dying,

and from a standpoint
of everything we had...

You know,
that's not a possibility.

I mean, that's not a survival
situation, yet the crew's surviving.

The key thing to me was time.

We needed time to think.

We needed to
pull this team together

doing something that
had never been done before.

[electronic buzzing]

[helicopter whirring]

[ship horn blowing]

[metallic squeaking]

[soft piano music playing]

[traffic whizzing]

[Flight Controller over radio]
And, Tim Peake, as you work your way

around the mast caster there,

feel free to look
at the load path

and get some
situational awareness--

[Courtenay McMillan] When I'm
trying to describe to somebody

what I do for a living,
I always have to ask,

"Have you ever seen
the movie 'Apollo 13'?

"You know, that big room
where all the people sit?

That's, that's where I sit,
that's what I do."

When you describe your job,

they ask,
"What do you do at NASA?"

And I said
I'm a Flight Director,

and they look at me
kind of quizzically,

and I say, "You know,

the guy with the vest
and the buzz cut?"

I, uh, have had a chance
to meet a few of those guys.

I really admire
everything that they stand for

and what they were
able to achieve.

I think it's kind of
amazing that, um,

out of nothing they built
this great institution.

[Flight Controller] Okay understand that.
It's the ventilation tube in the middle.

[McMillan]
We wouldn't be here today

without the achievements
that those folks made

and the strides that they took

in getting us down the path
of human space flight.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Yeah, we'll leave you there.

[Astronaut over radio]
Okay. Copy that.

[Ginger Kerrick] The people
that have worked at NASA

and particularly the folks
in the Apollo era

make it a point
to come and speak to us

to make sure that
we truly understand the job

that we are
getting ready to undertake,

and share their
experiences with us.

So all of us are very grateful
to our founding fathers.

[John Aaron] I grew up in
both Oklahoma and Texas,

and I used to sit outside at
night and I'd gaze at the moon.

Never occurred to me...

that we would land people there.

I still go out and I like
to enjoy gazing at the moon,

but I don't look at it the same
way I did when I was growing up.

It's a different moon to me now.

[Sy Liebergot] My childhood was
directed by my father who was a drunk,

and he was a womanizer,
and he was a gambler.

I left Philadelphia
where we ended up living,

and when I turned 18,
I said, "I've had it.

I'm getting out of this
hellhole," and I joined the Army.

And they made me a weatherman.

[laughs]
Of all things.

[Jerry Bostick] When I was
a senior in high school,

I guess I took an aptitude test,

and it said that I should either be
a funeral director or an engineer.

And so I went to the library and checked
out a book titled "What Engineers Do",

and it really intrigued me,
and I said,

"That's what I want to be.
I wanna be an engineer."

[Glynn Lunney] I was born in a
little town in Pennsylvania,

coal-mining town.

My dad worked
in the coal mines for a while.

But growing up, I was really
fascinated with airplanes,

so I built a lot
of model airplanes

and I hung em from the ceilings.

Little balsa things,

learned how to put the paper
around them and shrink it.

Uh, and, you know,
they got to look pretty good.

[TV Announcer] Aviation plants need men
to design the planes of the future.

[Kraft] I went to Virginia
Tech during World War II.

I was studying
mechanical engineering,

but I wanted to be a baseball
player, not an engineer,

but I knew I wasn't good enough.

[chuckles]

[Ed Fendell] I thought I was gonna
be this great baseball player,

which I wasn't.

You know, I was going nowhere.

Somehow I ended off going to this
junior college, studying merchandising.

The two years I spent there,

I really didn't learn a lot,
even about merchandising.

I learned how to
smoke cigarettes, smoke cigars,

drink whiskey and chase girls.
That's what I learned.

And I did a good job
of learning that.

And then everything changed.

[ominous music playing]

[Lyndon Johnson] There is
something new in the heavens,

something that has
never been there before.

It circles the Earth
once every 96 minutes.

It's called the Sputnik.

[Jim Kelly]
I can remember Sputnik.

It was in an English class,

the speakers came on

and the principal announced
what had happened,

and the Russians had put a
spacecraft or object into space.

[beeping]

[Bob Carlton] I remember I
was driving along the road,

and when I heard that
on the news

and I thought,
"What? What is this?"

[beeping]

[Gerry Griffin] And we said,
"Holy-moly," you know,

"these guys are ahead of us.

They've gotten
a man-made satellite."

And then shortly after that,
uh, when Gagarin flew.

[TV Announcer] It was the
propaganda coup of the year.

[Griffin] And obviously we
all knew we were in a race.

[TV Announcer] After the Russian
flight, US plans were accelerated.

Commander Alan B. Shepard was sent in a
suborbital flight, unlike the Russian...

[Griffin] And when Kennedy
laid down the gauntlet

that let's go to the moon
and back and do it in a decade,

I can remember, I wasn't
even in the space program,

but I remember thinking,
"Can that be done?"

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.

[TV Announcer] President Kennedy
had charted our course.

The landing of men
on the moon...

[dramatic music]

...before the end of the decade.

[dramatic music continues]

[Kraft] We didn't know smuts
about going to the moon,

about the environment
we were going into,

or the mechanical aspects of what
was gonna be required of us.

These things
are pretty complicated.

They maybe not
seem complicated today,

but they were complicated
as hell back then.

The background
of flight control really was

what we initially did in flight
tests, testing airplanes.

At Edwards Air Force Base,
the NACA where I worked,

were responsible
for testing the X-1.

And so, it was almost natural
to have somebody on the ground

monitoring the X-1 systems,

making sure it was ready to fly
from the bottom of the B-29.

And they were able then to monitor
the performance of the vehicle,

but also the performance
of the test pilot.

That was my concept
of flight test

and that became my concept
of flight control.

Okay, now what does that mean
in space flight to us?

How would we concoct
that kind of a system

that would allow us to get that kind
of information and talk to the crew?

That was a very big job.

We didn't have any buildings,
we didn't have any radar,

we didn't have any telemetry,

we didn't have any
voice communication.

And we ended up then saying,
"These are our requirements."

We gotta tell 'em
it's got to have a computer.

What the hell is a computer?

It was almost
that much we didn't know.

It isn't something
that we suddenly decided.

We've got a control center,
we've got these stations,

and so we're gonna fly.

That isn't how it happened.

It developed with time.

It sort of was
an evolutionary thing.

[Gene Cernan] Chris is the
creator of Mission Control.

His was the very first voice
that we heard,

and he was the foundation
for what Mission Control became

and its relationship to the crews
and the flights themselves.

There was never any question
who was in charge...

because he had the persona,
he had the demeanor,

he had the quickness,
he had the mental skills

necessary to pull
this team together.

He had a way about him
that he could kinda see

what was happening,
what was needed,

and think through what we
had to do to satisfy that need.

[Flight Control loudspeaker]
...two, one, fire.

[Astronaut over radio]
Oh, that view is tremendous.

At the Cape, it was a kinda old
steam engine kinda display.

