Our Greatest Adventure: The Apollo Missions

This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To share your stories with us, send them to OurAmericanStories.com.

We love hearing them and we love playing them. Up next, a story of perhaps our greatest adventure as a country, conquering the final frontier and not only getting a man on the moon, but returning him safely to Earth. Here to tell the story is Steve Kates, aka Dr. Sky.

And we're telling this story because on this day in history, in 2012, Neil Armstrong died. During this period of time in the 1950s, as many people were old enough to know, there was great tension between Russia and the United States in something that was eventually described as the Cold War. Any attack upon Cuba will be regarded as an attack upon the Soviet Union be responded to by all the weapons of their command. There is before all peoples a precious chance to turn the black tide of events.

If we fail to strive to seize this chance, the judgment of future ages will be harsh. And sad to say, the entire United States military and the Russian military, or Soviet military at the time, was hell-bent on developing and continuing to build many nuclear weapons. But the real changer in the game, the game changer that I like to describe here, is what happened when the Soviet Union launched the very first artificial satellite known as Sputnik 1.

That of course changed everything. It was a small sphere, maybe 24 inches in diameter, and it had three antennas and weighed about 185 pounds. What it was doing was it was sending and transmitting radio signals to ground stations on the earth just to test the ability to actually hear or listen to communications from space.

There weren't actual voice communications, this was all the pre-dawn of color communications in space. It was amazing to people, particularly here in America and say other free countries around the world, to imagine that their violated airspace just became that. That something from another country was up over the top of them. And in the spirit of the Cold War, this obviously brought about ideas that maybe they could drop a hydrogen bomb or an atomic weapon from space right on top of your head. And at that time, we had nothing that we could do about it until the continuing evolution of the space program. We really were in a race.

I mean, let's not say that the United States military was asleep at the switch or asleep at the wheel. We had plans to build rockets. And whether they were just for military purposes or a future space exploration, the sad state of the affair is that many of the early American rockets ended in failure. And there are so many videos, sad to say, on YouTube that archives everything or other places in the world.

Where the archival 16 millimeter films are still kept. People were actually seeing the explosion pretty regularly, more the norm than anything else of rockets on the launch pad. And why did that happen? Was it that we had bad science? No, it was that the Russians at the time, the Soviets, they were simply ahead of the United States at that point in time. They had the ability to develop these rockets. I would say that they were at least 10 years ahead of the United States, and the ability to actually have a readily available military vehicle to go into space. But let's also remember the primary thing, as Nikita Khrushchev said many, many times over, and I'm not going to quote him, but I'm going to give the best general description here so our listeners can understand it in the simplest way. The primary mode for them was not necessarily just to put something into space. They wanted to have superiority with intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, and that those launch rockets that they had were simply the rockets that were to deliver their nuclear weapons that they had developed.

I will repeat it again, their main mode of operation there was to build a delivery system to deliver nuclear weapons to the United States and other places in the world that weren't friendly to the Soviet Union. The first American manned spacecraft, of course, was a Redstone rocket in which one of the most famous of all astronauts, Alan Shepard, launched into space on a small, simple little Redstone rocket. But on that historic date of May 5th, 1961, Alan Shepard does what's called a suborbital flight.

And what is that? Obviously, the Russians, the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union are the ones that put Yuri Gagarin into space. Back on April the 12th of 1961, he actually orbited the Earth for an hour and 48 minutes in what they called was a Vostok spacecraft. Alan Shepard did his part by doing a suborbital flight.

Let me describe that for everybody listening. Alan Shepard's flight was not a circumnavigation flight around the Earth. It was simply launched to a certain altitude, and then it was launched to a certain altitude, and then it was launched to a certain altitude.

Break the barrier when you get up above what they call the Karman Line, which depending on who you ask, the beginnings of space start relatively between 50 and 60 miles above the Earth. So Alan Shepard, he of course ignited so much enthusiasm and success. But there was also a bunch of guys that were also part of an early program called the Mercury Project, in which they launched on rockets similar to that.

