[Archive audio] Today men first left the protective
atmosphere of Earth to walk in the vacuum
of the moon.
And we may wonder -
will our lives ever be the same?
Will future generations look back on the Earth
from another planet, from another star?
And say this was the beginning.
[Narration] The year is 1961.
The space race is in full swing and the
Soviet Union is enjoying a comfortable lead.
Under mounting political pressure in the United
States,
the freshly elected 35th president John F.
Kennedy
stands before congress in 1961 and he declares
that they will put a man on the
moon before the decade is through.
[Archive audio, JFK] For while we cannot guarantee
that we shall one day be first,
we can guarantee that any failure
to make this effort will make us last.
[Narration] It was an ambitious project and even NASA
itself wasn’t sure they could do it by 1970.
In 1963 Kennedy even came close to
agreeing a joint Soviet-American mission
to the moon to avoid duplication of effort.
[Archive audio, JFK] Space offers no problems of sovereignty.
Why, therefore, should man's first flight
to the moon be a matter of national competition?
[Narration] Despite this, NASA was undaunted
and remained committed to its quest.
How to approach the moon
was one of the first big questions.
Could you directly fly a spaceship there,
go out for a wander and then zip back to Earth?
Or did you need something a little bit more elaborate?
The option finally chosen
was that of a Lunar Orbit Rendezvous.
This meant that a ship would launch from Earth,
and stay in orbit around the Moon,
while a smaller craft, a lunar landing module,
descends to the lunar surface.
The same lander would then ascend
to bring the astronauts back to the mothership.
This method had the added benefit of
being able to use the lunar module as a lifeboat,
a feature that came very handy when the oxygen
tank exploded aboard Apollo 13.
By 1967, following nearly twenty unmanned
missions,
equipment improvements and nerve wracking
delays,
NASA was ready to launch the first
three Apollo astronauts to space:
Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
But Apollo 1 would never make it’s launch
date.
Disaster struck when during a training exercise
a fire broke out in the cockpit and all three
men perished.
16 months later, after numerous changes to
spacesuit
and spaceship design, and three unmanned missions,
NASA was again in a position to restart manned
missions.
Apollo 7 tested equipment in Earth orbit and
quickly thereafter
Apollo 8 became the first lunar orbiting mission,
sending pictures of the moon surface to Earth
via a live broadcast on Christmas Eve 1968.
[Archive audio] This is Apollo 8 
coming to you live from the moon.
I know my own impression is that it’s
a vast, lonely, forbidding type.
[Narration] NASA got ever closer to its goal 
with each mission
and then finally on June 20th, 1969, 
Apollo 11 made history
by landing the first two humans on the moon.
[Archive audio] The Eagle has landed.
- Roger. Twink.
Tranquility we copy you on the ground.
You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn
blue.
We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.
[Narration] Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took
those first steps on an alien landscape,
watched over by their third teammate Michael Collins
who was watching with anticipation 
from the orbiting mothership.
[Arcive audio] It's one small step for man, 
one giant leap for mankind.
[Narration] A further 10 men set foot on the surface
of the moon during the subsequent Apollo missions.
Altogether, the Apollo astronauts spent tens
of hours
on the lunar surface, collecting hundreds
of pounds
of rock and soil samples, and taking thousands
of photos.
The United States claimed
the victor’s crown in the space race,
but the effects of the program
reverberated throughout the world.
[Archive audio] The excitement of the mission, the tension and drama of the splashdown,
they remain only in our memories
and in time they'll be replaced in the future
by other missions, other memories.
The moments of Apollo may be over
but the understanding and the discovery,
they go on.
And the full meaning, the real meaning,
may yet be in the future too.
But for now, for the present, the images
and the sounds provide meaning enough,
to each in his own way,
and to each in his own time.
