First Man

Twenty seconds to drop.

Arm switch lite check.

Brakes out, check.

What's your mixing chambers?

Real rough up here, fluctuating a half degree on each side.

I see that.

Ten seconds.

Good on track, 15 seconds.

Give us a visual estimate of your location.

Okay. 140,000 feet. On your way down.

Approaching 115,000 feet.

Should be regaining aerodynamic control.

Right turn.

We show you ballooning, not turning.

Altitude rising. A lot more right.

Neil, you're bouncing off the atmosphere.

The altitude's still rising, Neil.

You're gonna have to stretch out your glide.

You seem to be a tad short.

Stow your flaps down, Neil.

I'm down.

Roger.

You okay?

Yeah.

Okay, Neil.

Kid's a good engineer.

But he's distracted.

He got home, Chuck.

He bounced off the atmosphere and still figured out how to get home.

Third mishap this month.

Bikle should ground him before he hurts himself.

There you go.

It's okay.

It's okay, sweetheart.

What's that?

Look. Who's that?

Is that a kite?

Does that fly in the sky?

Yeah.

How?

I see the moon

The moon sees me

Down through the leaves of the old oak tree

Please let the light that shines on me

Shine on the one I love

Maybe I should talk to Dr. Johns about it.

Who?

Dr. Harold Johns.

He developed a procedure in Saskatchewan.

So you'd go to Canada?

I guess I would take some time off.

Why don't you talk to the hospital?

See if the tumor might...

I spoke to them already.

I'm sorry, Neil. I wish I had more to offer.

That's okay, Jack. Appreciate it. Of course.

Give my love to June. You got it.

Okay, bye now. Bye.

Now, who made that? You or Grace?

Grace did.

I'll take it, then.

Thank you. Thank you.

Dick Day called from Houston.

He was asking after you.

That about Gemini?

They're looking for pilots with a solid background in engineering.

Well, maybe once Karen starts feeling better.

Just, you know, I wouldn't wanna move her until then.

Well, it would be nice to keep you around.

- Enjoy the casserole. - Thank you.

You're welcome.

Joe. Hey, Jan.

You hanging in?

You know.

It's nice of you to come by.

Of course.

Night, now.

Dad, wanna come play?

I should...

I have to help your mother.

I thought I might go to work.

Okay.

They're gonna use VTOL technology.

They don't even have it figured out how to get there yet.

I'm not gonna waste my time on...

Morning.

Neil.

You can take a few days off, you know.

I know.

I'm just getting up to speed on the new delta wing in the U K.

Bikle canceled the trip.

He wants you focused on writing up the pilot report from your last flight.

Am I grounded, Joe?

Write up the report on the bounce, okay?

Civilian?

Yeah. Yeah. Me, too.

Elliot. Neil.

Tough morning?

I barely lasted two minutes in that ice bath.

Of course, I suppose NASA's more interested

in the psychological reaction.

Well, I think I made it pretty clear that I thought it was cold.

Armstrong.

Good luck.

And to you, too.

Another egghead.

Neil, we've been chatting with candidates about the program.

As you know, our decision to forego direct ascent

in favor of a lunar orbit rendezvous approach

to the eventual Moon mission

has had a major impact on Gemini.

Do you have any thoughts on that decision?

Well, even considering von Braun's initial criticism,

it seems that the payload saved by parking the primary vehicle in orbit

and sending a smaller ship down to the lunar surface

is well worth the resulting challenges.

What do you see as the challenges?

Cislunar navigation, for one.

And rendezvous and docking.

Why do you think spaceflight's important?

I had a few opportunities in the X-15 to observe the atmosphere.

It was so thin, such a small part of the Earth

you could barely see it at all.

And when you're down here in the crowd and you look up, it...

It looks pretty big and you don't think about it too much, but...

When you get a different vantage point, it changes your perspective.

I don't know what space exploration will uncover,

but I don't think it'll be exploration just for the sake of exploration.

I think it'll be more the fact that it allows us to see things

that maybe we should've seen a long time ago.

But just haven't been able to until now.

- Does anyone have anything else? - Yeah.

Neil, I was sorry to hear about your daughter.

I'm sorry, is there a question?

What I mean is do you think it will have an effect?

I think it would be

unreasonable to assume that it wouldn't have some effect.

All right, Neil.

Thank you. That's fine.

Thank you. Thank you for your time.

Hello?

Yeah, sure. Neil.

Hello? Can I go play outside?

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, sir.

I got it.

It's a fresh start.

Are you sure?

Yeah.

Hey.

It'll be an adventure.

Since the time of Jules Verne,

man has imagined traveling to the Moon.

The old idea of how to get to the Moon

was to send one spacecraft all the way there and back.

However, NASA engineers have developed a modern approach.

Where one rocket contains several ships that will make the journey together.

Just as Columbus took a rowboat

from the Santa Maria to the shore of the New World.

The astronauts will take a smaller spacecraft

from the mothership down to the lunar surface.

When it's time to return, the smaller craft

will lift off from the surface

and dock with the mothership, which will then power the crew back to Earth.

Thus, thanks to the brilliant minds of NASA,

the age-old dream of going to the Moon

will soon be achieved.

Sputnik, Sputnik 2...

Vostok...

Gagarin.

The Soviets have beaten us at every single major space accomplishment.

Our program couldn't compete.

So we've chosen to focus on a job so difficult,

requiring so many technological developments,

that the Russians are gonna have to start from scratch.

As will we.

Hi. I'm Pat. Hi.

Got here about a week before you, so welcome to the neighborhood.

That's so nice of you.

I'm Janet.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

So, instead of here, we go...

Here.

That's to scale. Check it.

That's my husband, Ed.

And that's Eddie Junior. I don't know where Bonnie is.

You've got two? I do.

I see... Is this your first one?

No, no. We've got a boy, Rick.

How old is he?

He's five and a half.

We should get them together.

If we wanna get this done,

we need to prove that two ships can find each other in orbit

and dock without crashing.

That's the primary mission of Project Gemini.

When we think you're ready,

each of you will be assigned a flight with a specific task.

Only after we master all these tasks do we move on to Apollo.