DISCOVERY '67

[Music] that's the Saturn 1b rocket hurling the Apollo spacecraft into orbit when all the testing is finished the three astronauts aboard Apollo will ride it into orbit and toward the moon a new era is underway when men will land on the moon and fly around the earth for as long as a year today we're going to learn how Apollo will get us to the moon and what it's like inside the spacecraft as discovery examines Apollo our next step in outer space [Music] discovery 67 the award-winning program for young people with bill Owen there's a feeling around its America's sound Pepsi people feeling free free to choose anyway free to stand up and say you [Music] when you catch that then you need what Betsy's giving of concealing join the Pepsi they're a very free [Music] [Applause] the passage [Applause] [Music] Ciara portrait in majesty and Harold [Music] [Applause] ciara the new drama series set against the sweep and grandeur of our nation's great parks bringing you high wide and hence of adventure with the Rangers of the National Park Service as they roam the vastness of the Yosemite I reach some of that protecting the parks thousands of visitors we're starting at rescue northeast faced to the pinnacle two climbers both injured one bad Sierra a world of constant change where every day brings a new challenge and the men and women to meet in Sierra brought to you by the producers of adam-12 and emergency [Music] hi welcome to Discovery this is the Apollo spacecraft actually this section where the astronauts live is called the command module we're at North American Aviation where Apollo is built in Downey California Apollo is 11 by 13 and a half feet in size that it sound very big does it but it's the biggest spacecraft we've ever had ABC science editor Jules Bergman who's covered every one of our manned space shots is with us to tell us how Apollo works and what it'll mean to our space program Jules how big a step forward is Apollo bill mercury and Gemini were sort of like Volkswagens Apollo is more like a large family station wagon and it has to be the three pilots inside Apollo with all our food and equipment have to live in that spacecraft for three days going to the moon in three days coming back that's their home now this would be the command module a model of it right here right now we know that it's 11 by 13 and 1/2 feet in size but how big is it in relationship to the entire spacecraft well this model of the Saturn 5 moon rocket bill is the best way to show that here on top of it is the command module itself this spec that's what we've been talking about that's at the top the three hundred and sixty four foot high moon rocket itself three hundred and sixty-four feet figure 10 feet to a story that would be like a thirty six story building at least what we're seeing now is the command and service module right as it sits atop the Saturn 5 rocket in the giant Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Kennedy bill this Saturn 5 is called a fuelling test article it's designed to be sure that all those stages were looking at all the rocket fit together correctly and that the whole rocket fits the launch pad and here we see it being towed the three miles from the vertical Assembly Building out to launch complex 39 there's the view looking downward 364 feet of rocket there and there's the launch support tower near it and we're looking up crawler row as we call it toward the launch pad and here's the crawler transporter moving ever so slowly it moves at one-and-a-half miles per hour with about 18 different drivers or pilots guiding it 1/2 miles per hour toward the launch pad and that rocket by the way when it's fueled weighs 3,000 tons bill the crawler-transporter weighs 6,000 tons nearly 13 million pounds at all well we know now that this part is called the service module what does it really do well bill the service module is really the storehouse of supplies for the flight the fuel cells that give the astronauts the power for the spacecraft the reserve breathing oxygen is in here the fuel for a 20,000 pound rocket engine that's down here beneath the skirt that enables the entire spacecraft to maneuver in orbit and change its orbit and the fuel for these tiny rocket engines they're called thrusters that enable the astronauts to control the attitude of the spacecraft to change the pitch if you will the roll or the yaw of the spacecraft all those supplies are stored for the entire trip in this service module which stays with the spacecraft until just before the reentry I see Oh what about this structure here tools well this is the escape tower bill and there's a huge solid rocket motor in it and it's intended to carry the entire spacecraft away from the booster rocket if anything goes wrong during the launch phase and of course its jettisoned afterward if in case the launch does go when launch does go normally I should think that this is about the most complex machine man has ever put together it is complex alright bill more than 2 million parts in the command module alone this is the cleanroom at North American where the command and service modules are assembled and checked out under surgical operating room conditions to be sure there's no dust no dirt that gets into the spacecraft I see and here's the technician checking out wiring bundles they're carefully tagged to be sure the right section goes into the right part of the spacecraft more than 15 miles of wiring in the command module alone and here's an entire wiring harness some of those 15 miles going into the command module and testing is the name of the game bill in Space Flight these are the escaped our rocket tests being held at White Sands proving grounds will a boilerplate spacecraft that escaped are is powered by a one hundred and fifty thousand pound thrust solid rocket engine here it is with cameras on board and it's designed of course to carry the entire command module away from the booster rocket in case anything goes wrong during launch in it in all these tests its work superlative Lee there's the boost protective cover that's called it protects the command module itself from the rocket exhaust going away and now these cameras modeled aboard the command module and it's an unmanned test of course show us the spacecraft starting had come down the pilot chutes aimed at stabilizing the spacecraft before the big chutes open have begun to come out here so there's more than one shoot system as a system of really three different parachutes used pilot shoots drogue chutes and the main shoots pilot chute is designed to open at 25,000 feet in normal flight then the drogue chute and then finally there's the mortar firing that enables the drogue chute to pull out the three main parachutes each of them there's the drugs coming out right now hello motion here slow-motion footage so it takes much longer than it normally