This programme contains scenes that
some viewers may find upsetting
This is the moon - man's first stop
on his way to explore
our solar system.
To get there and return successfully
is the primary objective
of Nasa's Project Apollo.
But before men ever stand
on the moon,
Nasa will use three
different launch vehicles.
The first phase, Project Mercury.
Our second step, Project Gemini.
In phase three of the project...
...Project Apollo.
It carries three astronauts.
Each phase is key to landing
on the moon...
...before the end of the decade.
April 9th, 1959 Washington, DC.
This is a press conference.
These seven young men will be
the first astronauts,
United States Project Mercury.
People everywhere adopted
those seven as total heroes
even before they made
a space flight.
And Gus was one of them.
It was quite a surprise to Gus that
all at once he was a celebrity.
And I don't think that he...
...ever really got used to that.
He was a big hero in the little
town of Mitchell.
From a small town like Mitchell
to have an astronaut,
it was just magnificent.
Everybody was so proud to even say
they were from Mitchell
after Gus, you know, did so well...
...and became an astronaut.
He met his wife in high school.
They were high school sweethearts.
Betty turned out to be a very
strong woman.
She did a lot to help Gus
in his career.
Gus always wanted to be a pilot,
and he wanted to be a jet pilot.
He got his wings, and the Korean w*r
was going on,
so he was immediately sent
over there.
He flew 100 combat missions.
Got shot at several times.
He volunteered to fly more,
but they said no
and sent him home.
When he came back,
got into test flight,
he really enjoyed flying
different aircrafts.
And Nasa decided that the astronauts
should come
from military test pilots.
And there were something like 300
that agreed to apply.
And Gus was one of them.
ARCHIVE: And had his first
great success in space
when the Russians pushed
a man across the threshold.
He was Yuri Gagarin, the astronaut,
the Russians lionised
as the first to orbit the Earth.
It was the propaganda coup
of the year.
RADIO CHATTER
The press created the space
race between
the two major powers in the world.
And it became almost like
a contest...
...like a sporting contest,
if you will...
...in that, uh...
...they were able to defeat us
and we were to defeat them.
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.
No single space project
in this period will
be more impressive to mankind,
or more important
for the long range exploration
of space.
APPLAUSE
'61, President Kennedy said,
we want to go to the moon
and we're going to do it
in this decade.
And I can remember even
then thinking,
"Can we do that in nine years from"
a standing start?
When they started
building Mercury...
...everything was new.
And these were new,
bright young engineers,
and it was kind of a, "We'll try
this and see if this works.
"And if it doesn't,
we'll try something else."
ARCHIVE: It's Captain Virgil Gus
Grissom, raring to go.
A pat on the back from
Colonel Glenn in reserve,
enters the capsule
at Cape Canaveral.
Must be pretty lonely in there.
Three, two, one...
...lift off!
RADIO CHATTER
Go at 27 amps.
Roger... and trajectory is good.
Oh, roger, looks good in here.
Getting ready for impact here.
You can see the water coming
right on up!
RADIO CHATTER
I watched it much like everybody
else did on TV.
He was very close to getting drowned
with a helicopter
beating down on him while he tried
to lift the capsule,
which was filling up with water.
The helicopter that was trying to
pick up the spacecraft,
grappled him just like
they normally did,
but it was getting so heavy they
couldn't pick it up.
And the helicopter
engine overheated...
...and they finally had to cut it
loose and let it go.
Gus was lucky to live through that.
It was embarrassing to him whether
he did or did not cause it.
He knew he was going to get blamed
and that lived with him
for a long time.
We talked about that.
He said, I was just sitting there
and all at once...
POW! The thing blew.
The press and the media are...
...sometimes not too courteous.
Some were very aggressive
looking in windows,
all that sort of thing.
And so he had this house built
and he had no windows in the front.
That was done purposely.
ARCHIVE: Attempted firing of
a monster rocket heralds
the next step into space
beyond Mercury.
This is Saturn, America's giant
m*ssile of the future.
It's the work of a man who now
is one of the most important figures
in America's space programme.
