Original subtitles

In 1969, a group of astronauts change the world.

They ride the biggest rocket ever built to the moon.

It's the culmination

of more than 10 years of space pioneering

and a foundation for more than four decades

of exploring worlds beyond our own.

This is the story of our greatest adventure.

In the high desert of California,

NASA tests an experimental rocket plane.

The X-15.

They want to put a man into space...

...and they're in a hurry.

Rockets were powering aircraft

at higher and higher speeds.

The X-15 had enough energy

to zoom to altitudes above the atmosphere.

The X-15 flies so high,

pilots experience weightlessness

and look out into the darkness of space.

But even at 600,000 horsepower,

it would need to fly four times its top speed

to put a man into orbit.

The Soviet Union holds an early lead in the space race,

launching the first unmanned satellite to orbit the Earth.

On October 4, 1957, when Sputnik went into orbit,

people were so upset.

They said, "These people can't build a refrigerator.

How can they get into orbit?

How did this happen?"

5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

To beat the Soviets,

NASA must launch a man into Earth orbit.

Only rockets could go fast enough --

more than 17,000 miles per hour.

They call the program Project Mercury

and rally a team of determined young scientists and engineers

to figure out how to fly a military missile

with a man on top.

Most of us came in from aircraft flight desks,

and we knew nothing about rocketry,

or we knew nothing about spacecraft.

We knew nothing about orbits.

Gene Kranz joins the flight director's team

in NASA's earliest days.

So it was a question of learning to drink

from a fire hose.

We had to learn all about trajectories.

I'd never heard the term "retrofire,"

coming on down from orbit,

getting the spacecraft back home.

Kranz develops many of the mission-control procedures

for launching a man into space.

The Mercury program was --

To me, it was the most challenging,

because we had to virtually invent or adapt

every tool that we used.

No man has ever survived a vertical blast-off

on top of a rocket.

The risks are extremely high.

At first, even stuntmen are considered for the job.

There were suggestions

they take people like Evel Knievel

or race drivers or something like that.

And then President Eisenhower said

he'd rather have it be military test pilots.

Test pilots are trained to operate

and analyze experimental flying machines.

110 of the military's best pilots qualify.

NASA selects the top seven.

These, ladies and gentlemen,

are the nation's Mercury astronauts.

The Mercury Seven astronauts

become instant celebrities.

The press follows their every move.

You knew these guys.

You lived with these guys. You socialized with them.

They were the story.

Wally Schirra, a man of detail,

made the best textbook flight of them all.

Alan Shepard, extremely smart.

Scott Carpenter, the first scientist astronaut.

Gordo Cooper, the best pilot of the bunch.

Deke, nobody messed with.

Great human being in every way.

Gus Grissom, engineering savvy, quiet intellect.

John Glenn, civilized man, probably the most level-headed.

Glenn is already a public figure,

after making the first cross-country supersonic flight.

But even for a Marine, astronaut training is intense.

They ran us through every check they knew how to run.

I think, every medical test

they knew how to do on the human body.

It was a very thorough going-through.

Prepare to be at 0.5 G.

To carry the first astronaut safely into space,

NASA designs a pressurized capsule.

The one-man spacecraft replaces a nuclear warhead

as the payload for a Redstone missile.

But they're not ready to launch men into space.

I saw a lot of rockets launched.

I'd say that somewhere between 30% and 40% of them failed.

A lot of them came up off the pad

and went the opposite direction.

Some of them got halfway off the pad and blew up.

Some of them got to 10,000 feet

and turned the other way and blew up.

The whole thing crumbled and blew up.

It looked like an atomic bomb went off almost over our heads.

We got a big kick out of watching the Mercury astronauts.

It was great looking at their eyes.

We're looking at this thing and looking at each other

and deciding we want to go back and talk to the engineers

a little more before we go further.

Engineers make the rockets

more reliable for manned flight,

but doctors still aren't convinced the man on top

will be able to function in the weightlessness of space.

There was grave doubt in about 98% of the medical community

that the man could perform a task

when flying in zero gravity,

that he would have trouble seeing,

that he would have trouble swallowing,

he would have trouble breathing...

he would have trouble talking.

We had to prove to the medical community

that man would survive, in the first place,

and, secondly, that he could do a task.

It's not made public,

but John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and Gus Grissom

are on NASA's short list to be America's first man in space.

We were all very competitive.

We wanted to get those first flights.

January 1961--

The rocket and capsule are finally ready to fly.

But none of the astronauts are happy about NASA's choice.

A specially trained chimpanzee named Ham

will fly the next Mercury mission.

There was a group of professional naysayers

in Washington who insisted that we do some more work

to prove a 5-minute flight wouldn't be fatal to man.

NASA's medical team sends Ham

as a final test that man can function in zero G.

The astronauts fear they're losing precious time.

None of them liked it.

Alan was fighting to get rid of the chimpanzee.

He didn't want the chimpanzee to take up a rocket,

to take up a seat.

January 31, 1961--

Ham blasts off on a suborbital mission into space.

2... 1... 0.

Lift-off.

While weightless,

Ham's put through a series of tests and performs well.

Physically, he's unaffected by zero G.

Ham splashes down off-target.

He's fatigued, dehydrated, but generally in good shape.

His mission proves man can function in space.

But doubts remain about the reliability of the rockets,

and they still don't know who will fly first.

It had been a big mystery for a long time --

Who's gonna fly first?

The director of the Manned Spacecraft Center

finally reveals his choice.

Bob Gilruth came to our office,

and he named Al for the first ballistic flight.

Alan Shepard was chosen to be the first,

because he was considered to be the smartest

of the seven astronauts.

They felt, if Alan, on the first one, had anything went wrong,

he was more apt to be able to analyze

or fix or do or get it out of trouble.

After more tests and more delays,

NASA still hopes to put the first man in space.

There was certainly competition in the group.

Nevertheless, when it came time for a flight,

we worked together as closely as anybody could work together.

We had done everything we know how to do

to make this as safe as we can make it.

We're done with all the tests,

so we stand around and look at each other one last time

and ask, "Okay, are we really ready to light this candle?"

Eventually, the answer to that has to be "yes".

Alan Shepard's suborbital mission

finally has a launch date -- May 2nd.

But, on April 12th, NASA receives stunning news.

The Soviet Union puts a man into orbit and brings him back alive.

Cosmonaut Yury Gagarin becomes the first man in space

just 20 days before Shepard is scheduled to fly.

We were all very angry about not being able to fly

as quickly as we could have.

And we would have beaten Gagarin into space had we done that.

Al was not pleased at all.

He was very disappointed

that he was not to be the first spaceman.

And I was hoping for my friend Alan Shepard beyond hope

that he would be first,

and it tears you up to know he could have been.

Yet many milestones lie ahead.

The space race has only just begun.

John Glenn said, "Let's face it.

They beat the pants off of us.

Now let's all go on, and let's learn how to fly in space."

23 days later -- May 5, 1961, 2:40 a.m. --

Shepard's preflight medical.

After three days of delays, the final countdown has begun.

He was a cool cat.

But Alan Shepard was an educated daredevil.

Everybody was praying Alan could survive in space.

Inboard cutoff.

- Inboard engines out. - Inboard cutoff.

It was very exciting, very frightening,

to see a man come out of the trailer that he was in...

to look up at that vehicle...

ride the elevator up,

and then wait for us to get ready to launch.

5:21 a.m. --

Technicians strap him into the capsule.

Until the hatch is opened again,

Shepard's only link to the world is Deke Slayton,

the mission's Cap Com, or capsule communicator.

Downrange in the Atlantic,

the Navy prepares for Shepard's recovery.

45 million Americans watched the launch live on television.

Local beaches offer a front-row seat.

Everybody, including myself, came here.

We came any way we could.

The excitement here --

If you can imagine a million people outside these gates,

trying to push through these fences,

trying to see what they could see.

Everybody was praying and pushing for Alan Shepard.

T.M. is a go.

We have a momentary hold.

As the countdown progressed, we had frustrations.

They had problems with the spacecraft hatch.

And Alan Shepard was getting impatient.

Four hours later, Shepard is losing his cool.

Okay, if you would like to get an estimate...

You could see Alan Shepard's heart rate go up,

and it reached above 200.

