>>The Apollo program marked the first time that man successfully set foot on the moon during the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.

The Apollo program furthered our knowledge of the moon and changed our space exploration goals into a what if mentality.

There's never been a time in the space program that was quite as intense and quite as community involved as the Apollo program, simply because of a national goal being set.

>>They had so much invested in the success of the Apollo program, and every time something happens, certainly with the Apollo I fire when we had three astronauts die, they take that incredibly personally.

>>The most tragic thing that in our career, our heroes, was in 1967, January, when we had the Apollo I fire.

I mean, no, no one ever forgets the sadness and the, that tragedy.

>>I was actually on station that night when the fire occurred.

The last test we ran was myself and Skip Chauvin and Gus Grissom running the test.

And, the communication was really bad.

And, Skip said, let's take a ten minute break here and see if we can fix this comm.

And during that break i when the one of the astronauts, we believe it was Gus said fire.

We got a fire in the capsule.

And then just a few seconds later to get us out of here, we're burning up.

and then it was all quiet, and we could never, like, I think, a 3 or 4 minute break before that pad leader finally came back and we tried to find out, you know what's going on, he says.

I can't begin to describe it.

And we knew we were.

We'd had a real bad situation.

>>As soon as the fire happened, they closed the doors.

They locked all the books.

Nobody can move.

Nobody can take anything.

It's all frozen.

All the documents, etc., etc.

so when I showed up that night, the crew was still in there and then they needed help pulling the bodies out.

So I helped in carrying the bodies out of the capsule.

And, you get the bodies of the people you've been working with and it's like being in combat I guess.

They were there two days ago.

You were having fun, and now they're gone.

>>The loss of life is certainly an emotional event.

And unfortunately, I had the experience of conducting investigations.

That was probably one of the most emotional things to get over.

Was working on that kind of work.

>>I was on automatic pilot as far as driving and coming back and thinking, because every time I looked at a capsule, I saw the three guys.

>>Those astronauts they're top notch people, and they knew any time you're venturing out, you're taking some risk.

And they were willing to take that risk.

>>That literally takes the wind out of your sails.

Obviously, when an event like that happens, the whole program grinds to a stop.

And there was times there right afterwards, I wondered if Apollo would ever continue.

>>What made that event really important to the success of Apollo is those engineers had the vehicle.

It was sitting on the ground when this accident happened and they were able to take part and figure out exactly what went wrong.

And Chris Kraft, who was the flight director for NASA, said if that had happened in space, we probably never would have made it to the moon by the end of the decade, because the engineers were able to deconstruct that accident and figure out what went wrong and how to make it right moving forward.

>>After Apollo I, everyone became a lot more conscious of safety in my part.

What is my part in making sure something like this doesn't happen again?

>>The rest of us were working hard, making sure that our system wasn't in line for some catastrophic thing like that in the testing that was left, it really stressed ourselves further because now we're still going to keep this goal.

But we got to redesign, rebuild, requalify.

>>We had to make sur that all the copper pads worked when the batteries put the juice to them, because they were going to have to work on a trip to the moon.

>>That was our job.

Prepare and test them.

Be at a point when they want to go that your engine is ready to go.

And so whatever it took to do that, that's what this relatively small crew of guys and gals on each system did.

>>The dedication of NASA's employees and contractors provided the necessary fuel to face the many challenges ahead and the journey to the moon.

>>It's almost like you're married to the job, especially on the Apollo program.

It became your whole life.

>>We spent an awful lot of time at work.

I think the longest I spent was three days out there without coming home.

>>There would be weeks at a time.

I never came downtown Titusville, and we were working long hours and we were working many days, and there was a whole period of time that when you were not at work, it was a blur.

>>Our focus was, you know, what we're doing there at the Space Center.

We were kind of really detached from what was going on in the community.

Yeah, we joined clubs and the kids were involved in the sports and school, obviously important and that kind of thing.

But our focus was on our work.

>>You had sort of come home and say, who the hell are all these kids in my house?

Well, most of them are mine.

We're at work all the time.

We couldn't wait to get to.

Couldn't wait to get to work.

We're going to the moon.

>>They didn't see their families.

They didn't see their kids because there was a lot to learn.

And a lot to do, and a lot of things that had to happen right for us to get to the moon by 1969.

>>We covered the capsule processing, which went three shifts a day, seven days a week, from beginning to end.

No rest for the weary.

Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving.

We were out there.

>>I overheard one of my employees telling a new person that something came up about a meeting that I had scheduled rather late in the day, and they were told that they had to realize that I considered half days 12 hours.

>>I, as a manager and of course, counsel people that, you know, in spite of how hard we're working, I recognize you got to have some time because there's other aspects in your life besides rocket engines and turbo pumps.

>>But a lot of us were by a telephone.

We'd get calls at night.

My wife would say, hello, is Ernie there?

Where else would Ernie be?

Zonk, bam.

So I had to talk to the guy and she says, why do they call you?

I, you know, that's showbiz.

>>It was just not a ho-hum job.

I'll come in at 8 and leave at 4, there was a passion.

There was a mission.

>>And that mission was to land a person on the moon and safely return them to Earth.

>>I worked the Apollo program all the way through.

And that was just incredible.

And I would just watch Cocoa Beach grow up around me as I worked through those years.

I thought it was, you know, as chaotic during the Apollo 8, Apollo 11 timeframe when the eyes of the world were on us.

>>I stood on the launch umbilical tower the evening we got ready to launch, and the moon came up and I thought, how many generations of people have wanted to go to the moon and looked at the moon over eternity, and now we're doing it.

>>The engine system is the major component.

And of course, it's one that everybody's kind of concerned about because, you know, a rocket engine is really just a controlled explosion, and you do everything you can to make sure that you don't lose control, because when you do, all you got left is the explosion.

>>The booster had to burn 15 minutes and all the stages were gone.

And that huge, beautiful thing thundered out of here.

>>Watching it launch, as opposed to a little black and white TV set and liftoff, was one of these kind of moments for Bobby.

Oh, wow.

Look at that.

Yeah, and there's guys in there and I know them.

And I sure hope everything works.

♪♪ >>When we launch Apollo 11, they had a color TV camera going with them.

And I said, if they're going to have a color TV camera, I'm going to have a color TV.

And I went down and bought the color TV 19 inch, bo I was in high heaven, because I could see this in color, not just black and white.

>>It was almost a week and a half that that capsule had to work on its own with no help.

We can have from the moon walking, cleaning, rock gathering.

My God, you know, all this stuff.

And then when it came back, then we could say, wow.

Yeah.