48 years old, Wernher von Braun.
Dr Von Braun, this is only roughly
half the size of the Saturn,
this enormous machine above
us, is it not?
Yes, this is what we call
the first stage.
There will be two more
stages mounted on top of this.
Von Braun had been brought
to this country at
the end of World w*r II.
They'd been blowing up London
for months and months.
And so a large number of his people
got out of there
and surrendered to the US,
where he might continue
what he was doing.
What von Braun
did was extremely important
to the future of space flight
at that time.
I can remember saying, "By golly,
we're going to do this.
We're going to... if we don't do it,
we're going to die trying.
ARCHIVE: Field operations will
be staffed
with Kollsman representatives at
North American Aviation,
White Sands,
the manned space centre,
AC Spark plug, MIT Instrumentation
Laboratory and Cape Kennedy.
Unfortunately, in this world,
as you expand your knowledge,
as you expand your capability,
interfaces begin to mount.
Interfaces that are outside
of your organisation,
much less inside your organisation.
You've got... so you've got to make
sure that we are keeping
up with what they're doing
over there.
How do we tell the spacecraft
designers what we need?
They don't know how to do it either.
They're asking you questions
every day.
What you want them to do,
how you want them done...
What is it supposed to do?
Who's got the mission plan?
Dad was selected in the second
group of nine astronauts,
which was probably the best moment
of all our lives.
As a son of an astronaut,
that was like a special event.
You know, how can you believe that?
Ed stood out.
Ed fit in perfectly.
He was tall, great looking.
And he was just an image...
...that you thought about if that's
who I want to go into space with.
Dad went up with my grandad
when he was 12 years old,
and they flew in a T6 aeroplane.
And my grandad let him take
the controls,
and he felt like it was a natural
thing that he did.
That was when his mind kind of said,
"I want to do this,
"I want to be a pilot someday."
He went on to West Point,
where his father had gone
before him,
and he was a world-class runner
and hurdler.
And so he almost made
the Olympic team.
He was on the track team, and he
went to the Olympic trials
and came in third place.
Only two go at that point.
But he said it might
have changed his career,
and maybe it would have
been different
and wouldn't have been an astronaut.
You never know, you know.
Well, they met on a date.
And my mum was on a date with
someone else,
and my dad was over there,
and apparently
she was batting her eyelashes
or whatever.
And then one thing I think led
to the other.
They married about six months later.
I came along about nine
months later.
And then Bonnie was then about two
and a half years later.
ARCHIVE: New F-100 jets go into
operational service
with Air Force squadrons in Germany,
bringing the supersonic age from
the experimental stage
to the first line of
Western Air Defence.
They were flying F-100s
and basically looking
for any trouble on the border
of Germany and Russia.
Ed White was more cerebral.
He thought things through
in a way that others may not have.
And he didn't try to exude that...
...my ego was bigger than yours,
you know and some
of those first seven did.
But Ed, you know, was extremely
capable guy,
and he was always so friendly.
He was just a friendly,
friendly person.
Project Gemini is a two
man Earth orbital mission.
It is an intermediate step between
projects Mercury and Apollo.
Gemini will reveal
man's capabilities
during extended periods
of time in space.
Gus spent the summer of 1964
at the McDonnell plant.
He was very instrumental
in the design of Gemini,
to the point where the other
astronauts got
to call it the 'Gus Mobile'.
He worked closely with
the engineers,
and some liked him and some didn't.
Because he was a very
tough taskmaster.
And I guess he took the approach
that if I'm going to fly this,
I want it to be exactly like
I want it to be.
Gus came across sometimes to people
as being kind of gruff and,
you know, sharp,
but I never saw that.
He was always laughing
and telling jokes and kind
of the typical pilot.
There we are, 14 of us, the third
group of astronauts.
And you know, when I look
at it now...
...we were all very young.
And of course, we were all very
excited to be selected at that point
in the programme.
Everyone really respected that
commitment on the part of JFK.
The third group, when they came in,
Roger Chaffee was one of them.
And boy, if you call central casting
and ask them to send you
an astronaut,
they would send you Roger Chaffee,
because he had the looks
and the bearing and all of that.
