In the Shadow of the Moon Page #2

So NASA put out a request

for a third group of astronauts in early '63,

and of course everybody

in my test pilot class put their application in

because it was another opportunity

for a new challenge.

It certainly sounded very challenging

and something that if...

if other people wanted to be

a part of this

and this was a noble national effort,

why, I wanted to be a part of it.

Now how would you feel,

Mrs. Armstrong,

If it turned out...

Of course, nobody knows;

But if it turns out that your son

is first man to land on the Moon,

What... How would you feel?

Well, I guess I'd just say God bless him

and I wish him the best of all good luck.

[Applause]

I'll bet you.

[Music playing]

Collins:
That group of astronauts

was far and away the best group

I had ever been associated with.

There weren't any really weak sisters

in the bunch.

They were just an amazingly competent,

hardworking,

really good bunch of people.

One day... you're just Gene Cernan,

young naval aviator, whatever,

and the next day,

you're an American hero.

Literally.

And you have done nothing.

When Tom Wolfe

wrote "The Right Stuff",

I thought,

"Boy! That sounds good.

People are going to think

I have the right stuff!

I'm the same guy I always was,

but now, I've got the right stuff!"

It's sort of an unshakeable belief

in your own infallibility.

That's what the right stuff is.

That you're immortal,

that you can do anything

that is thrown at you.

Scott:
Nobody knew really

how to go to the Moon,

there was a lot on paper.

And we didn't know how to do things

and we didn't know how things would work.

It was just a matter of

putting them together,

making them work

and then correcting deficiencies.

And as pilots, astronauts,

why, we participated

in all of these things,

along with management

and the engineers.

Collins:

What we did in the early days

was take the overall spacecraft

and divide it up like a pie.

We sliced that pie up

into 10 or 15 different pieces

and we handed each slice

to one of the astronauts

and said, "This is yours,

we want you to learn that slice."

Kennedy:

We shall send to the Moon,

a giant rocket

more than 300 feet tall,

made of new metal alloys,

some of which have

not yet been invented,

fitted together with a precision

better than the finest watch,

on an untried mission

to an unknown celestial body,

and then return it safely to Earth,

re-entering the atmosphere

at speeds of over

causing heat about half that

of the temperature of the Sun,

Almost as hot as it is here today.

And do all this...

And do all this

and do it right and do it first,

before this decade is out,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes