THE SPACE DUET OF SPIDER AND GUMDROP

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] spider and gumdrop are spaceships hidden atop this rocket officially spider is a lunar module that one day soon will touch down on the moon gumdrop is a command module a mothership that travels to the moon and orbits while two astronauts descend in a spider to the surface the three Apollo nine 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 Schweickart a civilian on his first spaceflight pilot of the command ship gumdrop is Colonel David Scott a space veteran of Gemini 8 boarding gumdrop is Colonel James a McDivitt veteran of Germany for 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 there we now have an open tunnel and we have in a command module 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 that one of the difficulties in learning how to operate these mechanisms is a 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 that Jim and I end up leaving Dave in a three-man spacecraft which 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 and we know I have to 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 the old training problem we because I have to learn how to apply this one I have to flair how to apply this one then I have to learn how to apply these two together and that's not how to fly them this way in this way in some other way there's different modes that we can get into that we really have more than just two configurations we'd probably have somewhere between eight and ten or twelve maybe when we consider the s4b and the ascend the decent stage and command lies on the service marginal in the different ways we can uh come together we've got a lot of variables there right so it's very difficult to train for this mission [Music] [Applause] in a simulator the astronauts practice docking spider with a full-scale model of gumdrop [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a lunar landing research vehicle [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] on apollo 9 Weikart will also test in space a new independent life-support system to be used by the first men on the moon [Music] [Applause] [Music] a model of spider looks strange enough the real thing looks even stranger it's lost on aerodynamic shape I think I've ever seen matter of fact all the models I see it his night the models have nice straight sides and they're hard and rigid in their hanging my first time I saw real lamb I looked at and it had what looked like cellophane sides and and aluminum 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 mission [Music] [Applause] [Music] I mean relatively within the mission which of the maneuvers are more critical well obviously the untether DVA with a limb probably is because the limb goes to 90 miles it has no heat shield and no tether so it's 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 safely I guess I should add they both have the capability of landing we only have one set of parachutes and one heat shield [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] 7:40 a.m. March third day of the flight of Apollo nine [Music] there's gonna be a pretty standard launch we don't expect it to be any different than any preceding launch is there any launches that will follow us t minus 25 seconds and counting all aspects still got at this timers two computer and one of those twenty second house if we thought this was dangerous and it was critical and there were high risk we wouldn't do it 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 we have this ignition sequence start [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] in orbit the Apollo nine astronauts are beginning ten days of the most complex mission ever attempted in space this film is the visual result of the missions complexity views of the flight and the men 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 spider inside gumdrop the astronauts prepare for first Schweickart then McDivitt to under the LEM in they're weightless world up is where your head happens to be and moving around can be fun [Music] movement is accelerated by the speed of the camera [Music] on the third and fourth days McDivitt and Schweikert passed through the tunnel into the spider and transmitted television pictures to the ground now on the fourth day they will Don pressure-suit helmets for Schweickart spacewalk on the exterior of the spider [Applause] outside spider Schweikart is standing on his porch Dave Scott has opened gumdrops hatch just a few feet from Schweickart special on spider [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] on the fifth day McDivitt and Schweikert give spider it's crucial test flight undocking from gumdrop to maneuver one hundred miles out before attempting to find their way back to the vital docking with gumdrop and its capability to return them to earth [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] McDivitt and Schweikert see gumdrop and scott fall away as they fire spiders moon to set engine at 86 miles 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 change spider without even a moon landing gear it is now totally a spaceship with a look that seems strangely appropriate and even beautiful [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] with McDivitt at the controls spider moves in to try the crucial docking to reunite himself and Schweikert with their heat shield parachutes and Dave Scott [Music] success and Scott sees his friends emerged from the tunnel happy and tired but they can all relax a bit now as Spyder is fired off into its own orbit and the astronauts begin five 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 atmosphere [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the three astronauts completed 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 again [Music] Spyder 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 back [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]