All language subtitles for Tales.From.The.Explorers.Club.S01E03.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG

Explorers Club member
and NASA hero, Jim Lovell,

intends to plant
the Explorers Club flag
on the moon.

Little does he know,

his mission will be remembered
for all the wrong reasons.

[loud thuds]

Houston, we've had a problem.

[Josh] Test pilot and icon
Chuck Yeager
smashes the sound barrier

and paves the way
for club member Brian Binnie

to attempt
an even loftier feat.

If he succeeds,
he'll win $10,000,000.

And in 1969,
a future pioneer
of space travel

watches in awe
as Neil Armstrong

forever alters
our relationship
with the cosmos.

[Armstrong speaking]

[Josh] Decades later,
he too will make history

and could quite possibly
change the future
of space travel

for all of us.

Here at the Explorers Club,
it's time for lift off.

Welcome to the world-famous
Explorers Club.

For over 100 years,

this has been
a gathering place

for trailblazers.

The people who dare
to venture higher,

further, and faster.

As a member
of this exclusive club,

I'm bringing one-of-a-kind
access to its archives...

This is incredible!

...Artifacts...

Oh, my word.

...And my fellow explorers.

This is actual lunar dust?

Unbelievable.

The expeditions planned here
have tested the boundaries
of human possibility.

It's flag has flown
on death-defying voyages
into the unknown

that forever changed
our world.

These are the greatest
adventures of all time.

These are...

Tales from the Explorers Club.

The extraordinary feats
achieved by
Explorers Club members

often go hand in hand
with profound danger.

The quest for
scientific progress
can be treacherous

and even fatal.

At NASA though,
risk is part of the job.

For Apollo 13's Jim Lovell,
Jack Swigert and Fred Haise,

a life or death scenario
would become all too real

on April 11, 1970
during a mission for which
failure was not an option.

To some of the country's
more superstitious citizens,

the number 13 is not
a reassuring designator

for just the third mission
to the surface of the moon,

but following
a picture-perfect launch,

most people let out
a sigh of relief.

It looks like everything
is going according to plan.

The gumdrop-shaped
command module,

which the astronauts
will call home

for the duration
of their journey,

is dubbed, "Odyssey,"
meaning a long voyage

marked by many changes
of fortune.

More than a little prophetic,
if you ask me.

The command module
sits atop the cylindrical
service module,

which houses the main engine.

Attached to the command
module's nose is Aquarius,

the lunar module,
which ferries the astronauts
to and from the moon.

With Lovell
is an Explorers Club flag.

While all club members
are engaged
in some form of field work,

it's a rare honor
to be granted the flag
for an expedition.

Apollo 13's
ultimate destination

is a 50-mile wide crater
in the Fra Mauro Highlands.

There, Lovell and Haise
will explore
and collect moon rocks.

And of course, plant that
Explorers Club flag.

[loud thud]

What the hell was that?

It's nothing, Jim.

Just Haise tripping
the cabin depressurization
valve in the limb.

Very funny, Freddo.

[Josh] Apollo 13's commander,
Jim Lovell, is no stranger
to space travel.

He's flown to space
three times already,

more than any other American.

The last time was as
the command module pilot
on Apollo 8,

the first mission to
successfully orbit the moon.

But this time, the plan is
to go a step further

and take a stroll
on the lunar surface.

Jack Swigert isn't even
supposed to be here.

He was command module pilot
Ken Mattingly's understudy,

but just three days
before launch,

Maddingly was exposed
to the German measles

and Swigert
had to take his place.

Even though this was to be
just the third moon landing,

the national attitude in 1970
had already become,

"Been there, done that,
got the moon rocks."

The TV networks didn't even
pre-empt their programming

for a live feed
from the spacecraft anymore.

But all that changed
on April 13,

the day Apollo 13
grabbed the world's
undivided attention

for all the wrong reasons.

As the astronauts
close in on the moon,

NASA assigns Swigert
a couple of routine
housekeeping chores.

Okay, stand by.

-[loud thud]
-Fredo, again? Did you--

I didn't do a thing,
I promise.

[Josh] That loud bang
they just heard
is unfortunately not a prank.

Far from it.

To learn more about
what Lovell, Haise,
and Swigert are up against,

I know just the guy to ask,

my fellow
Explorers Club member

and former astronaut,
Mike Massimino.

