In the Shadow of the Moon Page #6

And I felt kind of bad that he wasn't going to have

the opportunity of being to...

Being able to be in a Lunar Lander

and make a landing,

but that was a decision that...

[Clears throat]

certainly was way over my head.

One guy had to stay

in the command module

and the other two were

going to go to the Moon

and I was... Pigeonholed,

if that's the right word,

as a command module pilot

and so that...

I lost my chance of...

of walking on the Moon

but in return for that,

I gained a chance to...

A:
Fly to the Moon

and perhaps be a member

of the first crew to land on the Moon.

Bean:

One thing I know about Buzz,

he's one of these guys

that's a lot smarter than most of us.

He had a nickname,

Dr. Rendezvous.

He loves to talk

about technical stuff,

particularly rendezvous.

I mean, he'll get this

orbit going this way

and that orbit

going the other way

and he really grooved

on those things.

You didn't want to sit

near him in a party

because he would start

talking about rendezvous.

And you would want to be talking

about that good-looking

girl across the room.

He could care less,

he wanted to talk about rendezvous.

And he'd been talking

to you about it all... all week long.

That's right, that was what

I was really interested in.

Duke:
I always respected

Neil Armstrong highly.

He was probably

the coolest under pressure

of anyone that I had

ever had the privilege of flying with.

[Engines power up]

He was just Mr. Coolstone,

if you will.

One of the oddities

in Neil's training

was this thing we lovingly called

"the flying bedstead".

It was an ungainly-

looking contraption

and it was meant

to imitate the L.M., the Lunar Module.

Neil, he and I were

in adjoining offices, same secretary.

I remember one day I came in

in the morning,

I run into a couple of guys, they say,

"Do you know that Neil bailed

out of the LLTV this morning? "

Bean:
I said, "no way."

He said, whoever it was,

Two or three guys said, "Yeah!"

I said, "Okay, I'm going

in there and ask him."

So I go in there and Neil...

Neil's fooling around,

nothing going on.

I said, "those guys

out in the office

Said you bailed out of

the LLTV this morning."

He said, "Yeah."

That was all he said, "Yeah."

I mean this guy had been

a second and a half

from being killed

and that was it.

He didn't say,

"l nearly got killed",

"l nearly, you know..."

I don't know what we...

"Yeah." that was it, that was it!

I mean, what was he

supposed to do?

I mean, maybe

he could have gone out

and gotten roaring

drunk or something

but that's not Neil, you know?

He went back and shuffled paper.

That's what you had to do.

You know, the program goes on!

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