[P.A. Chatter]
[Crowd chatter]
[Announcer] A wild new cowboy on the move.
He placed last night, second. Going for first.
[Audience cheers]
How many y'all wanna see that replay?
[Crowd cheering]
Following cowboy in hot water.
[Crowd gasps]
Come on big Jake, show 'em how.
Yeah.
[Man] Mission sequence start.
Engines on five, four...
Three, two...
[Cernan] I'm the luckiest human being in the world.
There... fire going.
I don't go around living in the past,
for the most part.
But ever once in while
you let yourself go back in time.
I'll look up there...
And I might just reflect
for a half a minute or so.
I can take myself there at the speed of thought.
[Schmitt] Okay, stand by for pitchover.
[Cernan] Oh, are we coming in?
Pitchover.
[Schmitt] There it is. Proceeded.
[Cernan] And there it is Houston.
There's Camelot. Right on target.
[Schmitt] I see it.
[Cernan] We got 'em all. 42 degrees.
[Schmitt] 25 feet per second through 400.
That's a little high, geno.
[Cernan] Okay.
[Schmitt] Very little dust.
40 feet. Going down at three.
[Cernan] Stand by for touchdown.
[Schmitt] Stand by.
20 feet.
Going down at two. 10 feet.
10 feet.
And contact.
Stop, push. Engine stop.
Engine arm, proceed. Command override, off.
[Cernan] As soon as you hit the surface,
the dust is gone, engine is shut down.
There's no noise.
You are magically in another world.
It was the ultimate
quiet moment in my life.
Pure silence.
[Cernan] Absolutely incredible.
I spent a lot of time growing up
on my grandparents' farm in Wisconsin.
No electricity.
No tractors, just horses.
So my desire in life was
to sometime have a ranch.
[Cows mooing]
It's where I can just be who I am.
I keep thinking, "my dad always would have loved this."
He was a jack of all trades,
he could fix-- rewire your house or build you a garage,
or fix the plumbing in your bathroom,
and that's why I learned to do all those things with him.
He said, "I don't care whether you're in a classroom,
on a football field, or whatever you do..."
Barron?
[Cernan] "Just do your best.
And someday, I promise you.
You're gonna surprise yourself."
It's like coming down the L.E.M.
Only if I fall here, I break my butt.
[Radio DJ] 1170 KCBQ, the legendary gene cernan is with us.
Now about the navy, talk a little bit about--
Because this is a big navy town, as you know,
and you spent time here.
[Cernan] I tell ya, San Diego is--
Is like another home.
I spent my best years coming out of Pensacola
here in San Diego.
[Cernan] From the time I was 22
until I was 27, this was my life.
In and out of San Diego,
flying off aircraft carriers.
This is where it all started for me.
At that point, 22, 25,
you're invincible and you're bulletproof.
There isn't anything you can't do,
you know, risk be damned.
The fact of life is,
naval aviation is a risky process.
You don't have much room for error.
If you get sloppy, you're gonna kill yourself.
You live within that environment,
you live within that culture,
but you love it, and you keep doing it,
and it doesn't discourage you,
'cause it's not gonna happen to me.
You know, it isn't gonna happen--
It's always gonna happen to the other guy.
He screwed up. I'm not gonna screw up.
That was the attitude you had to have.
- [Man] Is that you? - [Cernan] Course it is.
- [Man] That is you. - [Cernan] Red hot naval aviator.
Invincible, invisible, and bulletproof.
- Remember? - That's a stretch.
[Laughs]
[Cernan] There we are. That's it.
The stingers. Here we go, up over the top.
- The diamond roll. - [Man] There it is.
- God, that was fun, baldy. - Yeah, we were flying.
[Man] I made my first cruise with gene
on the old U.S.S. Shangri-la.
It was constant competition.
Who could land better on the carrier.
Who could bomb better on the carrier.
We used to grab airplanes
and go up and tail chase around the clouds.
We were-- we were pretty impressed with ourselves.
We have big egos.
But I think you have to have a big ego
to be able to do the intense type of flying
that we were trained to do.
When you land a plane on a carrier
in the daytime is tricky enough.
But when you do it at night,
you're not thinking about your girlfriend.
Well, gene might have been, but I wasn't.
I was-- I was dead serious.
Now, cernan, who knows?
Uh, he's kinda loose sometimes that way.
Jesus. Now we got a fire.
[Baldwin] If you think back
when you and I were in 113 together, okay?
We flew together all the time,
but were we competitive with each other?
I was a hell of a lot better left wing man,
than you were right wing man.
No. No, but I was a hell of a lot better bomber than you were.
You were lucky if you even hit the damn ground.
Why were you so weak in bombing, gene?
You were the weapons training officer.
Baldy, it's 240,000 miles away.
Anybody could hit that.
[Cernan] And my C.E.P. Was 50 miles.
[Baldwin] You were average in bombing.
You were pretty good at getting aboard the boat.
I knew you had a little fear at night.
- [Laughs] - Do I have to listen to this crap?
Do-- if I have to listen to this...
[Indistinct chatter]
I'm gonna make a circle over the field.
But I'll come in behind you.
[Cernan] Flying is a big part of my life.
[Radio chatter]
You got to have a passion,
a love for what you're doing,
or you shouldn't be doing it.
[Woman] I was an airline stewardess
for continental airlines and I lived in Los Angeles.
And I was in the airport and he was in the line.
I did not remember him,
but he said I smiled at him
and he just thought that I was great.
And I thought later--
I thought what he doesn't know,
I have to smile at everybody
because that was part of my job.
The first time he came to my house.
He had a-- I think it was, like, a '56 Chevrolet
and it had kind of loud mufflers on it.
I thought, "oh, my lord,
he's a hot rod of some sort."
[Growls]
[Chuckles] She says she heard that
when I pulled into the driveway.
And she said, "oh, my god, what have I gotten into?"
[Chuckles]
Well...
[Butler] We were very much in love.
He was everything I could have asked for.
And so we bought a home,
and I started working.
And I worked and then I worked
up until I had Tracy,
and that was two years after we were married.
He was great with her.
He was really-- he was good,
and crazy about her.
He still is.
That's his "punk."
He calls her "punk."
[Announcer] Man had his first great success in space,
when the Russians pushed a man across the threshold.
He was Yuri Gagarin,
the astronaut the Russians lionized
as the first to orbit the earth.
It was the propaganda coup of the year.
After the Russian flight, U.S. plans were accelerated.
Commander Alan B. Shepard
was sent into suborbital flight.
Unlike the Russian venture,
this took place in the white hot glare
of world-wide publicity.
[Cernan] It was period of time
when America needed a hero desperately,
and Alan became that hero of the astronauts.
The mercury seven were the real pathfinders
of what was to happen in the future,
which none of us really fully anticipated,
especially me.
[Crowd cheering]
Many years ago,
the great British explorer George Mallory,
who was to die on mount Everest,
was asked why did he want to climb it.
He said, "because it is there."
Well, space is there.
And we're going to climb it.
And the moon and the planets are there.
And new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.
And therefore, as we set sail,
we ask god's blessing
on the most hazardous, and dangerous,
and greatest adventure
on which man has ever embarked.
Thank you.
[Crowd applauds]
[Man] I had two reactions.
The man just placed
a hell of a responsibility
on we in the space program,
but I was pleased to hear that--
Very pleased to hear that.
On the other hand,
if I looked at what had to be done to get there,
I thought he was crazy.
[Man] We had a total of 20 minutes
manned spaceflight experience.
We had never been to orbit,
and when were challenged to go to the moon.
And our president had the confidence
to issue this challenge
and he had the confidence that we would do it.
[Butler] I remember he was so enthralled with that,
and I said to him, "would you like to do something like that?"
And he said, "oh, I'd love it."
I'd love to do it. Just give me the chance.
But by the time I get good enough,
by the time I get qualified,
by the time I meet all of their requirements,
there won't be anything left to do.
All the pioneering will be over.
Don't ever shortchange yourself,
you never ever know what fate has in store.
[Rings]
I got a call out of the blue
that NASA was looking for new astronauts
and was I interested in applying?
You bet I was.
I was invited to Houston,
but cautioned not to speak to anybody.
I jumped into a cab, drove downtown.
Checked into the old rice hotel under a fake name.
It was like I just stepped
into some crazy spy movie.
And who did I meet in the hotel bar,
but a whole bunch
of the greatest test pilots in the country
all checked in under the same name--
Max peck.
For the next few days, they threw mountains of paperwork at us,
and asked us questions I knew nothing about.
The next step was a physical at San Antonio.
I've never been subject to anything like that
in my entire life.
Every cavity in your body
had something stuck into it.
[Man grunts]
[Cernan] They put cold water in our ears
and spun us around like a top.
I was dizzier than a grasshopper.
Then they put us in this idiot box
to see how we could react to the unknown.
Up was no longer up, it was down.
Red was green, green was red.
Left was right.
They did everything possible to confuse us.
And at the end of it all,
all we were told to do was go home.
"Don't call us. We'll call you."
[Rings]
When the phone rang, it was my future boss,
Deke Slayton.
He said, "geno, we've got a job for you
in Houston if you still want it."
And of course from that point on,
my life was changed forever.
I just was selected for the space program.
Wow.
* zoom a little zoom in a rocket ship *
* off we go on a trip
* heading for the moon at a rocket clip *
* we're gonna zoom zoom
* rocket
* zoom a little zoom
* now we're almost free
* from the earth's gravity
* zooming to the moon at terrific speed... *
[cernan] We did all the general training going in
before we ever got assigned to a flight.
We had desert survival.
We did a little water survival.
We did jungle survival.
They gave us a fishhook and a machete
and dropped us in a helicopter
somewhere out in the middle of the jungle
in panama.
All that survival training,
it teaches you something about yourself.
Most of us had technical engineering backgrounds
of one kind or another,
but we were starting school all over again.
Orbital mechanics, which I knew absolutely nothing about.
Geology, which I really knew little or nothing about.
We were doing something somewhere all the time.
[Butler] They'd go to work in the mornings
and come home late.
And this was before they were training for a mission.
They were just getting their feet wet
at that particular time.
And we were bombarded
with photographers and press,
and, you know, it was like a whirlwind.
[Cernan] It was fame.