Lord knows what my heart rate was.

There's nothing wrong with being frightened.

It makes you do a better job.

But no one at Mission Control

wants to give the final "go" for launch.

All of us were extremely apprehensive.

We had never had a human being on the topside of a rocket.

Resume the count.

I'm gonna turn it over...

It's Alan Shepard who decides

they've waited long enough.

Finally, he says, "Let's light this candle.

Let's go."

T-Minus 10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5...

He had one single-line prayer

that he said just before ignition.

"Don't mess this up."

But he didn't say "mess".

Ignition.

All right, lift-off, and the clock has started.

It was sort of like the first hit in a football game.

When that Mercury Redstone

rose above the tree line,

cars stopped.

People got out, hit their knees, and literally prayed.

This is F reedom 7...

We saw that guy go,

and we could track him for about the first 20 seconds

as he went through powered flight,

and then back down at the consoles

and look at the data and listen to the calls.

Pressure is holding at 5.5.

Cabin holding at 5.5.

He is disappearing.

Here's a man going over 100 miles into space.

Cabin 5.5.

He looked so lonely up there.

Five minutes after lift-off,

Alan Shepard becomes America's first man in space.

Shepard's suborbital flight

reaches 116 miles above the Earth, then descends.

The retro -- 5... 4... 3... 2. Go ahead.

NASA still fears the high g-forces

or extreme temperatures of reentry could kill him.

There was no question, we -- We were sweating bullets.

Mr. Shepard, okay?

Okay.

Okay.

Mr. Shepard, okay?

As expected, Mission Control

loses radio contact with Shepard during reentry.

F reedom 7, this is Cap Com.

Do you read me?

7, this is Cap Com. Do you read me?

In Mission Control, we're absolutely helpless.

F reedom 7, this is Cap Com.

Do you read me?

7, this is Cap Com. Do you read me?

Roger.

The mission only lasted about 20 minutes.

But this was the purest, happiest 20 minutes

of our entire life.

He just hit the water a moment ago.

A cheer went up from the ship company watching him

from all decks on the aircraft carrier.

I think he proved,

without a question in anybody's mind,

that man, indeed, could perform almost any task in a spacecraft.

This was our first man in space.

And it was total joy.

The excitement of it -- That has never been matched.

When Alan Shepard went, it was the unknown.

It was the unknown.

Just 20 days later, President John Kennedy

sets a new goal for America's space program.

I believe that this nation

should commit itself to achieving the goal,

before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon

and returning him safely to the Earth.

This young president of ours gets up and says,

"We're gonna go to the moon and we're gonna land there

and we're gonna bring the people back home within the decade."

I was staggered or stunned or overwhelmed

by the scale of the challenge.

The first American has barely reached space,

and NASA still hasn't put a man into orbit.

But the countdown to the end of the decade has begun.

We had the knowledge, the moxie, and the will

to not only catch up but surpass and beat them

in the business of space flight.

NASA wants to put another man into space

in a hurry,

to prove Shepard's mission was no fluke.

They figure Gus Grissom is the engineer,

so Gus will make the second flight,

and he'll be looking out for our engineering question.

But the intense training prepares them

to do very little actual flying in space.

Seven of the world's best pilots

want a spacecraft they can control.

Gus was somewhat frustrated,

because the people that were putting this together

were trying to make it

so that the astronaut really had nothing to do.

He was just riding in this thing.

It took a while to convince the pilots

that we wanted to use their talents

in making the machine better.

Then they realized that's what we were trying to do,

and we had a great relationship with the seven astronauts

for that very reason.

We split up the duties in the group itself.

And one of my duties was in cockpit layout --

organizing your instrument panel

so you get the information when you need it.

Deke was gonna follow booster development for us.

Scott, I think, was on navigation

and how we're gonna keep track of where this thing is.

Gus Grissom had the whole recovery effort...

and organizing the Navy.

So each of us had sort of a specialty area like that.

NASA redesigns the capsule.

Grissom will have greater control

over the flight of his spacecraft

and a new explosive escape hatch.

Grissom names his capsule Liberty Bell 7.

It has another important, new feature.

In the original spacecraft design,

there was no window.

The reason was that that was gonna add weight --

not only the window itself, which had to be thick,

but the support structure around it.

And weight was critical.

10 weeks after Alan Shepard's flight,

Gus Grissom is ready for a second suborbital mission.

Shepard is Grissom's Cap Com.

4... 3... 2... 1... 0.

Lift-off!

I understand.

15 minutes and 37 seconds after blast-off,

nearly a bull's-eye splashdown.

The capsule had landed in the water.

At that point, we thought it had gone well.

Another perfect flight.

Mission Control celebrates.

It was the joy of having a successful mission.

Came off like a piece of cake.

Gus was sitting there minding his own business,

and, all at once, it was pow.

The hatch blew, and water started coming in over the side.

The capsule starts sinking.

Grissom has only moments to escape.

The space suit is designed to keep him afloat.

He had forgot to close one of the valves in his suit,

and it was letting water in.

No longer a life preserver,

the suit fills with water and drags him under.

The prop wash from the helicopter

was starting to cause him a big problem.

He was very close to drowning.

Unaware Gus is in trouble,

helicopter pilot Jim Lewis

tries to save the sinking capsule first.

We almost had it free and out, but every time it came out,

a wave would come along and grab it and pull it back down.

In Mission Control, we were absolutely helpless.

We were watching the helicopter trying to grapple

and lift the spacecraft up.

And we could see Gus struggling out there in the rotor wash.

And in Mission Control,

a lot of us were saying, "Forget the spacecraft!

Get Gus, get Gus, get Gus!"

Suddenly, Lewis has another problem.

A warning light indicates his engine is overheating.

Normally, when that happened,

you had about 5 minutes' worth of engine power

before experiencing an engine failure.

I didn't want Gus in my aircraft

in the event that we lost the engine.

We were gonna lose him.

A second chopper rushes in to pick up Grissom...

...as Lewis struggles with the capsule.

Grissom is safe.

But Liberty Bell 7 and all its invaluable data are lost.

The entire spacecraft sank in 3 miles of water,

which was deeper than the Titanic.

And we had no vehicles that were capable of doing recovery.

We lost the spacecraft.

But we got our crewman back.

Gus was destroyed about losing his capsule.

He said that that was the only craft that he ever lost.

President Kennedy congratulates Grissom,

but suborbital flights aren't enough.

America is still coming in second in the race for space.

And NASA still hasn't fulfilled

the primary goal of Project Mercury --

launching a man into orbit and bringing him home alive.

They said, "There's no sense in hanging around here."

The Soviets were claiming superiority

to the United States.

They had already made orbital flights,

and so the pressure was on us

to see whether we could do the same thing.

Everybody loved John Glenn

simply because of his talent to deal with the public.

In his capsule, F riendship 7,

John Glenn will attempt NASA's first orbital mission.

After more than a month of delays,

he's finally ready to fly.

We lived in a motel about 15 miles south

of the space center.

And every morning when we'd get ready to come out to work,

we'd go and look and see

if the searchlights were on on the launchpad.

If the searchlights were on,

we felt pretty confident driving in,

because somebody was there doing something

and the countdown was more than likely progressing.

You felt, "Okay, we're going for it.

We're gonna get it today."

NASA needs more power to put a spacecraft into orbit.

The larger Atlas rocket will blast Glenn

162 miles above the Earth at a speed of 17,500 miles an hour.

John Glenn -- He was a fighter pilot

in World War I I and Korea.

He had three different aircraft

that were literally shot out from under him,

and he managed to fly those things home.

So they said, "John will bring it back down."

Glenn will orbit the Earth three times.

NASA's biggest concern --

Shepard and Grissom were weightless for five minutes.

Glenn will be weightless for nearly five hours.

Someone had predicted that, in zero G,

your eyes no longer needed to be supported

by the structure under the eye

and that your eye would gradually change shape in orbit.

Your eye might change enough,

you would have trouble seeing the instrument panel.

NASA has tracking stations all over the world.

We had the capability to track spacecraft by radar,

and we had the capability of getting EKG

and heart rate and breath rate,

as well as telling us what was going on in the spacecraft.

There will be no smoking in the blackout

until further notice.

T-Minus 7.

- We might have it by then. Roger.

I'd been through all of that -- 11 scheduled dates

and three times up there.

So, when it finally came, it was almost a surprise to go.

When you're out there and you're actually on the launchpad,

there's no way to simulate that.

Your attention, please.

On my mark, we will pick up the count.

More than 50,000 people

watched from nearby Cocoa Beach.

We reporters would watch from the beaches then,

because they wouldn't let us in.

But we kept banging at the gates and kicking at the fences.

They said, "They're more of a nuisance outside

than they'll be on the inside," so they finally let us in.

It was just the greatest place in the world.

100 million people across America

watched the countdown live on television.

T-Minus 15 minutes. Mark.

When it came time to go, the whole world was with me.

All recorders to fast T-Minus 18 seconds and counting.

I was the communicator for the countdown.

I wanted to say something like, "Bon voyage, buddy.

Have a good time."

And also enlist the aid of our maker in protecting him.

I was expecting somebody to say "launch hold"

of some kind.

4... 3... 2... 1... 0.

I couldn't believe it.

And the excitement of John Glenn going into orbit --

This was the adventure of the 20th century.

The moment when the final Atlas engine will shut down,

when F riendship 7 should separate from the booster rocket

and begin orbital flight.

After all the dire predictions of what might happen

and how you might feel in space in zero G,

and there wasn't any problem at all.

Of course, in the Mercury spacecraft,

there wasn't anyplace to float to.

You were just in there. You're in a cockpit and strapped in.

The most you could do would be loosen the straps

to be a little more comfortable.

But it was an elated feeling of zero G

and seeing how things work

and seeing whether you could swallow.

Nothing prepares you for the view as you look outside.

You can see the curvature of the Earth's surface

and whole nations just at a glance.

As Glenn orbits the Earth,

Mission Control follows him

from one tracking station to the next.

I was at a tracking station in Bermuda,

and the tracking from the Cape

was beginning to get very marginal

as the vehicle sunk down, going over the horizon.

And the tracking from Bermuda was becoming

an increasingly better location

to measure the fact that we were in orbit.

It was fun. It was demanding, but it was fun.

We really enjoyed ourselves.

Everything was going so well

that it was beyond belief that it could go that easily.

But as Glenn completes his first orbit,

Mission Control confronts its first crisis in space.

The telemetry people noticed a signal

which was indicating that the heat shield had come loose.

It was very scary to me.

If indeed the heat shield was loose,

during reentry, the spacecraft would probably get very hot --

temperatures of 3,000 degrees.

The heat might burn off the heat shield,

and it would have killed him.

We ran a few tests to see if what we were seeing was correct.

We began to ask him questions.

Do I feel any bumping or something like that?

So it's quite obvious they weren't telling me

exactly what they were thinking on the ground.

If the problem is real,

the straps for the retro-rockets are the only thing

holding the heat shield in place.

John didn't like not being told

what was wrong with the machine that he was flying.

The reason we didn't was because

there wasn't anything he could do about it.

I think the astronaut needs to know

everything they know on the ground.

If you lost communications,

the astronaut should have all the information.

The engineers quietly hope the straps hold

until the capsule hits denser air.

Then the force of descent should keep the heat shield in place.

But when I first started reentry

and the retro-rockets fired,

the straps that held that retropack

onto the basic spacecraft itself burned off.

There were burning chunks coming back by the window.

Sort of a thump on the spacecraft.

During reentry,

ionized plasma builds up around the spacecraft,

causing a radio blackout for about three minutes.

The world waits to hear if John Glenn is dead or alive.

The heat shield was not loose.

It was a microswitch malfunction.

With Glenn's orbital flight,

the U.S. finally catches up to the Soviet Union.

John Glenn instantly becomes one of America's greatest heroes.

We had been concentrated so much

on this mission for so long,

just didn't think much about anything else.

And then to have it over was really a big relief.

After John's flight, we were all proud.

I was proud of him.

We were all proud of the United States for doing it.

It was proof positive

that this country could compete in the world of space flight

and that the Russians, indeed, were not ahead of us.

Some months ago, I said

that I hoped that every American would serve his country.

Today Colonel Glenn served his,

and we all express our thanks to him.

