- [gentle music]

- This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to the earth.

- When the President said we're gonna go to the moon, that really floored me. I really thought it was beyond our scope. The team of people that we had didn't quite feel that way. I think they were excited as hell about it. And so, I became excited about it, as a result of that.

- Well, if you look at the impact of the, what's now called the Apollo on Fire, that was January of 1967. That meant there were only two more years in the decade to land a man on the moon. And after the Apollo on Fire, we took 21 months with no flying. 21 months out of the remaining time, so I think the Apollo on Fire created the opportunity to get it done because of all the changes that went on. [gentle music]

- Let me talk a little bit about Apollo 8. Gutsiest thing we have ever done in man-space flight. Huge risk. Huge risk. Gutsy. The most important Apollo flight ever, 'cause it set us on to the goal to do what President Kennedy wanted us to do.

- The recovery team was started talking to the DOD people about the Navy support we're gonna require in the Pacific. General Houston says, I'm not about to go ask Admiral McCain. They ought know that they've already planned to have that time off. He said, so I'm not gonna go ask Admiral McCain to break that subject. You're gonna have to do that. I said, bring me an airplane. We'll both go. So, that's what we did. The Admiral came in; everybody jumped to attention, including me, and they said, okay, young friends, what have you got to say? So I gave this 15 minute briefing of what we wanted to do, why we were going to the moon, what it meant to the country, and, but, I need your ships. He banged his hand down, and he said, that's the best goddamned briefing I've ever heard. Give this young man anything he wants. We walked out.

- Go up and orbit the moon. That was a biggie. That was the biggie. That was our design mission, if you wanna call it that.

- [Rod] Three, two, one, zero. [rocket fires up] We have commenced, we have lift off. Lift off at 7:51...

- Firing of the command module engine to put the vehicle into orbit the first time, took place, of course, on the backside of the moon, 'cause that's the most efficient place to do it. When you did that, the meant you'd be around the moon for 30 minutes. So we got to the moon and we hit the time, when they were gonna lose communications with the space craft, on the second, and that gave us pretty good confidence that we were in the right orbit; the right place. At that point, we went, we're behind the moon. We were actually on a trajectory where, if we didn't do anything, it would come back around the other side of the moon and be on trajectory to come back to the Earth. And so, when that thing came around to the right side, I did a lot of praying for 30 minutes. Thank God, it's gonna come around the other side of the moon. And it did.

- [Rod] We've got it. We've got it. Apollo 8 now in lunar orbit. There's a cheer in this room.

- Now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

- The guys read the Bible verses on Christmas Eve, and 'cause they were right there working, along with thousands of other people. But, I mean I got goosebumps that just lasted... I still get goosebumps when I reminisce about the reading of those words.

- Oh, that's the one that really got everybody. I think probably brought tears to everybody's eyes.

- [Astronaut] In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, let there be light.

- When those guys signed off on that, it was, it was just, hey man, this is the best Christmas ever. You know, [laughs] you go home and really have a great time. So, uplifting. Very lifting.

- There was a second time when we were coming back to the earth, and Lovell said,

- Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.

- You know the highlight had to be, probably the burn headed home. When they came around on time, and so we knew they'd made the burn. And they were headed home. You could relax a little bit, I guess. We still had to go through entry and everything, but, but you could relax. [dramatic music]

- And what a wonderful thing to happen in 1968 during those times. I mean, talk about at the end of the year, it... Hollywood couldn't make a movie any better than that in my opinion. [subtle dramatic music]

- Paine, who then became the acting Administrator, came in at one of our meetings one day, he says, I want to talk to you guys. He said, I am extremely proud of you people, that you have been willing to come up with this change in plan, to take advantage of what you have to do to get the program back on track, and I congratulate you for having done that. Boy that was one of the best things anybody has ever said to me. [subtle dramatic music]

- We were having a discussion the other day at my company. I said something about Apollo being the golden age of space exploration. One of the younger guys looked at me, said, today is the golden age of space exploration. And, you know, he may be right.

- Calculated risk today, is a much more scientific, restricted sort of process to go through. Interesting because it makes you wonder, if you took the same process today, and put it back into the Apollo 8 timeframe, would we have actually done Apollo 8? And I'm not so sure.

- I really do think it's important to establish a permanent outpost on the moon. And really start, move into space as a species, as humanity moves into space. Not just a few explorers but, but the colonists. To expect a president to make a Kennedyesque speech, and Congress to fall in line, and give almost unlimited amount of money, probably not gonna ever happen again in that same way. That's not to say we shouldn't go forward, and that space exploration won't happen. Although with orbit, there's a lot of business opportunities. People can run businesses and make money, and frankly, these commercial firms; if they can provide a transportation service at lower cost, with regularity, with a good safety record, then it will open up all kinds of industries in space. And then the government can buy a ride just like we go down to the airline counter and buy a ticket on the airline today. That would be a good thing. It will allow NASA to move away from the low earth orbit phase, and go back to the cutting edge, really hard, really exotic things that the agency needs to do.

- I am really amazed at what SpaceX has done. I don't try to make apples to apples comparison. I know what the Orion team is doing. I don't worry too much about competition between the commercial world and the Orion program.

- But we might be seeing the kind of things that happen in aviation in the 20s, where you've got this explosion of designs, and companies, and creativity to help build this great infrastructure. [gentle music]