Wasn't necessarily fortune, but it was fame,
and you had to learn how to deal with it.
I mean, you walked around with--
With a halo over your head.
You were special.
[Cernan] One day, they say very confidentially,
we're gonna set up an appointment for you to get fitted
for a suit...
For a space suit.
I mean, all of a sudden.
Wow.
You don't know what that's going to lead to,
but you know what it means.
In the fall of 1965,
the Gemini 9 crew was announced.
Charlie Bassett was going to be the prime pilot
with Elliot see,
and Tom Stafford and I were gonna be the backup crew.
And charlie and I were doing the same thing.
We flew together. We went places together.
We trained together.
We did everything together
that our side of the spacecraft had to do.
So we got to be pretty good friends.
And then in February of '66
the totally unexpected happened.
[Man] I heard this big crash.
And then a few seconds later, this big explosion,
a big black cloud mushroomed up
and parts from the airplane just flew everywhere.
No chance to do anything for the two men?
No. None. Not at all.
[Reporter] Minutes after the crash,
the Gemini 9 backup crew
of Eugene Cernan and Thomas Stafford
came in safely from Houston
in a similar jet.
And tonight NASA announces
they now become the prime crew
for the Gemini 9 flight.
[Butler] That was just a devastating time.
It was just horrible.
You just realized then I guess
how close it can be.
- [Man] Aim. - [Gunshots]
[Man] Aim.
- [Gunshots] - Aim.
[Gunshots continue]
[Man] It was very traumatic at the time.
But then we had a job to do,
to go on and fly the mission.
And we had a short period of time to do it.
I'd had a lot of experience in Gemini.
Gene had no experience in Gemini.
So we had to concentrate
on getting him up to speed
on all the procedures and techniques
and the duties he had.
Suddenly, after this accident,
I found myself on my very first flight.
[Launch control] This is Gemini launch control.
T-minus ten...
Nine... eight...
Seven... six...
Five... four...
Three...
One... zero.
We have ignition.
[Cernan] The real world's got a lot of surprises
and we found a great many of them on Gemini 9.
When I stepped out of that spacecraft,
we were really headed out into the unknown.
The umbilical was about 25 feet long
and it was-- it was like a snake.
If it brought me back to the spacecraft,
I'd hit it with my foot or my arm
or my helmet or whatever,
and I'd go tumbling back out.
I mean, I was upside down, sideways--
The earth might have been up here,
it might have been down there. I don't know.
I was just helpless.
[Radio chatter]
I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing
and it isn't working.
And it isn't going to go away unless something--
I do something about it,
and I wasn't sure what the next step was going to be.
[Radio chatter]
Once I got behind the spacecraft,
the umbilical was not my problem.
My task was to basically assemble the jetpack.
I had to turn oxygen valves on
and fuel valves.
And every time I turned them,
off I would go back into space.
[Stafford] We had no proper handholds.
The foot restraints,
tethers-- any of that.
[Panting]
[Cernan] I was working pretty hard.
My heart rate was 160, 170.
I knew it. The ground knew it.
I knew I was driving the doctors bananas down there
because they've never confronted this type of thing before.
Don't forget, the spacecraft is going around the world
once every 90 minutes.
[Stafford] And the moment the sun went down,
he fogged over,
so he could not see.
[Kranz] It was very frustrating here on the ground,
listening to gene and knowing he was in trouble,
but there was nothing I could do about it.
His body temperature was increasing.
Deep core temperature was increasing.
[Houston] Okay, we have that. Roger.
We concur on the no-go.
[Kranz] It was the process of really coming to grips
for the first time
that there was something
about this element of space flight
that we did not have a good handle on yet.
We had many lessons to learn along the way.
[Cernan] I was really disappointed,
because I was sent up to do a job
and I didn't get it done.
[Kraft] Tom Stafford did a great job.
Cernan himself did a great job,
but they did have some tough moments,
and we learned a lot from that.
It was Cernan's failures
that caused us to eventually do it right.
[Cernan] We moved in this house
when Tracy was nine months old...
In 1964.
House is almost 50 years old.
This neighborhood's almost 50 years old.
There wasn't much here.
On the corner was Mike Collins.
Charlie Bassett, Al Bean lived down the street.
Rusty Schweickart lived here.
That little house right there
has a lot of history in the walls,
if they could only talk.
* here we are again
* happy as can be
* all good pals
* and jolly good company
[butler] We were all pretty close,
but I think I was probably closer to Martha Chaffee.
She lived next door to me,
and she and I were very close.
Oh, we were always back and forth,
I mean, between our houses.
And we did go to the same hairdresser,
and we'd have lunch,
and the normal things that women do.
We were like sisters.
* whoops we go again
* la-di-da-di-da
we were already close, I think.
We're all vying to be first guy
to land on the moon, obviously.
But we were very close in our social activities,
our training activities,
and so it was a small band of brothers.
* jolly good company
we'd have a drink together occasionally.
I won't go into any more details.
* such good company
* la-di-da-di-da
* hey, la-di-da-di-dee
[Chaffee] I don't want to sound like they were wild,
but they were a little crazy.
[Chuckles]
[Laughs]
Oh, I don't know about "the wild bunch" or not,
but I'd like to think
we worked hard and we played hard.