So many of those astronauts, of course, John Glenn, Wally Schirra, we could go on and on. But the important part of what happened with the early part of the Mercury program is that they used, initially, they used the basic Redstone rocket to get their Mercury capsules to go up into orbit. And I should say that's when they did go into orbit around the Earth after Alan Shepard's suborbital flight. So that particular part of America's space program was called Mercury. And then when it transpired into something even more phenomenal, we used what was originally an ICBM type missile called the Titan II and the Gemini, of course, meaning twin. You had a two-man capsule, the Gemini capsule, to test out how we would maneuver in space and do docking in space. But to answer the question that people are probably wondering out there, Apollo was the next mission.

And that all started with inspiration by John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy's speech at Rice University back on September the 12th of 1962 when the words that I won't quote exactly. Why some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?

Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decay and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.

Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are willing to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the other two. So Apollo began our incredible journey to the moon. And you're listening to the story of Apollo, more of the story after these messages. Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that all of our stories about American history from war to innovation, culture, and faith are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life. And if you can't cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.

Go to Hillsdale.edu to learn more. And we return to our American stories and the story of the Apollo missions with Steve Kates, aka Dr. Sky. When we last left off, Steve was telling us about how the space race got started after the launch of Sputnik. We were behind the Soviet Union by nearly a decade, but President Kennedy promised that we'd land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

That year was 1962. But what kind of man could go to the moon? Let's return to the story.

Here again is Steve Kates. Well, we all have seen the right stuff as a movie, or at least I hope we have, or read the book. They're looking for people that have discipline. Now that's a broad-based statement. What's discipline? They want people from a military background who know how to solve problems, who can take orders.

That's an important thing too. You not only had to meet those criteria intellectually. I mean, I'm sure there were great many IQ tests given and many people passed or many people failed.

Here's Jim Lovell, astronaut on Apollo 8 and courtesy of NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Collection, with more. That physical was nothing like anybody had ever heard of before. You know, what they did to us was unknown to the medical profession because they knew that they had guinea pigs. You have to have the ability not to be claustrophobic. I mean, that comes to a personal thing that if people go into, let's say, a large MRI machine for a medical procedure, and they have a difficulty going through that tight tube, well, you might simply be categorized as being claustrophobic. But these astronauts have to be able to handle critical situations.

They knew we're going to go into an environment that was completely strange, so they did things just for background and, you know, from data. And I went through there, but when I got there, the next selection was to go on to, down to a second group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for some more tests and things like that. The doctor called me and said, well, you're finished. And I said, finished? Why?

I might not accept it now. Now, I said, what's wrong? And they said, well, you have a high bilirubin. I said, I don't even know what a high bilirubin is. What is it?

Well, it's too much pink pigment in your blood. And actually, you need it to not be too tall. I know that sounds a little maybe unusual to people because, or maybe not, because the average height of these astronauts was not 6.4. So many NBA players would probably be, you know, simply not able to do that, even if their capabilities mentally and physically were there.

You have to be able to fit into the spam can. So many medical experiments were done on these people, putting them in pressure situations. They had to sit in a thing called a centrifuge, which was this small capsule intentionally making you feel uncomfortable. And it starts spinning around in a room in a circle. And that particular object had three dimensions.

So it could start moving, not as you're going around just in a circle, but it could start rotating in a different axis, like, you know, roll, pitch and yaw. And you certainly wouldn't want to be the person who obviously had, you know, the most nausea, because that might disqualify you. But some of the interesting stories, I thought it appropriate to honor the Apollo 1 crew, because this is an amazing story. And most people never heard it, or they weren't even around at the time when it happened. Three American astronauts, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White, were put through a series of tests to test out the small capsule that would be part of the command module. We find these three astronauts over and over going through this testing where they had to get into spacesuits, climb into this small, very strange, triangular looking little spacecraft, the Apollo capsule. And this didn't happen in space, this happened on the ground. And on January the 27th of 1967, through all this trial and error, the astronauts are strapped into their seat. It's known that Gus Grissom was complaining that they couldn't talk between their capsule and the command center, which was about 25 feet away with wires. How are we going to get to the moon? And he used a few choice words in there that I'm leaving out.

