NASA APOLLO 11 PRESS CONFERENCE w/ NEIL ARMSTRONG, EDWIN

[Music] this is astronaut neil armstrong command pilot for the apollo 11 moon landing mission what is the purpose of the apollo 11 mission apollo 11 is man's first attempt to demonstrate the ability to go to the moon to land there and to return to earth what are your responsibilities as commander of apollo 11. well in in general the responsibilities the commander are to make the onboard decisions whenever they're required and to oversee the performance of the duties of all the crew including himself now in this particular case i participate in those procedures on board the spacecraft as well as oversee those of my fellow crew members and the specific tasks that i'm charged with the performance of include the monitoring of the launch or procedure should they be required manual flying of the booster should that be required and taking my turn at on on watch in the normal monitoring of spacecraft in the in the command module in the lunar module charged almost nearly equally with the lunar module pilot in the operation of the lunar module systems and control the vehicle during descent and ascent would you describe what will be happening just before the lunar module touches down on the moon we will continue burning the engine until an altitude of only about five feet in which the probes will uh ignite the uh a light on our panel we see it illuminate we cut the engine and fall the last several feet to touchdown columbus explored one new world you're about to explore another how do you feel about such comparisons well i'm very impressed to be compared with columbus and of course we recognize his discovery and have honored it in some respects by the call sign of our command module columbia there are some favorable comparisons and some that won't hold true certainly columbus's venture was one that was very expensive in his time was one that very few countries could afford and uh spain could afford only uh by digging into the very depths of their their treasury it was a voyage with the a good bit of the risk and some complaints however in many ways it was not at all like the voyage of apollo 11 first he wasn't sure where he was going at least he thought he was going to china or the indies and ended up of course in a completely new world now i very much hope that we won't terminate at some place that we didn't expect to plan it that we hadn't planned a visit i think we know a good bit about the place that we are going and and it's also necessary to notice that he did it without uh an entire nation's efforts be behind him our voyages is the voyage of a nation and a voyage of humanity while his was a voyage of a very limited view this is astronaut michael collins command module pilot for the apollo 11 mission what do you think will result from the apollo 11 flight obviously we've opened up a travel system which is heretofore been impossible we now will be able to offer to human beings the option is the option of either walking on the surface of the earth or walking on the surface of the moon or hopefully is some not too far distant date the option of walking on the surface of some other planet and i think that the possibilities therein are almost limitless however as i say before such an event i'm fully equipped to say in great detail what they may be and historically we've been unable to predict the benefits of various inventions or various discoveries how do you view your role as command module pilot well apollo was designed to be a three-man job and the third which i perform is is i think as important no more so no less so than the other two positions i think i'd be a fool if i said that i had the best seat of the three on the other hand i can say with the complete candor and with complete honesty that i'm very happy to have the seat which i have and to be doing the job that i intend to do will you be kept pretty busy as you fly alone in the command module yes and no i hope i'll be very unbusy i have two roles to play first i act as the passive target vehicle and in the event that everything is working perfectly within the limb then i am not unduly busy i have many chores to do and i i prepare to to take an active role in bringing the two vehicles together however as i say provided the limb works and can its radar is working properly and it's capable of making each and every maneuver uh leading up to the rendezvous and docking then my job is is essentially a quiescent one on the other hand should difficulties arise within the limb then my job is to rescue the lamb and i then find myself becoming the active partner in charge of a very complex vehicle with a very complex job and this is when i truly become busy and i'm literally racing from one side of the cockpit to the other getting solutions to various problems from my digital computer making sure that my rendezvous radar transponder and vhf ranging systems are working properly and doing a host of other small details all of which are necessary for the successful completion of the rendezvous this is astronaut edwin aldrin lunar module pilot for the apollo 11 moon landing mission what's the first thing you and neil armstrong will do after landing one of the first things that we will be engaged in is uh making immediate decisions as to how long we'll be staying on the surface there are several uh favored uh abort points that we will be checking various systems to uh to get a stay or no stay beyond these points the first one occurs some four or five minutes after touchdown the next one about 10 minutes and the final stay occurs uh one revolution afterward now what we will be doing during that first revolution is very intensely preparing the vehicle for a simulated countdown to launch which we will uh carry up to the last uh five or ten minutes before the the ascent one revolution later as the command module comes over following this period we'll go through a power down of the systems in the lunar module preparing it for an extended stay on the surface we will have an eat period followed by about a four hour rest period when we uh awake hopefully from uh much needed sleep of four hours we'll have another heat period and go through about a two hour plus eva preparation period about exploring the moon's surface astronaut aldrin had this to say following the eva preparation period we will go through the planned two-man excursion on the surface with uh neil exiting the spacecraft first as he goes down the ladder i'll be uh taking pictures of him with a 16 millimeter camera through the window television camera will also be recording his activities initially he'll uh collect a contingency sample as uh as i descend uh onto the surface he will then be collecting a bulk sample of a larger sample of the lunar material while he's doing this i'll be participating in an extended eva evaluation just what are the capabilities of man to perform tasks on the lunar surface we'll then join together uh following the deployment of television and perhaps the uh deployment of the uh flag on the surface will then perform jointly an inspection walking around the uh lunar module looking at the various systems the landing gear making a very thorough inspection of everything that we can observe on it in the process of doing this we'll be taking a series of panorama photographs uh at three different locations as we move around when we get to the uh about three quarters of the way around the lamb we'll begin to uh deploy several experiments uh one is a laser retro uh reflector and uh we'll offload these two from the scientific equipment bay the other experiment is a passive seismometer deployment of these experiments will take some uh five to ten minutes and they're to be deployed some fifty to sixty feet away from the lunar module we returned from this uh excursion around the lunar module will then pick up the equipment for a documented sample in detail and a predetermined location some 40 50 60 feet away from the lunar module following this we'll package up this these samples conduct a few core tube samples and other brief experiments pick up the solar wind experiment and then prepare these packages to be transported up into the lunar module i'll enter into the lamb first and then neil will convey these two sample return containers up on this tether assembly once they're inside then he'll reenter the lunar module we'll pressurize and that'll be the end of our eva