First man on the moon history
On Earth, tension was building in mission control. Armstrong and Aldrin were in the lunar module preparing to descend to the surface. Lift off, we have a lift off.ĭERMOT O’LEARY: By the 20th of July, 1969, four days after the launch, the astronauts were orbiting the Moon. They are sitting on the equivalent of an atomic bomb.ĭERMOT O’LEARY: In fact, the Saturn V rocket that took Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the Moon had over two million working parts, and if anyone of them went wrong it could have meant death for the astronauts.ĪRCHIVE AUDIO: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, zero. JOHN TRIBE: The crew will tell you that they were very aware that they were riding a monster. Can you try and paint the picture of how brave these guys must have been to be sat on top of it with quite a lot of hardware and explosives underneath them? The only rocket with the power to do it was the Saturn V.
In 1969, John Tribe was part of the team responsible for getting Armstrong and his crew to the moon.
Most of NASA’s astronauts were test pilots but even amongst them, Armstrong’s ability to stay calm was exceptional. Later as an elite test pilot pushing the limits of the rocket-propelled X-15, the fastest plane in the world, he almost lost control when he flew beyond the Earth’s atmosphere to the edge of space. DERMOT O’LEARY: In 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first human being to set foot on the Moon and in doing so completely changed our view of the world.ġ8 years earlier, as a 21-year-old fighter pilot in the Korean War, he flew dozens of missions, almost losing his life on one of them.