Before our lunar landing, no one really knew what the physical and psychological effects
of space would be or whether the astronauts would even survive.
To prepare for the unknown, astronauts spent years training in some pretty unusual places.
They were pushed to dangerous and, in some cases, deadly extremes.
But without this training, the crew of Apollo 11 may never have made it to the moon.
In the late 1950s, this is where NASA found its first astronauts.
The idea was that since military test pilots were accustomed to flying advanced and powerful
aircraft, their skills would provide the most useful transition.
But there was a big difference between flying in a sophisticated jet and being launched out
of Earth’s atmosphere in a tiny metal container.
Out of over 100 candidates plucked from the military, only seven were selected for NASA’s
first manned space program, Project Mercury, and they had less than two years to go from
military pilots to astronauts.
The first several months of training were spent in the classroom, learning about the science of spaceflight.
There were five other areas of focus during Mercury training: vehicle operations, physical
fitness, ground activities, maintenance of flight skills and space flight conditions.
[Announcer] Alan Shepard as he takes the G load of an emergency abort and landing.
The astronauts referred to this particular part of their training as “sadistic” and “diabolical”.
With the ability to accelerate from 0 to 280 kilometers per hour in under seven seconds,
the Johnsville human centrifuge, tested the ability to remain conscious under the extreme
G forces that spaceflight would bring.
In May of 1961, the training paid off with the first manned mission of the Mercury Program,
and a series of successful flights followed.
NASA quickly announced Project Gemini, its next space program
which would prepare astronauts for Apollo.
The Gemini and Apollo missions would require astronauts to function in zero gravity for
up to two weeks and endure the harsh effects of space.
NASA’s biomedical staff conducted a series of experiments that tested exposure to acceleration,
radiation, 100-percent oxygen and microgravity.
The astronauts were put on unusual sleep and diet regimens to test their bodies’ limitations.
They had to learn how to do seemingly basic, but wildly inconvenient, tasks like going
to the bathroom in a specially designed space bag.
To prepare for spacewalks, the astronauts took part in weightlessness training inside
an aircraft dubbed “the vomit comet”.
NASA later added an elaborate underwater training, called neutral buoyancy, that required
astronauts to master diving techniques as they worked on a spacecraft mockup.
Outside of NASA’s facilities, the astronauts were sent to the Panamanian jungle and the
Nevada desert for survival training.
In the event their spacecraft landed in a remote part of the globe, the astronauts
needed to be prepared to live off the land.
Training for Apollo required astronauts to broaden their scientific knowledge in order
to conduct experiments on the lunar surface.
So astronauts went to Iceland, Hawaii and the Grand Canyon to learn how to recognize
and catalog geologic features on the moon.
To simulate these experiments, NASA also recreated a lunar landscape using dynamite and fertilizer
bombs in a Northern Arizona field.
One of the most difficult scenarios to prepare for was the lunar landing itself.
These pure fly-by-wire aircraft were created to emulate the flight specs of the Lunar Module.
But these vehicles were risky and dangerous.
During a training flight, Neil Armstrong lost control, ejecting right before the vehicle crashed.
An unrattled Armstrong was spotted at his desk working about an hour after the crash
as if it had never happened.
According to other astronauts, that’s just how he was.
And that calm, collected nature is what made Neil Armstrong the perfect astronaut to pilot
the Lunar Module during the first trip to the moon’s surface.
Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969.
The crew: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, followed the paths of the
astronauts before them.
When it came time to descend to the moon’s surface, Armstrong and Aldrin entered the
Lunar Module, nicknamed Eagle, and separated from the Command-Service Module where Collins remained.
The dangers the astronauts faced were no longer theoretical and all their training was about
to be put into action.
The Lunar Module’s computer froze, reading an error code neither astronaut understood.
Despite the software failure, they continued the descent.
Aldrin called out navigation while Armstrong took over manual controls.
But by this point, they had overshot the predicted landing zone and were now flying over crater fields.
To make things more terrifying, the fuel supply was rapidly diminishing and they had just
one minute until a mandatory abort.
Using the skills he developed flying the training vehicles and channeling his nerves
of steel, Armstrong leveled off and touched down on a smooth patch of the moon.
[Armstrong] Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
They actually did it.
NASA made it to the moon with less than six months until the end of the decade.
While Apollo 11 got a lot of the glory for this goal, there were dozens of astronauts
who helped get to this point.
Hundreds more people back on Earth, women included, were making the impossible happen.
Throughout the Apollo missions, engineers and ground control were faced with split-second
decisions that could either end in triumph or tragedy.
And a lightning strike during Apollo 12 would take that pressure to extreme heights.
Make sure to subscribe to Seeker to watch all of the Apollo series.
And if you want to learn more about the two crucial missions before NASA made it to the moon,
then check out this video.
Thanks for watching!