Lieutenant, congratulations on your
selection to the new astronaut team.
How do you feel about it?
Very excited, very happy and very
honoured that I could be
chosen for this.
I never dreamed that he would
go that far.
It was a new beginning
in a different type of life.
Mrs Chaffee, how do you feel
about your husband's appointment?
Oh, I'm thrilled to death.
I think it is something
that he has always wanted.
And, of course, what he
wants, I want.
And he's dreamed about it
since high school, actually.
So I'm real thrilled about it.
Do you feel apprehensive at all,
worried at all?
Not right now, but my view might
change when he gets
shot off into space.
But right now, I'm not.
Cheryl, do you know what
your daddy is?
Rocket man.
A rocket man?
I met Roger my freshman year at
Purdue University.
I liked him.
We were like two peas
in a pod.
I remember when he took
flying lessons
and was so excited
when he did his solo.
It was in his blood.
And then we got married.
I was 20 when Roger was 22.
We got married in '57 and Sheryl
was born in 58.
And then Steve was born in '61.
I never knew he was flying
reconnaissance over Cuba.
He never talked about it.
And I think a lot of the pilots
were like that.
He never told me anything.
He went to work and that was it.
Everything was brand-new.
The place was new,
we were new.
What we were doing was
completely new.
Extremely exciting times.
We worked eight or ten, 12, 14
hours a day,
seven days a week.
I mean, nobody thought anything
about it.
It was just, you know, part of
what was the fun of being pioneers
in this kind of a business?
I would quiz him on the moon.
We had a big picture of the moon
in his office,
and I would point to different
craters for him to talk about.
He really wanted to go to the moon.
He wanted to go to Mars.
After Mercury, Nasa showed great
confidence in Gus
by selecting him as the command
pilot for the first Gemini.
He named his spacecraft
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
after his experience with Mercury.
Nasa wasn't too happy with that...
...but they considered it better than
his first choice of the Titanic.
I think they made the perfect
choice to put Gus
as the first man manned
Gemini commander.
And they also put a good guy
in the right seat,
John Young, who was extremely good.
I was assigned to be a coordinator
between the first experiments that
we flew in space, really.
To be the liaison, as it were,
between the crews
and the scientists of various kinds,
but also often doctors as well.
And Gus was, "I'm not here for you.
"I'm here as a test pilot."
And if you're from the press,
"The heck with you," you know,
"If I have to deal with
you, I will."
But, you know, and if you're
an experimenter,
and especially "If you want me
to wear something
"or you want to poke a hole in me,
forget it."
And here I am,
the interface between Gus,
the commander of the first
Gemini mission,
and the first experimenters
who were putting things
in the spacecraft that would take
some of his precious time.
And so, as far as Gus was concerned,
I was an enemy.
Three, two, one, zero.
Lift-off!
1-4. Lift-off.
Roger, Molly Brown,
you're a go from here.
As I recall, the launch was normal.
But every flight that I was ever
a part of always had problems.
One of the problems
I remember encountered,
and it was in a system I was
responsible for,
were the thrusters.
The little attitude control
thrusters sticking.
And they would clog up.
Gus was smart
and he was analytical.
I watched flight on television.
That was quite pleasing
to see it land
and know that the recovery was
going very well.
ARCHIVE: 300 miles above
the earth...
Colonel Alexei Leonov
makes history.
The Russian cosmonaut is the first
man to brave
the vacuum of space, twisting,
turning and somersaulting
as he hurtles round
the world at over 17,000 miles
an hour.
Gemini 4, they put a great
crew together.
Ed, of course, the first guy to
fly out of the second group.
And McDivitt was the commander
of that flight.
He was a seasoned guy that knew
what he was doing.
The flight was originally set up to
be a pretty much
of a medical experiment.
There was a big medical uproar about
whether we were going to die
or not when we landed.
It was the first mission to have
four days in space,
so we didn't know how they were
going to be affected.
This was a special
mission to maybe pass
the Russians
for the first time.
From the beginning, we were behind
trying to catch up.