The beginning of the mission
seems like it's off
to a perfect start.

What goes wrong?

They were doing a routine,
uh, stirring of the tanks

to get a better
pressure reading

and there was a problem
with one of their sensors

and it was a short
waiting to happen.

-Okay.
-And once they initiated
that stirring of the tanks,

it created a short,
which created a spark,

which then led
to an explosion.

[Josh] Even though
they don't know
what's just happened,

the astronauts have trained
for situations like this.

They go into emergency mode,

trying to identify
the problem.

Moments later,
Mission Control hears

the scariest line
ever delivered from space.

Houston, we've had a problem.

Houston, we had a loud bang
associated with
the caution warning there.

Did we just hit a meteoroid?

No way, a meteoroid
would have torn us to pieces.

[bleeping]

We've lost two
of three fuel cells.

[Josh] Back in Houston,
flight director Gene Kranz

tries to bring order to chaos.

Mission Control's computers
are relaying so much
conflicting information

that the flight controllers
assume the instruments
must be malfunctioning.

[man] Roger to restart.

[Josh] Because if what
they read is correct,

Apollo 13 is in big trouble.

We've lost two
of our three fuel cells.

We're almost out of power.

[Josh] Minutes later,
Jim Lovell glances
out the window

and sees something
that strikes terror
into his heart.

[Lovell] Houston,
we are venting
something out into space.

Looks like a,
a gas of some sort.

[Swigert] That must
be our oxygen.

The oxygen is not just
for breathing in space,

it's also for power.

-Hmm.
-[Massimino] Liquid hydrogen,
liquid oxygen

feeds fuel cells,
which are,
the chemical reaction to that,

creates power so you can
charge your batteries.

So this is like
a double whammy for them?

Yes, and that I mean
better off than without
having breathing oxygen.

-[Josh] Right.
-You need both.

[Josh] To recap,
Odyssey's power
is nearly gone,

its critical oxygen
is almost depleted,

and it is tumbling
uncontrollably through space.

Some of our thrusters
may have been damaged too, uh,

I'm having a real hard time
smoothing us out.

[Josh] The word dire doesn't
do the situation justice.

Their spacecraft is dying.

As Swigert finally gets
Apollo 13 under control,

Lovell is struck
by a new reality,

his dream of walking
on the moon is over.

He will not be planting
his Explorers Club flag there.

But is difficult as
that realization is to ingest,

he can't dwell on it for long,
there are far bigger issues.

Like, will they be able
to get home?

An hour after the explosion,
with the command module's
systems crashing,

Houston radios the spacecraft,
and they come up
with a radical plan.

[Josh] The three-man crew
will abandon Odyssey
and relocate to Aquarius.

They quickly gather up
armfuls of food,
water, and technical manuals

and make their way
into the lunar module,

powering down
the command module
behind them,

to preserve what little
battery power it has left.

"Abandon ship,"

those are two words
you probably don't wanna hear
when you're in space.

They're doing
something they haven't
really trained for--

-Yeah.
-And they're using
this spacecraft

-in a way that it was never
intended to be used, right?
-Yeah, no.

The lunar module
was intended
to land on the moon

and get them back
to lunar orbit.

Now what they
had to use it for

was they were gonna
abandon ship of the,
of the command module--

-Right.
-Power that thing down,

cross their fingers
that in a couple days

it's gonna power
back up again,

and then live off of
the, the lunar module.

[Josh] The three
Apollo 13 astronauts

are now in a landing craft
designed for just two.

Mission Control calculates
the odds of them surviving
at less than ten percent.

If that doesn't paint
a gloomy enough picture,

Apollo 13 is now
more than 200,000 miles
from earth,

speeding farther away
with every passing second

at over 3,000 miles per hour.

While feverishly searching
for solutions,

Mission Control has the crew
haul out the lunar module's
flight manuals.

Here's a good life lesson,

never leave home without
your instruction manual.

You never know
when you might need it.

To stretch their power,
the ship must operate
no more than 400 watts.

That's the equivalent
of just four
household lightbulbs.

Oh, and that also
includes their heat.

Soon, temperatures
will plummet,

but now is not the time
to worry about
creature comforts.

It is the time to figure out
how to get their
shattered spacecraft home.

These guys are in
a crippled spacecraft,
they need to get home.

