The Team That Made the Mission to the Moon Possible

Outside at night and I'd gaze at the moon.

Never occurred to me that we would land people there.

I had the feeling of what it meant.

We're making history.

So most of the attention

around Apollos always focused on the astronauts,

but the film is about those people in the back room

at NASA who really made the missions happen

through planning, through monitoring the flight,

through dealing with emergencies.

My name is Keith Haviland,

and I'm one of the producers of the documentary film

Mission Control The Unsung Heroes of Apollo.

I cannot think of any place I'd rather be

than to be here in mission control.

It finally dawned us,

we just landed on the moon.

[Mission Control] Go for landing, 3000 feet.

One of the remarkable things about them is,

they came from very ordinary backgrounds.

From smokestack towns, from the Navy, from the army,

not normally officer class, but from the ranks.

But together they became this fabulous team

who did remarkable things,

and they're essential in the history

of the Apollo program of getting man to the moon.

[Astronaut] Alright Houston, we've had a problem.

[Mission Control] Okay, stand by, they got a problem.

Everybody keep cool, let's solve the problem,

but let's not make it any worse by guessing.

[Keith] The concept of mission control was wholly new.

It emerged from flight tests with experimental aircraft.

Computers were not really understood.

Building one of the world's first global networks

was something that was also part of the complexity.

And so the challenges were fundamental.

[Mission Control] Three, two, one.

[Kieth] And the first few American missions were failures.

With the Apollo program, the Apollo on fire,

three astronauts died in seconds,

trapped inside a badly designed spacecraft.

[Anchorman] The tragedy occurred

during a simulated countdown for the first flight...

That really shook the program.

The program came pretty close to being canceled,

but they had the courage and the nerve

to see changes through,

and it became a transformational moment.

One of the points made in the film about Apollo One,

is the fact that without it,

the moon landings may not have happened.

[Astronaut] Make sure

that you got your feet underneath you.

The final sequence of the film is around Apollo 13,

but all their training, all their knowledge,

all their preparation came together

to save the three men in the bay

of the barely damaged spacecraft.

[Man] We were in serious, serious trouble.

There was only one thing for 48 hours

to get those guys home.