* jolly good company, hey
* jolly good company
* jolly good company, hey
* jolly good company
we all got along well.
We liked some people better than others,
just like any group.
We were all trying to do the same thing.
We were willing to make sacrifices
to achieve the dream of getting to the moon.
But we knew going in
that some people weren't gonna make it.
[Kraft] We do everything we possibly can
to make sure that it is as safe
as we can possibly make it.
But one of these days,
there are going to be some mistakes made,
either in the systems design or we on the ground,
which result in an accident
and maybe a fatal one.
[Announcer] We interrupt this program
to bring you a special report from ABC news.
There's been a fire on the pad.
What happened? They're dead.
Top space agency officials
are flying to cape Kennedy tonight
to begin the official investigation
into what caused the flash fire
that killed the nation's first three Apollo astronauts
earlier tonight.
Lieutenant colonel Gus Grissom, 42;
Lieutenant colonel ed white, 36;
And lieutenant commander roger Chaffee, 31;
All died in moments,
helplessly trapped inside their spacecraft.
I was sitting at that console right there
when Grissom, Chaffee, and white were killed.
I listened to them die.
[Chaffee] That evening, January 27th, a Friday,
I was giving my kids hot dogs...
And then somebody said there'd been an accident.
So when Mike Collins finally came...
To the door and I saw him, I knew.
I knew already.
I said, "I know, mike, but...
You've got to tell me."
And he did.
And I took my children into the--
I'm sorry.
I took my children into the bedroom,
and trying to tell...
An eight-year-old and a five-year-old
that they're dad wasn't coming home,
it's hard.
[Cernan] And I went home and...
Pulled in my driveway,
still in the flight suit.
Cars all over the street.
NASA security around.
Walked right across the lawn
to Martha's house.
I dreaded--
I dreaded the moment.
Arlington.
Cold January day.
I wasn't sure whether we were burying three of our colleagues
or whether we were burying the entire Apollo program.
Because we knew the Chaffees so well,
I was asked to stay with Martha.
And I did.
Sat next to her at the cemetery.
How she held her composure,
I don't know.
Good-bye, my friend.
[Kranz] The Apollo 1 fire changed us forever...
And we've never forgotten it.
In our business of space flight,
risk is the price of progress.
* and the sign said
* long-haired freaky people *
* need not apply...
[Cernan] The world was in a mess,
the country was in a mess,
but this was going on out there somewhere.
Maybe we were a little cocoon
in the middle of this big world of ours.
* so I took off my hat and said imagine that... *
[Lovell] You know, we had a mission to do--
Astronauts, engineers,
all sorts of people working for NASA,
all working towards the same goal.
* can't you read the sign
[cernan] Man, I was working my butt off,
and I never really appreciated
what was going on at home.
[Butler] I think the wives played an important part
because we did everything when they weren't there,
which they weren't there most of the time.
I think he'd be the first to tell you
that I pulled my share of the load.
[Cernan] They'd been home taking care of the kids.
Paying the bills,
seeing the kids get to school
and do their homework.
We were unfair. We were selfish.
[Bean] We were not very good husbands.
We weren't very good fathers either.
And sometimes you can't balance things
like work and family.
Like, we had-- this is how the work is
and the family is way down here.
If you didn't do this,
you weren't gonna stay as an astronaut.
That's simple.
We weren't interested in this.
We were interested in this.
[Cernan] We're gonna be the second flight
to ever go to the moon--
Stafford, young, and myself.
We're gonna get on a big ol' Saturn V.
It was a big chunk to swallow.
[Reporter] You're sitting on the top
of 2,740 tons of equivalent TNT.
Do you know fear or apprehension?
I didn't before you told me it was that much TNT.
[Cernan] The last couple of days before launch
get pretty intense.
[Butler] It is a very personal time,
and it was a very loving time.
You realize that unless god's willing,
I might not ever see you again,
or he might not see us again.
What if doesn't come back?
[Cernan] The night before I flew,
I wrote a letter to Tracy just in case.
"To my dar-- darling daughter, Tracy.
Trace, you're almost too young to understand
what it means to have your daddy go to the moon.
But someday,
you'll have the feeling of excitement and pride
that mommy and daddy do.
Punk, we have lots of camping
and horseback riding to do when I get back.
I want you to look at the moon,
because when you are reading this,
daddy is almost there.
I love you Tracy.
My wonderful...
And beautiful daughter.
All my love."
You don't sleep that well,
you get up fairly early in the morning.
You have your traditional breakfast.
Then you go down and get suited up.
You've been suited up a thousand times before
for all kinds of tests and what have you.
This is for real.
The worst part of it all is just waiting.
And then at last it's-- it's time to go.
Your adrenaline is pumping pretty strong
at that point in time.
You know, you can hear yourself breathe inside that suit.
[Applause]
[Man] T-minus 33 minutes and 30 seconds.
33 minutes until the scheduled liftoff of Apollo 10.
This Saturn V, by the way,
is the most powerful Saturn V ever to fly,
with 7,700,000 pounds of first stage power...
[Mission control] Two minutes and counting.
Our status board indicates
here in the control room...
[Cernan] It's no longer something you're gonna do.
