In the Shadow of the Moon Page #3

then we must be bold.

Cernan:

I look back at Kennedy,

was he a visionary,

was he a dreamer,

was he politically astute?

The chances are, yes,

he was probably...

probably all three.

We'll never know.

Nor will we ever know

whether he really fully appreciated

The challenge that he had laid down

in front of... the American people.

Kennedy:

And therefore, as we set sail,

we ask God's blessing

on the most hazardous and dangerous

and greatest adventure

on which man has ever embarked.

[Music playing]

Scott:

Things were moving very quickly

and I was assigned as a back-up crew

to the first Apollo mission.

Things were in sort of a turmoil,

there were a lot of problems,

and Gus Grissom was

doing the best he could,

with his crew of Ed White and Roger Chaffee,

to straighten them out,

try to get the spacecraft

ready to fly.

Collins:

We were incredibly intelligent

about some of

the hazards that we faced.

And we thought long

and hard about them

and we did everything we could

to ward them off,

but the business of 100% oxygen environment

inside the spacecraft,

we really had not thought that through.

Man:

And the wires were really bad in there.

I'd asked Gus, I said,

"Gus, why don't you say something

about this wiring? "

I said, "It's really terrible,

they ought to do something about this wiring,

it's really bad."

and he said, "l don't..."

And he said, "l can't say anything about it

or they'll fire me."

That's what he told me.

I couldn't believe it.

Cernan:
The crew were conducting

this test on the ground,

they weren't going to fly.

I guess we, and I think of all of us

in the NASA family,

never gave it a second thought.

what would happen if you got a spark

in a 16 psi,

[Music playing]

Bean:

I picked up the phone

and they said... "Who's this? "

I told them Alan Bean,

he said, "Well, we're down here,

we're doing this test

and we've lost the crew."

And I said...

"Where'd they go?

You've lost them? "

Because I thought

they just needed to run the test

and they can't find them.

"No" they said,

"We've lost the crew."

I said, "Maybe they're

down at the beach house."

And they said,

"No, there was a fire."

And then it dawns on me

that maybe they're talking about

something different than I think.

Newsreader:

We interrupt our regular programming

to bring you this special report.

Here's ABC's science editor,

Jules Bergman.

Top space agency officials

are flying to Cape Kennedy tonight

to begin the official investigation

into what caused the flash fire

that killed the nation's

first three Apollo astronauts earlier tonight.

They died at t-minus ten minutes

into a simulated launch countdown,

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