Slight problem,
they're headed
in the wrong direction.

-Yes.
-So, how do you do
a U-turn in space?

What they decided to do,
instead of turning around
and firing an engine,

was to keep going
to the moon and use
a free return trajectory,

which means using
the gravity of the moon

to pull you in a little bit,
slingshot you around,

using physics
to head back home.

[Josh] The astronauts need
to fire the LEM's engine,

known as a burn,
to accelerate the ship
to 16 feet per second

and prepare them
for their free return course.

Their previous speed
was calculated for
an easy orbital insertion,

but that's the last thing
they want now.

If they're going too slow
when they get to the moon,

they'll fall into orbit
and never break free.

If they don't
get this just right,

the end of the mission
will be inexorably linked
with the end of their lives.

Three, two, one,

burn.

[Josh] The Astronauts
of Apollo 13

must fire
the lunar module's engine

in a maneuver known as a burn.

They have little
margin for error.

If they're going too slow
when they get to the moon,

they'll fall into orbit
and never break free.

As Lovell prepares
for the burn,

he realizes his shipmates
are distracted.

Boys, we don't make
this next maneuver correctly,

and you'll never have a chance
to get those photos developed.

Just a moment, boss.

You've been here before,
Jim, we haven't.

If we're gonna die,
I wanna at least capture
this one more second.

Roger that.

Three, two, one,

burn.

[Josh] Apollo 13 swings
behind the moon,

further from Earth
than any crewed spacecraft
before or since.

For 20 minutes,
they are out of contact
with Mission Control,

racing around
the far side of the moon.

Houston breathes
a collective sigh of relief

when communications
are re-established.

Two hours later,
Houston orders a second burn

to speed up
Apollo 13's trip home.

They don't have enough power
to take things slow.

They need to cut at least
12 hours from their trip,

or Apollo 13's
tale of survival

won't have a happy ending.

But first, Lovell must
make sure they're heading

in precisely
the right direction.

There's no Google Maps
in space.

Lovell suddenly realizes
he has a big problem.

Ordinally, the astronauts
would navigate using

the alignment
optical telescope,

the modern version
of an old sailor's sextant.

You lock in a known star,
verify its position in space
with the guidance computer,

and presto,
you're ready to go.

But Lovell can't
see any stars.

Damn it.

This debris cloud is so thick
I can't get a lock
on anything.

All I can see
is a bunch of metallic junk
glinting in the sunlight.

The sun.

That's when everyone realizes

there is one star
no debris field can
ever obscure, our Sun.

Apollo 13 is ready to burn.

Unlike the previous burn,
which lasted only seconds,

this burn will take four
and a half minutes,
a relative eternity.

The maneuver
is an initial success,

but for the crew,
time is not on their side.

At that point,
all they could do was wait.

The return trip was a test
of human endurance.

Apollo 13 had almost
no food or water.

The temperature was now
38 degrees Fahrenheit,

just six degrees
above freezing.

Oh, and the condensation
from the astronauts' breathing

was running down
the interior walls.

Their breathing, it turns out,
is slowly killing them.

Every exhalation
releases carbon dioxide.

The LEM is outfitted
with CO2 scrubbers.

They're only designed
to accommodate two people
for two days.

While there are some
CO2 scrubbers back
in the command module,

they're the wrong size
and shape.

After just a day
and half inside the LEM,
warning lights begin to pulse.

-The air inside the space
craft is turning toxic.
-[alarms blaring]

Something has to be done.

[alarms blaring]

This is where, uh,
the creativity

and the passion
and the dedication
of the entire team comes in.

It's not just the astronauts
on board

it's the control team
down on the ground.

And, and being done

very manually, like...

Yeah and not much else.

It's not, like,
"Oh, we'll just fire up
the old computer here"

-Right.
-It's, like, guys
with pencils, right?

Yes, absolutely.

[Josh] Luckily,
mission control has been

working the problem
back on Earth.

The develop a solution
using only items the crew
has at their disposal

to connect the command module
scrubbers to the LEM's
environmental system.

Things like socks,
cardboard binder covers,
and, of course, duct tape.

The MVP of all perilous
situations.

In the end, it's ugly,
but it works.

The CO2 levels normalize,

which, puns aside,
is a breath of fresh air
for Apollo 13.

