We Have Liftoff: Nine Days In July Podcast Chronicles Apollo 11 Mission

Apollo 11 space vehicle taking off from Kennedy Space Center.

Nine Days in July is a new podcast from science documentary filmmaker and journalist Brandon Phipps, taking us through each of the nine days human beings spent in space on Apollo 11. “You think you know this story, but you don’t,” he begins. Only a fraction of the incredible space mission that took us to the moon and back is well-known by most people, and many of the minds who made that mission possible are unknown and unsung. This podcast will break down each day of the launch and the return home hour-by-hour, putting us right inside the Command Module, the Lunar Module, and Mission Control, sharing stories from astronauts Jim Lovell and Dick Gordon about what it felt like and looked like to be shot into space. Even our national psychology is part of the story; after all, “This was one of the most tumultuous eras in American history,” Brandon points out. The Vietnam War was more unpopular by the day, civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, and the Cold War with the Soviet Union seemed to be leading everyone straight to nuclear disaster. “Apollo 11 is about more than putting a man on the moon...Not since the Civil War had the country felt more divided, or more angry. Never had our democracy felt more brittle or imperiled. Sound familiar?” Brandon asks. “America needed a miracle. We needed a reason to reach for greatness, beyond our misfortunes. No pressure, right?” 

The first episode focuses on, of course, the first day of the Apollo 11 mission: the launch on July 16, 1969. Before this moment, years of building and training and testing and re-working have been done to create the Saturn Five rocket and train the team that would fly it: Neil Armstrong, Mission Commander, quiet and disciplined; Buzz Aldrin, Lunar Module Pilot, blunt and opinionated; and Michael Collins, Command Module Pilot, light-hearted and witty. “Together, they were about to crack history wide open.” At Mission Control, flight directors Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris in the movie Apollo 13) and Cliff Charlesworth run the “go/no-go” sequence, making sure the Saturn is prepared for liftoff, while the astronauts are strapped into their seats. Dick Gordon, who flew on the Saturn for Apollo 12, describes seeing the great rocket on launch day: “This is real, that beast below us, that Saturn Five is a living, breathing object. It's venting vapors and ice is falling off of it, and it's a creature that's just about to come alive.” 

To obtain liftoff, the incredibly powerful engines of the Saturn start burning, but clamps hold the rocket into place as the power builds beneath it. “At zero, explosive bolts release the vehicle. You might think it erupts off the pad, but it doesn't. This is the point at which gravity is the strongest, and the ship is the heaviest,” Brandon explains. Apollo 7's Walter Cunningham says, “It's not a sudden acceleration...With this, you're starting off at zero velocity, and it's just a slow building. It's like a train behind you that's just building up.” At 9:32 a.m., Apollo 11 achieves liftoff. “Janet Armstrong tightly clutches her son, Ricky, as her husband's rocket emerges from the roiling smoke and flames.”

We hear how it felt for the astronauts inside to speed through the atmosphere, going more than 6300 miles per hour; “This is the point at which the G forces are the greatest,” Brandon says. “The astronauts are nearly four times heavier than their normal weight.” Once they’re safely out of the atmosphere and in earth’s orbit, we learn about “one of the single most difficult and dangerous elements of the entire mission,” the part where Michael Collins had to separate the Command Module from the rocket, turn it around, and dock with the Lunar Module. “If he can't get the Lunar Module out, their moon shot is over before it begins.” And we hear what it’s like to be out there, looking down at the planet, the rarest sight in human history: “We have been asked a lot, 'what have we discovered when we went to the moon?' Collectively, I should say that we discovered the Earth,” Dick Gordon says. “A very delicate planet sitting out there, in the blackest black you'll ever see.” 

Earth and lunar landscape

Listen to the episode for all this and even more: what kind of camera went to space with the astronauts, how many ex-Nazis were on the NASA payroll (hint: it’s more than one), and what Neil, Buzz, and Michael’s wives and children were thinking and doing during liftoff, only on Nine Days In July

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Photos: Getty Images


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