Transcripts For CSPAN3 Apollo 11 Astronaut Returns To The La

Into this comfortable chair. It is a wonderful feeling to be 39a at launch pad. Neil ato turn and ask question or tell buzz aldrin something. Of course, i am here by myself but it any rate, i know they would enjoy joining into this sort of a conversation as much as i am looking forward to it. Did you find it different coming out for apollo 11 as compared to your gemini 10 mission . The flights of gemini 10 and apollo 11 were quite different. We rode up on a rocket, so that part was similar, but the Gemini Program got a lot of publicity. Some of it worldwide, but nonetheless it had more of a local character. Celebrity,st like a celebrity resort of event, like ,erhaps an athletic contest where is apollo 11, on the other hand, was serious business. We crew felt the weight of the world on our shoulders. We knew that everyone would be looking at us, friend or foe, best weanted to do the possibly could, put our best foot forward, and that required a great deal of work on our part. Time left overh for any of the things we might have more enjoyed. Absolutely. Having the weight of the world on your shoulders, i know you went through an extensive amount of training. Can you tell us about the training . How did it prepare you for the mission . I think the simulators were the heart and soul of our training. They were very good machines. They were excellent duplicators of what we would see inflight. The one failing was that they could not duplicate particularly well the view out the window that we saw. 99 of our work, throwing switches and communicating with houston, 99 of our work we really didnt need to simulate the view out the window with great fidelity. So the simulators were very powerful instruments, and we spent a lot of time in them. The the come on metal command model simulator, i spent 600 hours and it repairing for apollo 11 alone. Preparing for apollo 11 alone. What did you find the most challenging . I think about the flight to the moon as along and fragile hazyand chain. Points along the route, we have names for them, like going faster than escape velocity, slowing down into lunar orbit and so forth. Matter how well things are going for you, you cannot just relax and pat yourself on the back and say, well isnt this wonderful . Ok, 17 down,ay what is number 18 coming up . I better get on the ball and worry about it. For me, it might have been different for someone else, but for me at least, the flight was a question of being under tension, worrying about what is coming next, what do i have to do now to keep this daisychain intact . Guys were down here supporting the vehicle processing, training and emulators, you spent a lot of time in florida. Is that a challenge for your familys . How did they react to you going to the moon . Different families react in different ways. In my family, with three Young Children who should not be uprooted from their schools, my wife pat stayed in houston, and i was by myself. Some crews imported their family from texas to florida, and it worked out well for them, but we used a different system and it did not work out very well for us. We had a chance to visit crew quarters this morning. We were in the dining room and the rooms where you stayed, the suit room and everything. Did it bring back any memories . How long were you in quarantine before the flight . Dont know how long we were in quarantine before the flight. Quarantine was sort of a that had beentamp put on some piece of paper. It did not really changed too much our normal training routine. I think we were in quarantine maybe two weeks . Oh, if there is a historian out there, i am sure he or she will correct that number. Apollo launch an prior to years . Not an apollo saturn, but i ,aw the first saturn to launch 501, and i will always remember it. We had pretty good seats for that. I would say we were about between two and three miles away, which sounds like forever and a day, but when you are looking at a saturn 5, certainly you find out in a big hurry that you are pretty close to it. Off,hing ignites, it takes it very, very quietly starts ascending. You look out across the lagoon, and you say oh, that is not a big deal. I have seen rockets go off before. Then it starts going up and picks up speed, going faster. It looks a little more impressive, but still nothing very exceptional. The shock wave from the rocket powered hits you, hits you in the viscera. Your whole body is shaking, your feet underneath you are shaking in the mud, and you think, my god, this is what they mean by power. It gives you an entirely different feeling, a different concept of what power really means. You have to be there and have your belly shake before you can really evaluate a saturn 5. Did you get a chance to strap into the vehicle in practice before you launched . The first time you strapped in, that was not the first time. I dont think so. We had been inside the vehicle quite a number of times. Going way back, our command itule, 107, i had nursed through the Assembly Process in california, and so it and i world friends. And very graciously, i invited neil and buzz to come aboard circum certain circumstances, that i would be czar of the trio, but we had things to prepare us for our separate duties after launch. We are coming up on the exact time of launch, so lets take a look at this video that is coming up. We have a polished a successful vision. We landed men on the moon and return them safely. That was the primary goal, as stated. T minus seconds. Guidance is eternal. 