Ten, nine, ignition
sequence start...
Six, five, four...
...three, two, one...
Lift-off!
Everybody in the control
centre was uneasy.
It's the first time we'd put a...
...somebody had been outside
the spacecraft...
...and only a spacesuit left
between him and sudden death.
I can remember thinking, "Oh, my
gosh, what if that hose breaks?"
It's providing oxygen
and all that kind of thing.
Of course, he had no
foot restraints,
no hand restraints, no nothing.
Except for that g*n,
which didn't work too well.
He was really out there by himself.
The Gemini suit, you're
in a balloon
and bending balloons
every time you move.
I mean, it was really hard work.
People were really amazed
at how well
he handled himself in space.
You're going 17,500 miles an hour
and everything's going fine.
He was having a great
time out there.
And of course, time flies
when you're in a situation
like that.
And so what the whole world
remembered was McDivitt, you know,
looking at the watch and the
checklist and saying,
"Hey, it's time to get in here."
And Ed saying, "Yeah, yeah,"
you know, basically,
"Yeah, yeah, I'll be with you
in a minute." Right.
Trying to stay out as long
as he could.
But then when he started to get back
in, McDivitt had to help him.
The suit was puffed up, of course,
and the hatch wasn't that big,
and he really struggled
to get back in.
By the time he got back in,
it was dark.
So when we went to close the hatch,
it wouldn't close,
it wouldn't lock.
And so in the dark,
I was trying to fiddle around over
in this side where I couldn't
see anything,
trying to get my cloth down
in this little slot to push
the gears together.
And finally we got that done
and got it latched.
When they closed that hatch
everybody said,
"Good Lord" Man,
I'm glad that's over."
When we hit the water,
we checked around for leaks.
I said to Ed, "How are you feeling?"
He said, "I'm feeling great,
how are you feeling?"
I said, "I'm feeling great too."
"Guess we aren't going to die."
Ed was really the pioneer
for American
extravehicular activities.
It captured the imagination of,
I think,
the entire public.
Could go on a parade like
that in a city where dad was born.
And of course, he was very proud
of being a Texan.
The whole city turned
out, and that was the best
of those kind of parades
I've ever been in
in my life, and I'll never
forget that.
It was really kind of overwhelming.
It was like being a movie star
or even more than that.
It's indeed a pleasure
to be back here
and stand on the steps here
and share a little bit of
the experiences I had with you.
It's wonderful to be back
in the state of Texas.
We were mobbed wherever we went.
And dad was, you know, besieged
by press
and wherever we went, they rolled
out the red carpet.
It was just kind of crazy.
Five, four, thee, two, one...
Gemini was two year
crash course
in how you go to the moon
and get ready for it.
It's where we learned how
to rendezvous, how to dock,
how to do a spacewalk or
extravehicular activity, EVA.
Not that we knew all the answers
yet, but that we were
on the right track.
ARCHIVE: The moon is a necessary
first step
for exploration of the planets.
To fly men there
and return them safely
in this decade is the goal of
Nasa's Project Apollo.
The early missions of Mercury
and the experience
from Gemini have brought
this country
to the next major milestone,
the first Apollo
three manned space flight.
These are the men to fly
that mission.
Astronaut Roger Chaffee.
Needless to say,
I'm extremely excited
about being named
to this flight crew,
and I think I've got a couple of
the greatest men
in the world to work with.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
The senior pilot, Edward White -
he will be remembered
for his spacewalk.
Ah... Uh, working in the systems
right now, getting up to speed.
And I think, uh, we'll all be
looking forward to the flight.
And command pilot Virgil Grissom,
one of the original
seven astronauts -
his third time into space.
I realise that this isn't
a flight to the Moon,
but if it were, which two men would
go down to the surface of the Moon?
If it was this crew, it would
be me and somebody else.
LAUGHTER
Very good.
When we heard, you know, that it was
Grissom and White and Chaffee,
perfect. Let's go.
That was a wonderful crew.
They had three different
representatives from
three of the different groups.
They all clicked together very well.
I think our crew and
backup crew really
worked very, very well together.