It's something that's happening.
It's happening right now to you.
[Radio chatter continues]
Everything intensifies.
[Mission control] ...Seconds and counting.
We are go for our mission to the moon at this time...
[Cernan] But the clock keeps going.
[Chatter continues]
All systems are performing satisfactorily.
All the last minute countdown checks are proceeding okay.
[Cernan] This is it. This is for real.
That thing's gonna light off under you
and you're gonna head on out to the moon.
[Mission control] 15... 14...
13... 12... 11...
Ten... nine...
We have ignition sequence start.
And five... four...
Three... two...
All engines running.
Launch, commence liftoff.
We have liftoff, 49 minutes past the hour.
[Mission control] You're go staging 10.
[Stafford] roger. 10 is go.
Inboard shutdown.
[Cernan] What a ride. What a ride.
[Mission control] That's gene cernan reporting, "what a ride."
[Cernan] It was America that was going to the moon,
but the fact of life, it was 20th century humanity
that was going to the moon.
The entire world was on board
that spacecraft with us.
- [Man] Station point one. - [Man] roger.
Looking good intermediate zone.
Apollo 10, Houston, do you read?
[Houston] roger.
10, you're go for pyro arm and go for sep.
[Young] roger.
[Stafford] We have sep.
The world is incredible.
I sure hope we can show it to you, I really do.
[Cernan] You're part of this big thing that's going on,
and yet you don't realize
how big a thing it is, quite frankly.
You don't fully comprehend it all.
[Radio chatter]
[Man] 10, Houston, 22 looks good to us.
I gotta check the thrusters here now.
[Cernan] You look out the window,
your whole window is filled up with the earth.
[Cernan] How's that for the front porch?
[Houston] Oh, boy, that's beautiful.
10, it's looking real stable to us.
We show you closing slightly.
[Cernan] charlie, we can't be more than about 5, 10 feet away.
[Houston] roger.
[Stafford] Snap, snap, and we're there.
- Got two grays. - [Houston] roger.
[Cernan] You capture that lunar module
and we're on our way.
You now regain consciousness as to where you are
and where you're going.
[Announcer] ABC news presents the flight of Apollo 10,
brought to you by tang,
the energy breakfast drink
for astronauts in outer space.
Good morning or good evening,
depending on where you are in the country.
From ABC space headquarters in new york...
[Butler] I guess, after one mission
you feel a little bit more confident,
because you think, "oh, well,
I've been there, done that.
So maybe I'll be better this time.
I'll do-- I know kind of what to expect."
You had all these people in your home.
You had all these press out there.
It's trying, believe me.
It's very, very trying.
You do sweat it out till they're home.
[Houston] Apollo 10 is reported to be maneuvering
to burn attitude at this time.
Its distance from the moon is 681 nautical miles.
Apollo 10, Houston. Two minutes to L.O.S.
Everybody here says godspeed.
[Stafford] Okay, we'll see them
right on the other side in orbit.
[Stafford] We wouldn't see the moon until we got there.
And finally, we got close.
We could finally see
a little scimitar of the moon,
that was all.
And then the sun went and disappeared.
[Cernan] The moon is between you and the sun,
and it blocks out that light.
You are now immersed, yourself, in this blackness.
And then all of a sudden...
Boom...
Someone turns on the lights.
There's the moon.
[Stafford] roger, Houston, Apollo 10.
You can tell the world that we have arrived.
[Cernan] As you come out, you're still in sunlight.
You come around the horizon of the moon,
and here comes the earth.
Earth rise.
[Cernan] charlie, it might sound corny,
but the view is really out of this world.
[Houston] charlie brown and snoopy. You're going over the hill.
All the systems are go.
We're all go here on the ground.
It's looking great. Over.
Roger. 56, 22, 55. Snoopy going.
[Cernan] We is go, and we is down among them, charlie.
[Houston] roger. I hear you weaving your way up the freeway.
Can you give me a post-burn report? Over.
[Cernan] Yeah, as soon as I get my breath.
As we circled the moon
in a lunar lander-- snoopy--
We knew we were vulnerable
to a whole host of unknown problems.
And our goal was to identify and then solve those problems
so that Neil and his crew would have
just that much less to worry about.
And one of the problems we encountered
was pilot induced.
We were going to simulate from 47,000 feet,
as if we were on the moon,
lift off from the assent stage,
and then go up into a rendezvous mode with the mother ship.
But in preparing to do so,
tom and I misplaced a switch,
[Houston] Snoop, Houston,
we have you go for staging. Over.
[Man] Okay, tom.
What's that?
[Man] Okay, let's...
[Stafford] god damn.
[Cernan] Son of a bitch.
[Man] We're in trouble.
[Cernan] I saw that lunar horizon go by my window
eight times in some 15 seconds.
[Houston] Snoop, Houston...
[Radio chatter]
[Duke] The thing spun around at max rate
to this new attitude.
That got our attention in mission control.
And we got-- certainly got his attention
as he relayed it over the-- Over the comm.
[Cernan] Tom got this rotation stopped.
How we did it,
I don't know.
[Stafford] Yeah, okay. Something went wild there on that staging.
We're all set. We didn't lock it.
We're going ahead to the auto maneuver.