You had a bunch
of little meters.

For reading pressure
and temperatures,

and quantities of fuel
and things like that.

When we got the goal
of going to the moon,

that was a really much
bigger step than Mercury.

So the pathway to build
the Control Center in Houston,

equip it for the digital age,
and make it work that way,

was a big step for us
from what we had done

at the Control Center
at the Cape.

[James Burke] Fifteen hundred
miles west of Cape Kennedy,

the heart of the entire project,

the Manned Spacecraft Center
at Houston, Texas.

And this building behind me where all major
decisions are made throughout the flight.

Mission Control.

From launch to splash down,

in this room 17 key men
whose average age is only 30

will watch and control
the Apollo Mission.

They'll be aided in their task

by a continuous
flow of information

pouring into this room
24 hours a day from space

and from tracking stations
all over the world.

From these display panels
behind me,

they'll be able
to call up anything

from a live television picture of
Cape Kennedy, or a recovery ship,

to moon maps, like that one,

to a circuit diagram of the smallest
transistor on board the spacecraft.

All the controllers in this room will be
helped by six rooms full of back up staff.

[Kraft]
So, we need a lot of people.

We were looking for people with
certain kind of capabilities:

math capabilities,
systems capabilities,

communications capabilities,
on and on.

[Fendell] I had become an
air traffic controller.

One day the phone rang

and it was a gentleman
out here in Houston

and he started telling me
they were hiring

every engineer
that walked in the door.

And the next thing I knew,

I was driving to Houston
in my Austin Healey sports car

with my black and white TV
and my clothes.

? Come and take a trip ?

? In my rocket ship ?

? We'll have
a lovely afternoon ?

? Kiss the world goodbye ?

? And away we fly ?

? Destination moon ?

? Travel fast as light ?

? Till we're lost from sight ?

? The Earth is like
a toy balloon ?

? Well, the thrill you get ?

? Riding on a jet... ?

[Bill Moon] I worked at McDonnell
Aircraft doing electrical design,

so I got set up
with an appointment

and filled out an application
form to work for NASA.

About three months later,

I come home one day and there's
a telegram under my door,

job offer.
[chuckles]

[Aaron]
See, I thought when I applied

I would just get
an interview maybe.

Maybe, that's what
I told my wife.

But when the telegram
came it was an offer,

and it was an offer for more money
than a country boy had ever seen,

$6,770 a year.

[Steve Bales] My first job was to
give tours of Mission Control,

and the Control Center was just
being outfitted with consoles.

As I was a tour guide,

I had a chance to meet people that
were going to man those consoles,

and I say "man" because there
were no women, they were all men.

And they were going to run those
consoles and make the decisions,

and they didn't have much time

but they had a little bit to
tell me what they were gonna do,

at least what the basic job was
of each position.

This front bank of consoles,
known locally as the Trench,

possibly because
it's in the front line,

is where the Rocket Men sit.

It's their job to watch and check that
every engine on board the space craft

is firing correctly and pushing
Apollo in the right direction.

Right behind them here,
the Flight Surgeon.

His console has two normal
screens like everybody else's,

but here in the middle,
on this screen

he can monitor the physical
state of the astronauts

second by second
throughout the flight.

Next door to him
sits the Capsule Communicator.

An astronaut himself,

he's trained with the crew
and speaks astronaut jargon,

and so acts as
a kind of interpreter

when a particularly difficult order has to
be passed from Flight Control to the crew.

Next to him,
along this bank of consoles,

the men who check all the
systems on the space craft.

And behind them all, the boss,
the Flight Director himself.

He co-ordinates
everybody's effort

and uses that to assume responsibility
for minute-to-minute decisions

on the state of the mission
throughout the flight.

[Kraft] And hey, we got a
new program called Gemini.

Why have we got Gemini?

Well, with all these things we gotta do to
go to the moon and beginning to figure it,

we gotta do some testing.

We gotta do some stuff that
proves we can do this stuff.

[Flight Control over loudspeaker]
Five, four, three, two,

one, fire.

And there was a side benefit

that was very important too

in that the ground
had to learn how to operate.

Gemini became the proving ground for this
Chris Kraft approach to Mission Control.

So for the team in the Control Center,
Gemini became the big step up.

Each one of the missions had a
very defined set of objectives.

[Griffin] First of all,
you can survive in space.

Second, you can
stay there for a long time.

And then,
the rendezvous in the EVA.

[Kranz] Space walks and
all this kind of stuff.

[Lunney] By the time
we came out of Gemini,

we had a very well tested
group of people.

And when we got to Apollo,
we just had to blow it up.

You know, make it...
It just had to be bigger.

So, we were ready to take on the rigors and
the difficulties that Apollo presented to us.

[TV Announcer] The moon
is a necessary first step

for exploration of the planets.

To fly men there and return them
safely in this decade

is the goal of NASA's
project Apollo.

The early missions of Mercury,

and the experience from Gemini,

have brought this country
to the next major milestone:

the first Apollo
three-man space flight.

These are the men
to fly that mission:

Command Pilot Virgil Grissom.

[Kraft] I knew Gus
Grissom extremely well.

I knew Ed White pretty well.

I didn't know Roger Chaffee
very well at all.

I knew their families,

I knew their capabilities,

I know their...
What drove astronauts.

[TV Announcer] The Saturn
rocket, the Apollo spacecraft,

and all the component parts
have been tested and retested.

Everything is nearly ready,
including the crew,

for this country's first
three-man space flight.

On Apollo 1, we were trying to
get the first manned flight off,

and it was a push,
it was obviously...

That usually happens
at the beginning of a program,

and we were having trouble
with the space craft.

We knew that
there was bad workmanship.

We knew that
the wires were exposed.

[Aaron] My introduction
to the Apollo program

after I came off of Gemini

was that they were
conducting a live pad test

with the crew
in a flight condition

on the pad at the
launch site in Kennedy.

[Chuck Deiterich] Most of that
activity was directed by the Cape.

I mean, they were in charge of it.
We were just monitoring.

But the Cape was
really responsible for it,

so I don't know if they felt any
pressure to get that test done or not.

[Aaron] The way the hatch was
designed, it sealed from the inside.

They were buttoned up
in a space craft

at 16 pounds per square inch
of pure oxygen.

I don't think any of us recognized
the seriousness of the danger

we had put the crew in.

If you got anything that'll burn,
and if it ever catches fire,

it's just gonna be a holocaust.

[Aaron] So I was sitting there
watching all the data coming in,

listening to the dialogue,
absorbing this stuff, learning.

I was back in my office
doing paperwork,

but came back
to be the flight director,

and Gus says, "I'm ready to go,"

finally after bitching
like hell about the fact

that he couldn't hear somebody
or he couldn't talk to somebody.

And so, we were taking a break.

They were going to see
if they could fix the comm.

And some of the guys stood up
and went outside the room,

but for some reason,
I hung back for a second.

I had something to do,
and I still had my headset on.