I mean, we did not have
any problems in terms of,
you know, compatibility
or dealing with things...
...in spite of the difficult
initial relationship with Gus.
And we became the best of friends
after we were on the crew together
for no more than a week or two.
It was a very interesting
transition.
It was a whole new vehicle -
the first time we'd built
a three-person vehicle.
North American Aviation
was the contractor,
and even though they'd
had a lot of experience,
they were struggling
with the command module.
Plus, as we learn things, it was
continually modifying the vehicle.
So as fast as we were building it,
we were changing it.
The modifications never stopped,
which require you to go back
in and undo work you've already
done and checked out,
and you pull wiring out
and you put new wiring in.
It was pressure, pressure, pressure.
When I came to work for NASA,
the covers they had on the
floor of the command
module and over that wiring
were just the standard foam
type protective covers.
I don't know how in the world
anybody would think
that was acceptable
in an oxygen environment.
The crew was not shy
about speaking up.
They did not like some things
about the spacecraft.
They would look at
something and say,
"You know, that switch there?
Not very handy.
"It ought to be moved
over to this side."
Well, the contractor would do it,
you know, just at the whim
and fancy of an astronaut.
It drove the contractors nuts,
and it drove the program
managers even more crazy.
Gus was very involved
in the hatch design,
and he insisted that the hatch
seal from the inside out so that,
you know, in the event of a leak
in orbit, you've always got pressure
in the c*ck holding
that hatch closed,
which was, you know, a sound reason.
We all bitched about the hatch.
No question.
But it wasn't because of safety,
it was because of the difficulty
of using the damn thing.
Time was passing
and we had to meet these goals.
And Apollo was running late.
Running slow.
They knew they had a problem.
Everybody was trying to get to
the Moon in the decade of the '60s,
like President Kennedy had promised.
And so they were cutting corners
and doing things, probably,
to get there faster.
All of us down there are struggling
to meet the schedule,
and we were trying to go faster
than we could handle.
I was annoyed at the way
what became Apollo One
came out of the plant at Downing.
It was not finished.
So it was shipped to the Cape
with a bunch of spare parts
and things to finish it out.
And that, of course,
caused this whole atmosphere
of developing where...
I would almost call it a first case
of bad go fever - "go fever"
meaning we've got to keep going,
got to keep going, got to keep going.
That evening, I debriefed with Gus.
I said, "If there are any things
that go wrong, like a glitch
"in the electronic circuit,
some bad sounds, scrub."
They were frustrated.
Frustrated over the things that
were happening to the spacecraft.
I mean, I've got a picture
of them praying.
I look forward a great deal
to the first flight.
There's a great deal of pride
involved in making a first flight.
So I think I'm... I'm looking
forward to the flight
with a great deal of anticipation.
There's a lot of unknowns,
of course, and a lot of problems
that could develop or might develop,
and they'll have to be solved,
and that's what we're there for.
This is our business - to find out
if this thing will work for us.
You flew on Mercury, flew on Gemini,
and now you're flying on Apollo.
Does the law of averages,
so far as the possibility
of a catastrophic failure,
bother you at all, sir?
No. You sort of have to put
that out of your mind, and...
...there's always a
possibility that, uh...
...you can have a catastrophic
failure, of course.
It can happen on any fight.
It can happen on the last one
as well as the first one, so...
...you just plan as best you
can to take care of all of
these eventualities, and you get a
well-trained crew and you go fly.
The Apollo One test, which we
considered to be non-hazardous,
ran long because of various
problems during the afternoon.
And then the comms system
was really acting up.
I was in Mission Control.
I was a flight controller.
We had gone round and round and
round on the communication issues.
We could not get a clear voice.
We couldn't talk to each other.
Gus was forever complaining
about the countdown
and the communications.
We knew that there was
bad workmanship.
We knew that the wires were exposed.
We knew that there was
a lot of stuff going on
in that spacecraft
that we didn't like.
I don't think any of us
recognised the seriousness
of the danger we
had put the crew in.
The whole ball of fire
that was inside
that vessel came out like
sheets of flame.