How can we get to the moon and communicate if we can't talk within 20 feet? Well, on that, their very same day, something very sad happened. And it's open to how this really evolved. The three astronauts were strapped into their chairs and they were breathing at the time 100% oxygen. And the design on this particular capsule had two hatches. There was an inner and outer hatch for brevity.

And if you needed to get those hatches open, it would have taken a lot longer than today, just opening like a car door or even a few levers and move out as the modern day capsules I'm sure have. But what happened, allegedly some sort of wire short or some kind of a fire broke out underneath their couches. And sadly, those three astronauts, it's one of the most horrific things I've ever heard.

They asphyxiated because they couldn't get them out of the capsule. The Apollo program might have been canceled in its entirety after this. The fire took place in 1967. We had a commitment made by President Kennedy that we would land a man on the moon and bring him back home safely before the end of the decade.

And when the fire occurred in January of 67, and we didn't know really what it was going to do, everybody was really down in the dumps saying, holy cow. But the government, NASA and others talked about what their wishes would be. And they certainly wanted to continue the space program. But just remember, those astronauts and a few others that died in training accidents in military aircraft to train are some of the unsung heroes that never really get to be talked about because space can be a dangerous place. And it's not for everyone.

But the positivity that we've shown as a nation and other nations around the world is to move away from this planet, for good reasons, to colonize the space like the early explorers did in the ocean. You have to, you have to go by faith, you have to, you have to believe in what the people are going to hand you. You know, Al Sheppard's old joke was, you know, how does it feel to sit on top of something built by the lowest bidder? But the lowest bidder was, you know, pretty expensive. But you have to believe that whole thing. And I did. Apollo 8 is quite fascinating. We're going to do 4,000 miles so that we could test the lunar module, the command module, and then come back at a high rate of speed so that, you know, we could test the heat shield and things like that. I recall this very vividly, the three of us were out testing our spacecraft, and Frank got a call to go back to Houston. So Bill and I still stayed out there. We were working out there. And Frank came back again, back to Downey and said, things have changed. And we said, what? He said, if everything goes all right with Apollo 7, Apollo 8 will go to the moon.

NASA made a decision that they would send three astronauts on a journey around the moon for 10 lunar orbits in 1968 around Christmas time. I was elated. I thought, man, this is great. I mean, I already spent two weeks in space in Gemini 7 with Frank Borman. I didn't want to spend another 11 days or something like that, you know, going around the Earth again.

I said, this is fantastic. And on the way back, on the way back of the T-38, when it was my turn to sit in the back seat, either Bill or Frank were flying, I drew the Apollo 8 insignia. The Apollo 7 was to test out the entire Apollo capsule, the command module where you live, the habitation module, and then to be able to maybe move and separate that little spacecraft in eventual missions, which is the lunar lander. The lunar module wasn't ready. And the lunar module was supposed to go up there, you know, and be tested out. And we had intelligence information that the Russians that the Russians were going to put people around the moon. They were really attempting to land people on the moon and had tried all sorts of things to get there and were building a huge rocket called the N-1. Built 10 of them, flew four, none was really successful. But they were very persistent people and they were very close to actually doing that. They had sent a couple spacecraft up, went around the moon. One was not successful. One was partially successful. The next one, the two cosmonauts, and I know them, wanted to go.

And then they hesitated back and forth. The hierarchy argued, should we send another unmanned or should we not? And when they did that, this side of the Atlantic, bold leadership at this time, they said lunar module's not ready, the command service module, if it proves out, Apollo 7 will be okay.

Huntsville thinks the booster could be okay. And so they said, let's send Apollo 8 to the moon. And so that's how it came to pass. There was a lot of objections in some of the higher, you know, offices of NASA that this might not have been the right thing to do because we only tested Apollo 7 in Earth orbit and yet we haven't sent a Apollo spacecraft to the moon yet. So Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders did that most incredible feat. And we've been listening to a heck of a story of how America got to the moon and how we got there before our competitors, our primary competitor, being the Soviet Union. When we come back, more of this remarkable story with Steve Kates, AKA Dr. Sky.

After these messages, this is Our American Stories. And we're back with Our American Stories and the story of the Apollo missions in our incredible journey to the moon with Steve Kates. When we last left off, Steve was telling us about the tests that the astronauts selected to be in the Apollo program had to go through, tests that could be deadly, like Apollo 1.

