Horizon

The moon. To get there you have to fly at 25,000 miles an hour.

You have to travel a quarter of a million miles there...

...and a quarter of a million miles back.

And when you return to Earth, your spaceship has to survive

re-entry temperatures of 2,500 degrees centigrade.

And we've done it.

I'm Professor Brian Cox.

I'm a physicist, and as long as I can remember,

I've been captivated by the story of our journey to the moon.

Telling that story over the years, and inspiring me along the way,

were BBC presenters like James Burke and Patrick Moore.

Patrick Moore, what did you think of that? Quite incredible.

From the early days of animals in space...

I'm at the foot of the ladder.

...to Armstrong's momentous first steps...

There is Armstrong...

...to the near tragedy of Apollo 13...

'OK, Houston, we've had a problem.' Say again, please? 'Houston, we've had a problem.'

...the BBC covered the whole story.

And we've just heard that all over the world there are

33 countries that have stayed up to take these pictures live.

I believe that the Apollo moon landings were the greatest

achievement in human history, the last time we

reached for something beyond our grasp, and made it.

But that was 40 years ago.

So what was it about July 1969 that brought the moon within our reach,

and why haven't we been back for 37 years?

This is the story of how we walked on the moon, of the technology

that enabled it to happen, the politics that demanded it happen,

and the triumph of the human spirit that made it happen.

We've all got used to the remarkable fact that humans have walked on the moon.

And it's easy to forget that only fifty years ago,

the moon was another world, technologically out of reach.

But then the Cold War began.

It created a climate of fear and insecurity,

but also brought about the international competition

that would drive humanity towards the stars.

In 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth.

A new era had begun.

Until two days ago that sound had never been heard on this Earth.

Suddenly it has become as much a part of 20th

century life as the whirr of your vacuum cleaner.

It's a report from man's farthest frontier, the

radio signal transmitted by the Soviet Sputnik,

the first man-made satellite as it passed over New York earlier today.

Right now, it's over Auckland, New Zealand.

According to the latest Soviet announcement the satellite is still

maintaining its speed of 18,000 miles an hour, a

dozen times faster than any man has ever flown.

But despite the achievement, the public couldn't help

but see things through the prism of Cold War fear.

Do you admire the Russians for doing it? No, definitely not.

We should've been the first ones to have it, such things.

It gets the American people alarmed that a foreign country, especially

an enemy country, can do this, and we fear this.

We fear that they have something that the majority of people don't know about.

Definitely alarmed.

What do you think about America not being able to do the same?

Well, if I was in military service and fell down on

the job like that, I could stand a court martial.

Somebody's falling down on the job, badly.

Sputnik's mocking beeps marked the beginning of the space race.

The cosy myth of American technological superiority

over Soviet Russia was shattered overnight.

The Soviet Union had managed to launch Sputnik into orbit 500 miles

above the surface of the Earth, travelling at 18,000 miles an hour.

It was an enormous challenge to America's pride, and

a direct challenge to the supposed supremacy of the capitalist system.

For the next 15 years, space became the frontline of the Cold War, and,

initially at least, America failed to dominate.

This was to be America's answer to Sputnik, the Explorer satellite.

To hurl it into space, the Vanguard, a navy research rocket.

The Soviets had used a military rocket, a missile, for their space shot.

President Eisenhower wanted the American's entry into space to have

the appearance, at least, of a non-military enterprise.

But Vanguard gave the world another image of American technology.

'100 million dollars has just gone up in a huge, red orange ball of smoke.

'We don't know what caused the failure.'

My first reaction, I believe, is the normal reaction of every American.

I'm disappointed. Disappointment alone wasn't enough to help them

catch up, as the Russians soon reached another historic landmark.

The Soviet Union has launched a second Earth satellite.

The satellite is carrying a dog as experimental passenger.

Laika the dog had been launched into space with no possibility of returning to Earth.

Even in the '50s, animal rights activists were vocal.

The party from the canine defence league have now come out of the Embassy.

Are you going to take any further steps, Mr Johns?

Well, we are asking dog lovers everywhere to observe a silent

minute at 11 o'clock each morning, while this dog is in outer space.

Laika's loneliness was short-lived.

Though the Soviets claimed she had survived for several days,

almost 50 years later, the truth came out.

In 2002, they admitted that the dog astronaut

died within a few hours of take-off.

By now the Americans weren't far behind,

and one year later they sent a chimp named Ham into space.

This was the first big venture of the newly-created

National Aeronautics And Space Administration, NASA.

This time, the Red Stone rocket lobbed Ham safely into space.