And all at once,

you know, I heard it...
"Fire."

[rocket blasting]

And then there was some silence, and
then there was a bunch of noise.

Just noise. I couldn't
tell what it was.

Wow, it all happened
just right quick.

We were sitting there
and we hear the crew.

We heard the shouts
from the crew.

"Egress, egress."

I said, "Hey, get back on here.
There's something going on."

[Kraft] And then, from
then on, it was...

impossible to do
anything about it.

Uh, of course...

[sighs]
you're just in shock.

[Kraft] Because I'd been in
the flight test business

for quite a while of my life,

I've seen death happen in various
ways, but not like that.

And so you had
that feeling of guilt,

you had that feeling of remorse,

you had that feeling of "My god,
why did we ever let that happen?"

I think that, uh, we killed those
three men. It's almost murder.

[Fendell] A short period of
time after this all happened,

we were called to an all-hands
meeting in the auditorium,

and we were called
in there by Gene Kranz.

[Kranz] Here we had a group
of very young engineers,

most of them just
fresh out of college,

who had never gone through
this type of an experience.

The first thing that you do

is to identify what your part
in this failure was all about.

And Gene commenced to tell us

that we were all responsible
for killing the crew,

that we had not done our jobs.

We could have gone
to the program manager and said,

"Look, we're not ready,"
but we didn't.

So therefore, we will
never do this again.

Our teams in Mission Control
will be known by two words.

He said to us, "I want you
to go back to your offices,

"and on your blackboard,
white boards that we had,

"I want you to write 'tough
and competent' on that board,

and I don't want you
to ever remove it."

Tough: we were never going
to shirk our responsibilities

because we're forever
accountable for what we do,

or in the case of Apollo 1,
what did we fail to do.

Competent: we're never going
to take anything for granted.

We'll never stop learning.

From now on, as a team,
we will be perfect.

I think it changed
the entire attitude

of who we were,
what we did,

and how we progressed
into the future of space flight.

[soft piano music playing]

[Kraft] It's my opinion and
an opinion of many others,

had that not happened,

we would never have
gotten to the moon.

That interim period
following the fire

was the only thing
that saved our ass,

because we were able to then step back
and say, "What's wrong with this thing?

What do we
have to do to fix it?"

And it brought together the whole
organization from top to bottom in NASA.

Without all that happening,
we'd have never gotten there.

[Griffin] We had leaders, actually,
all the way from the top

that told us, you know,
"Get the job done,"

and they didn't try
to do it for us.

[Fendell] We worked for people
that were great leaders.

It started out with the Krafts
and the Gilruths and those guys,

and they mentored their people,

and you learned to mentor your
people as you became a manager.

[Kraft]
To be a leader,

you have to be willing to accept the
responsibility that requires you to do that,

and that's what people don't
understand about management.

They don't understand
that it takes a commitment...

that you're willing to accept.

I became notorious for
saying what the hell I thought.

I want to hear
what you have to say,

and I might give you hell
if I don't like it,

but that's tough.

Go away and come up with another
idea that I might like.

And I expressed those
kind of thoughts to people.

That's where I got
my management forte.

People liked it.

Apollo 8 was going to be
an Earth orbital flight.

Uh, we were going to fly the
Lunar Module for the first time.

And we'd go and do various
maneuvers in Earth orbit.

[Kraft] Well, they delivered
the Lunar Module to the Cape

and it was
a horrible piece of hardware.

They couldn't get
the damn thing checked out.

And as a result,
it was way behind schedule

and it was not gonna meet the schedule
now of the Command and Service Module

which was
coming along very well.

[Lunney] NASA management
came up with this idea of,

okay, let's take the flight
opportunity that we have,

let's assume we can get
the fixes into the Saturn V,

and let us think about
going around the moon.

[Kraft] I said, "My god, that's a
hell of a different proposition."

The risk involved there
are many manifold.

And the first thing I did
was call my people

who I thought were necessary to
deciding whether we could do it or not.

So we all got together, there
was about eight or ten of us,

talked it over, and I told 'em
what we were thinking about.

I thought,
"Really, he's got to be crazy.

You know, we're a long way
from being ready to do that.

[Kraft] And I said, "I want
you to go away and I...

"Here's what I see
the problems are.

"Now, you go ahead
and think about this

"and you tell me
what the problems are,

and whether you think
you can do it."

[Bostick]
So that was an intense weekend,

and we went back on Monday, and says, "Yes,
we can do it, with these limitations."

[Aaron]
So we walked off from Apollo 7

after we got that
all wrapped up,

and bang, they made that announcement.
It was like,

"You're gonna do what?"

We're gonna send a spacecraft
out on a trajectory

that's only gonna miss
the moon by 60 miles?

It was incredible.

[Burke]
So, if all goes well,

at ten minutes to 2:00
on Saturday afternoon,

that's ten minutes to 8:00
in the morning here,

Borman, Lovell, and Anders will be sitting
up there, one minute from launch,

on a mission that has more risks in it than
the Americans have ever tolerated before,

and on a rocket
that has only flown twice.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Apollo 8, you're looking good.

[Astronaut over radio]
[indistinct] We're looking good.

[Flight Controller over radio] Apollo 8,
Houston. You're a go for staging, over.

[Astronaut over radio]
Roger that.

[Bostick] There was a real
sense of the magnitude

of what we were doing
within the Control Center.

We quadruple checked every number
that we sent up to the crew.

You know, nobody said anything to
each other, but you could just tell,

you know, by looking around

that yes, he's having
the same thoughts that I am.

This is no simulation,
this is for real.

[Moon]
Trans Lunar Injection, TLI,

when they did those things,
you knew you were on your way.

I mean, [laughs]
there was no time to come back

except to go around the moon
and come back, you know.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Now he's counting for two...

[Astronaut over radio]
...one.

[Lovell] It put us on
a course to the moon,

25,000 miles an hour,
all the way,

and we could actually,
if we wanted to,

coast all the way to the moon.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Trajectory, guidance, flight dynamics,

everybody in the front, what's called the
Front Trench of this control center,

says they're happy,
and that includes the booster.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Kranz]
During the Apollo 8 Mission,

I was not directly involved,

so I had the luxury,
and it was a luxury,

of feeling the emotions that

I'm sure the people in the viewing
room were starting to feel...

the emotions that the people
out in the world were watching.

I mean, they were watching this crew go
to the moon and basically describing it.

And instead of having to
stay focused on the next event,

the next thing,
when is the next call we got,

I could say,
"God, this is beautiful."

I mean, I cannot think of any place
I'd rather be in my entire lifetime

than to be here
in Mission Control.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Uh, this is Apollo Control Houston

at 68 hours, 52 minutes
into the flight of Apollo 8.

At this time, Glynn Lunney
has gone around the room

taking a status check
with his flight control team.

We look go,
we continue to stand by,

and this is
Apollo Control Houston.

[Lunney]
Here we go.

I was on duty for
the Lunar Orbit Insertion,

and we start
falling towards the moon,

and, uh, it's getting bigger.

There's a two hour orbit
around the moon,

and when you go behind the moon,

you have about maybe 50 minutes of
where you can't see the vehicle.

Well, that was
a very eerie feeling.

You know, we had...
Here we're going to the moon,

been talking back and forth with
the flight crew all of the way.

And then we have loss of signal,

you know, LOS,
and we can't talk to them.

[Lovell] Mission Control said,
"You're gonna lose

communication with us
at such and such a time,"

and to the second, that's
where we lost communication.

[Griffin] You could've heard a
pin drop in that Control Center.

I mean, this was the first time we
[clicks tongue] gone behind the moon.

You can't see it and we can't...
You don't have any data,

so we're depending on the space craft
working perfectly behind the moon,

because it can come out from the backside
of that moon, it can go anywhere.

It might be headed
into the damn lunar surface.

It might be headed
into deep space

if that engine screwed up
or the computer screwed up.

So I'm up pretty tight.

[Griffin] They had to do a
maneuver on the backside

to slow down to stay
in orbit around the moon,

and if they didn't
do that maneuver,

they would come out back into
view of the Earth at one time.

If they did do the maneuver, then
they would come back in another time.

And we had two
countdown clocks setup

so that we could countdown
to both of those.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Apollo Control Houston,

mark one minute from
predicted time of acquisition.

Apollo Control Houston,

Jerry Carr has placed a call,
we're standing by.

We've heard nothing yet
but we're standing by.

We've got it.
We've got it.

Apollo 8 now in lunar orbit.

[cheering and clapping]

[Griffin] Sure enough, they
came around the corner.

The burn had gone fine,
they were in orbit.

[Flight Controller over radio]
So, there's a cheer in this room.

Uh, this is
Apollo Control, Houston

switching now
to the voice of Jim Lovell.

[Griffin]
Big sigh of relief

'cause we knew
at least they were stable.

Now, whether we could get 'em out of orbit
that was, that was another question.

[Lunney]
I would say that all of us,

we probably spent the whole day

that we were in orbit around the
moon, in the Control Center.

Everybody was so keyed up.

Then, you know,
towards the end of this day,

Frank Borman comes on, says, you
know, they have something to say.

[Aaron] So I was just watching what
was going on with the space craft,

everything was nominal.

And then Frank Borman...

just started, said,
"In the beginning...

God created heaven and earth."

[William Anders on radio]

It hit me like a ton of bricks,

and then it hit everybody in that
Mission Control Center, I think,

whether they were faith based
or not, like a ton of bricks.

It made the hair
stand up on my neck.

[Anders on radio]

[Rod Loe]
It was, uh, such a moment.

None of us knew
that was gonna happen,

and, uh, you know, I'm not
ashamed to admit I was crying.

[Frank Borman on radio]

[Lunney] It just rang the
right bell for everybody,

and if you thought
about it for 40 years

and asked yourself "What could you
have said that was better than that?"

there wouldn't have
been another answer.

[Borman]
"And God saw that it was good."

We engineers are not poets.

We're not good at that but, uh,

I mean, it was a profound effect on
everybody that was in the Control Center.

[Borman on radio]

[Lovell] A screenwriter couldn't
have done a better job.

The year of 1968, in the US,
a very disastrous year,

with the Vietnam War going on,
and the elections going,

and the riots going, and the
killing of two prominent people.

To end the year by going around
the moon on Christmas Eve,

it all just fell into place.

[Astronaut over radio] Spider Gumdrop,
I can see your jets firing

just as clear as a bell.

We used to work
just crazy hours.

We would run
10 or 12 launch sims a day.

And it was grinding.

We were so consumed
with these flights

and exercising them
and so on and so on

that we never really had
sufficient time to savor them.

It took a toll
on the family, you know.

We weren't around that much.

The wives took over.
They did all that.

And, uh, they managed
the checkbooks,

they did everything.

If I could go back and do
all over with again,

I wouldn't do it.

It was that much of an impact
on my family.

NASA consumed my time.

[Deiterich] The simulation
team had a little room

right off the front
of the Control Center

with a glass window,
they could see us.

[Fendell] And when we ran a simulation,
which was a training exercise,

it included the Control Center,

it included the crew, the actual
crew usually, over the simulator,

and we were all interconnected
both data and voice-wise.

[Deiterich] So it was really a way
to check out all the ground systems

and, uh, develop procedures,

'cause if the didn't work in the simulator,
they weren't gonna work for real.

My nickname for the sim guys

"those who are out to get us."
[laughs]

They just kept throwing
problems at you all the time.

And they were trying to push us to our
limits and see where we were gonna go.

[Bales] We were about half way
through the landing simulation...

and we get this program alarm
in the computer.

[Kranz]
1201, 1202, you know, uh,

and everybody's wondering,
"What the hell is a 1201, 1202?"

[Lunney] Program alarms was the
computer's way of telling us

"You're asking me
to do too much."

I mean, we were very unfamiliar
with that, at least to me.

[Bales]
I call my back room,

Jack Garman was an expert at computer
programs, and he didn't know.

So I said, "Flight, something is happening.
I don't know what. Abort."

[Kranz] In Mission Control,
when we wrote the Mission Rules,

you need two cues
to call an abort.

And that was when
we started the debriefing,

the simulation supervisor
came in and said,

"Well, you had one cue,
what was your second one?"

And there was total dead
silence in that room.

After the debriefing was over,

Gene said, "I want you
to get that team together

"and you tell me which alarms you're going
to continue on and which ones you're not."

So I said,
"Jack, you pull together MIT,

"the people that built this
computer, and anyone else you can,

come up with the list,
brief me on it,

and that's what
we'll write as a rule."

And that's exactly
what Jack did.

[lively music playing]

[TV Announcer] Cape Kennedy's dreaming
towers, launching pads for lofty ideals.

Collins, Armstrong and Aldrin,

the three men chosen for
mankind's most historic mission,

to reach a new world and return
with a handful of dust.

[Kraft] The scientists
were not very happy

that we hadn't done
everything they wanted to do,

and I had said to them,

"Look, I'm not gonna listen to anymore
of the things you want to do."

I said, "We are
going to the moon.

"We're going to
land on the moon,

"we're gonna get our ass off
of the moon as fast as we can,

"and still picked up
some samples,

"and make sure the space craft's
ready to go, and we're coming back

"because we want
to prove to ourselves

"that all the things that we thought
about to fly there and back

are correct and done well."

[Lunney]
It was time for Apollo 11.

There was a lot of emotions
in the Control Center.

The team was comfortable.

The team was satisfied that we had
done everything we knew how to do,

to be sure that this was
as safe as we could make it.

[Kranz]
We had a security guard.

This guy here is exuberance,

and he comes up and says, "So we're
gonna land today, Mr Kranz,"

and all of a sudden,
that was different.

The room was already
starting to fill up,

not just in Mission Control, the controllers
on that shift were coming on duty,

but also, there was
a visitors viewing room

and it was filling up
with every NASA manager

that had ever had
anything to do with Apollo.