[Butler] It was frightening when they did have
that one mishap.
If you think going to the moon is hard,
you ought to try staying home.
[Cernan] Apollo 10 really came home in a blaze of glory.
Rolling, twisting, turning--
These flecks of fire were just snapping at us.
We're on our backs coming in backwards.
The heat shield's behind us.
It would just come over the top of my window,
and just come over there
right in front of my eyes and snap.
A sheet of fire completely immerses you and surrounds you.
I know what it's like to be that comet.
The shooting star.
It is a spectacular fireworks show.
It--
I wish it had happened on fourth of July.
We had just been to the moon.
So you can imagine how it felt to come home.
Home. Your real home.
Not just your home away from--
This home. Your family.
And the response of people
you have known a lifetime
was so overwhelming.
You could tell it meant something to them.
[Baldwin] Nothing but pride.
Nothing but pride.
And so proud of him,
so proud of him that he could go out
and do something like that.
And proud of the country.
[Cernan] Not many people remember Apollo 10,
but I do.
And I'll tell you someone else who remembered it,
and that's Neil Armstrong.
- [Electronic beep] - Okay, Neil,
we can see you coming down the ladder now.
[Armstrong] I'm gonna step off the lander now.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
Would I have liked to been at a first landing?
You bet your life I would've.
But as it turned out,
I think fate shined down upon us,
and got the right people
in the right place at the right time.
How does one,
adequately express his feelings
about a special friend
when that friend is also a world icon
whose name will live in history long after
all here today have been forgotten.
Neil, you can now finally
put out your hands
and touch the face of god.
Farewell, my friend.
You have left us far too soon.
God bless you, Neil.
[Car horn honks]
[Woman] Oh!
Hey, daddy.
How are you?
[Chattering]
- Okay, here. - Come here, baby.
- Remember when I came back from-- - Mm-hmm.
Apollo 10 and I tried to impress you?
- Yeah. - You know, daddy's been to the moon.
- Been here, done this. - He flew snoopy closer,
and was way out in the--
In-- in the heavens where god lives.
And I never will forget it,
you just stood, and listened to me.
I brought you back down to earth.
All the sudden, it got quiet
and I had nothing else to say,
and you looked up, and said,
"daddy, now that you've been to the moon and back,
- when you gonna take me camping... - Camping.
- We used to go camping. - ...Like you promised me."
That's right.
And you know what that brought home?
All the times,
during that period of our lives together
that I couldn't take you camping,
that I was gone.
I was gone somewhere.
I was gone and gone, and gone and gone.
It was a very selfish life on my part,
and on the part of all the guys.
[Radio chatter]
[Chatter continues]
[Man] The rim on this little crater
seems to be all white.
[Man] This is gonna be some kind of different ride.
[Cernan] Dick Gordon had a crew with Jack Schmitt.
Jack Schmitt was a lunar geologist.
It made sense, at least to me,
and I was afraid it made a lot of sense
to too many other people,
that they should keep that crew together.
Well, the national academy of sciences
wanted a geologist to fly to the moon.
They've always wanted that.
So here's their last opportunity
to put a ph.D. Geologist on a flight crew.
[Cernan] And so it was gonna come down
to dick's crew or my crew,
and he had an ace in a hole.
He had jack Schmitt.
I knew if I had any chance at all,
I'd better not do something stupid.
We do a lot of training in simulators,
and we had this lunar landing training vehicle.
We also used the helicopter.
I had an urge to fly low
over the Indian river,
and the little skid that you land on with this helicopter
touched the water.
This is the helmet that I was wearing
when I was flying that helicopter,
and when I unstrapped it,
it floated to the surface,
and it picked an equilibrium position.
Probably floated, I guess about like that,
and everything above the surface is charcoal.
I thought he'd, as the saying goes in the navy,
that he'd screwed the pooch.
I thought he'd done it to himself,
because, you know, hell,
nobody flies a damn helicopter into the water
unless there's a couple bikinis there you're looking at.
How can anyone do something
so dumb as I just did
and be given the responsibility
of flying a gillion-dollar spacecraft to the moon--
Being responsible for the crew,
the safety, the success of the mission?
And I knew, absolutely,
when the time came, it would not be me.
[Man] Scene four, take one.
Sound for Apollo 17 astronaut cernan.
Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ronald Evans
have been named for the finish Apollo flight, Apollo 17.
Schmitt is a first among flying astronauts.
He's primarily a geologist rather than a pilot.
When we made the final selection of the crew
for Apollo 17,
that was done in concert with Deke Slayton,
who was head of the flight crew
operations at the time.
And I was never too pleased with the process
that was followed there,
because I thought it was too much
in the hands of Mr. Slayton.
[Gordon] jack was taken off of my crew
and assigned to Apollo 17.
I didn't think that was very fair.
And I said, "they can't take jack Schmitt off my crew
and give him to somebody else."
[Cernan] He may have had a right to be somewhat bitter
I got the flight and he didn't.
And, uh, you know, he said--
Tells me that today,
because he said, "you took my flight."
And I may have.
You know, sitting on a pad
waiting for launch,
it's a long time to-- to contemplate
where you've come from,
where you're going.