10, 9, 8 ignition sequence starts main engine starts four, 3, 2, 1, 0, lift off. Apollo 11 was about exploration, about taking risks for great rewards in science and engineering. Goal before the work. Reflect ability, the option of walking this planet or some other planet. Be at the moon, mars, i dont know where. And i am poorly equipped to evaluate where that may lead us to. We choose to go to the moon. Perhaps the highlight for those of us on the land would probably be a successful touchdown. I really look forward to that the most this time. So mike, does that bring back any memories . Could you talk about what it was like watching a saturn 5 launch . What was it like to ride that rocket . After engine ignition, it is quite different than what you might imagine. Distance,ch it from a it makes this stately ascent, and you are quite aware of the gigantic power it is producing, 7. 5 Million Pounds of thrust. But inside it is a different situation. Inside you are not worried about your power so much as you are worried about your steering, and you are suspended inside the cockpit, not too far away from that launch umbilical tower that is right off to one side. As you lift off, if there is any imbalance, it is compensated for by the swiveling of your motors below you. You have five engines down there. As you ascend very slowly, majestically, inside it is a different situation. , left tojiggling right. You are not sure whether those jiggles are as big or as small as they should be, or how much closer they are going to put you to the launch umbilical tower, which you do not very much wants to hit right that moment. So it is a totally different feeling at liftoff. The nervous novice driving a wide vehicle down a narrow alley. And you clear the tower things smoothed out of it, pick up speed, then it becomes more like you might imagine, watching it from afar. You are more conscious of the gigantic amounts of power below you, you are more conscious of the acceleration and the speed that you are picking up, and then you soon find out that your machine, your saturn breaks apart into pieces. When it is finished with piece number one, it jettisons it and gives you a momentary skyrocket inside the cockpit. The cockpit is immediately full not any fire or flames, but the vision, the idea of the site, being surrounded by fire. When it gets through that little hick up, from then on it is a quieter, more rational, silent ride all the way to the moon. What did it feel like when the second stage late. Was that a pretty good kick . That is a stage we had worried someone about during its birth and genesis. The designers and engineers have had some difficulty with the second stage, and we were a little bit leery about how ready was the second stage for a manned flight . Perfect, smooth as glass. Much smoother than either the first or the third stage, so it was our friend that day. Awesome. At the end of the video, neil was talking about landing down on the surface of the moon. I know you have been asked this many times before, but i will ask it again. What was it like being all alone in the command module while neil and buzz were down on the surface of a moon . Know, i was amazed that after the flight by the way, we were locked up in quarantine after the flight, with a huge colony of white mice. We were worried that we might have brought back some harmful pathogens from the moon. They wanted to keep everything under observation. Ask, wasalways entitled only as person in the whole lonely solar system when i was by myself in that lonely orbit . The answer was no. I felt fine. I had been flying airplanes by aloft, so that was being in a vehicle it was no novelty. I trusted my surroundings, i was very happy to be where i was and to see this complicated mission unfold. At the time that i was by myself, i was perfectly enjoying it. I had hot coffee, i had music if i wanted it, good old command columbia had every facility that i needed and it was plenty big, and i really enjoyed my time by myself, instead of being terribly lonely. I was not one iota lonely. Did you ever enjoy did you guys ever feel like every time contact with mission control, did you enjoy the brakes when you are on the side of the moon where they were not able to talk to you . It was kind of nice. The trip around the moon at 60 miles above the surface, that was my altitude, that is about a two hour deal. Like your radios can see around corners. They cant quite, but instead of being half of two hours, it was more like 40 something minutes of peace and quiet. I enjoy the peace and quiet. Ourknow, mitchell control our friends, our savior, our mentor, but they could also be a ak,rible nuisance yak y they want this, that, and the other, this tidbit of information minute after minute, hour after hour. So to have a peaceful period of solitude was far from being terrifying. It was very nice, pleasant, easy, and i enjoyed it. Did you have the opportunity to fly again . Did you choose to fly again or not fly again, and would you like to have walked on the moon . 