[Charlie Duke] I was anxious, you know.
It's a big deal.

So I was really focused on it and
was really excited, actually.

This meant today's the day,
you know, we're gonna do this.

[Kranz]
Everything was on track.

We're ahead of the Flight Plan
right on down the line.

We had a private conference loop

that was accessible only to the
people in the control room.

The outside world couldn't hear it,
the managers couldn't hear it.

He just talked to us.

[Kranz]
And basically I indicate

that I believe
we were born for this day,

we were meant to be here.

We did a great job
preparing for this mission.

And then I said, "I will stand
behind every decision you will make.

We came into this room as a team
and we will leave as a team."

I can remember that today as
well as if it was a second ago.

I can remember the words,
I can remember what he said,

and that made
all the difference in the world.

And then I said, uh,
"GC, go to battle short,"

and he went up and locked
the control room doors,

and these doors would not be reopened until
we had either landed, crashed, or abort.

[Flight Controller over radio]
This is Apollo Control

at 102 hours, 12 minutes
into the flight of Apollo 11.

We're now two minutes 53 seconds
from reacquiring the spacecraft.

Twenty-one minutes, 23 seconds

from the beginning of the powered
descent to the lunar surface.

[to Apollo 11] Fine control
with the burn attitude.

[Astronaut over radio]
Rog.

Here's the moon
and here's the orbit you're in.

And here you do PDI,
Powered Descent Initiation.

And Kranz goes to every position,
"Are you go or no-go?"

You got to be "go" or we
ain't gonna start that burn.

-[Kranz] Okay, Retro?
-Go.

-Fido?
-Go.

-Guide?
-Go!

-Control?
-Go.

-Telcom?
-Go.

-GNC?
-Go.

-EECOM? Surgeon?
-Go.

CAPCOM we're go
to continue with PDI.

[Kranz]
The principle challenge was,

"Did I have enough information
once we started down?"

And we have to update
the computer's knowledge

of altitude above
the lunar surface.

[Astronaut over radio]
Okay, we got data back.

Radar, Flight, looks good.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Rog.

[Bales]
Good news.

The landing radar
catches on at 39,000 feet.

I thought my big problem
for the day was over.

Unfortunately,
it was just starting.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Stand by.

[Bales] 1202. Oh, my goodness,

one of those codes
that we had during the sim.

It was like the... The sim wasn't
exactly that, but it was close,

and I was frantically trying
to remember which code that was.

Well, when that came, I thought
we were dead in the water.

[Astronaut over radio]
Yeah, the same thing we had.

[Bales] We get the information
that it says 1202,

but I'm still trying
to remember,

and Jack Garman is screaming,
"Steve, it's on our little list!"

And I just finally...
By the time I see my list,

he was about several seconds
before I was and I said...

[Bales over radio]
We're go on that, Flight.

[Kranz over radio]
We're go on that alarm?

[Bales over radio] If it
doesn't reoccur, we'll be go.

And that took us
all of 20 seconds maybe,

but that's a lifetime in the
middle of powered descent.

Bales knew that it was
still flying the machine,

and we were still going.

[Astronaut over radio]
Delta H is looking good now.

[Kranz over radio] Okay, all
flight controllers, hang tight.

Should be throttling down
pretty shortly.

Okay, all flight controllers,
go/no-go for landing.

-Retro?
-Go.

-Fido? Guidance?
-Go. Go.

-Control?
-Go.

-Telcom?
-Go.

-GNC? EECOM?
-Go. Go.

CAPCOM, we're go for landing.

[Bales over radio]
Same type. We're Go, Flight.

[Kranz over radio]
Okay, we're Go.

[Duke]
And then, as he pitched over,

there was a big boulder field
down there, and he can't land.

[Kranz] There's craters in there,
there's big boulders in there.

Somebody said that Armstrong's
thought he just got a 50-50 chance

they would get to land on it
or have to abort.

And I think he was probably the
coolest hand out there on that day,

and he had thought about this a hundred
times or more, in terms of landing it.

[Duke]
He had to level off,

then he had to fly horizontally
to get over this boulder field.

Well, that took
a lot of extra gas.

[Carlton] As we kept going down,
the low level sensor tripped,

and said if fuel dropped
below this point...

-[Astronaut over radio] Low level.
-Low level.

Now we're almost run out of gas.

Fuel critical.

I started the stopwatch.

[stopwatch ticking]

We're down at
one lunar G hovering,

and I know
how fast that uses fuel,

and I know
how many seconds are left.

I was giving a running, uh,
commentary for Mission Control,

and Deke Slayton
was sitting to my right.

He was Director
of Flight Crew Operations,

and he punched me in the side

and said, "Shut up, Charlie,
let 'em land." [laughs]

[Flight Controller over radio]
I think we better be quiet now.

[Carlton over radio] Okay, the only
call outs from now on will be fuel.

[Astronaut over radio] Okay, Bob, I'll be
standing by for your call outs shortly.

[Carlton]
On my stopwatch,

I put a little piece
of Scotch tape and said,

"Okay, at this point now,
we'll have 60 seconds left."

And a little up further,
we got 30 seconds left.

And a little further,
we got zero.

We were set up
so that the astronaut knew

when you reached a point,

either he's going to land
or he's going to abort.

[Duke] I am convinced that
within 100 feet of the moon,

I'd have called "abort," he
would've continued his descent.

-[Astronaut] Sixty.
-Sixty seconds.

And that control room got quiet.

It just felt like everybody was just glued
to their consoles and holding their breath.

[Bostick] The last 10 or 12 seconds
of that landing was very tense.

You know,
are we gonna do this or not?

[Carlton] And I was
looking at the altitude

and I thought
we're not gonna make it.

There's no way. There's too
much altitude for us to drop,

but I didn't know
we were in a crater.

And when they come up to the lip of
the crater, you only come along here,

and I'm showing
this much altitude.

When they come over
on the plateau, bam,

it did a step jump.

And shortly after that,
Buzz said, "I see dust."

Ah, it was a sigh of relief.

[Astronaut over radio] Putting feet down.
Two and a half.

Picking up some dust.

Three feet.
Two and a half down.

Big saddle.

Four forward.

Four forward.
Moving it to the right a little.

Thirty seconds and a half.

Thirty seconds.

[Aldrin]
Contact light.

Okay, engine stopped.

ACA out of descent.

Prepare to shut down.

We landed with 18 seconds
left on the stopwatch.

[Flight Controller over radio]
We copy you down, Eagle.

Okay, standby for T1.

[Armstrong over radio]
Tranquility Base here, The Eagle has landed.

[Flight Controller over radio] Roger,
Tranquility. We copy you're on the ground.

You got a bunch of guys
about to turn blue.

We're breathing again.
Thanks a lot.

[Armstrong over radio]
Thank you.

[Flight Controller over radio]
You're looking good here.