Later, with Earth growing
ever larger,

it's time to prepare
the ship for reentry.

The first step
is jettisoning the crippled
service module.

As it floats away,
the crew gets their
first look at the damage.

They realize,
not for the first time,

that they're lucky
to be alive.

Next up, it's time
to head back
to the command module,

but NASA has never powered up
the command module
from a full shut down before.

Will it even restart,
given how little juice
is in the batteries?

And to make matters worse,
the condensation is so bad

that it is literally raining
inside the capsule.

If any of that water gets
anywhere near the internal
electrical components,

it will be the Apollo 1 fire
all over again.

If that command module
doesn't power back on...

-They're done.
-It's over.

That's right.

They need the command module,
the power back on,

so they can use it to get
through the Earth's atmosphere
and come back home.

[Josh] The astronauts execute
the sequence

to power up Odyssey
and cross their fingers.

Amazingly, it comes back
to life without a hitch.

A strategy
collectively developed

under the most urgent
of circumstances has paid off.

An hour before landing,
it's time to say goodbye
to Aquarius.

They cut the lunar
module loose,

silently bidding farewell
to the ship that saved
their lives.

Apollo 13 is soon enveloped
in ionized plasma.

Mission control loses comms.

This is normal, it happens
for about four minutes
on every mission,

but four minutes pass
and there is still no contact
from Apollo 13.

None of Houston's instruments
are reading the ship.

Four and a half minutes,
five, five and a half,

still nothing.

Questions swirled,
"Was anything else
damaged in the accident?

Did the heat shield fail?
Were the parachutes damaged?"

At this point, there are more
questions than answers

and the crew's lives hang
in the balance.

Following a near
catastrophic accident

that forced the astronauts
of Apollo 13

to immediately head back home
in a dying spacecraft,

Jim Lovell, Fred Haise,
and Jack Swigert

plunge into Earth's atmosphere
like a blazing meteor.

Flames lashed their windows.

If they didn't compute
their reentry just right,
they'll burn up.

And now, several minutes
after they should have already
appeared on NASA's scopes,

there's no sign of them.

But the heat shield holds.

To their indescribable relief
the crew of Apollo 13 hear
a comforting "Pop."

The main chutes deploy.

[all cheering]

Given all of their
recalculations,

the Odyssey's flight path
was at a much shallower
angle than normal,

taking them more time
to exist the atmosphere

and re-establish comms
with mission control.

Minutes later,
they splash down gently

in the warm waters
of the South Pacific.

Behind me,
still wrapped in its
original protective plastic

is the flag that Jim Lovell
intended to plant on the moon
during the Apollo 13 mission.

Lovell returned it
to The Explorers Club
with a letter.

He wrote, quote,
"Since we were unable to land,
the plans were disrupted,

and the flag has remained
as is since it was taken from
the spacecraft." End quote.

Plans were disrupted,
talk about an understatement
for the ages

and a testament
to Lovell's bravery.

Long before
the Apollo 13 mission,

NASA was teeming
with swashbuckling
young pilots

who, despite
the inherent danger,

were fighting to be
the first ones to test
brand new technology.

That's were many
Explorers Club members
have stepped up.

Putting their lives
on the line
to advance science.

And when it comes
to test pilots,

no one had the right stuff
quite like our own
Chuck Yeager.

Chuck Yeager
is an aeronautical legend.

Look in the dictionary
under fearless

and you'll likely
see his picture.

After becoming an ace pilot
in World War II

he turned his attention
to pushing the envelope
of speed.

His mission,
to be the first person
to break the sound barrier.

Breaking the sound barrier
is what happens when
an aircraft begins to move

faster than the speed
at which sound travels,

roughly 767 miles per hour.

When the aircraft
reaches this point,

it creates a series
of loud acoustic shock waves

called a sonic boom.

Travelling at such speeds
puts tremendous stress

on both the plane
and the pilot.

This stress is measured in Gs.

1 G is what you and I
experience everyday.

It is the gravimetric pull
of the Earth on a human body.

Pretty standard stuff.

But as the Gs go up,
the effects are anything,
but standard.

Piloting a fighter jet
causes the blood
to rush out of your head

depriving the brain of oxygen.

This is why pilots
wear pressurized G-suits.

To keep the pilots' blood
stable during periods
of high acceleration.

Without it, they succumb
to gray out,

in which they lose
their color vision.

