Rehearsal For The Moon

[Music] [Music] man Now controls more propulsive power than ever before and his vehicles are more complicated than he has ever known and he will have to survive in an airless environment where the heat can at one time boil water and seconds later the cold could freeze air [Music] solid where weight is meaningless a man of 150 lb on Earth can expect to weigh over half a ton 25 lb and nothing before he gets back to prepare men for space missions Nessa has developed complex flight simulators often more intricate than the vehicles they [Music] duplicate astronauts John Young and Don Eisley are rehearsing for their flight in the Apollo Command Module the astronauts call this Simulator the box car because of the boxes that house the television and Optical projectors that surround the Command [Music] Module computers respond to the controls and instruments tell the astronauts in training what their spacecraft would be doing this is one of three Command Module simulators in Houston and Cape Kennedy in which the astronauts learn everything about their Command Module and are put into sudden emergency situations here they can afford to make mistakes and Learn by them the lunar module will be used to land two astronauts on the moon in the lunar module Simulator the astronauts learn to fly the spacecraft astronauts Jim Irwin and John bull are the crew for ground testing the lunar module they're not only rehearsing their roles but also helping develop flight and test [Music] procedures through the spacecraft windows in this simulator they can see views of the lunar surface and of the rendevu with the Command Module while these simulators give complete visual presentations the actual feel of Rockets firing must be experienced in other ways one of these simulators is the lunar Landing research vehicle a trainer that acts the way the lunar module would under the 1 Sixth gravity of the Moon a jet engine its thrust directed down supports 56 of the vehicle's weight smaller clusters of rockets are used to control attitude another group of rockets is used by the pilot to land the astronauts will use this Free Flight Training to simulate Landings on the [Music] moon in another moving Simulator the dynamic crew procedures simulator scientist astronauts Dr Edward Gibson and Dr Owen garot are getting the sensation of a violent but safe abort from a booster one of the largest and perhaps most spectacular of the moving trainers is the ducking [Music] simulator a Command Module mockup and an active lunar module both ride on a film of air from frictionless Air bearings astronaut Bill POG practices the critical docking maneuver to be performed eventually in orbit around the Moon [Music] but while the astronauts use these simulators to train for their complex missions they still must learn to live and work in the Hostile space environment this environment is created artificially in the world's largest vacuum chamber located at Houston's Mann spacecraft Center astronauts like Mike Collins learn to use their pressure suits in the vacuum and harsh temperatures like those of space and the moon but reproducing the ations of weightlessness is a more difficult Apollo simulation problem in this converted Air Force plane flying special trajectories astronauts experience the lack of gravity for a few brief seconds a good approximation of the weightless State can be achieved for longer periods by training underwater in this tank astronaut Dave Scott practices emergency transfer from the lunar module to the Command Module another simulator is used to practice working in varying conditions weightless or in lunar Gravity the subject rides in a gimbal system that can be adjusted to give him almost any weight the entire unit of man and machine rides on an overhead air bearing these are the simulators in which the astronauts train for Apollo when two United States astronauts land on the moon for the first time they would have landed there many times before and never left Earth for