WEBVTT 00:01.171 --> 00:02.180 - This is Apollo Control 00:02.180 --> 00:04.012 at four hours fourteen minutes. 00:04.012 --> 00:06.089 Huntsville has acquisition. 00:06.089 --> 00:08.480 (radio static) 00:08.480 --> 00:10.960 - Huntsville valid due in. 00:10.960 --> 00:12.573 - Houston, Apollo 9. 00:13.590 --> 00:15.667 - Go Apollo 9, this is Houston 00:16.613 --> 00:19.075 - Okay, Houston you're coming in very weak 00:19.075 --> 00:22.285 but be advised we had a successful ejection 00:22.285 --> 00:25.910 and we are presently separating very slowly from the S-IVB. 00:25.910 --> 00:29.092 We've got them in sight out of all the windows. 00:29.092 --> 00:30.112 - Alright, sounds beautiful. 00:30.112 --> 00:33.070 Could you give me your ejection time, please? 00:33.070 --> 00:36.180 - We've created a real partnership with machines 00:36.180 --> 00:40.583 which have allowed us to do amazing things. 00:41.920 --> 00:43.500 We don't really know 00:44.570 --> 00:47.130 what life elsewhere in the universe looks like 00:47.130 --> 00:50.440 so we don't know what the parallel to that is, 00:50.440 --> 00:55.103 but I suspect that part of life, wherever it may exist, 00:56.153 --> 00:59.260 of necessity involves 01:00.860 --> 01:03.410 intelligence and self-awareness. 01:03.410 --> 01:06.310 Creating tools and machines, which 01:06.310 --> 01:09.743 enable it to do things that it could not otherwise do. 01:10.695 --> 01:14.040 As I say, we're all very much wrapped up in this. 01:14.040 --> 01:15.890 Everyone of you has got, 01:15.890 --> 01:18.223 in your pocket or your purse or whatever. 01:20.500 --> 01:21.803 I got one right there, 01:22.930 --> 01:25.313 this thing has, I have no idea, 01:26.250 --> 01:29.720 somewhere between 1,000 and 1,000,000 times the capability 01:30.570 --> 01:33.390 that got me and my buddies up into space 01:33.390 --> 01:34.640 and to the moon and back. 01:35.860 --> 01:37.693 We take it for granted. 01:40.330 --> 01:45.230 But it got me thinking that that idea, as a tribute, 01:46.220 --> 01:50.940 that we seldom acknowledge is something 01:50.940 --> 01:54.463 that I felt I wanted to bring to people's attention. 01:55.700 --> 02:00.700 People today at the edge, at the frontier of investigating 02:03.060 --> 02:06.230 the evolution from the Big Bang 02:06.230 --> 02:09.690 all the way through the 13.7 billion years 02:09.690 --> 02:11.143 that lead to today. 02:15.250 --> 02:20.250 Believe certainly that life is a natural outcome 02:21.320 --> 02:23.830 of the fundamental structure 02:23.830 --> 02:26.133 and organization of the universe. 02:27.110 --> 02:29.820 You go back to the Big Bang that started with quarks. 02:29.820 --> 02:34.720 Extremely hot, extremely dense and as things expanded 02:34.720 --> 02:38.410 and got cooler you know those quarks and things 02:38.410 --> 02:41.293 got together and formed nuclear particles. 02:42.560 --> 02:45.300 Atomic particles following on from that 02:45.300 --> 02:48.030 and eventually things cool off enough 02:48.030 --> 02:51.440 that atoms got together to form molecules. 02:51.440 --> 02:54.840 Eons later, out of chemistry, comes a transition 02:54.840 --> 02:57.320 which we have no clue today how that happened. 02:57.320 --> 03:01.163 And that is the evolution from chemistry into biology. 03:02.300 --> 03:06.803 And with biology came some very fascinating realities. 03:07.740 --> 03:09.520 Survival instinct. 03:09.520 --> 03:12.430 The fundamental recognition that 03:14.290 --> 03:17.350 driving all of life that we know of is this 03:18.580 --> 03:22.400 tendency to do whatever it takes to survive, 03:22.400 --> 03:26.100 to expand, to go beyond and that's where, 03:26.100 --> 03:31.030 out of intelligence and humanity as we evolved 03:31.030 --> 03:34.680 out of that life process we invent machines 03:34.680 --> 03:37.810 that enable us to go beyond. 03:37.810 --> 03:39.400 And of all people here, 03:39.400 --> 03:40.980 in this particular gathering, 03:40.980 --> 03:43.000 here I am telling you that 03:43.000 --> 03:45.300 we've gone out and landed on the moon. 03:45.300 --> 03:49.470 I look back at Apollo on this 50th Anniversary Celebration 03:49.470 --> 03:52.640 and I look in particular to Apollo 8, 03:52.640 --> 03:54.190 guys that preceded me, by the way 03:54.190 --> 03:56.030 General, with the third mission but that's okay, 03:56.030 --> 03:57.474 you were close fourth. 03:57.474 --> 03:59.710 (laughter) 03:59.710 --> 04:01.695 Sorry about that General, but I 04:01.695 --> 04:04.695 (audience laughter) 04:06.450 --> 04:08.780 Apollo 8 was the crew 04:08.780 --> 04:11.690 Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders 04:11.690 --> 04:13.540 all very good friends of mine 04:13.540 --> 04:17.580 who went out the moon at Christmas 1968. 04:17.580 --> 04:20.810 The most memorable thing about it for me 04:20.810 --> 04:24.400 was the fact that they got there, 04:24.400 --> 04:26.020 went into orbit around the moon. 04:26.020 --> 04:28.833 Not just around it and back but they went into orbit. 04:29.740 --> 04:33.060 They were looking at the craters on the surface of the moon 04:33.060 --> 04:35.370 to get any kind of information and intelligence 04:35.370 --> 04:38.580 they could about the subsequent landing that would help 04:38.580 --> 04:40.973 on the landing to come a couple missions later. 04:42.690 --> 04:44.440 They were flying pointed straight down 04:44.440 --> 04:45.540 as they went around the moon 04:45.540 --> 04:47.400 and they were actually going backwards 04:47.400 --> 04:49.240 so that they would see the craters come out 04:49.240 --> 04:51.520 from under the nose of the spacecraft 04:51.520 --> 04:53.970 and disappear over the far horizon. 04:53.970 --> 04:57.880 They did that for three orbits around the moon, six hours. 04:57.880 --> 04:58.890 And then for some reason, 04:58.890 --> 05:00.480 that I don't know and I don't know if he knows 05:00.480 --> 05:03.620 but Frank Borman rolled the space craft 05:03.620 --> 05:04.760 so that they were going forward. 05:04.760 --> 05:06.740 Same altitude but they were going forward 05:06.740 --> 05:10.490 then craters were coming from the far horizon toward them. 05:10.490 --> 05:15.241 The same thing, crater upon crater upon crater, 05:15.241 --> 05:17.240 shades of gray, 05:17.240 --> 05:21.220 looking up stars in a very very black universe 05:22.600 --> 05:24.370 and all of the sudden shockingly, 05:24.370 --> 05:25.203 I mean literally, 05:25.203 --> 05:28.820 it was a shock to them when up over the horizon 05:28.820 --> 05:29.803 came the earth. 05:33.070 --> 05:37.080 Beautiful, blue and white, colorful 05:37.080 --> 05:40.430 and suddenly, for the first time, in history 05:40.430 --> 05:44.803 humanity realized what it was all about. 05:45.810 --> 05:49.480 We are the creation of the universe 05:49.480 --> 05:52.030 here in this small corner of the universe 05:52.930 --> 05:54.200 that we occupy 05:55.070 --> 05:57.510 and we're the only life that we know about, 05:57.510 --> 05:58.880 for that matter, in the universe 05:58.880 --> 06:02.350 but certainly here in our little corner of the universe 06:02.350 --> 06:04.950 and they, with their own eyes, saw that beautiful earth 06:04.950 --> 06:08.423 and recognized the earth as Mother Earth. 06:09.490 --> 06:14.490 And we, humanity, intelligence, life, 06:14.540 --> 06:17.052 being born out of that 06:17.052 --> 06:20.230 non-human mother 06:20.230 --> 06:23.703 but Gaia, Mother Earth. 06:24.860 --> 06:27.310 And I look back at that 06:27.310 --> 06:28.620 and as far as I'm concerned 06:28.620 --> 06:32.720 that was the moment of what I call cosmic birth. 06:32.720 --> 06:34.860 That was the moment that life 06:34.860 --> 06:38.090 first moved out of the mother, 06:38.090 --> 06:41.600 that was the moment where as in human life 06:42.502 --> 06:45.580 there forms a two-way relationship. 