And if they accelerate
further, they'll blackout
all together.

On October 14th, 1947,

just two years after the end
of World War II

and roughly 22 years
before Apollo 11 touches
down on the moon,

Yeager flies his rocket
powered Bell X-1
into the history books.

Two nights before the flight,
Yeager falls from a horse
breaking two ribs.

A military flight surgeon
would never have cleared
him to fly,

so Yeager keeps his injury
a secret, taping his ribs.

There's no way he is gonna let
a few broken bones stop him
from making history.

The experimental prototype,
nicknamed Glamorous Glennis
for Yeager's wife,

doesn't take off
on a runway like
a normal plane.

But rather is carried
in the belly of a B-29 bomber.

The X-1 is released
into the bright sun 20,000 ft
above the California Desert.

To reach the speed
of sound, X-1 requires
four rocket engines,

which Yeager ignites
one at a time.

The first rocket slams
him back into his seat.

He passes the chase plane
flying beside him
as if it's sitting still.

All around him
the X-1 shutters and shakes.

Engine two kicks in.

He never even realized
speed like this was possible.

Thankfully, the deafening
rattle seems to be dissipated.

Engine three.

There are some in the program
that think the Bell X-1

will shatter into pieces
when it hits
the sound barrier.

There's only one way
to prove them wrong.

Yeager fires off
the last rocket engine.

His machmeter,
which calculates the ratio

of the true air speed
to the speed of sound,

fluctuates erratically
before tipping
right off the scale.

According to his instruments,

Yeager is now flying
supersonic

and unexpectedly finds himself
on the steadiest and smoothest
flight he's ever experienced.

He assumes something
is wrong with his instruments,

when the tracking station
on the ground radios up to him

that they just heard
a distant rumble of thunder,

his sonic boom.

[sonic boom]

Yeager has done it.

He's the first human
to break the sound barrier,

paving the way for a new era
of supersonic flight.

Nearly 60 years later,

another test pilot
and Explorer's Club member,

Brian Binnie, would fly
a ground-breaking craft
to its destiny

after being dropped
from the belly
of a larger plane.

Its name, SpaceShipOne.

In 2004, the company
Scaled Composites

designed and built
a totally new type
of spacecraft

unlike anything
ever seen before.

That's the thing
about prototypes,

they require
someone brave enough
to prove they work.

Admit it,
SpaceShipOne looks weird,

like something out
ofStar Wars.

It's fashioned from advanced
carbon fiber composites,

making it far lighter
than a traditional craft.

Those enormous
awkward looking wings

are designed
to keep it stable
at 2100 miles per hour,

nearly three times
the speed of sound.

SpaceShipOne is built
to touch space

and uses a powerful
hybrid rocket engine

that burns
liquid nitrous oxide
along with solid rubber fuel.

Just like Chuck Yeager's
Bell X-1,

it's carried part of the way
on the belly of a mothership
named White Knight,

and it will fly above the same
California Desert.

The more things change,
the more they stay the same.

The plan is for SpaceShipOne
to be released at 50,000 ft

and fire it's rocket engine
to take it past the threshold
of space.

After three minutes
it will tilt it's wings
70 degrees,

to create resistance
called feathering
and land back on Earth.

The goal was to win
the coveted Ansari X Prize,

a 10 million dollar award
offered to anyone who builds
a private spacecraft

that flew into space twice
within 14 days

and safely returned
to the Earth.

Like me, Explorer's Club
member and Virgin Galactic
Experience architect

Joe Rohde has a fascination
with SpaceShipOne,

mostly because
it's science fantasy
made real.

SpaceShipOne legitimately
looks like a spaceship.

This is one of the best things
about it,

I mean, you have,
it looks like you imagine
them to be.

-It's like a whole
different approach.
-Yeah.

Because up to this point,
pretty much, if you wanna
get to space,

you need to shoot
a big heavy rocket

filled with a lot of fuel
straight up in the air.

That's right.

[Josh] Test pilot Mike Melvill
is the first one up,

on September 29th, 2004.

I was in attendance that day,
excited by the possibilities,

but vary of the inextricable
dangers that come along

with pushing the envelope
of scientific progress.

Earlier that summer,
Melvill successfully
piloted SpaceShipOne

on its maiden flight,

making him the world's first
commercial space pilot.

