- [tense string music]

- I was nine years old in July 1969, and very vividly, I remember exactly where I was and who I was in the room with when we first landed on the moon, and it was incredibly inspirational, and that was what motivated me. That's what got me interested in science, and math, and engineering, and it took over my education, my interests, and it drove me to want to come and work in the space program.

- It was just such an exciting time. Like, at one point we decided that thing up there, we're gonna go, and we're gonna actually see what it looks like. I mean, it's daring and exciting, and it's something I really wanted to be a part of. [soft piano music] [systems check]

- [Radio Overwatch] CAPCOM we're go for landing.

- [Radio Specialist] Altitude 4,200.

- [Flight Control] Houston, you're go for landing, over.

- After we had gotten to a pretty serious point in the decent where we needed to had fish or cut bait so to speak that we got a sudden signal that said the computer's overloaded. The warning was very disturbing to say the least, and it took one of our flight controllers about 30 seconds, 20/30 seconds to get an answer to that and soon as we started taking in the radar, then that corrected the errors, the possible errors that could be in the computer. Now, having done all that, it turns out that we were in the wrong place. We didn't know the condition of the surface of the moon at that point. We knew the surface of the moon was smooth where we wanted to land, but we didn't know the large craters, et cetera, and the large rocks that existed where we were gonna land, and Neil Armstrong did because he could see it. He stops the decent and starts flying the vehicle like a helicopter, which you could do with the lunar module, transposing the thing across the surface until he could find a reasonable place to land. When he started doing that then he was rapidly using up the fuel that he had as a backup to do what he was doing. We knew damn well when he was going to put that damn thing down at that point somewhere he was gonna put it down even though it might be too rough, even though it might be a big crater, even though he might land on the side of a crater.

- [Armstrong] Okay, engines stopped.

- [Flight Control] We copy you're down eagle.

- [Armstrong] Houston, Tranquility Base here, the eagle has landed.

- [Duke] Rodger Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.

- Exciting. I don't know how you could ever do anything that would be more exciting than that in your lifetime. Any engineer or any patriot. [foreboding piano music]

- [Armstrong] Okay, I'm going to leave that one foot up there and then both hands down about the fourth rung up.

- [Flight Control] There you go.

- I think I cried when they touched down, and I knew they were on the ground they were safe. I was probably saying a lot of prayers too. The faces of all these people all over the wold show awe and joy. It was nice to bring awe and joy to the world.

- That's something I'll never, never forget. How just, the joy we had at least landed, and now the challenge was to do a little bit of whatever we were gonna do. Place the flag and do a little experimentation. Grab some regolith and some rocks and then get back in and come back safely somehow.

- [Armstrong] Seven, six, five. Wednesday, it's not happening. Proceed. Very good.

- Apollo gave us a lot of impetus just like Lin-ver Pliv-ian lanning. He didn't do much engineering wise, but he charged everything up. So Apollo charged things up, but now we have the trauma of Apollo euphoria to live with. Now that is a powerful trauma. Goddamn, we've been to the moon. We'll go to mars. Well, where's the money coming from?

- To have allowed us to be as this country, to get in this position today to where we don't ever, our transportation that we own to put our own people into space and get 'em back again is absurd. I don't like it. I just hope one of these days we'll be back to where we're controlling our own destiny when it comes to exploration of space with humans.

- [Flight Control] Three, two, one, zero. All engines running, commence liftoff. Pete Conrad reports that your program is in. [radio communications] [soft piano music]