8 at one flying in a t3 point between houston and the cape era, and mike said, i will plug you in. You would forward, he would forward, ding ding on the back of radio, keep going and so forth. So as i interpreted it, he was offering me to be the commander of the apollo 17. I said to him well, listen. Doesnt work out, if we screw something up were something goes wrong, i will come back and you will find me knocking on your door. But if everything goes like it is supposed to on apollo 11, im not appear. The reason i made that decision composed of various aspects. Primarily involving the long interval that would be another three years, i figured, in my life. Three years of living in dingy motels in strange places, trying to learn new things once again. That to rosie the future. Other thing was, i would be separated from my family. With Young Children and the wife who have been wonderful about supporting me all the way through, including up to and through apollo 11, i would be asking her to go through that whole rigmarole one more time, and that did not seem fair somehow. So i put all those things iher and told him hey, didnt say im out of here, i forgot what i said exactly, but he understood. He didnt question it, and that was the way it was. Sure. I think one of the best books about the apollo era was your book, carrying the fire. Is there any epilogue you would add to it today, anything you would add to that original book . I dont know. I would have to go back and reread it. I remember reading it after it was published i believe it was published in 1974 or Something Like that. I liked the interval between 1969 and 1974, because it gave stop and thinkto about things and what i wanted to say, and it was close enough that i had not lost the detailed memories of these various thoughts about the flight to the moon. But the addition to it i think today, of course, there would be a number of additions that i would want to add. One would be the business of, where do we go from here . That is the fascinating question to pose. I would address that if i were to do a retake of carrying the fire. Where do we go from here . That is a great lead in. I am a product of the apollo generation, but we have a lot of folks on the planet are that were not even alive back then, and were trying to create the artemis generation now, trying to get the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024. What do you think about our path forward . I love the word artemis, the twin of apollo. I thought that is a wonderful name, and more important than the name, it is a wonderful concept. I think women can do anything that men can do in space, perhaps they can do it better. So i think artemis i like that, i like it. I like how it rolls around on the tongue, you turn it over and think about it. But i dont want to go back to the moon. Mars igo direct to call it the jfk mars express. John f. Kennedy gave us the apollo express, and that was a wonderful, a masterpiece of understatement, of assisting instruction. What kennedy said helped us so much in our preparation for the first lunar landing. I cannot emphasize too much. Wherever we went, we would use kennedys name you guys got to get busy here, you are lagging behind. Do this, that, and the other. Kennedy said by the end of the decade i would like to transfer that spirit from where we are to where we might go. I would propose going direct to mars. Under what i would call the jfk mars express. Having said that, i grant people who wants to go back to the moon, i grant that they have a great deal of merit to their argument. Who i consider to be a lot better engineer than i, thought there were gaps in our knowledge and that we could fill those cracks by a return to the moon, and that would assist us mightily in our attempts to go to mars. And we believe the faster we get to the moon, the faster we get to mars because we develop those systems that we need to make that happen. You mentioned neil. I wish buzz was with us today, but we have lost one of your crew permanently. Do you have any fond memories of share . Would like to i usually talk about when people ask me that question is not neil flying to the moon or back, although he did a superlative job as a crew commander. No complaints there. When i think of is neil the , for three men who were privileged to go around the world after the flight of apollo 11, and explain to the world what it was all about or what neil thought it was all about. He was a masterful speaker. He was an introverted person in many ways. He did not want to grab the microphone, but if he found the microphone to rest in front of him, he could use it to wonderful advantage. He was extremely intelligent, had an extremely wide background of knowledge, scientific knowledge, historical knowledge, really, probably more than scientific. History of technology fascinated him, and on our around the world trip, time after time as our spokesman, he would make a speech i am so glad to be in your city here, let me do a quick check and see which city im in right now he would have the audience just feeling like they crawled aboard columbia with us by the time he was through with his speech. He was wonderful in that regard. I think he was a perfect man of the group that i knew. I think there were probably 30 of us that might have been candidates to be first man. But of the other 29, that group i think neil was the perfect choice, and i am glad others had the smarts to decide also. I could not agree with you more. He is one of the finest dental and i have ever met, not to be surpassed by you. It has been a true privilege and an honor to be out here on the pad with you today. Thank you so much for everything and i wish you the very best, sir. Bob, thank you. The operation you run here is so much more complex and many ways than what we had during apollo. Toalute you and your ability bring all of these little pieces together in a successful future for nasa. Thank you, sir. 1963, airmber 16, force one touched down, bringing president kennedy on his third visit to americas spaceport. He was welcomed by Major General leighton davis, commander of the air force missile test center. Nasa administrator james webb and Nasa Launch Operations Center director curt davis. Quicklyident moved out on his whirlwind tour, stopping outside the saturn block house briefing. I after another briefing inside the block house, the president and his party, which included floridas senator smathers, drove to the base of the giant saturn. Saturn will carry an american crew to the moon in this decade, a goal established by the young president shortly after he took office in 1961. The president then boarded a nearby helicopter for an aerial tour of the space launch areas, and a 30 mile flight to the uss observation island. [helicopter blades whirring] the commander in chief was piped aboard. Donning a sailors jacket, he looked every inch the naval officer he was during world war. I the fleet performed flawlessly, and president kennedy saw his first missile launch. A proud commander congratulated a proud crew. The president returned to the case by helicopter, president kennedy bit his farewell. On november 25, the cape was closed. Officers assembled for memorial services. Brigadier general harry j sans junior, the Vice Commander spoke. Warm,moved among us, was and gave his awareness of our efforts. It is well to remember that we are assembled here today not because of the shocking way that he died, but the cuts of and in tribute to the way he because of and interview to the way he lived. We salute the memories of our late president , john f. Kennedy, and salute as well in token of fast devotion to duty new president and commander in chief, lyndon b. Johnson. Demonstrating a determination to move forward towards the goals established under the late president , cape workers the next night launched an interplanetary monitoring platform. It was the 21st straight success for the delta. Nasa underlined this determination the next day, successfully launching the sense are. The entire centaur upper stage was placed in orbit. On thanks giving day, president Lyndon Johnson announced the trade one famous name for another. Cape canaveral from here on after would now be known as cape kennedy. Weekend, American History tv is marking the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing with live coverage from the national air and space museum, archival film, interviews with astronauts and more. To watch all of our programs in their entirety, you can visit our website, cspan. Org history. The next several hours, American History tv features cbs Gemini Program<\/a> got a lot of publicity. Some of it worldwide, but nonetheless it had more of a local character. Celebrity,st like a celebrity resort of event, like ,erhaps an athletic contest where is apollo 11, on the other hand, was serious business. We crew felt the weight of the world on our shoulders. We knew that everyone would be looking at us, friend or foe, best weanted to do the possibly could, put our best foot forward, and that required a great deal of work on our part. Time left overh for any of the things we might have more enjoyed. Absolutely. Having the weight of the world on your shoulders, i know you went through an extensive amount of training. Can you tell us about the training . How did it prepare you for the mission . I think the simulators were the heart and soul of our training. They were very good machines. They were excellent duplicators of what we would see inflight. The one failing was that they could not duplicate particularly well the view out the window that we saw. 99 of our work, throwing switches and communicating with houston, 99 of our work we really didnt need to simulate the view out the window with great fidelity. So the simulators were very powerful instruments, and we spent a lot of time in them. The the come on metal command model simulator, i spent 600 hours and it repairing for apollo 11 alone. Preparing for apollo 11 alone. What did you find the most challenging . I think about the flight to the moon as along and fragile hazyand chain. Points along the route, we have names for them, like going faster than escape velocity, slowing down into lunar orbit and so forth. Matter how well things are going for you, you cannot just relax and pat yourself on the back and say, well isnt this wonderful . Ok, 17 down,ay what is number 18 coming up . I better get on the ball and worry about it. For me, it might have been different for someone else, but for me at least, the flight was a question of being under tension, worrying about what is coming next, what do i have to do now to keep this daisychain intact . Guys were down here supporting the vehicle processing, training and emulators, you spent a lot of time in florida. Is that a challenge for your familys . How did they react to you going to the moon . Different families react in different ways. In my family, with three Young Children<\/a> who should not be uprooted from their schools, my wife pat stayed in houston, and i was by myself. Some crews imported their family from texas to florida, and it worked out well for them, but we used a different system and it did not work out very well for us. We had a chance to visit crew quarters this morning. We were in the dining room and the rooms where you stayed, the suit room and everything. Did it bring back any memories . How long were you in quarantine before the flight . Dont know how long we were in quarantine before the flight. Quarantine was sort of a that had beentamp put on some piece of paper. It did not really changed too much our normal training routine. I think we were in quarantine maybe two weeks . Oh, if there is a historian out there, i am sure he or she will correct that number. Apollo launch an prior to years . Not an apollo saturn, but i ,aw the first saturn to launch 501, and i will always remember it. We had pretty good seats for that. I would say we were about between two and three miles away, which sounds like forever and a day, but when you are looking at a saturn 5, certainly you find out in a big hurry that you are pretty close to it. Off,hing ignites, it takes it very, very quietly starts ascending. You look out across the lagoon, and you say oh, that is not a big deal. I have seen rockets go off before. Then it starts going up and picks up speed, going faster. It looks a little more impressive, but still nothing very exceptional. The shock wave from the rocket powered hits you, hits you in the viscera. Your whole body is shaking, your feet underneath you are shaking in the mud, and you think, my god, this is what they mean by power. It gives you an entirely different feeling, a different concept of what power really means. You have to be there and have your belly shake before you can really evaluate a saturn 5. Did you get a chance to strap into the vehicle in practice before you launched . The first time you strapped in, that was not the first time. I dont think so. We had been inside the vehicle quite a number of times. Going way back, our command itule, 107, i had nursed through the Assembly Process<\/a> in california, and so it and i world friends. And very graciously, i invited neil and buzz to come aboard circum certain circumstances, that i would be czar of the trio, but we had things to prepare us for our separate duties after launch. We are coming up on the exact time of launch, so lets take a look at this video that is coming up. We have a polished a successful vision. We landed men on the moon and return them safely. That was the primary goal, as stated. T minus seconds. Guidance is eternal. 10, 9, 8 ignition sequence starts main engine starts four, 3, 2, 1, 0, lift off. Apollo 11 was about exploration, about taking risks for great rewards in science and engineering. Goal before the work. Reflect ability, the option of walking this planet or some other planet. Be at the moon, mars, i dont know where. And i am poorly equipped to evaluate where that may lead us to. We choose to go to the moon. Perhaps the highlight for those of us on the land would probably be a successful touchdown. I really look forward to that the most this time. So mike, does that bring back any memories . Could you talk about what it was like watching a saturn 5 launch . What was it like to ride that rocket . After engine ignition, it is quite different than what you might imagine. Distance,ch it from a it makes this stately ascent, and you are quite aware of the gigantic power it is producing, 7. 5 Million Pounds<\/a> of thrust. But inside it is a different situation. Inside you are not worried about your power so much as you are worried about your steering, and you are suspended inside the cockpit, not too far away from that launch umbilical tower that is right off to one side. As you lift off, if there is any imbalance, it is compensated for by the swiveling of your motors below you. You have five engines down there. As you ascend very slowly, majestically, inside it is a different situation. , left tojiggling right. You are not sure whether those jiggles are as big or as small as they should be, or how much closer they are going to put you to the launch umbilical tower, which you do not very much wants to hit right that moment. So it is a totally different feeling at liftoff. The nervous novice driving a wide vehicle down a narrow alley. And you clear the tower things smoothed out of it, pick up speed, then it becomes more like you might imagine, watching it from afar. You are more conscious of the gigantic amounts of power below you, you are more conscious of the acceleration and the speed that you are picking up, and then you soon find out that your machine, your saturn breaks apart into pieces. When it is finished with piece number one, it jettisons it and gives you a momentary skyrocket inside the cockpit. The cockpit is immediately full not any fire or flames, but the vision, the idea of the site, being surrounded by fire. When it gets through that little hick up, from then on it is a quieter, more rational, silent ride all the way to the moon. What did it feel like when the second stage late. Was that a pretty good kick . That is a stage we had worried someone about during its birth and genesis. The designers and engineers have had some difficulty with the second stage, and we were a little bit leery about how ready was the second stage for a manned flight . Perfect, smooth as glass. Much smoother than either the first or the third stage, so it was our friend that day. Awesome. At the end of the video, neil was talking about landing down on the surface of the moon. I know you have been asked this many times before, but i will ask it again. What was it like being all alone in the command module while neil and buzz were down