But now he needs
to go higher and faster,

completing the first
of the two flights necessary
to win the X Prize.

White Knight rises
from the Mojave Desert.

SpaceShipOne with Melvill
at the stick is released

and it's engines fire.

The spacecraft goes supersonic
in just 11 seconds,

pinning Melvill to his seat.

SpaceShipOne is in an almost
vertical climb.

4.5 Gs press down on Melvill,

that's more Gs than
astronauts experience
aboard the space shuttle.

At these supersonic speeds,
it's not just Melvill's body
that feels the stress,

the pressure locks
his joystick,

he's unable to steer
at 2000 miles per hour.

SpaceShipOne suddenly goes
into a spiral.

It corkscrews
through the atmosphere
a terrifying 29 times.

In addition to me,
two other observers that day
are Explorer's Club members.

One is pilot Brian Binnie,
who is slated to fly

the same craft
in just five days.

The second is Burt Rutan,
he is one who designed
and built SpaceShipOne.

I remember feeling
my heart in my throat

as the spacecraft began
tumbling through the air.

Luckily, SpaceShipOne
has entered a section
of the atmosphere

where the air
is significantly thinner,

meaning its wings
are nearly useless anyway.

Melvill takes advantage this
and use his reaction jets,

designed to move
the craft in space
to get it back under control.

SpaceShipOne arcs through
space for three minutes,

reaching a height
of 62.5 miles just above
the Karman line,

the internationally recognized
threshold of space,

then it rapidly descends.

As SpaceShipOne
hits the atmosphere,
a roar fills Melvill's ears.

[screams]

[breath trembling]

The feather mechanism
angles the wings into position

slowing the spacecraft
and reorienting it
for reentry.

But Melvill
is decelerating so fast

that he is hit
with a crushing 5.5 Gs.

His vision begins to tunnel,
he is about to blackout
and crash to the Earth.

All the three Club members
in attendance can do,

along with the everyone else,
is watch.

On September 29th, 2004,

SpaceShipOne
attempts the first
of two flights necessary

to win the 10 million dollar
Ansari X Prize.

Onlookers, both in person
and worldwide,
hold their collective breath.

They are witnesses to history.

And if things go
horribly wrong,

potential tragedy.

On his ascent,
pilot Mike Melvill nearly
loses control of the craft,

and on the descent,
the G-forces are so great
that he nearly blacks out.

Thankfully,
at about 60,000 ft,

Melvill is able
to shift the tail feather
into its glider position.

Despite beginning its descent
more than 20 miles off target,

he brings the space plane
in for a perfect landing.

[crowd cheering]

The guy gets out
and waves again
and you're, like,

"That guy just went to space."

That's right,
right in front of you.

Like, "He left a minute ago,
he went to space
and he's back."

That's right.

It blew my mind,
I couldn't believe it.

This was, like,
a whole different reality.

For pilot Brian Binnie,
who just watched

the pioneering
yet perilous flight unfold,

taking the controls
of SpaceShipOne again
in five days

is more than a little scary.

After it returns
to the hanger,

engineers worked
12-hour shifts

trying to figure out
what caused the vessel

to go into a series
of uncontrolled corkscrews.

It turns out, they'd seen
this behavior

on one of the very
first test flights.

SpaceShipOne tends
to roll when encountering

abrupt changes
in wind speed and direction,

especially when buffeted
by side winds.

The wind simply behaves
differently across
it's massive feathered wings.

There was no fix
that could be made.

This was the spacecraft
Explorer's Club member

and pilot Brian Binnie
would have to fly
to claim the X Prize.

Take it or leave it.

But according to Chuck Yeager,

describing how he felt
just minutes before
he broke the sound barrier,

quote, "This is the kind
of moment that a test pilot
lives for."

On October 4th, 2004,

the 47th anniversary
of the launch of Sputnik,

SpaceShipOne will attempt
another flight through
the stratosphere.

This time with Binnie
at the helm.

The same wind shear
that affected the first flight
is at play once again.

In another twist,
Melvill suggests he
might have caused the roll

by inadvertently stepping
on a rudder pedal.

Binnie has been living
in the simulator,

ensuring that when he
is controlling the real thing,
he'll be prepared.

It all comes down
to this moment.

To win 10 million dollars,
Binnie has to be perfect.