After the fire on Apollo 1, the Apollo missions could have been canceled, but they weren't. We pushed forward and after a few successful flights, decided to send a group of astronauts into space around Christmas time. That mission, Apollo 8.

Here again is Steve Kates. Apollo 8, NASA made a decision that they would send three astronauts on a journey around the moon for 10 lunar orbits in 1968 around Christmas time. There was a lot of objections in some of the higher offices of NASA that this might not have been the right thing to do because we only tested Apollo 7 in Earth orbit, and yet we haven't sent an Apollo spacecraft to the moon yet.

So Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders did that most incredible feat. Here's Jim Lovell, astronaut on Apollo 8 with more. Well my first sensation of course was not too far from the Earth because when we turned around we could actually see the Earth start to shrink. Now the highest anybody had ever been I think had been either I think it was Apollo or Gemini 11 up about 800 miles or something like that and back down again and all of a sudden you know we're just just going down and it was it reminds me of driving a car looking out the back window going inside a tunnel and seeing the tunnel entrance shrink as it gets as you go farther into the tunnel. It was quite a quite a sensation to think about you know and you had to pinch yourself hey we're really going to the moon I mean you know this is it.

I was a navigator and it turned out that the navigation equipment was perfect I mean it was just you couldn't ask for a better piece of navigation coming. Coming into the moon itself the last day our blunt end was towards the moon and we didn't see it as it got bigger but the ground called up and the mission control said now at such and such a time and they named it right down to the second you lose communication with us because the moon's gravity will swing around to the far side right to the second there was static in our earphones no calm. Then of course we we lit the engine to slow down and we got into lunar orbit and this is where we started to look at the moon you know and we all those nice things we said. That Christmas message when we determined first of all that we would get and burn into the lunar orbit on Christmas Eve we thought boy we something's got to be appropriate to say we ought to say something what can we say and we couldn't think of anything.

Then there was a fellow that I think Mormon knew his name was Cybergene. Well it's another example of the wonderful country live in because Julian Cheer who was the head of public information for NASA in Washington called me one day and so you're going to have the largest audience that's ever listened to or seen a television picture of a human on Christmas Eve and you've got I don't know five or six minutes and I said well that's great Julian what do we do and he said do whatever is appropriate that's the only instructions but then that's the exact word do whatever is appropriate whatever you feel is appropriate and be honest with you we were so involved in the mission and this was a peripheral one so I just kind of farmed that out to a friend of mine Cy Borgen and from Washington. He was with the U.S. information agency I think had gone with them some of the astronauts around on their trips. Frank asked him could he come up with something appropriate well he could but he knew another person I think it was a newspaper man I forget his name that he said okay I'll think it over I'll try to see what I can do and he was working almost all night trying to think of appropriate words and his wife came down and said why don't you have them read something from the bible and they said well that's you know the new testament now she says the old testament reading from genesis because you know this would be very appropriate and I discussed it with Bill and Jim and and we had it typed on the flight plan and that's I didn't give any more thought than that so that's how it came to pass they said the first 10 verses of genesis which is really the foundation of many of the world's religions that's how it got started. We are now approaching lunar sunrise and for all the people back on earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you. The beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said let there be light and there was light and God saw the light that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness he called night and the evening and the morning were the first day and God said let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters let it divide the waters from the waters and God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament the waters which were above the firmament and it was so and God called the room in heaven and the evening and the morning for the second day God said let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear and it was so and God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters called these seas and God saw that it was good and from the crew of Apollo 8 we close with good night, good luck, Merry Christmas and God bless all of you all of you on the good earth. Looking back at the earth on Christmas eve had a great effect I think on all three of us I can only speak for myself but it had for me because the the wonderment of it and the fact that the earth looked so lonely in the universe it's the only thing with color all of our emotions were focused back there with our families and so on so that was the most emotional part of the flight for me. We were so curious so excited about being at the moon that we are like three school kids looking into a candy store window watching those ancient old craters go by from and we're only 60 miles above the surface. We didn't have any kind of feeling at least myself of you know fear or if you know are we going to get back or not it was just just to be there was such an exciting moment that you know would have done it all the time I felt very very honored and lucky to be there. There was a little bit of concern as to how that would be you know received in the world but NASA gave them the permission to do that I mean it wasn't something that was really that controversial but in many circles they they thought that hey this is an appropriate thing to do as we celebrate the birth of the Christ child Christmas and read from the book of Genesis and talk about the creation according to the Bible of how the universe was formed and God and his wonderful ways of how he manifests beauty and love to all the people of the world and probably to all people in the other civilizations outside of this world. At the time we didn't know what the effect of the flight would be we didn't know whether the flight was going to be successful or not but you know with riots and assassinations and the war going on I was part of a thing that finally gave an uplift to the American people about doing something positive which was really that's why I say pile of weight was really the high point of my space career.

