bluedot 2019 | James Burke & Dallas Campbell: Moon Landings

I heard a story I didn't if it's true or not actually it was during Apollo 11 because you were on air a lot of the time going you know talking talking through the mission that you actually the reason we saw it at all in the UK is that you actually persuaded the BBC not to pack up for the nights well is that true well it would be that's a nice story it's half just say just say yes yes good thank you but now let me tell you why okay no um one of the things you do when you're covering a mission like that is is you read the flight plan every second many astronauts have said to me over the years flying in space is just minutes and seconds there's no time for anything you can eat you can sleep and you can work and the work is detailed by the second so I had a copy the flight plan so that I knew what was supposed to be happening in case something went wrong but and also to explain to the audience and lost my thread the BBC gonna pack up to be right and so anyway they'll and and blah blah blah and the the problem all along with with all the Apollo flights was that there was - as you know two channels of communication between them on the ground one with a capsule communicator which we could hear and the other - the flight director whom we couldn't hear it was there was not made public so they were talking about stuff that we didn't know but we had to listen hard to see if anything went different and sure enough it did instead of the bit where it says ring hammock you know they didn't do that and I flee forward and I found about four pages later stuff that they were doing which indicated that they were about to go out and we went off the air because they were not saying much and it was 11 o'clock at night or four through 11 or something and I went up to the control gallery and said hey guys they're doing stuff that indicates they're gonna get out and everybody said now rubbish and I said no they are they are so they said well I'll call the control of channel controller so they called the channel controller and said he says they're getting out and the channel controller said what does that mean and I said what it means we stay right and he said if you're wrong you'll never work again because if BBC had never stayed up all night so we went back on the air at 11:30 and stayed on until 10:30 the next morning and so we got to see those first those first steps because of you yeah well I mean if they were going off to bed it would have cut to be we would have missed it yeah we would've got the national anthem and a dot that's right just just take us through the moment from your perspective that's that Evy ale of Armstrong coming down the ladder the first step onto the limb foot pad and then onto the lunar soil just can you can you remember your what you were thinking at oh yeah oh I can remember very clearly I was thinking two words shut up because you know you didn't want to go in his down in history as the man who spoke over the top of Armstrong saying that's one small step

Channel: bluedot festival

Views: 2,064

Rating: 4.6129031 out of 5

Keywords: bluedot, festival, james burke, dallas campbell, moon landings, jodrell bank, science, space, the moon

Id: Q4Cjo7gDIj4

Length: 3min 3sec (183 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 26 2019