And perfect he is.

Binnie's hands, feet,
and SpaceShipOne are steady.

It doesn't roll a single time.

Binnie guides SpaceShipOne
just shy of 70 miles above
the surface of our planet.

The highest any private craft
has ever gone.

Now an astronaut,

Binnie brings SpaceShipOne
back to the ground
without a hitch.

He's cinched the X Prize.

[crowd cheering]

The success of SpaceShipOne
was only the beginning.

Scaled Composites partnered
with Sir Richard Branson
to create Virgin Galactic.

And eventually,
a fleet of ships,

which will carry citizen
astronauts into space.

But Virgin Galactic
isn't the only company

rewriting the rules
of space exploration.

Another Explorer's Club member
has a dream that was born

in a Houston suburb
when he was just
five years old.

A dream that started
with one small step.

On that momentous night
in the summer of 1969,

pretty much the entire
world is sitting around
their television.

Watching Explorer's Club
member Neil Armstrong

take his first giant leap
for mankind.

[astronaut] The EVA
is progressing beautifully.

[Josh] This moment
is a landmark in history.

The world is locked
in a cold war between
the US and the Soviet Union.

The space race is serving
as a proxy for the conflict

between communism
and democracy.

Both countries have spent
vast resources,

recruited top talent,
accelerated technology,

and produced new generations
of giant rockets.

Everything has all led
to this moment.

[woman] Okay, Jeffrey,
time for bed.

That young boy
grew up to become

one of the most powerful
entrepreneurs in the world.

Explorer's Club member
and honorary club chair,
Jeff Bezos.

Like so many kids of his era,
Bezos became obsessed
with space travel.

But before the cowboy hats
and his own suborbital launch,

Bezos undertook a mission
to find and recover

historic artifacts
from the Apollo program.

The Saturn V F-1 engines
that launched Apollo 11
to the moon.

Just one problem,
they were lost
in an oceanic abyss.

The Saturn V's
five F-1 engines

remain the most powerful
liquid fueled rocket engines
ever created.

At an altitude
of about 42 miles,

explosive bolts separate
the first stage from the rest
of the rocket,

propelling them upward
before falling into
the Atlantic Ocean,

roughly 350 miles down range
of Cape Canaveral.

The humongous engines
are now long lost
to the deep sea.

But the scale
and scope of this search
and recovery mission

doesn't deter Jeff Bezos,
he wants to find them.

Bezos really wanted
those Saturn V engines.

-Apparently so.
-Why? What, what makes
them so special?

Uh, I think a couple
of things.

-One is that they were
really powerful engines.
-Yeah.

Especially for back then,
they were gigantic.

-Right. They're huge, right?
-They're huge, like, 20 ft.

20 ft tall, they had amazing
amount of power,
one of those engines,

they had five of them
on the Saturn V,
but just one of 'em,

more thrust than we got out

-of all three shuttle
main engines.
-Wow.

And only used once,
which I think is
the other thing that

attracted his
attention to this.

It's that they
were thrown away.

[Josh] Bezos employs
theOcean Stalwart,

an exploratory ship equipped
for ultra-deep sea
search operations.

Finding the engines
is like looking

for a bell shaped needle
in an underwater haystack.

Bezos knows his quest
is a long shot,

which is why he sunk years
of research and cutting edge
tech into the hunt.

Ocean Stalwart scans
the Atlantic for a full month.

Using state of the art
deep sea sonar

to locate potential anomalies
in the rough area

where NASA predicted
Apollo 11's first stage
went down.

If the sonar identifies
anything that warrants
a closer look,

another ship,
theSeabed Worker,

will return to launch an ROV,

a remotely operated vehicle
tethered to the ship
like a marionette

with power cables
and fiber-optic data lines.

In March of 2013,

at a depth of nearly
three miles,

a half-mile deeper
than where theTitanic rests,

they find what they're
looking for,

not one, but several
mangled F1 engines.

The ROV's cameras capture
what Bezos later describes
as "An underwater wonderland,"

an incredible sculpture garden
of twisted F1 engines

that serves as a testament
to the Apollo program.

What followed next
was a nail-biting
deepwater ballet.

Hard as it was,
locating the engines
was actually the easy part.

The most difficult
part remained,

getting them off the seafloor
and back into the light of day

for the first time
in nearly half a century.