would and here are the three main shoots beginning to unroofed unfurls they come out of the top of the spacecraft each of those three main chutes 85 feet in diameter when it opens and one of the fail-safes built in here is that any two of those main parachutes can get the spacecraft and the crew down safely without their being injured there they are completely open as the spacecraft ascends to a normal landing [Music] this landing of course was at White Sands on the desert Apollo is designed to land on land initially it's it lands on water now because the full landing system is not yet perfected and these are the water tests held right here at North American with a boilerplate command module being dropped into a big tank test the rain to two things really seeing how well the spacecraft hall or fuselage takes the shock of landing in the water and then seeing how well it floats how well it does as a boat all that testing but still there was the Apollo one tragedy bill no one knew it could happen as astronaut Frank Borman has put it before the accident everyone thought Apollo 1 was safe I wouldn't have hesitated to have gotten in myself that's the way he put it to the investigation board now in the light of the accident Apollo was going to get a new quick escape hatch so the crew can get out in a hurry if fire develops during testing or on the pad it's going to get a new normal air system inside without high-pressure oxygen in the spacecraft cabin thus reducing the fire hazard and some of the more flammable materials inside the spacecraft are going to be removed new materials less flammable materials substituted the legacy of Gus Grissom ed white and Roger Chaffee is that because of their accident every astronaut who ever flies an Apollo on trips in Earth orbit or to the moon will fly more safely as it's been put very eloquently three guys who had their eyes on the moon never even made it off the launch pad and everyone connected with Apollo has vowed that it will never happen again we're going inside the spacecraft with Jules Bergman and North American research pilot Tom Armstrong to see what it'll be like in an actual flight to the moon we're inside the Apollo spacecraft about to take a simulated trip to the moon and back with North American research pilot Tom Armstrong Tom how do we actually control Apollo when we're in orbit well Jules very much the same way that you do an airplane we have a control system here we have an instrument panel in front of us and we have an engine which we use to take us from one place to another how does the control stick govern the attitude of the spacecraft again very similar to an airplane we pitch nose up this way nose down nose right nose left and if we wish to roll we can roll to the left or roll to the right all with this one what we call three axis hand controller right then we can use the engine the same way that we do in an airplane we point the nose of the spacecraft using the hand controller in the direction that we wish to go we use the engine then to take us to that point right and then in this Apollo simulator which is actually on the spacecraft we are in we can tell where we are we can see the earth below us as we were around in orbit yes we do that through a TV camera that we have focused through this window here and we get the view of the earth which looks very similar to what an astronaut would actually see in an earth orbit mission it shows the earth about a hundred nautical miles below us the way it will there's nothing like the face of a kid eating a Hershey bar Oh bass is happy as it can be only a Hershey bar tastes like a Hershey bar it's the chocolate Hershey's real milk chocolate and if you like almonds try to Hershey bar with almonds the best tasting freshly roasted almonds there are Hershey yes right and also now as we head out in the simulator trip toward the moon we see the star field up there through television yes we have a star presentation which as the earth fades out we start to pick up all the stars that you normally would see in the sky on any clear night here on earth and how do we use this massive and talented computer here Tom well the computer is what you might call just a sophisticated way of counting it's an adding and subtracting machine we can use it to compute where we are to compute how fast we're going and all of these types of information that you need to navigate in deep space right now I'm sitting in the senior pilots couch and he's actually the navigator as well yes and one of the major advantages of Apollo is that it is so big that I can move forward here to the navigation station and stand up and then looking through this versatile telescope and section you have here I can see the stars as they would be in orbit and plot a path for us and you can insert that into the computer right you as a navigator down here would give me the information that I need and then I could push this into the computer and set up for a computation which would then tell the whole crew where we are versus where it is we wish to go every radio aboard the spacecraft could fail all our radios to earth for example and as long as we had the computer the sextant and the telescope we could still tell where we were all the time that has been one of our number one design criteria to be able to do what you want to do on board on the three-day flight to the moon we're totally independent of the earth we have to be right and here's the way it oughta be Tom on that giant Saturn 5 moon rocket lifts off from pad 39 at the Cape right we're just about to clear the launch umbilical tower they're 3,000 tons of weight at all blasting its way up into orbit with the command module atop right there are seven and a half million pounds of thrust right there and an animated view of the scene on the control center now the first two main stages of the rocket are burned out and we're being powered by the Saturn 4b third stage which burns out and now the fairing is deployed right and now you're going into what we call the transposition docking maneuver it gets its name from the fact that we must transpose the limb from its launch housing to the front end of the command module right and it begins with the pilots of the in the command module pulling away from the LEM right and then they'll turn around and come back and plug into the LEM using their control system now there's a lunar module being pulled out by the command module right and we sometimes call it a lunar bug or LM right we call it a lamb a bug a lunar module we have many names for them and here they're departing from Earth orbit heading toward the moon yes they've just left Earth orbit there and now they're on the way to the moon and you will see the moon in the background and the earth just disappearing over the lunar horizon as they go into orbit around the moon and first lilamon the mothership