[Armstrong over radio] Okay,
we're gonna be busy for a minute.

[Griffin]
Then it finally dawned on us,

you know, we just
landed on the moon.

And we're not talking about landing
in an airport or something here.

We're talking about
landing on the moon.

[Kranz over radio]
Okay, keep the chatter down in this room.

[Kranz] Everybody's applauding
behind us in the control room,

but we've got to stay
totally focused.

Is it safe to remain here for the
next two minutes, yes or no?

Is the space craft going
to tip over, fall over?

Are we in a crater?
Are we sliding down?

So we had a variety
of questions we had to answer.

[Kranz over radio] Okay, T1.
Stay/no-stay. Retro?

-Stay.
-Fido?

-Stay.
-Guidance?

I remember Kranz
went around "stay/no stay."

Of course you couldn't say
"Go/no-go."

You had say "stay/no-stay," and so we
said "stay." Everybody said "stay."

[Bales] Right after this,
the final stay/no-stay,

somebody grabs me
by the shoulders.

And I looked up
and I said, "Oh my god."

Chris Kraft was also
in charge of the software,

of the computer software,

managing it before
the first Apollo flights.

And so he knew what
could have happened.

He knew the rules pretty well,

and yeah, that was really...
That was really quite a thing.

[Lunney] To finally get there
and to be down there is...

First time, you know, in the
history of the human race,

that anybody has
done something like that.

And it's like,
the team delivered this.

[Kranz]
It was impressive.

This was the ultimate,
ultimate, ultimate

testing of the teams
in Mission Control

and the culture
established there.

[Fendell] And eventually,
we did a shift change,

and I stopped to get something
to eat, some breakfast.

And as I walked in,
I bought a newspaper.

Well, that newspaper's
about three inches thick.

I still happen to have
that newspaper by the way.

And, uh, I sat down
at the counter

and I ordered my scrambled eggs,
and I'm drinking my coffee,

and I'm looking at all of this, we've
landed on the moon, all the things.

Two guys walked in
and sat down next to me,

and one of them
said to the other one, he said,

"You know, I landed
in Normandy on D-Day."

And I'm listening,

and then he said,

"I was never prouder to be
an American than yesterday.

We landed on the moon."

It then hit me what we had done.

[Armstrong on radio]

[cheering and applauding]

[Richard Nixon] The man that
has been selected tonight

to receive this
group achievement award

for the whole 400,000
who, in one way or another,

have contributed to the success
of this program is a young man.

Steve Bales, when the computers
seemed to be confused

and when he
could have said "stop,"

or when he could have
said "wait," said "go."

Thank you, Mr. President.

[crowd applauding]

[Kelly]
Apollo 12...

started off just like
any other mission.

[TV Announcer] The countdown for
Apollo 12 still going at this time.

Project officials are still keeping
a close eye on this weather front

that has moved into the area more rapidly
than anticipated earlier this morning.

I got a flight awareness award.

So I got to go down
to watch the launch.

[Flight Controller over
loudspeaker] T-minus 20.

[Moon] I'm sitting out
there in the rain,

three miles away.

[Flight Controller over loudspeaker]
We have guidance internal.

Ten, nine, eight...
Ignition sequence start.

Six, five, four, three,
two, one, zero.

All engines running.
Commence liftoff.

We have liftoff at 11:22 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time.

[Moon] The Saturn V was
a powerful vehicle,

and once one lights off, you can
feel your clothes pulsating.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Tower clear.

I'm feeling pretty spunky.

You know, here's my first time
as a lead flight director,

a launch flight director,
you know.

[Pete Conrad over radio] Pete Conrad
reporting the roll and pitch program

to put Apollo 12
on the proper course.

[Aaron] Thirty or so
seconds into the flight...

[Flight Controller over radio]
Roger, Pete.

[lightening crashing]

I see two streaks of lightening
down each side of the vehicle.

Wow, the crew came alive.

All the data went blank.

All my console lights, I mean,
just lit up like a Christmas tree.

And I watched John.
John just sat there.

I don't remember him
talking to the back room.

[Griffin]
The thought that I had first is,

I'm going to be the first guy
that has to call an abort.

I looked at my data...

And he just stared at the data
and stared at the data...

I said, "John,"
I said, "Talk to the back room,"

and John ignored me.

[Kelly]
And all of a sudden,

there was some patterns
and stuff on the screen.

I wasn't too sure at first
what they were.

but then, then I said, you know, I
thought to myself, "I've seen this."

"Bang, I've seen this before."

And it turned out he had seen
what the data would look like

from a ground test
which he remembered.

And that's when it clicked.

The Signal
Conditioning Equipment, SCE.

And then John Aaron said, "Flight,
tell 'em to go SCE to AUX."

And Jerry Carr said, "What?"

"What is that?"

John came in over
top of both of us and said,

"Signal Conditioning Equipment
to Auxiliary."

It went to the space craft.

[Griffin] Al Bean knew
where the switch was.

He reached down, he flipped it,

and as soon as he did,
voila, we had it all back.

[Aaron over radio] We got it
back, Flight, looks good.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Okay.

[Aaron] Now, it's that
SCE to AUX fixed the problem.

SCE to AUX was the thing that
allowed me to get the data back.

[Griffin] But the one
thing I kept looking at

was the trajectory plot, which we
had on a big display in the front.

It was right on.

[Kraft] And that's when
I told Gerry, I said,

"Look don't put yourself
under so much pressure.

"We don't have to go
to the moon today."

"We can just do some tests, and
the three of them will come home,

and go the next time."

And all he was really saying is,
"Your call," you know.

I said, "Well, it's your job.

"You know, that's what you guys know
better than I do, how to do this.

"I just want you to know that you
don't have to be under the hammer,

"or the pressure
of making a bad decision,

"so you make a good one...

and I'll accept it."

[Griffin] But we kept checking
things out, and sure enough,

it was okay, so we...
"Let's go for TLI."

So here we went.

And, you know, the mission after that
was one of the cleanest we ever had.

[Griffin] And we had a hell
of a party, I remember that.

[Deiterich]
After splashdown,

we would go down to The Singing
Wheel and all have a beer together.

We would party
and just have a great time.

[Loe]
Splashdown parties were, uh,

a lot of good-natured joking back and
forth with the other disciplines.

Like, you know, "Boy, you really
screwed that one up today."

It was eyeball to eyeball, pointing
fingers and shaking fists at each other.

You didn't pull any punches,

but everybody was friends.
There's no doubt about that.

I mean, we were
all in this together.

[Fendell]
Drank a lot of beer.

It was really a terrific time.

Made us all a better
team for it, I think.

[Lunney]
I got to the Control Center

and I was due to go on
shift an hour later.

Uh, everything seemed
to be going fine.

[Liebergot] Normally, the last
hour of the eight-hour shift,

we would prepare the crew
for their sleep period.

And there were certain things that we had
in the checklist that had to be done.

One of the items was stir the
cryos, oxygen and hydrogen.

