The United States in 1969.
Nixon [We are caught in war, wanting peace.]
Nixon [We are torn by division, wanting unity.]
There wasn’t a whole lot for Americans to celebrate.
Nixon [We find ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent
precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth.]
The race to space was one of the things that made the decade a little more bearable.
But soon, the 60s would become the 70s and NASA still had two crucial missions to complete
before it could even attempt to put a man on the moon.
Time was running out.
It had been eight years since President Kennedy put NASA on a path to our nearest celestial neighbor.
Now, in 1969, newly inaugurated president Richard Nixon would be the leader to ensure
mankind’s giant leap before the turn of the decade.
NASA just marked a major milestone with Apollo 8 proving we were capable of reaching lunar orbit.
But the possibility of a lunar landing was still uncertain.
The Lunar Module, or LEM would be the crucial bridge to the moon, and it was finally time
for a manned test.
The LEM was the vehicle that would take two astronauts from the Command-Service Module
to the lunar surface and back again.
The Apollo 9 crew would be the first to operate this spacecraft in orbit and they decided
to name their Lunar Module, Spider... because well, it looked like a spider.
The small spacecraft had two sections: the ascent and descent stages.
The upper section carried the crew and housed the control systems and ascent rocket engine
while, the lower section consisted of the descent rocket engine, lunar surface experiments
and the landing gear.
But before the LEM could get anywhere close to the moon, one of the most sophisticated
and dangerous series of maneuvers for the Apollo Program needed to be perfected.
Apollo 9 launched on March 3, 1969 with astronauts James McDivitt, David Scott
and Russell, “Rusty” Schweickart aboard.
Once in Earth’s orbit, the S-IVB’s engine was fired and propelled the crew on a translunar flight.
This is where things got complicated.
The CSM and the Lunar Module were stacked separate on the rocket and they needed to
connect before venturing closer to the moon.
The crew did this through a maneuver known as transposition and docking.
Successful docking created a sealed, pressurized tunnel between the two spacecraft which the
astronauts used to transfer from one spacecraft to the other.
Apollo 9 proved that the maneuvers worked as designed and gave the astronauts access to the Lunar Module.
On the fifth day of the mission, the crew undocked the Lunar Module.
McDivitt and Schweickart took Spider on an excursion successfully testing the ascent
stage and ability to re-dock with the CSM.
Since the Lunar Module was designed to only operate in space, once the mission was complete,
the crew had to cut Spider loose before returning to earth.
Apollo 9 splashed down on March 13th, and just two months later NASA launched Apollo 10.
This mission encompassed all the aspects of a crewed lunar landing… except the landing part.
The veteran Apollo 10 team, Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan named their CSM
Charlie Brown and their Lunar Module Snoopy
which had become a safety mascot of sorts for NASA.
The crew completed many of the same tests as the mission before but with some added pressure.
This time, millions of people were watching.
Apollo 10 was the first mission to broadcast a live color TV transmission, giving Earthlings
a new view from space.
Stafford and Cernan flew the Lunar Module closer to the moon’s surface than ever before, gaining
insight into the lunar gravitational field and scouting the landing site for Apollo 11.
But about 12 kilometers from the moon’s surface, Snoopy began to spin out of control.
The spacecraft was nearing gimbal lock - which essentially meant that the guidance system
could no longer trust its computer.
According to a NASA engineer, the result is similar to when a car spins out on an icy road.
Fortunately, the astronauts were able to quickly regain control, but if they hadn’t, the
spacecraft would have lost its navigation system and could have slammed into the moon.
Despite that near disastrous human caused hiccup, the mission was relatively smooth.
Most importantly the Lunar Module did its job… again.
The United States was finally ready to put a man on the moon.
For over a decade, all of NASA’s astronauts had been training for this moment.
From the jungle to the desert to the ocean, the Apollo crews were pushed to the limit,
and in some cases risked and even gave their lives for this goal.
In the end only two astronauts would be the first to step foot on the moon, and one of
them almost died trying to get there.
Seeker is diving into each Apollo mission, taking you back in time for NASA’s journey
to another world.
Next up is Apollo 11, the final push to the moon.
If you want to learn more about the missions that led up to this point,
check out this playlist here.
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Thanks for watching!