Apollo space craft instrument panel. The green numeric display and keypad (see enlarged image below) are the interface of the world’s first portable computer for flight navigation.
Podcast
Ep.01 ‘We choose to go’: With no idea how to get there, the race to the moon begins – “we intend to win”. To understand how the story ends, we need to start at the very beginning.
Ep.02 Kids in control: The unsung heroes who saved the day. “Here’s some 26-year-old kid, who could stop the lunar mission.”
Ep.03 Long Island Eagle: Ugly, angry, with four legs and wrapped in gold: it was a spacecraft like nothing on Earth.
Ep.04 Fire to the Phoenix: “You heard ‘fire’. Then you heard a scream.” The Apollo 1 tragedy and what happened 21 months later – Apollo’s first successful manned mission into Earth’s orbit.
Ep.05 The fourth astronaut: The computer that got us to the moon. The size of a briefcase, there had never been anything like it. Apollo 11 was “the first time software ran on the moon”.
Ep.06 Saving 1968: War, riots, assassinations: “the year that shattered America”. And then NASA took the biggest risk in its history, with Apollo 8.
Ep.07 Michael Collins – Third man: Without the astronaut who didn’t step on the moon, Apollo 11 wouldn’t have succeeded. Michael Collins was in lunar orbit, playing a crucial role. This is his story.
Ep.08 ‘We’re go for powered descent’: The 13 minutes begin. Eagle is going too fast. There are communications problems. We have met the people and heard about the technology, now the descent is underway.
Ep.09 Tranquility Base: We are five and a half minutes to the moon. Tension goes “through the roof”. Neil Armstrong takes control and the fuel starts to run out.
Ep.10 ‘For all mankind’: History as it happened, explained. Kevin Fong guides us through the descent to the Moon from start to finish, using Capcom Charlie Duke’s communication loop, from NASA’s archive.
Ep.11 The 13 minutes: History as it happened, uninterrupted: every word, every crackle, the tension and triumph. Hear how Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to reach the Moon. This is NASA’s archive recording of Capcom Charlie Duke’s communications loop from 20 July 1969.
Ep.12 Live from Houston: “We choose to go.” The season finale comes from where JFK made his famous Moon speech. We reflect on one of the greatest achievements in human history.
Apollo 11 – The final 13 minutes that took humans to the Moon: The minutes before landing were tense, as fuel ran low and connections frequently dropped out between the Lunar Module Eagle and mission control. Relive the tense moments as Neil Armstrong manually piloted Eagle towards the surface of the Moon.