Technicians were burned.
Papers were set on fire.
People were rushing in all directions
trying to get fire extinguishers.
Six guys took it in turn two at a
time to try and get the hatches off.
In the process, they were
burning their hands on the hatches.
Then the fire came up the side
and filled the whole room
with black smoke.
And then, from then on, it was...
...impossible to do
anything about it.
I've seen death happen in
various ways, but not like that.
Top space agency officials are
flying to Cape Kennedy tonight
to begin the official investigation
into what caused a flash fire
that k*lled the nation's first three
Apollo astronauts earlier tonight.
Lieutenant Colonel Gus Grissom, 42,
Lieutenant Colonel Ed White, 36,
and Lieutenant Commander
Roger Chaffee, 31,
all died in moments, helplessly
trapped inside their spacecraft.
ON RADIO: ..the first three
Apollo astronauts earlier tonight.
It was just a news flash on
the radio in the car, and I...
I slammed on the brakes and
pulled off to the side just
before going under the runway, and
I just... I had to just sit there...
...I think, for 15 or 20 minutes
before I felt I could,
I could drive again.
Uh, I mean, it was such a shock.
All at once it was shock,
disbelief, confusion.
I was more concerned with Mum
and Dad and how they were
going to react to this.
Surprisingly, I think Mum
handled it very well.
Dad took it very, very hard.
I don't think he ever
quite got over it.
Jan Armstrong was in our driveway
when we came pulling up
and she got Mum, and then they
just sent me and Ed to our room,
and we were back there,
sitting in our rooms.
We didn't know what was going on.
And then I think at some point
Mum ended up coming in and I just...
...yeah.
It's... the worst thing you
could ever possibly hear.
That was probably the worst night of
my life, without a doubt. For sure.
I remember every single
second of that day.
But I had to tell my kids.
I remember the horses and
the carriage bringing the coffin.
My grandparents were there,
and President Johnson.
Mum did what my dad had wanted.
He wanted to be buried
at West Point.
That was his wish.
Mum wanted to keep Dad's wish,
so we went that way.
g*nshots
You had that feeling of guilt.
You had that feeling of remorse.
You had that feeling of, "My God,
why did we ever let that happen?"
And there's those three men are
gone, and you had to deal with that.
I was the designated engineer to
go into the spacecraft to try to
identify where the source
of the ignition was.
It was a very traumatic situation,
but at the same time,
my focus and my concentration
was on my job.
All the leaders in both NASA
and North American...
...lost their jobs and they
brought in new people.
They were all tough guys.
They took no rubbish from anybody.
They ran a hard shop.
They had very little patience
with people that screwed
up or didn't do the job,
and they really took
over the program.
I thought it was unnecessary
to move as many people as we did,
but that's just the way it was.
Politics is tough
in a situation like that.
In retrospect,
we put the story together -
is that a single spark ignited
either Velcro or the T0 netting
and in a 100% oxygen environment,
instantly was like a fireball
just going across that spacecraft
all the way to the other side.
And it was instantaneous.
NEWSREEL: In Washington, astronauts
Borman, McDivitt, Slayton, Schirra,
and Shepard attend a congressional
subcommittee hearing
probing the Apollo capsule disaster.
The questions...
We went through a lot of trial.
NASA, unfortunately,
as a bunch of civilians,
didn't know how to take off
the black armband.
And military people moan inside,
cry inside, bleed inside
about losing a compatriot.
But they wore the black armband
to the funeral, and that's it.
It's gone.
NASA wore the
black armband for a year
and we kept saying,
"Look, take the band off.
"We got to get back to work."
Gus... Gus would be the first person
to say, "Let's get on with it."
We were right up against it.
I mean, the idea that we could
recover from that kind of accident
and all of the work
that had to be done
rebuilding things and still make
the end of the decade?
Phew, man, that was...
It was really tight.
expl*si*n
In a year that was really bad
in the United States, in 1968 -
the riots, Vietnam
was going downhill -
there was so much
negativity in the world.
ENGINE ROARS
Everything had to work right.
And miraculously, it did.