establish a good orbit around the moon right and they have to retro to do this and here you can see the main engine firing to slow down so that they can be captured by the moon's gravity then after checking out the command module on the orbit two of the crew members get aboard the Lo and begin to check it out yes they check it out go through a detailed electronic and systems check out and then they'll actually separate from the command module to begin their journey down to the surface of the Moon the two vehicles are joined by that airlock there in the center right and the tunnel which they crawl through right now there's the actual separation of the limb from the command module which stays in orbit around the moon and here's the actual braking maneuvers they touched down on the lawn well it's very much like a helicopter landing the lunar module comes straight down as it approaches the surface it cuts the main engine and lands on the surface of the moon and my all landings be that smooth we hope so and then one of the crew members first gets out carrying a television camera yes and he then takes the camera over to a clear area and actually a wrecks it so that the viewers at home can get live television pictures from the surface of the Moon right there's the antenna setup to relay the picture yes you can see it's already erected there and it will transmit pictures in from this handheld TV camera back to earth right now it's figured that first visit and a lunar surface should last about 18 hours that's about what we would call a nominal or average amount of time yes then they blast off as they're doing here yes and you can see that the first stage is left behind on the moon used for a launching platform the descent rocket and its names become the launching gantry for the ascent phase right just like that Cape phonetic Kennedy on their regular launch pad right and then they go into orbit around the moon again alright and here they are thrusting to get back up into the same orbit that they left when they separated from the command module here you can see the lunar orbit rendezvous as we call it as the lamb approaches the command module getting ready to dock and re transfer the two crewmen back to the command module and this is the big maneuver lunar rendezvous which is the heart of our technique yes right here now is the actual docking of the lunar module with the command module and the two pilots in the lunar bog get aboard they get aboard and then the lamb is jettisoned and left in lunar orbit as the command module thrusts to come on back toward the earth and the trip back from the moon to the earth is gonna take about three days about 68 hours I think it's bigger than 68 hours is actually the minimum time it could be up to 72 and then they jettison the service module because they can't solve it and begin their atmospheric entry you can see the shockwave forming here on the command module as they enter the atmosphere now you can see the deployment of all of the parachute systems that are on the vehicle there's a two drogue chutes for stabilization their jettison and the pilot chutes come out which in turn bring out the main descent parachutes with North American research pilot Tom Armstrong we've taken a simulated trip to the moon and back and that is the way it should be if all goes well aboard our first manned Apollo flight to the moon Jules today we've learned how we can get to the moon now let me ask you this why do we want to go there bill we've talked about national prestige many people have talked about the need to race the Russians to the moon but I think in the end the single biggest reason is going to be learning plain old scientific learning because sooner or later and exploring the moon we're going to discover not only how the moon began as a satellite of the earth but how the earth itself began so it's the geology the science will learn which is invaluable it's going to be difficult for anyone on the moon not just the astronauts but people who come later and begin to settle the moon you might say for as far as briefing and as far as climate adaptation well the moon has no atmosphere the moon does have a violent climate with days as hot as 220 or 230 degrees nights as cold as 240 degrees so when man comes to stay on the moon as he will in lunar laboratories they'll be completely shielded from the heat and cold they'll have their own atmosphere man will have to be protected they'll be lunar lunar roving vehicle x' which were already planned to carry astronauts 50 or 100 miles back and forth on the moon for their exploration but the moon itself is only the beginning of the space program bill is it possible that the moon will ever be more than a place to hold all this equipment we're talking about in other words will there ever be cities on the moon no one seriously thinks there'll be cities the moon might be a way station if you will an interplanetary refueling point for trips to Mars or beyond there's some thought that the volcanoes of the Moon which the Russian scientists claimed to have seen smoke rising from may have hydrogen fuel beneath them that hydrogen fuel might possibly be usable to refuel our Rockets with isn't there an analogy here Jules with the ancient explorers settling in the new world and discovering new territories what do we know what is beyond the moon Mars Venus and so on we know very little except we know that we know enough at this point to get there with our technology with man's ingenuity and that using a nuclear-powered rocket which the president has now asked the Congress to appropriate the money to build and using apollo using the saturn v man can get to Mars for example which very likely will be our next man target in this planet system of ours I can envisage to some diplomatic problems who owns what territory well nobody's going to own any territory out there one of the few things that we have agreed on in this world of ours at the United Nations is that no one's going to own planets or space that they're gonna be open internationally for all men to explore the whole subject is fascinating and remember it's been just a little more than five years since John Glenn made our first orbital flight a flight lasting less than five hours Jules thanks for being with us today and having this look at Apollo with us and our future in space Russia starts your taste-off right but as the day wears on just brushed freshness [Music] [Music] ciara portrait in majesty and peril ciara the new drama series set against the sweep and grandeur of our nation's great parts bringing new high wide and handsome adventure with the Rangers of the National Park Service as they roam the fastness of the Yosemite Sierra brought to you by the producers of adam-12 and emergency [Music] this has been a Jules power production in association with ABC News in public affairs [Music]