Their neutrality in politics was always number one but reading from the Bible was just in their opinion and I approve of it I think it was a beautiful thing because at that time there's a way to send a message about peace and love and why not do that during a time when everybody needed calming. It was probably one of the most watched shows ever in the history of television and I don't know the exact number of people that were watching but it's in the hundreds of millions and it was so well done and I thought that the reading of the Bible and the book of Genesis was a apropos for the time and tensions were very high in America. And you've been listening to Steve Kates aka Dr. Sky and you're also listening to Frank Borman and Jim Lovell tell the story of that Christmas Eve reading of Genesis and what it was like to be up there in space 60 miles from the moon's surface. The story of how America got to the moon first here on Our American Stories and we're back with Our American Stories and the final portion of our story on the Apollo missions. When we last left off Americans had successfully orbited the moon on Apollo 8 and read from Genesis while doing it. With the mission a success it was time to put a man on the moon. That mission it would be Apollo 11. The year was 1969 here again is Steve Kates but first audio from Neil Armstrong at the post-landing press conference. You'll also hear from Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in this segment.

Let's return to the story. It was our pleasure to have participated in one great adventure. It's an adventure that took place not just in the month of July but rather one that took place in the last decade. We all here and the people listening in today had the opportunity to share that adventure that was certainly the highlight for the three of us of that decade. We're going to divert a little bit from the format of past press conferences and talk about the things that entered it interested us most in particular the the things that occurred on and about the moon. The road to the stars has always been difficult. There's so many things that can go wrong on a trip to the moon and back it's sort of a long and fragile daisy chain of events and I can remember being in the little house trailer aboard the aircraft carrier after we landed in the Pacific and thinking gee none of them did none of those little links broke and to me that was the amazing part that everything worked in some as well as it did. You have to be able to live in this environment and you have to obviously have a steady flow of oxygen to continue the obvious understatement of the entire program to survive in space. You have to make sure that your landing craft the lunar module is going to work perfectly.