And then in December of '68,
Borman, Lovell, and Anders
took off to the Moon.
To go from Earth orbit to the Moon,
it was a big jump.
That was just... Just amazing.
And then 11 came along.
ARMSTRONG:
It's one small step for man...
...one giant leap for mankind.
How exciting that was.
I can remember that
like it was yesterday.
CHEERING
INAUDIBLE
I took great pride in the fact
that we did land on the Moon.
I think that's what Gus
would have wanted...
...to do it in the time frame
that Kennedy asked.
I think that probably without
the sacrifice of Apollo One,
we would have never made it
to the Moon in a decade.
It was an incredible time.
We were doing it for ourselves...
...we were doing it for
our fellow crewmen
who weren't around
any more to do it.
We were doing it for humanity.
As the missions went on
after Apollo 11,
we became more focussed
on real exploration.
And Dave Scott was a
very thoughtful guy.
He left a tribute on the surface
to the fallen astronauts,
which included the Apollo One crew.
RADIO: T-Minus five, four,
three, two, one.
Booster ignition
and lift-off of Discovery.
The shuttle program.
It was the most fantastic flying
machine you'd ever seen.
We have main engine start.
Four, three, two, one and lift-off.
Lift-off of the 25th
Space Shuttle mission
and it has cleared the tower.
But NASA, they made
some really bad errors.
expl*si*n
Challenger was one.
Columbia was another one.
You are putting your life on
the line because you believe
in what it is you're doing.
I mean, being at the
forefront of exploration
is something that you're willing
to pay a price for.
Here we have all 25 astronauts
recognised on our wall.
I'd like to take a special moment
to recognise every one.
NASA, in a very difficult way,
has had to learn
some very tough lessons in
how you deal with disasters,
and they're doing it quite well now.
Hopefully they'll never
have to do it again,
but they have a strong commitment
to supporting the families.
Roger B Chaffee.
BELL RINGS
Virgil "Gus" Grissom.
BELL RINGS
Edward H White II.
BELL RINGS
We feel like we're a part of the
NASA family, and ultimately,
we see our mission as helping
them fulfil their mission,
which is human exploration,
which was the dream
of those astronauts who'd perished.
I'm glad that they've
got the memorial.
It's just something to
look at and say,
"Hey, he's remembered,"
and that's important.
People want to remember him.
He was the first American
to walk in space.
Getting over it has been something
we've been able to do together.
Bonnie has helped me
and I've helped her
all that time, you know.
Sometimes I see my dad in my dreams,
and they're always positive
and urging me forward in my life,
which I appreciate
that he does that every so often.
I remember having dreams
that he would walk through
the front door and, you know,
say, "Hey, I'm home."
And he'd just have maybe
a bandage on his face
or on his hand or something.
And yeah, I had those dreams
quite frequently.
You know they're around watching
you and guarding. They're angels.
It's the light of life.
They light one for Gus,
one for Ed and one for my dad.
And I think that's just shining
their light when they, um,
when those candles are lit.
The last time I was there,
I looked up at the sky
and there were three stars...
...lined up.
And it was really, really special.
BUGLER PLAYS
The Apollo fire is still a very
significant event in people's minds.
When you look at the history of
the space program,
the loss of those three guys is,
will always be, significant.
I don't think the three
of them died in vain.
I think they were the
stepping stones
for the rest of the people
to go to the Moon.
And now we have Artemis
going back to the Moon,
this is all a great continuation.
Ladies and gentlemen,
your Artemis Two crew!
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
We're all family,
and it's a family of astronauts.
Now a family not just of
white Christian men,
but a lot of diversity.
Men, women, people from
all over the world.
Earth life is moving out
into the universe
and Artemis is that next big step.
This next step will be better
than what we did.
Better tools, better technology.
The lessons we learnt
on Apollo One
have been with us ever since,
and I think every time
that spacecraft launches,
we'll know it's got a little bit of
Apollo One in it.
ENGINES ROAR
Though the days are long
Twilight sings a song
Of the happiness that used to be
I'll see you in my dreams
Hold you in my dream.
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Apollo 1 (2025)
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