on the surface of a moon . Know, i was amazed that after the flight by the way, we were locked up in quarantine after the flight, with a huge colony of white mice. We were worried that we might have brought back some harmful pathogens from the moon. They wanted to keep everything under observation. Ask, wasalways entitled only as person in the whole lonely solar system when i was by myself in that lonely orbit . The answer was no. I felt fine. I had been flying airplanes by aloft, so that was being in a vehicle it was no novelty. I trusted my surroundings, i was very happy to be where i was and to see this complicated mission unfold. At the time that i was by myself, i was perfectly enjoying it. I had hot coffee, i had music if i wanted it, good old command columbia had every facility that i needed and it was plenty big, and i really enjoyed my time by myself, instead of being terribly lonely. I was not one iota lonely. Did you ever enjoy did you guys ever feel like every time contact with mission control, did you enjoy the brakes when you are on the side of the moon where they were not able to talk to you . It was kind of nice. The trip around the moon at 60 miles above the surface, that was my altitude, that is about a two hour deal. Like your radios can see around corners. They cant quite, but instead of being half of two hours, it was more like 40 something minutes of peace and quiet. I enjoy the peace and quiet. Ourknow, mitchell control our friends, our savior, our mentor, but they could also be a ak,rible nuisance yak y they want this, that, and the other, this tidbit of information minute after minute, hour after hour. So to have a peaceful period of solitude was far from being terrifying. It was very nice, pleasant, easy, and i enjoyed it. Did you have the opportunity to fly again . Did you choose to fly again or not fly again, and would you like to have walked on the moon . 8 at one flying in a t3 point between houston and the cape era, and mike said, i will plug you in. You would forward, he would forward, ding ding on the back of radio, keep going and so forth. So as i interpreted it, he was offering me to be the commander of the apollo 17. I said to him well, listen. Doesnt work out, if we screw something up were something goes wrong, i will come back and you will find me knocking on your door. But if everything goes like it is supposed to on apollo 11, im not appear. The reason i made that decision composed of various aspects. Primarily involving the long interval that would be another three years, i figured, in my life. Three years of living in dingy motels in strange places, trying to learn new things once again. That to rosie the future. Other thing was, i would be separated from my family. With Young Children<\/a> and the wife who have been wonderful about supporting me all the way through, including up to and through apollo 11, i would be asking her to go through that whole rigmarole one more time, and that did not seem fair somehow. So i put all those things iher and told him hey, didnt say im out of here, i forgot what i said exactly, but he understood. He didnt question it, and that was the way it was. Sure. I think one of the best books about the apollo era was your book, carrying the fire. Is there any epilogue you would add to it today, anything you would add to that original book . I dont know. I would have to go back and reread it. I remember reading it after it was published i believe it was published in 1974 or Something Like<\/a> that. I liked the interval between 1969 and 1974, because it gave stop and thinkto about things and what i wanted to say, and it was close enough that i had not lost the detailed memories of these various thoughts about the flight to the moon. But the addition to it i think today, of course, there would be a number of additions that i would want to add. One would be the business of, where do we go from here . That is the fascinating question to pose. I would address that if i were to do a retake of carrying the fire. Where do we go from here . That is a great lead in. I am a product of the apollo generation, but we have a lot of folks on the planet are that were not even alive back then, and were trying to create the artemis generation now, trying to get the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024. What do you think about our path forward . I love the word artemis, the twin of apollo. I thought that is a wonderful name, and more important than the name, it is a wonderful concept. I think women can do anything that men can do in space, perhaps they can do it better. So i think artemis i like that, i like it. I like how it rolls around on the tongue, you turn it over and think about it. But i dont want to go back to the moon. Mars igo direct to call it the jfk mars express. John f. Kennedy gave us the apollo express, and that was a wonderful, a masterpiece of understatement, of assisting instruction. What kennedy said helped us so much in our preparation for the first lunar landing. I cannot emphasize too much. Wherever we went, we would use kennedys name you guys got to get busy here, you are lagging behind. Do this, that, and the other. Kennedy said by the end of the decade i would like to transfer that spirit from where we are to where we might go. I would propose going direct to mars. Under what i would call the jfk mars express. Having said that, i grant people who wants to go back to the moon, i grant that they have a great deal of merit to their