He returned after a few minutes in that new

environment apparently healthy, if a little confused.

In 1961, the Russians were once again

the first to reach a major milestone

when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.

This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news.

All Moscow is waiting to give a hero's welcome

to the world's first spaceman, Major Gagarin of the Soviet Air Force.

Major Gagarin was sent up in his 4.5 tonne spaceship from somewhere in the Soviet Union.

As he looked down on the Earth from the loneliness of space,

he streaked across Asia, Africa, and South America,

controlling the pitch and roll of the ship.

Shortly after the news was given of the flight, Tom

German interviewed Sir Bernard Lovell at Jodrell Bank.

I think this is one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind.

It's remarkable when one realises that this success has been achieved

by a nation that a generation ago was largely illiterate.

The Russians celebrated yet more proof of Soviet superiority.

And, finally, here was an achievement so momentous

that it transcended earthly rivalries.

What do you think of the news? I think it's fantastic.

I can tell you he's now back, safe and sound. Really? I didn't think he would get back.

What do you feel about this generally?

Do you think the Russians have whacked us?

Definitely, I really do. I think it's a marvellous achievement.

There'll soon be a man on the moon at this rate.

Such was Gagarin's accomplishment that the BBC pushed the televisual

boundaries of the time

with a live broadcast of his triumphant homecoming.

This is Richard Dimbleby in the BBC TV studio in London.

You're looking, if you've just turned on your television sets

today, at the first time, perhaps, to a live television picture from Soviet Russia.

And in spite of those flashes now and then, this

is remarkable achievement, getting a picture,

through all those different links and short waves,

and other waves, and being able to show an aeroplane

propeller whirling round as we were seeing it right

in front of our faces just now from such a distance.

Here is a man who has done and seen things that no other living person has done or seen.

And there is Mr Kruschev.

Mr Krushchev embraces him, kissing...

There's certainly enthusiasm, and I can well understand why they feel so enthusiastic.

Once again, America tasted humiliation in the space race.

But perhaps it was what the country needed.

Gagarin's obvious good health after his orbit of the Earth galvanised NASA's doctors.

The fact that Yuri Gagarin flew and flew successfully

from a life scientist's point of view, in the way he'd gone up

and come back and appeared to be in very good shape,

I think was a very positive stimulus to the programme because it

demonstrated clearly that this new environment was perhaps not quite

so bad as everyone had anticipated,

and I think it made it easier to put Alan Shepherd into flight,

although quite frankly we would've done it in any case,

whether Gagarin had flown or not.

Three weeks after Gagarin's flight, a Red Stone rocket

awaited the arrival of American's first astronaut.

It was the early morning of 5 May, 1961.

Alan Shepherd's arrival at the launch pad was conspicuously different from Gagarin's.

America was to conduct its space programme in public.

Taken aback at first by this policy, the man who directed most of

American's manned space flights, Christopher Craft.

For those of us who were working on the programme daily, it was

inconceivable to us that we were going to have real time television

of a missile launch from Cape Canaveral because of the dangers associated with that,

the fact that we were going to be in a looking

glass of the world, it never crossed our minds.

That's what happened the day we flew Alan Shepherd.

It was an exciting time,

it was a time of competition with the Russians.

Just before we flew Alan Shepherd the Russians had flown

Gagarin in space and put him in orbit and here we

were just putting Shepherd into sub-orbital flight.

We were very disappointed that

we'd lost that part of the race but at the same time even

then we couldn't conceive the attention it was going to be given.

We thought maybe that'd taken some of the pressure off the situation but it hadn't.

Shepherd's five minute entry into space showed that an American,

as well as a Russian, could survive there.

But before the first American even went into orbit

around the Earth, the US was committed to the moon.

Kennedy's new administration, only four months old, was in trouble.

The economy, the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the Gagarin flight.

Kennedy urgently needed proof of his new frontier.

His Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, was an ardent supporter of the space programme.

In a memo to Johnson, Kennedy asked his Vice President to identify a goal in space

that America had the best chance of reaching before the Russians.

Johnson's answer was prompt, the most difficult goal of all,

allowing America time to overtake the Russian lead.

Johnson's response prompted President Kennedy to

make one of the most memorable political speeches

in history, and set America on course to a new world.

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,

before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon,

and returning him safely to the Earth.

No single space project in this period will be more impressive

to mankind, or more important for the long range exploration of space.

And none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

While Congress applauded, and agreed to the moon commitment without even taking a vote,

NASA now had a clear goal, and for the moment at least, a blank cheque.

NASA had pushed for the moon programme,

but when Kennedy's challenge came, many in the Agency were aghast.