[Flight Controller over radio]
Initiate EECOM.

[Astronaut over radio]
Go ahead, COM.

[Flight Controller over radio]
You got your stir now in the O2?

[Liebergot]
So we stirred the cryos.

[radio static]

And all hell broke loose.

[Kranz over radio] What's the
matter with the data, EECOM?

[Liebergot over radio]
We got more of a problem.

[Kranz over radio]
Okay, listen, listen, you guys,

We've lost, uh, fuel cell
one and two pressure.

[Liebergot over radio]
We lost O2 tank 2 pressure.

[Kranz over radio]
GNC, you wanna look at it?

Okay. Stand by,
they got a problem.

Well, basically, I had a whole
bunch of problems reported to me.

I was wondering which one
he was talking about.

[Lunney] I came in and
plugged it back in.

Sat down next to Gene.

The first reaction was, well, look maybe
we're having an electrical problem here

and it affects the telemetry
and the instrumentation.

[Kranz over radio] You see an
AC bus undervolt there, EECOM?

[Liebergot over radio]
Negative, Flight.

We may have had an
instrumentation problem, Flight.

[Kranz over radio]
Rog.

[Liebergot]
I said, "I think we've had

an instrumentation
problem, Flight,"

and that was probably
the biggest understatement

in the history
of manned space flight.

I mean, I couldn't have
been more wrong. [laughs]

[Kranz over radio] Well, let's get
some recommendation here, Sy,

if you got any better ideas.

Naturally, I got a little panicky.
[laughs]

You know, when you begin to panic,
this gorge comes up in your throat

where you get to the point
of fight or flight,

and a fleeting thought of getting
up and going home did pass my mind,

and of course,
that was not an option

and I knew that.

[Kranz over radio] Can we
review our status here, Sy,

and see what we've got
from a standpoint of status?

What do you think we've got
in the space craft that's good?

[Liebergot over radio]
Stand by, Flight.

[Liebergot] So, and then
when I got settled down,

I said, "You know, it does appear
we've actually lost two fuel cells,

and I really don't know why."

[Lovell]
We didn't know what happened.

It wasn't until
I looked out the window...

that I realized
how serious we were.

[Lovell] When I saw that
oxygen being expelled,

I realized it was
not just oxygen

but the electrical power
and the propulsion system.

[Lunney] It was beginning to
dawn on the Control Center

that maybe this is a real problem that we
got here and, uh, it's not gonna go away.

[Liebergot over radio]
Uh, Flight, we're gonna hit 100 PSI

in and hour and 54 minutes.

That's the end, right there.

[Kranz] And that is where,
basically, my frame of mind changed

to survival mode.

I call my controllers and say,

"Okay, all flight controllers,
settle down, quit your guessing.

Let's start
working this problem."

[Kranz over radio] Okay, now,
let's everybody keep cool.

Let's make sure
that we don't do anything

that's going to blow our electrical
power with the batteries

or that will cause us
to lose fuel cell number two.

We've got
the command module system,

so we're in good shape
if we need to get home.

Let's solve the problem but let's
not make it any worse by guessing.

[TV Announcer] Here is a
bulletin from ABC News.

The Apollo 13 spacecraft has had a
serious power supply malfunction

that could cause the lunar landing
mission to be terminated early.

As soon as we heard it,
you know, we all came in

to do what we could to help out.

People came from everywhere,
all across the country.

When I got there, of course,
I went to the back room,

it was chaos.

They were still trying to recover
their sanity from what had happened,

and they were
beginning to regroup.

[Aaron] I didn't even
initially put on a headset.

I just walked
behind the consoles

and listened to them over the voice
ways, what problem were they working.

That damn room
was in serious confusion.

And it took me a while to come to
that conclusion, but it was true.

[Cernan] Failure was, for quite a
while during that period of time,

may have not been an option,

but it was out there lurking,
uh, in a dark sky.

It was just... It was just almost
daring us to make a mistake.

[Duke] They were slowly
losing electrical power,

and it wasn't going to be long until
all the fuel cells were offline,

so now we're on entry battery.

[Aaron] I walked up and sat
down next to the EECOM.

Sy Liebergot, he was
on there, I said, "Sy,

this problem, you're not
gonna fix this one."

So I said, "You gotta shut
the Command Module down."

And you can imagine
the reluctance to do that.

[Liebergot over radio]
Flight, EECOM.

[Kranz over radio]
Go ahead, EECOM.

[Liebergot over radio] The pressure in
O2 tank 1 is all the way down to 297.

We better think about getting in
the LM, or using the LM systems.

[Lovell] We were in
serious, serious trouble,

and the only way that we could
possibly save ourselves

was using the Lunar Module.

[Deiterich] Ordinarily, when
you're going out towards the moon,

you can turn around and burn the big
engine straight at the Earth and get back.

However, the big engine just had
a big problem back there

and we didn't know
how bad that was.

We could actually do a big burn

with the descent engine
on the Lunar Module.

There was not that much longer
to go around the moon.

So my input was let's get on
a free return right away.

[Flight Controller over radio]
This is Apollo Control, Houston,

here in Mission Control, we're looking...
now looking towards an alternate mission.

Swinging around the moon and using
the Lunar Module power systems,

because of the situation that has
developed here this evening.

[Lovell] I had to maneuver
to get back into an attitude

which Mission Control
figured out.

And there I learned
something very important,

because the Lunar Module
had never been designed

to be maneuvered with the Command
Service Module attached.

So I literally had to learn,
in a short period of time,

how to maneuver the space craft,

but I got that technique,
fired the Lunar Module engine,

and that put us back
on the free return course.

[ominous music playing]

[Lunney]
We are about 70 hours from home,

and we have a plan for carrying
out the rest of the mission,

but there is gonna be
no relaxation at all

as far as that goes,
from now until splash.

I did not appreciate how much
reaction we were getting

from the outside world.

It didn't sink on me till later how
connected everybody seemed to feel

with these three guys.

Uh, you know, they didn't even know them,
didn't know their names or anything,

but the whole world
seemed to be united

in pulling for this
to come off well.

[Burke] The situation
is extremely critical

and we are monitoring it
at all times.

We'll be back with
another report at 12.30

and then you can see a full analysis
of what's happening at 1:00.

[Fendell]
We all smoked.

And when I say smoked,
we really smoked.

When you went into the Control
Room, you came in that side door,

and when you opened that door,

a cloud of smoke
came out the door.

That's how much smoke there was.

Apollo 13 brought out
some very interesting things

because it wasn't like you got cleaned
up and dressed to come to work

and put on your shirt and tie

and brushed your teeth, and
used your underarm deodorant,

you went running, right.

We were there for 35 hours...
straight.

I think I wore the same set of clothes
for at least three or four, five days.

I slept in SSR on the floor.

I was under a table back then.

It was pretty ripe.

Sleep meant nothing,
change of shifts meant nothing,

personal problems meant nothing.

There was only one thing
for 48 hours...

that the entire team of people,
led by Mission Control,

the guys could not solve
their problem up there in space.