It's one of those real moments
that you take an introspective look
at what is now in front of you.
This is what I asked for.
This was my personal moment of reckoning.
[Butler] When it lifted off,
it was just-- I mean, I'll never, ever, forget
how that was because the whole ground rumbled underneath your feet
and all the fish jumped out of the lake.
[Tracy] The entire sky just totally lit up.
It was just beautiful.
[Cernan] Oh, my golly!
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable,
but it is bright in the sun.
[Cernan] It was the most proud moment
of my entire life.
I had proved to myself that I was capable
of coming this far.
I couldn't get out of my mind--
This almost science fiction world
I was living in.
Now we had a little more than three days
to make use of the time we had on the moon,
and that's when the work really began.
So we set experiments out there,
seismic experiments,
experiments of all kinds.
The next thing we did was unload the lunar rover.
We had the rover to facilitate our ability to move around,
and try to explore this entire valley.
We never would have been able to do that on foot.
It didn't go very fast,
but it went fast enough on the moon in 1/6 gravity.
[Houston] Okay, and gene, you might get the--
[cernan] Okay, now shove it.
That's too much. Wait a minute.
But our major objective was to try and establish
the history of that valley.
- Oh, hey! Wait a minute. - What?
There is orange soil!
Well, don't move it until I see it.
It's all over.
Orange!
Don't move it until I see it.
I've stirred it up with my feet.
How can there be orange soil on the moon?
Look at it.
I'll be a son of a--
That's the volcanic...
[Laughter]
...they're up against a constraint anyways,
so they gotta leave at a certain time regardless of what we got.
[Man] I'm willing to give up all the light mantle stuff,
and stay up another--
That's the priority right up there, huh?
There it is. Look at that.
[Cernan] That change at all?
[Houston] Oh, thank you, geno. It looks much better.
[Cernan] When you get out there and look back...
As small as it is compared to the earth,
when you're the only two guys out there,
it can be pretty lonely at times.
Once we got in, we took our suits off
and we had to dry them out.
We had to eat.
We had to rest.
I remember specifically pulling up the shade
before we tried to get some rest
and looking out at the earth.
Maybe I just had to make sure it was still there.
[Cernan] Oh, that ought to be a beautiful shot
if I can see what my settings are.
That whole period of time, that's the time I call
sitting on god's front porch.
I was out there somewhere with the opportunity
to see something and be somewhere
and do something that only 12 human beings
in the history of mankind
have been able to do, or be, or see.
Tracy, did he promise to bring you anything back?
Well, I asked him to bring a rock back from the moon.
But he said if he could,
he'd bring me one back.
And he said if he could, he'd bring me a moonbeam.
- A what? - A moonbeam.
A moonbeam?
[Laughs]
He's either pulling your leg
or you're pulling mine.
That's what he said.
[Chuckles]
[Cernan] I parked the rover
about 3/4 of a mile behind the L.E.M.
So that they could operate the television camera
and watch our liftoff.
And I don't know what possessed me to do it,
I just scratched Tracy’s initials in the lunar surface.
I put "T.D.C."
And someday, sometime,
I can only believe--
Not just hope, but believe--
That someone will go back,
and that's what they'll find.
[Tracy] I guess you appreciate things the older you get.
Always.
You understand them better, you appreciate them more.
And you know, the older I get,
probably the more meaningful it gets to me.
[Cernan] I'm gonna roll it downhill so we can work on it,
well, I'll document it first.
Walking up the ladder,
was probably one of the most memorable moments for me,
because I looked down at my footprints
and I knew I wasn't coming this way again.
Why we were here? What did it mean?
I looked over my shoulder, and there's the earth,
there's reality. There's home.
I wanted to press the freeze button.
I wanted to stop time.
I really wanted to reach out,
put it in my hand, stick it in my spacesuit,
and bring it home and show it to everybody.
This is what it feels like. This is what it looks like.
[Houston] This is Apollo control and 187 hours, 31 minutes.
Now approaching 30 minutes until time for lunar liftoff.
The countdown toward liftoff going very smoothly.
Control, telmu, G.N.C, eecomm,
surgeon, inco.
I was the flight director on this console
for gene Cernan's liftoff from the moon.
Rog. We're go for liftoff here, capcom.
[Kranz] So that when it came time,
we recognized the triumph of the work that we had done,
but we also lost some very good friends.
So it was a celebratory mood,
but it was also one that we looked very somberly at our past.
And we hoped that somewhere, somehow, someday,
we would be able to carry the work that we had been doing
into the future.
[Houston] Three, two, one, ignition.
[Cernan] Burn away, Houston.
Could I have imagined that it would come to this?
I don't want to remember it this way.
I'm just disappointed.
I almost wish I didn't come here today.
You go to the moon and you're everybody's hero.
You're sort of caught up in it yourself.
People everywhere of every color, of every religion,
every ethnic background were overwhelmed.
"Let me touch you. Let me talk to you."
And you live that kind of activity
for four or five years,
that's a big change in your life.
[Butler] Our life did change a lot.
He was so engrossed in all of this notoriety,
and traveling, and speaking,
and I got so tired of it.
And I thought, "I just want a normal life.
I want to be a normal housewife."
