Apollo 9 : space duet of Spider Gumdrop

[Music] o [Music] l spider and Gumdrop are spaceships hidden at Top This rocket officially spider is a lunar module that one day soon will touch down on the moon Gumdrop is a Command Module a mother ship that travels to the moon and orbits while two astronauts descend in a spider to the surface the three Apollo 9 astronauts riding into space in Gumdrop have a Prime mission to test spider in preparation for its job to land men on the moon assigned as lunar Landing module pilot is Russell schwier a civilian on his first space Flight pilot of the command ship Gumdrop is Colonel David Scott a space veteran of gmany 8 boarding Gumdrop is Colonel James a MCD divid veteran of gmany 4 now the first US Commander ever to have responsibility for the simultaneous flight of two spacecraft and the team of three to man them both and there we now have an open Tunnel and we have in a Command Module uh three people and three pieces of equipment Each of which is about the size of a people and with six of us in there it is really crowded uh that one of the difficulties in uh learning how to operate these mechanisms is the weight primarily it gives us the capability to transfer from one vehicle to the other through a pressurized tunnel I think it's important to realize that uh that Jim and I uh end up leaving Dave in a three-man spacecraft which uh takes three men to run it when we first got these two spacecraft I figured well if it's if it's so hard to do to train for this spacecraft then we now have two it should only be two times as hard as this but I found out much to my amazement that it's much more difficult than two times uh the old training problem we because I have to learn how to fly this one I have to learn how to fly this one then I have to learn how to fly these two together then I have to learn how to fly them this way and this way and some other way and there's so many different modes that we can get into that we really have more than just two configurations we probably have somewhere between 8 and 10 or 12 maybe when we consider the s4b and the asent The Descent stage the Command Module and the service module and the different ways we can hook them together you got a lot of variables there right so it's very difficult to train for this mission in a simulator the astronauts practice docking spider with a fullscale model of [Music] Gumdrop [Music] a lunar Landing research [Music] vehicle [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] la [Music] [Music] on Apollo 9 schwier will also test in space a new independent life support system to be used by the first men on the [Music] moon [Music] a model of spider looks strange enough the real thing looks even stranger it's the most UN aerodynamic shape I think I've ever seen uh matter of fact all the models I see it has the models have nice straight sides and they're hard and they're rigid and everything my first time I saw a real lamb I looked at it and it had what looked like cellophane sides and and Al foil roof and I oh they're kidding but it's really that's what it really is but it doesn't need to be strong it doesn't need all those aerodynamic shapes on the outside because that's not its [Music] [Applause] [Music] mission I mean relatively within the mission which of the Maneuvers are more critical well obviously uh the untethered Eva with a limb probably is because a limb goes to 90 miles it has no heat shield and no tether so it's uh essential that the limb returns to the heat shield one thing that we should keep in mind is that only one of these vehicles has a capability to land uh safe I guess I should add they both have the capability of Landing we only have one set of parachutes and one heat [Music] shield [Music] 74 a.m. March 3rd day of the flight of Apollo [Music] 9 and it's going to be a pretty standard launch we don't expect it to be any different than any preceding launches or any launches that'll follow us T-minus 25 seconds in counting all aspects still go this time as the computer monitors 20 seconds if we thought this was dangerous and it was critical and there were high risk we wouldn't do it TB guidance release 15 14 13 12 11 10 99 we have ignition sequence [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] start [Music] [Music] w [Music] la [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] la [Music] [Applause] [Music] a in orbit the apolline astronauts are beginning 10 days of the most complex Mission ever attempted in space this film is the visual result of the mission's complexity views of the flight and the men from the third stage it's turned around now station from Gumdrop now separated from the rocket the astronauts inspect spider then dock with it to spring it free from the rocket section now visible below the skirt of the [Music] spider inside Gumdrop the astronauts prepare for first schwier then mcdot to enter the LM in their weightless World up is where your head happens to be and moving around can be [Music] [Applause] [Music] fun movement is accelerated by the speed of the [Music] camera on the third and fourth days mdid and schwier pass through the tunnel into the spider and transmit television pictures to the ground now on the fourth day they will Dawn pressure suit helmets for schwacker spacewalk on the exterior of the [Applause] spider there okay in the outside spider schwager is standing on its porch okay Dave Scott has opened gumdrops hatch just a few feet from scher's position on spider oh there oh there that looks comfortable [Applause] you okay good you the camera or something I camera oh very pretty what things are still falling out up there what are you doing throwing everything overboard oops there goes a nut okay what are you talking about me again okay B in okay Dave you got to start getting your hatch closed better to start getting your hatch closed if you're not already doing it closed lock on theth fifth day MCD divid and schwier give spider its crucial test flight undocking from Gumdrop to maneuver 100 m out before attempting to find their way back to the vital docking with Gumdrop and its capability to return them to [Music] Earth [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] mcit and schwier see Gumdrop and Scott fall away as they fire spider's Moon descent engine at 86 mil the part of spider that will remain on the moon a small launch platform is cast off for the try to return to Gumdrop spider fires its Moon Ascent engine [Music] from Gumdrop Dave Scott sees his friends returning in a changed spider without even a moonlanding gear it is now totally a spaceship with a look that seems strangely appropriate and even [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] beautiful [Music] with MCD divid at the controls spider moves in to try the crucial docking to reunite himself and schwier with their heat shield parachutes and Dave [Music] Scott success and Scott sees his friends emerg from the tunnel happy and tired but they can all relax a bit now as spider is fired off into its own orbit and the astronauts begin 5 days of valuable scientific Earth photography navigation and systems checks after 10 days in Earth orbit Gumdrop prepares for its fiery re-entry into the Earth's [Music] atmosphere [Music] la [Music] the three astronauts completed did all of their assigned objectives in a near perfect mission aided by thousands of people on the ground and new and complex systems of communication and control Gumdrop carried its crew safely into space and back housing most of them most of the time and Performing its Maneuvers well now burned and blackened it will never fly [Music] again spider still circling the earth flew so well that the first men scheduled for lunar Landing may take off later this year with their own spider proven and tested to fly them from their Gumdrop in lunar orbit down to the surface of the Moon and safely [Music] back [Music] la