There was only one thing
on their mind,

to get those guys home.

[Griffin]
We had been trained to think,

don't ever give up
as long as you've got options.

And we never ran out of options.

The team was just non-stop.

The whole way back, people just
kept inventing new things,

new innovations
and new ways to do things.

It's a question of having
this incredible ability

to basically make sense
out of things

that were almost
beyond our comprehension,

and find the piece parts where we
could start fitting them together

and start pulling
this puzzle back.

[Lovell] I could see the Earth starting
to get bigger and bigger really,

realized that
we had to have instructions

of the best way to power up
the Command Module.

And so I kept asking,
very politely at the time,

"Do you have
those instructions?"

And they said, "We're working
on it, we're working on it."

[Kelly]
The original power-up document

started off with John Aaron
and I on a blackboard.

We kinda drew some things
on the board, some rough ideas,

that was the beginning
of the document.

I knew basically what equipment you had
to have on to do a certain function.

That then started
the whole process

of how to build all the detail
switches and circuit breakers,

what sequence
you had to do this in,

and it's all very compressed.

From there it just
started growing,

and people would start inputting their
piece of their turf, their territory.

And one organization
wanted this.

Well, that had to
come back into the document,

and actually through
John and I to say,

"Hey, can we afford
to do that power-wise?"

And we worked out all the bugs,
all the procedures,

and the final document was, of course,
then approved and read to the crew.

Tomorrow morning, Eastern time,

the space craft will approach
the Earth looking like this.

This is the way it looks now.

About five hours before it
reaches the Earth's atmosphere,

the men in the Command Module
will jettison this part here

called the Command...
The Service Module,

and it'll float away in space.

That will leave these two parts
of the space craft,

the LM here
and the Command Module here.

I don't remember saying,
"Hey, man, we've done it,"

because we hadn't yet, okay.

There were still
so many variables involved

that, you know, I was just
hoping what we did was right.

We didn't know whether the explosion
that we now knew had occurred,

what the entire effect was
on the Command Module.

We don't know whether the heat
shield's been damaged or what,

and has everything we have done
to save the crew going to work.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Bostick] Well, on all of
the returning flights,

we have
what we call "blackout."

[Griffin] There's a period
where they blackout

because of ionization, the heat.

And you couldn't
communicate through it.

So they couldn't talk to you
and you couldn't talk to them.

[Kranz] At this stage
in the space program,

we could compute when blackout will start
and when it will end within a second,

and we've never missed.

Well, in this case,
it started right on time,

and then when the time came
to come out,

uh, it didn't happen.

[Bostick] You know I started
thinking, "Oh, my god," you know,

"here we've done all of these
things to get them back home,

and, uh, something's happened
to the heat shield."

The thoughts going through my mind
at that time is, "They're gone."

There were concerns relative
to the management chain there

buzzing around
that we might have damaged

heat shield
or all that kind of stuff,

and that's to the point
where I just...

And I think this is true
of every controller.

You put out of your mind those
things you have no control over.

Don't worry about them,
that's the breaks of the game.

If that's it, so be it.

So we sat there and we sat
there and we sat there,

and I forget how long
it actually was late.

[Flight Controller over radio] CAPCOM,
why don't you try and give 'em a call?

And all of a sudden, we got the
word from a down-range aircraft

that ARIA has
acquisitioned a signal.

Bang!

[chuckles] We almost all
fell out of our chairs.

All of a sudden, it came alive.

And then the aircraft carrier
reported radar contact.

then they reported
a sonic boom and we said,

"Boy, we're re-entering
that sucker."

Crew was talking.

The relief of, uh,
that they were okay.

And then once we got contact,
we heard from 'em,

it went to pure elation.

And there was this
television camera view

looking up at the space craft

from the deck of the carrier,

and there were these
three big, old balloon chutes.

You know, the most
beautiful sight I'd ever seen.

[triumphant music playing]

[Kranz] The key things is until
that crew is on the carrier deck

and we hand over responsibility
from Mission Control

to the aircraft carrier
task force commander,

and when that is complete,

then we can
start our celebration.

[TV Announcer]
Here they are.

James Lovell, John Swigert,
and Fred Haise.

[Kranz] And celebration is
always in three phases.

We light up
the ceremonial cigar,

you pass the thing lit up
right along the line.

And now you open
the Control Room doors

and our back room controllers
can come in and join us.

Those are the real heroes of 13

because they're the ones who gave... They're
the people who gave us the answers.

And the third phase
in celebration

is pass out an American flag
to every controller,

and this is one that traditionally
Jerry Bostick started,

back when we set our first
space flight record as Americans

and rendezvousing
two space crafts.

So the end of the mission is,
is one of total exhaustion,

total feat, total exuberance...

that yes, our crew is home.

They're safe and we did
what we set out to do.

[triumphant music playing]

[Lovell] After the flight, in
discussions with the control people,

I said, "Well, we thought we would
deliberately not talk to you...

so that it might make a good
movie one of these days."

[laughing]

[cheering and applauding]

[Flight Controller over radio]
Three, two, one, ignition.

[Astronaut over radio]
We're on our way, Houston.

[McMillan]
After the Apollo 1 fire,

"tough and competent" became the
mantra of the flight control team.

Those are still the core of the principles
and the foundations that we live by.

Uh, I don't think that
has diminished at all.

[Flight Controller over radio] Guys, you can
start opening your cuff checklist to page seven.

We are in a terminate case.

[McMillan]
Our key priorities are always

crew safety,
vehicle safety, mission success.

And those don't alter,

but what "mission success" means
changes over time.

Those folks that
flew the early missions,

they set the standard.

They went through
the fire for us,

um, and we try to live up to
uh, the excellence

that they demonstrated
every day.

[train horn blowing]

[Griffin]
It's amazing.

I think it's amazing that we were
not only able to do it technically,

but the country let us do it,

the public and the congress and the
leadership and the White House.

Everything collided
and lined up correctly.

[Carlton] I had the
feeling of what it meant,

you know, we're making history.

I think all of us did.

And realizing that, there was a
sense of pride in what we're doing,

and a great feeling of gratitude that I
happened to stumble into it at the right time.

It was just a golden opportunity
to be a part of it.

[Kranz] Somehow or other,
when we came together,

we were greater
than the sum of our parts.

We became capable

of doing what, in most cases,
would be considered impossible.

We were better than
we ever expected to be.

We were more successful
than we were expected to be.

And really, with the exception of
a bad accident on the launch pad,

we brought every crewman home.

[Cernan]
We the astronauts,

we were always
the tip of the arrow,

but Mission Control were
sort of like the feathers.

They pointed us
in the right direction.

They made sure we were gonna
get where we wanted to go

and get home safely.

I'm just proud of the people
that were involved.

They never let me down.

They never let the system down,
they never let NASA down,

they never let the country down.

And if you're looking
for patriots, they are they.

Every one of them.

[triumphant music playing]