You have to have a flight path to the surface of the moon that works very very simply by a small computer that if many people go out and go to one of their dollar stores right now a little handheld calculator that costs less than maybe a couple of dollars had more so-called processing power than the entire lunar module itself. Well every launch day is a time of excitement enthusiasm and apprehension but I think in most circumstances you always feel that the chances of actually lifting off are are fairly distant or remote. I think the momentous most memorable thing that I can recall about that particular day was the opportunity while my my two friends here were being put into the spacecraft to stand alone but to stand alone by myself out there and look at the rocket and the quietness and see the sun come up and the waves rolling in and the evidence of the millions of people watching but but nothing specific and it's just so quiet and to realize that indeed such a contrast was going to take place all the frantic activity preparing the rocket but it was so quiet up there for me personally ended in a very few moments so we were going to be departing in a great roar and off for a momentous event. Mission sequence star six five four three two one zero all engine running liftoff we have a liftoff 32 minutes past the hour liftoff on Apollo 11. Well I think the impressions of the moon started thousands of miles as we get closer and closer we could see more and more there are many different moons to remember the one that we see from the earth the one that's in route you look down on it and it's a rather rough lonesome foreboding location. And then this object is hurtling around the moon and you have to have a series of burns in which you're firing the descent motors they don't have unlimited fuel so as they get into a certain angle of attack as they call it remember the little lunar module is like a little spider with the four legs you're going around the moon in a horizontal position and then you slowly have to fire these little tiny if you if anybody's seen the lunar module you notice that it has these little bell-shaped areas around it which are actually little rocket motors and they're steerable and that descent has to be done in an orchestrated way because not only are you looking to go to the surface you're actually looking to go to a location on the moon so as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are going down they're getting a series of these alarms master alarms on the computer with the buzzing sounds meaning an override the computer was overridden and this little computer think about it it was this big box big beautiful polished metallic box and that's fascinating that in those days they even had something I think it was like 73k and the description was that most emails take up more space than the Apollo computer had on the descent came close to having to abort they overrode all this and I'm keeping it very simple it's a long process then they have to drop down it didn't drop down very hard but it didn't just perfectly soft land as if you never felt it and then those famous words the eagle has landed roger twink tranquility we copy on the ground you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue we're breathing again thanks a lot the most amazing story I'd like to ask Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and I'm not quite sure how to ask this question but when you first stepped on the moon did it strike you as you were stepping that you were stepping on a piece of the earth or sort of what your inner feelings were whether you felt you were standing in a desert or this was really another world or how you felt at that point well there was no question in our minds where we were we've been orbiting around the moon and now comes the most amazing part of the story is the actual egress from the lunar module and stories have it that Buzz Aldrin wanted to be the first man onto the surface of the moon but NASA looked to Neil Armstrong because of his ability to handle problems if something were to happen they wanted him to be able to handle any situation and boy did he handle one when he was in the Gemini program him and Dave Scott orbiting the earth in one of the Gemini capsules and somehow I don't know the answer I don't think they did either the spacecraft started to roll as if you held a pen in your hand and just start turning it horizontally and it got faster and faster and faster and that may have caused that whole mission for Gemini to those astronauts to perish but Neil actually handled the problem cool calm and collected Neil Armstrong exits the lunar module comes down the ladder and here's a story that most people do not know inside his spacesuit he had a small little bag a collection bag for lunar material and as we heard on the earth that's one small step for man one giant leap for mankind the truth story is this true wording should be and was that's one that's one small step for a man we had garbled when we heard the communications and it sounded like that's one small step for man not to go on technicalities but the first thing he did when he got onto the surface was to bend over and gather a sample of lunar material why because if anything were to have gone wrong with the lunar module at that time and they had to go away and blast off from the moon they at least had the money spent of the Apollo program to bring back a sample of lunar material we also noticed that there's not as many pictures of Armstrong on the surface of the moon as Buzz Aldrin comes out and describes his words were magnificent desolation he and Neil are so busy trying to do everything they had to do set up science experiments check and see that the camera worked and yes those camera images were by today's standards rather poor if you were rating them on a grading scale you'd probably give them a d but that was the best technology we had at the time to even show the flag of course was placed onto the surface of the moon to me it was one of the prouder moments of my life to be able to stand there and quickly salute the flag so many people have done so much to give us this opportunity to place this American flag on the surface they did their EVAs they collected lunar samples they had to tuck all those samples back in and now it's time to go home and here comes a very interesting story what happened is is the time was to go apparently buzz says that he turns around and somehow whether it's because of his suit or some other object the ascent button or switch that you've hit to get yourself to blast off the moon actually broke and it's described by Aldrin that he what he used even before we called him sharpies he actually used this little felt tip pen and stuck it into the hole where the switch or the relay had been broken and thank goodness that lunar module ascent stage took off many people don't know that the ascent from the moon was an interesting thing and pretty harrowing because president Nixon actually had a second speech that he was prepared to deliver if indeed the two astronauts were stranded on the moon because of the inability of their ascent motor on the lunar module to fire but luckily that speech never had to be given collectively it said this that if we put our minds to a problem and try to solve it we can do it and it came with great expense it came at the loss of human life but the simple legacy is American exceptionalism proud to say this did something that was really incredible it was a stranger to me before the mission but it I now look back at it as somewhat of a friend a place that I visited the story of the Apollo missions we're telling them because on this day in history in 2012 Neil Armstrong died here on Our American Stories