Apollo 11: What We Saw (Podcast)

Take a front seat ride in the Apollo Lunar Module as it makes its historic descent and avoids a near catastrophe unfolding behind the scenes. Then travel back to a time before the Space Race, to the America of cowboys and Indians, to understand how all of America’s small steps led us to the one giant leap.

Four satellite launches into the Space Race, and the score—in terms of pounds put into orbit—is Communism, 1300; Capitalism, 33. And the humiliations keep on coming. In history's biggest sales pitch ever, the Soviet Union is handing the United States its backside on a platter. But then a new capsule, the space equivalent of a '66 Corvette Stingray convertible starts to get some real traction as the Cold War gets hotter.

As the Apollo program finally starts to take wings, learn how the entire program, and everything it accomplished, was actually NASA's backup plan. From a fire during a routine test to Christmas messages from the far side of the moon, see how the Apollo Program got to that one giant leap of Apollo 11 with a series of very small steps, and missteps.

Nearly every single human with access to a TV set watched the blurry, almost surreal image of Neil Armstrong stepping live onto the surface of the moon. But after Apollo 11 returned to earth, we got an entirely different view of those first historic moments. Join us for the journey of Apollo 11, the seven Apollo Missions that followed, and decades of disappointments and shortfalls, crowned at last with a new hope for our future in space.