Ignitions sequence have started
Hi my name is Ben Feist. I want you to experience the
Apollo missions exactly as they occurred fifty years ago
Ok Houston we have a problem here.
The original audio for the mission is one of the most interesting components.
The audio itself has been in the National Archives on 30 track tapes for the last 50 years and
there is only one machine that can play these tapes back uses in a very special
format and we had to refurbish that machine and get it working again and
have the tapes shipped back in the National Archives to Johnson Space
Center and we carefully digitized them so that we could hear them for the first
time the amount of material on the website in total is 7400 hours of audio
but what that means is you can sit in any position in Mission Control for the
whole mission and just be that play controller
So these tapes were put away with the investigative material archives and we're not stored with the rest
so they haven't been hurt since 1970
There's one particular phone call will be found where Marilyn Lovell, Jim Lovell's wife
phones Mission Control and wants to talk to somebody about what is going
on this is the morning after the explosion happens
Hello? Hello, Marilyn. This is Ken.
Hi. Listen I'm naturally concerned.
And I thought you were the best person to talk to.
How are thing looking this morning?
My kids aren't up yet. They don't even know what's going on.
Cause they went to sleep before all this came up last night.
I was wondering what I can tell them.
Here you can actually hear the reality of what this was who were these people and how worried were they or you
know were they strong in the situation where they afraid in the situation all
those kinds of things are actual real questions that can now be answered through this material
Listening to the people in Mission Control doing their work is an
astounding thing to witness we've heard for years historians tell the story
about heroic their efforts were in Mission Control but before you hear it
firsthand and you can hear the emotions and people's voices in them and the
speed at which they had to make choices you can't really appreciate it they
didn't hesitate they did what they needed to do now through all this
material you can get to know the dry sense of humor
get to know the way that they would banter back and forth trying to keep things like
they were under great pressure and you come back come away from it feeling a
lot more enriched by the historical material
I would love to do it for all
the Apollo missions it's a huge amount of work and of course takes a lot of
time currently you can go look at Apollo 11 in real time and can also look at Apollo 17
Really getting this material into a
situation where people can listen to it and have access to it is the there's
been look important part of this project I'm sure in another 50 years there might
be another effort to translate them into some other format that will be however
we consume our media then which I can't anticipate
but for now this is the best way to do it
and I'm happy we're able to bring this material into your
living room
This is pretty. Look ah there
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