06:45.580 --> 06:48.530 No longer a fetus being supported by the mother 06:48.530 --> 06:51.580 but now, a life independent of the mother. 06:51.580 --> 06:53.020 The development of love 06:54.039 --> 06:55.980 and think about the environmental movement 06:55.980 --> 06:57.583 that started at that time. 06:58.550 --> 07:01.430 Think about the whole birthing process 07:01.430 --> 07:05.420 of the fetus demanding more and more energy and material 07:05.420 --> 07:07.940 to support it's growth. 07:07.940 --> 07:09.610 Creating more and more waste 07:09.610 --> 07:11.370 and the mother having to process it. 07:11.370 --> 07:12.920 There are good analogies there. 07:13.870 --> 07:16.853 We adopt them in our whole environmental process. 07:18.470 --> 07:23.354 But love has become now a two-way process. 07:23.354 --> 07:25.680 And the next thing that follows on that love, 07:25.680 --> 07:28.870 that love relationship that we have now with the planet 07:29.730 --> 07:30.993 is responsibility. 07:32.270 --> 07:36.340 We all assume in our own way 07:36.340 --> 07:38.840 some responsibility for our mothers 07:38.840 --> 07:41.361 and fathers, for that matter but they don't count much. 07:41.361 --> 07:44.120 (laughter) 07:44.120 --> 07:49.120 And here we are celebrating 50 years of human eyes 07:49.230 --> 07:53.860 first seeing and recognizing and to some extent 07:53.860 --> 07:56.250 still in the process of acknowledging 07:57.252 --> 08:00.040 that responsibility which is intrinsic 08:00.040 --> 08:03.520 in the understanding that we are 08:03.520 --> 08:06.550 the only life in our corner of the universe 08:07.420 --> 08:11.240 and this evolutionary process, in which we're a part, 08:11.240 --> 08:14.350 will continue and we now, 08:14.350 --> 08:16.560 with the power that we have, 08:16.560 --> 08:20.510 our cells, our brains, the machines that we create 08:20.510 --> 08:24.240 are responsible for the continued evolution 08:24.240 --> 08:26.813 of life out of Mother Earth. 08:28.610 --> 08:31.100 That's what Apollo was all about. 08:31.100 --> 08:33.900 It wasn't Rusty Schweickart or Neil Armstrong 08:33.900 --> 08:35.040 or anybody else. 08:35.040 --> 08:37.853 It wasn't the Apollo 9 mission or the Apollo 11 mission. 08:39.360 --> 08:42.870 It was that moment in time that will be remembered 08:42.870 --> 08:45.713 10,000 years from now, 100,000 years from now. 08:47.360 --> 08:49.890 With a little bit of luck and responsibility lived 08:51.910 --> 08:54.370 we're gonna see that there is life 08:54.370 --> 08:56.440 that we were part of here. 08:56.440 --> 08:59.720 This unique moment when that life first emerged 08:59.720 --> 09:03.460 out of this Mother Earth, this beautiful earth 09:04.406 --> 09:05.806 that we celebrate here today 09:07.806 --> 09:10.610 and that is what we should be celebrating today 09:10.610 --> 09:13.830 on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 09:13.830 --> 09:18.600 and I appreciate being here to suggest that to you 09:18.600 --> 09:21.720 to charge you with whatever you've got to do 09:21.720 --> 09:24.130 to see that that continues to your 09:24.130 --> 09:27.120 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, 09:27.120 --> 09:30.020 that is the process of evolution we're all part of 09:30.020 --> 09:32.120 and what we celebrate today. 09:32.120 --> 09:34.410 And if it were not for that airplane behind me 09:34.410 --> 09:35.650 and the Mass Air Guard 09:35.650 --> 09:38.340 and the 101st and the 102nd, 09:38.340 --> 09:40.170 I wouldn't be here today to celebrate it with you. 09:40.170 --> 09:42.560 But, thank you very much for inviting me 09:42.560 --> 09:43.981 and I really appreciate it. 09:43.981 --> 09:45.653 Thank you 09:45.653 --> 09:47.189 (applause) 09:47.189 --> 09:48.522 - Thank you sir.