And I remember when gene and I were on a private jet,
I was sitting in one aisle,
he was sitting across the aisle from me.
And I looked at him, and I thought,
"you know, cernan, this is your life, this is what you want.
But I don't want it."
I guess a couple years after that
we ended up separating,
and going our different ways.
[Cernan] Some 60% of us got divorced,
and I'm not proud of it.
We were so tunnel-visioned
when we were going to the moon,
that we never had time to get off
that big white horse we were riding
until it was too late.
I lived a single life for, I don't know,
seven or eight years.
And that sounds like a lot of fun
when you're 40, 50 years old.
But sooner or later, you've gotta come to grips with who you are
and what's important in life.
[Woman] I was invited to a friend's home
for a cocktail party,
and gene happened to be there.
And I just happened to see the best looking chick
at the party, and it was her,
and someone said, "would you take her home?"
And I said, "well, I'd be glad to."
But after taking her home,
I'm not sure I was ever gonna see her again.
That's true.
I just liked gene's--
I thought he was more down to earth
than a lot of the other ones.
Mm-hmm.
And at that time, I didn't think he had such a big ego.
- Give me a break. - But I have since--
I'm learning more about me.
Give me a break.
You know we're gonna be married 25 years?
- 24. - Five.
It's five.
Jan became something very special in my life.
And from that relationship,
came a family again, and grand kids.
Kids.
- Give me a break. - Take a seat. Come on.
This is a beautiful--
Someone take a picture.
We are! Sit down, come on.
- Okay. - Fix your hair.
- Ow. - You're about to sit on me?
Ow. That's-- you put me in the middle.
Wait. You're sitting on me.
Ow, my shirt.
- Okay, am I all right? - Yes.
Okay.
[Talking off mic]
...1.6 billion dollars.
I'm here for a couple days and I'm going to San Diego,
so I could do something...
[Woman] Oh, brother.
It's a very high energy level.
He-- you know, he just doesn't stop.
He doesn't take a moment to catch his breath.
He's got a million things on his mind at one time.
I don't know that retirement is really in his vocabulary.
And there are people here that are listening today
who will see humans walk on mars.
I won't, but they will.
[Cernan] While we're still here,
and there's an opportunity to share
what the space program has meant,
particularly in this day and age
when we're talking to a generation
who weren't even around when we went to the moon,
we have an obligation to do that.
Okay. We get it?
You came all the way from France?
Yes.
Oh, boy.
Oh, yeah. That's a good one.
Thank you. Thank you.
Take care.
Whew!
[Baldwin] All of the fame, and the speeches,
- and the traveling... - What's your name?
I'm on him a lot now. "Gene, shut it down."
Shut down your schedule.
[Cernan] This is October.
Here was September. Here was august.
Throttle back, you know? Slow down, baby.
You gotta smell the roses a little bit.
But he drives himself.
[Cernan] The bad part about it is,
I'm realizing that,
like when we were in the space program,
when we're going full bar, eight days a week,
I ignored my family.
We-- we all did.
But I'm finding I'm getting innuendos from my family,
from the grand kids, from my wife,
that I'm doing the same thing now.
And maybe--
Maybe I'm finally coming to a realization
that I gotta think of somebody else.
I do. I-- I don't think I'm selfish.
I think I do think of somebody else.
I think of those people who want a piece of you,
who you somehow owe a piece to,
but there is a limit.
Now I think maybe I owe a piece of me to my family.
- You got-- okay. - Here you go.
You know, this is a lot of work
- for old guys like us. - Tell me about it.
These two horses together can go like the wind.
We ain't gonna do that today.
I know damn well I'm not.
You fly right wing, I'll fly left wing.
Okay.
We're gonna go across
and go back in through that gate.
- Okay. - Unless you want to run the barrel?
No. I don't want to run any barrels.
Hey, baldy, are you ready to admit
we ain't got what we used to got?
Yeah.
Easy, now. Let's not have a wreck here.
I got it. I'll get it.
If I can get my leg over this saddle, anyway.
There.
All right, I think we survived.
Come on. Oh, shit.
Oh, baldy! I can't walk!
I can't either.
[Cernan] We're still here.
- That's right. - How many more years?
We got a pact to make it to 85
and then we'll reevaluate.
I gotta pact-- I gotta pact with my dog.
You know what? When we got him, I said,
"if you go ten, I'll go ten."
That was Barron,
and I've gotta renegotiate with him.
We only got three and a half of those ten years left.
- I'm not ready! - Well, bless.
- I love you, babe. - I love you, too, man.
[Cernan] Just standing here,
getting a little nostalgic.
Sort of gives me a chance
to wonder whether this all happened in my life.
Whether it was a reality
or whether it was a dream.
Is that dummy in there with my name on really me?
[Radio chatter]
And I also stand here and I'm wondering
what people are gonna think,
not in another 40 years, but maybe another 100 years.
Who knows? Maybe another 1,000 years.
[Radio chatter]
I often tell young kids,
and particularly my grand kids,
don't ever count yourself out.
You'll never know how good you are unless you try.
Dream the impossible,
and go out and make it happen.
I walked on the moon.
What can't you do?
And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow,
we leave as we came and God willing, as we shall return,
with peace and hope for all mankind.