We have a long way to go in the space race,

but this is the new ocean,

and I believe the United States must sail on it

and be in a position second to none.

The U.S. is on track to fulfill Kennedy's dream,

yet orbital flight is just one small step.

Now NASA must begin to explore the hostile territory of space.

The reason you're going up there

is not just to see if you can do it.

It's to do basic research.

In his capsule, Aurora 7,

Scott Carpenter will fly next.

John's flight was an experimental test flight.

Mine was to be more of a scientific investigation.

There were visibility experiments.

There were capsule-maneuvering tasks that were new.

It was a very busy flight plan.

Your attention, please.

All personnel,

please clear the test-stand area to the roadblock.

Aurora 7 blasts off for three orbits of the Earth --

nearly five hours in space.

5... 4... 3... 2... 1... 0.

Ignition.

Scott Carpenter -- I call him a romanticist.

He was interested in the beauty of space --

the sunrise and the sunset.

Roger.

I remember just spinning a camera a little

and letting it go and watch it stay right there.

That's an amazing sight -- the view and the weightlessness.

Things do look different.

The stars don't twinkle anymore.

There's no atmosphere.

It's an addictive sight.

He was distracted many times during the flight.

For the first time,

conflicts arise between the astronaut and Mission Control.

He kept using the fuel in a cavalier fashion.

He was maneuvering the spacecraft to look here, there,

and everywhere at sights that he wanted to see.

Frankly, I can understand that.

There was a requirement for me to expend more fuel

because of the observations I wanted to make.

During the first revolution, he used up the fuel

in the automatic control system almost completely.

We told him to stop using that system.

He got to the manual system

and used up all but about 10% or 20% of the manual fuel.

Scott Carpenter is running out of gas.

When he came up on retrofire,

the fuel had been almost entirely depleted.

I didn't have any fuel.

The thrusters were not working.

For reentry, Carpenter has to manually

turn the capsule 180 degrees so the heat shield faces down.

But he has another problem.

An automatic attitude sensor, used to align the capsule,

is off by nearly 40 degrees...

and only Carpenter knows it.

He did not tell us that,

and we had no way of knowing on the ground

there was this bias there.

Now he's got to fire the retro-rockets manually.

Roger.

With a faulty sensor, Carpenter's already off-target.

If he's not positioned perfectly,

the heat shield down, the capsule will burn up.

You subject the capsule to heating,

and that could be catastrophic -- fatal.

4... 3... 2... 1... 0.

Mission Control loses contact with Carpenter

during the radio blackout.

Three minutes later, nothing.

Aurora 7, Aurora 7, Cape Cap Com, over.

Aurora 7, Aurora 7, Cape Cap Com, over.

After 40 minutes,

still not a word from Scott Carpenter.

The press is already speculating

that NASA has lost its first astronaut.

Aurora 7, Aurora 7, Cape Cap Com, over.

Aurora 7, Aurora 7, Cape Cap Com, over.

Finally, reconnaissance flights

locate Carpenter 250 miles off-target.

Nobody knew where I was after my flight,

but I knew exactly where I was.

Carpenter floats in the Atlantic for three hours.

Nothing worked exactly the way it should have,

but we brought back some interesting, new information

in space flight.

Scott Carpenter achieves

all his mission objectives,

yet flight controllers think many of the problems he faced

could have been avoided.

Five months later, Wally Schirra flies six orbits.

Then Gordo Cooper circles the Earth 22 times

over a day and a half.

Cooper becomes the first American to sleep in space

and the last to orbit solo around the Earth.

As Project Mercury comes to an end,

Project Gemini is already preparing to blast off again

with a bold, new goal for America's exploration of space.

We choose to go to the moon!

We choose to go to the moon in this decade

and do the other things, not because they are easy

but because they are hard.

The Mercury program was the most challenging

of all the work that we've ever done in space.

To a great extent, the Mercury astronauts

were literally flying by the seat of their pants.

There's nothing I think could prepare us

for that kind of an experience.

I've been very fortunate.

We were all for one, and one for all.

The Mercury astronauts

took the first heroic steps into a new frontier.

At the dawn of the space age,

Project Mercury lays the foundation

for the great adventure to come.