Debriefing Apollo 8 (1969)

[Laughter] [Music] hello I'm Jim Brett of NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland Ohio during this ninth program of our history of space travel series we'll see the film debrief Apollo 8 it shows us Man's first orbit around the moon the film was released in 1969 [Applause] a machine may be said to be born when it first performs a useful function this then is the birth of a machine and the beginning of an achievement 363 ft tall weighing just under 6 and a/4 million [Music] lbs capable of 180 million horsepower the first stage engines came from from Louisiana the second stage came from California as did the third they were proved out for the mission in Alabama the vehicle destined to make the moon touchdown on a later Apollo Mission comes from New York the guidance and navigation equipment within the narrow instrument ring grew in Wisconsin was checked in Massachusetts electr Mechanicals within the command and service modules are from Florida display systems from New Hampshire the astronaut space suits are from Delaware the mission Commander was born in Indiana grew up in Arizona and its Moon Voyage it will be controlled from Texas serviced by computers in Maryland splash down near Hawaii the giant crawler on which it rides was made in Ohio the genius and sweat of literally the entire nation ride the [Music] [Music] mission the dream of man the long Impossible Dream to reach out to the Moon is coming true these men will lead the way Colonel Frank Borman Navy Captain Jim Lovel Lieutenant Colonel Bill Anders the successful conclusion the happy ending is history but gaps remain importantly part of the task of filling those gaps belongs to each individual a self debriefing to evaluate the larger significance of the event which might have gone unnoticed in the excitement for some this re-evaluation has already begun Dr Norman Vincent Peele the mission of Apollo 8 quite apart from its significant scientific meaning stimulated an immense Rejuvenation of the spirit of mankind and that Spirit needed Rejuvenation a year featured by two Grim assassinations by riots by racial and social stripe and a baffling attempt to end a war left men with a dull sense of frustration then at the end of such a year came the Apollo 8 an incredible Adventure when three Intrepid Spirits Circle the moon fascinating the imagination of man their willingness to stake their lives on the Enterprise the infinite Perfection of detail which worked precisely and their deep spiritual understanding of the greater world in which God presides communicated a new sense of man's greatness and gave the world a fresh sense of meaning Dr Norman Vincent Peele tmy suggested that the Earth might be round Columbus gave a practical demonstration of the fact if any lingering doubt remains now man has seen with his own eyes I have a beautiful view of the s4b and the earth here1 I try to get make the s4b is the third stage rocket engine droplets of its vented fuel scatter around it the speed of the spacecraft Outward Bound brings us face to face with another acceleration a new fact of life historian Arthur Slinger Jr the Salient fact of our age is a fantastic speed up in the velocity of History it was as recently as 19 three that the White Brothers soared for a moment over the sand at Kitty Hawk and today 65 years later within the same life time of many men astronauts fly around the moon and now the velocity of history is carrying us into a new phase in the Human Adventure no one knows where this new phase will end in what Triumph or tragedy but it is clear that the flight of Apollo 8 begins a new epic in the history of man historian Arthur Slinger Jr part of beginning an epic in the present instance is keeping house for 6 days in a space about the size of the back seats of three station wagons packed for a family vacation as you watch motion pictures taken on board you will hear comments related to Houston on the same subject it happiness B squares for breakfast you don't need them I'll bring them back we'll them out here okay Houston Apollo I stand corrected uh William had one Marine he didn't tell me about it he stuck [Applause] it part of the astronaut's working gear is a helmet holding earphones and microphone in position it's called a Snoopy hat hey you're looking pretty small down here now Houston we carrying a big stick though just barely B got Clear Lake and your uh nozzle temperatures Bill have dropped from about 94 to around 66 this is Mission Control it stands as the first rank of the unnumbered and innumerable Apollo team flight controllers man the consoles they watch A continuing readout of every system in the capsule three shifts around the clock all flight controllers speak to the astronauts through one voice the capsule Communicator of each shift he is an astronaut himself best suited to sense the needs the stresses the preoccupations the environment of the men so far away the line of communications is spread around the world land bases must be supplemented by ships carrying the special equipment needed to keep the channels open aircraft become flying transmitters and receivers [Music] Other Nations help with deep space Communications Australians join the team in canura Spaniards in Madrid the third base is in California men women and machines spread round the world this team is knit by faith an acceptance of responsibility for perfect performance it stretches back through the ranks to each Workman involved in American industry they kept faith in a spirit of dedication to Excellence the successful completion of the mission is a witness to how they came through and once achieved this dedication may be applied in other directions Henry Ford made comment the courageous Voyage of the Apollo 8 astronauts has done more than extend our knowledge of the universe it is enlarged the spirit of man if we can successfully challenge the Mysteries and dangers of outer space surely we can move confidently now to achieve a better more peaceful life for our fellow humans here and throughout the planet Earth Mr Henry Ford not all giant eyes and ears on Earth are turned toward the spacecraft the sensing Machines of the space particle alert Network face the Sun from our life-giving sun streams a hail of infinitely small pieces of matter on Earth we are shielded from them by our cloak of atmosphere and our magnetosphere the integument of Van Allen belts the men and women of SP monitor Sun spot and solar flare activity looking for Clues to an imminent rise in the Stream of potentially hazardous space particles the team grows wider deeper stronger [Music] history repeats itself in paraphrase this is the shot seen round the world this is the first shot of Earth live on television the mission was conducted in the plain of the entire world literally happy Birthday Mother back in 1961 when Apollo goals were first set President Kennedy said whatever mankind must undertake all men must freely share Apollo 8 remained true to that Pledge on television it gave us a new look at the Moon and a new look at ourselves this is Thomas J Watson Jr 10 years ago it seemed that Russia would make this flight before us and would make a moon landing first as well with the Apollo 8 flight it becomes obvious that we have moved into the lead we can be thankful that the United States has shown the world once again that it can accomplish any tasks it decides upon Thomas J Watson Jr chairman of the board of IBM direct from the deep space tracking antenna in Madrid these pict were passed along to the Eurovision Network to London Paris Rome West Germany Scandinavia they were seen in Warsaw Prague in Moscow citizen of the world winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace Dr Ralph Bunch Apollo 8 and those stout-hearted astronauts have given to mankind a new and Limitless perspective in the universe and to the Earth an added dimension of proximity and neighborliness in the solar system the Epic flight of Apollo 8 in cracking the moon barrier demonstrates that man now has the capability to soar as high and as far as his dreams may project Dr Ralph bunch of the United Nations okay Houston moon is essentially gray no color looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a grayish be Christmas Eve the date of a mission is dictated by launch Windows which open and close in a long cycle if you miss one you wait the December window opened the 21st closed the 27th so the DAT and hour of the Apollo 8 mission was really determined billions of years ago when the celestial clock was first set in motion it timed out to the Christmas season Bob Hope reported a Vietnam reaction all joy believe me all joy the men I spent Christmas with have a lot on their minds but the Apollo a trip turned out to be as important as anything what the three astronauts did rubbed off on a lot of guys everybody grew a little tall and that was double a few away from home and I think it'll be months before we know how much it meant to all of us and all the people of the world Bob Hope it was Christmas on Earth and on the moon [Music] the Moon is a different thing to each one of us I know my own impression is that it's a a vast lonely forbidding type existence or expand from nothing it looks rather like clouds and clouds of P Stone and it certainly would not appear to be a very inviting place to to live or work Jim what are you thought most oh Frank my thoughts were very similar the vast L up here on the mo is uh all inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth Wasteland desolate inhospitable in unremitting procession the apparent speed at which you see these pictures is not real time only a technical camera was carried on the mission altitude about 70 Mi shot with a long lens [Music] [Music] Mike I think I can say without contradiction there's been a mighty long dry spell up here I guess you say anything you like without contradiction [Applause] [Music] this film was taken through an optical sighting instrument on board the spacecraft two separate images Converge on the single eyepiece it was intended only for space navigation navigation in space requires three dimensions instead of two scientific seant observations made on Apollo 8 were a practical potentially vital Gathering of scientific data taking the longer view of the scientific value of the mission comment was made by DR Leo Goldberg astronomer I believe the Apollo 8 mission will ultimately prove to be of enormous scientific importance as a vital step that had to be taken before Men actually land on the moon once they do the exploration of the moon is bound to give us crucial information on how the moon and other bodies in the solar system were formed furthermore the mission proved that we now have the capability to move large and complicated scientific equipment around in space and to deploy it almost anywhere we wish to in the space between the Earth and the moon I find this to be a very thrilling Prospect indeed but no matter what happens in the future The Voyage of Apollo will be looked back upon as the mission that proved we could really operate in space on a large scale astronomer Leo Goldberg of Harvard [Music] University the condition of zero gravity when you get accustomed to it has some very practical applications [Music] The Command Module on Apollo 8 serial number 103 did not change at Christmas but there was talk of Reindeer and Santa Claus right he was looking for a chimy on 103 here but he didn't see any you could have left the hatch unlock for him I'll think about that think real hard Jim Ecom says he could have slipped down the steam duck sounds good about that time feel spil water [Music] in 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 and let it divide the waters from the waters and God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament and the waters which were above the firmament and it was so and God called the firment Heaven and the evening and the morning were the second [Applause] [Music] day and 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 the Seas and God saw that it was good and from the crew of Apollo 8 we close with good night good luck a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you all of you on The Good Earth Isaac azimoff is a professor of biochemistry and a prolific writer of Science Fiction for many years he's been thinking in terms of an Earth to Moon to Earth trep Asim off has a special point of view the feat of Apollo 8 is of peculiar interest to myself because it places me in the unaccustomed position of being overconservative in 1939 I wrote a story describing in essence this flight I placed it in 1973 I suppose if someone had asked me then do you really suppose people will fly around the Moon and back to Earth by 1973 I would have answered not really but it makes a good story well they did it in 1968 and I am more happy than I can say Isaac azimoff stands with one foot in the world of science and one foot in fantasy to take a fictional look at the future and underestimates with both feet in the Practical World it now includes outter space a comment from the returning Space Capsule during a TV transmission starts us off in another direction we have you about [Music] [Applause] 180,000 looking at yourselves at a seed from 180,000 miles out in space m I keep imagining is if I'm a some lonely traveler from another planet what I think about the Earth from this altitude whether I think it be inhabited or [Applause] not Friday December the 27th re-entry Splashdown acquisition recovery the last 15 minutes of the flight began at a speed of almost 25,000 mph then only 5 miles from the appointed Rend in the Pacific it ended speed zero if a machine may be said to be born when it performs a useful function Perhaps it is said to die when that function is fulfilled and having died it will be enshrined next to its still young ancestors the aircraft of Orville and Wilbur Wright lindberg's Spirit of St Louis but this is not an end far from it it is part of a much longer plan [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it has been estimated that at some time or another during the flight of Apollo 8 over 1 billion people all over the face of the globe were tuned into the spacecraft by television or radio the experience was most widely shared [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the astronauts returned to the world of men but there's more a week to the day after the Apollo 8 splash down another Apollo spacecraft had taken up its position on pad 39 at Cape Kennedy the countdowns by calendar and and clock have begun to bring it to the same moment at which we first saw this Apollo the night before it was born as launch Windows open and close the next missions move forward two test flights of the lunar Landing vehicle and then the proposed landing on the moon and plans are in the making now which include flybys of other planets visits to what Dr Bunch calls neighbors Eric haer is a writer until recently a working long whose deep insights into the nature of man have stirred the thinking of many let me quote Eric haer's words I always felt that man is a stranger on this planet a total stranger I always played with a fancy that maybe a contagion from outer space was the seed of man hence our preoccupation with heaven with the Sky With the Stars with a God who was somewhere out there in outer space it's a kind of homing impulse we are drawn to where we came from and I'm just tickled to death that this thing is being done by squares you know by average Americans not by these pretentious intellectuals because this is the great Genius of the average Americans they take something momentous and make an un momentous thing out of it and by the time they are through with it traveling into space and to the distant Stars will become routine this is why America is an ambiguity in the world because we make it so that there are no Exceptional Persons required to do [Music] anything that remarkable trip was made possible by the carefully organized work of many people here at the Lewis Research Center work with liquid rocket fuels and oxidizers in zero gravity led directly to technology important to the lunar spacecraft in zerog liquids do not necessarily settle in what is on Earth the bottoms of their tanks the propellants can be in various shapes and locations that could cause catastrophic problems when a rocket engine is shut down in Zerg and then restarting is tried if propellants are not kept in the bottoms of their tanks propellant pumps don't work Lewis researchers used aircraft aobb and wasp rockets and a zerg drop tower to create short periods of Zerg in order to investigate fluid Behavior the researchers found that only a little bit of thrust is needed to control the fuel location in the tank so very small rocket thrusters were used as required on the Saturn upper stage to settle propellants in the bottoms of the tanks while Apollo coasted during the next episode in our film series we'll see the Saturn Apollo as it carries its crew to Mankind's first lunar Landing until then this is Jim Bernett saying goodbye from NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland Ohio [Music] what e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e