argument. Who i consider to be a lot better engineer than i, thought there were gaps in our knowledge and that we could fill those cracks by a return to the moon, and that would assist us mightily in our attempts to go to mars. And we believe the faster we get to the moon, the faster we get to mars because we develop those systems that we need to make that happen. You mentioned neil. I wish buzz was with us today, but we have lost one of your crew permanently. Do you have any fond memories of share . Would like to i usually talk about when people ask me that question is not neil flying to the moon or back, although he did a superlative job as a crew commander. No complaints there. When i think of is neil the , for three men who were privileged to go around the world after the flight of apollo 11, and explain to the world what it was all about or what neil thought it was all about. He was a masterful speaker. He was an introverted person in many ways. He did not want to grab the microphone, but if he found the microphone to rest in front of him, he could use it to wonderful advantage. He was extremely intelligent, had an extremely wide background of knowledge, scientific knowledge, historical knowledge, really, probably more than scientific. History of technology fascinated him, and on our around the world trip, time after time as our spokesman, he would make a speech i am so glad to be in your city here, let me do a quick check and see which city im in right now he would have the audience just feeling like they crawled aboard columbia with us by the time he was through with his speech. He was wonderful in that regard. I think he was a perfect man of the group that i knew. I think there were probably 30 of us that might have been candidates to be first man. But of the other 29, that group i think neil was the perfect choice, and i am glad others had the smarts to decide also. I could not agree with you more. He is one of the finest dental and i have ever met, not to be surpassed by you. It has been a true privilege and an honor to be out here on the pad with you today. Thank you so much for everything and i wish you the very best, sir. Bob, thank you. The operation you run here is so much more complex and many ways than what we had during apollo. Toalute you and your ability bring all of these little pieces together in a successful future for nasa. Thank you, sir. 1963, airmber 16, force one touched down, bringing president kennedy on his third visit to americas spaceport. He was welcomed by Major General<\/a> leighton davis, commander of the air force missile test center. Nasa administrator james webb and Nasa Launch Operations Center<\/a> director curt davis. Quicklyident moved out on his whirlwind tour, stopping outside the saturn block house briefing. I after another briefing inside the block house, the president and his party, which included floridas senator smathers, drove to the base of the giant saturn. Saturn will carry an american crew to the moon in this decade, a goal established by the young president shortly after he took office in 1961. The president then boarded a nearby helicopter for an aerial tour of the space launch areas, and a 30 mile flight to the uss observation island. [helicopter blades whirring] the commander in chief was piped aboard. Donning a sailors jacket, he looked every inch the naval officer he was during world war. I the fleet performed flawlessly, and president kennedy saw his first missile launch. A proud commander congratulated a proud crew. The president returned to the case by helicopter, president kennedy bit his farewell. On november 25, the cape was closed. Officers assembled for memorial services. Brigadier general harry j sans junior, the Vice Commander<\/a> spoke. Warm,moved among us, was and gave his awareness of our efforts. It is well to remember that we are assembled here today not because of the shocking way that he died, but the cuts of and in tribute to the way he because of and interview to the way he lived. We salute the memories of our late president , john f. Kennedy, and salute as well in token of fast devotion to duty new president and commander in chief, lyndon b. Johnson. Demonstrating a determination to move forward towards the goals established under the late president , cape workers the next night launched an interplanetary monitoring platform. It was the 21st straight success for the delta. Nasa underlined this determination the next day, successfully launching the sense are. The entire centaur upper stage was placed in orbit. On thanks giving day, president Lyndon Johnson<\/a> announced the trade one famous name for another. Cape canaveral from here on after would now be known as cape kennedy. Weekend, American History<\/a> tv is marking the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing with live coverage from the national air and space museum, archival film, interviews with astronauts and more. To watch all of our programs in their entirety, you can visit our website, cspan. Org history. The next several hours, American History<\/a> tv features cbs News Coverage<\/a> of apollo 11. Nasas First Mission<\/a> to land man on the moon. We begin with a launch on july 16, 1959. That will be followed by the cbs broadcast of the moon landing and moonwalk on july 20. We wrap up coverage with the urn to earth and the recovery by the crew of the uss hornet. This is American History<\/a> tv on cspan3. 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