To advance our understanding
of the world through science
and technology,

Discovery is funding more than
20 Explorers Club expeditions,

and this one
could be a lifesaver.

An estimated 25,000 asteroids
roam our solar system

that are big enough
to obliterate a city.

But 70% of them
remain undetected.

Using a grant from Discovery,

former astronaut Dr. Ed Lu
is tackling that problem

by mapping every single
space rock he can find.

His map sounds like
the stuff of science fiction,

but it could help predict
impending impacts early enough
to take action,

allowing ample time
to deflect the asteroid
away from Earth.

NASA will test its latest
planet-sparing technology
in October of 2022

by crashing a half-ton
spacecraft called "DART"

into an asteroid
7,000,000 miles from Earth

at nearly 15,000 miles
per hour.

If humanity doesn't wanna go
the way of the dinosaur,

Dr. Lu's map might
just show us the way.

Jeff Bezos and the crew
of the Seabird Worker
had done the impossible.

After scouring the ocean floor
on two expeditions,

they'd finally located several
of Apollo 11's lost
F1 rocket engines.

But retrieving them
would prove to be
the hardest part.

While Bezos watches
on a screen aboard ship,

the ROV uses a robotic arm
equipped with a blower

to carefully clear
the area around the engines
of sediment,

before attaching hooks
and lifting the mangled metal
out of the mud.

The whole mission depends
on this working.

It's like trying to knit
with boxing gloves.

It takes several tries,

but they're
finally successful.

That's beautiful.

[Josh] Bezos compares
the ROV's buoyancy

while manipulating
the massive engine

-to working in microgravity.
-[crew cheering]

[Josh] It all leads back
to space.

The powerful ROV
carefully deposits pieces
of the 18,500-pound engines

into a large wading basket,

careful not to entangle
its critical tethers
with the container's lines,

before theSeabed Worker
raises it up

and into the light of day.

[crew cheering]

[Josh] But are these engines
actually from Apollo 11?

Bezos and his team
can't be sure.

Decades on the ocean floor
have obscured
the serial numbers.

They may be from any
of a baker's dozen
of Saturn V launches.

That's where Rory Golden
comes in.

He's the explorer
who discovered the brass
ship's wheel on theTitanic.

Bezos asks him to give
the engines a look over.

Armed with a black light
and a magnifying glass,

Golden is able to make out
the faintest remnants
of an ID number.

They have a side engine
of Apollo 11's first stage.

Their mission is accomplished.

Bezos wanted the engines
to be preserved
for all to see,

and both are now
on permanent display

at the Seattle
Museum of Flight.

Bezos really wanted
those Saturn V engines.

Yeah, to go and get those
pieces that were missing,

-that belong
in museums, really.
-Yeah.

It's a lot of history
and a lot of nostalgia.

I think it's a great way
to pay tribute

to the hard work
of the men and women
who made that possible.

Bezos has his sights
and his considerable resources

set on inspiring
the next generation
of explorers.

In 2000, he founds
Blue Origin,

a privately-held
space flight manufacturing
and services company.

Blue Origin continues to turn
civilians into astronauts

and hopes to eventually
return us to the surface
of the Moon.

But like all entrepreneurs,
Bezos has competition.

Fellow Club member Elon Musk
has his own vision
for the future,

one that leads all the way
to the Red Planet.

In 2014, at an Explorers Club
black-tie event,

SpaceX and Tesla founder
Elon Musk

accepts the President's Award
for exploration
and technology.

[crowd applauding
and cheering]

[Josh] Musk's SpaceX
is undeniably the commercial
space flight leader.

Their Falcon 9 rockets
shuttle both supplies
and astronauts

to and from the International
Space Station,

a capability
that at this time,

even NASA doesn't possess.

But Musk is dreaming bigger.

While the SpaceX
human landing system

will help ferry astronauts
to and from the Moon,

Mars is where Musk
wants to take humanity.

SpaceX's founding ethos
is to make humans
multiplanetary.

Space, according
to Captain Kirk,
is the final frontier,

which makes you wonder,

how far can Explorers Club
members Bezos and Musk
push that frontier's limits?

But that's the thing
about space,

it's right there in the name.

It's limitless,

filled with unimaginable
mysteries and adventure.

And for members
of the Explorers Club,

there's infinitely more
out there left to discover.