🚀 Apollo 11 - Toute l'Histoire - Documentaire Espace

Video from the channel Stardust - La Chaîne Air & Espace about Apollo 11, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 1:59:02. Language: French. Video type: Documentary.

French-language documentary that covers the Apollo 11 mission from start to finish, combining archival footage with testimonials. It covers the choice of the landing site, the crew's training, the journey to the Moon, the Eagle's descent, the moonwalk, the return, and what became of the three astronauts afterward.

After the Apollo 7 through 10 missions, NASA takes it as given that Apollo 11 will attempt the first Moon landing. The chosen site is the Sea of Tranquility, a basalt-filled impact basin mapped using photographs from Apollo 10 and the Lunar Orbiters. On Christmas Eve 1968, Deke Slayton offers command to Neil Armstrong, with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. The documentary reviews their backgrounds: Armstrong flew 78 missions in Korea and was an NACA test pilot at Edwards with the X-15 before Gemini 8; Collins flew on Gemini 10; Aldrin shot down two MiG-15s in Korea, earned a doctorate at MIT on orbital rendezvous, and performed three spacewalks on Gemini 12. The documentary describes a crew that was not close-knit, the decision by Slayton, Kraft, Gilruth, and Low that Armstrong would go out first, and the social context of the era.

The launch takes off from pad 39A in front of nearly a million spectators, and the spacecraft enters lunar orbit on July 19. On July 20, during the descent, Gene Kranz's team keeps the mission going despite intermittent telemetry; Steve Bales and Jack Garman clear the 1202 alarm, a computer overload. The Eagle overshoots the planned ellipse and Armstrong takes manual control, dodges a boulder field and a crater, and lands with little fuel remaining. The moonwalk lasts about two and a half hours: the flag is planted, 22 kg of samples are collected, and a seismometer, a reflector, and a solar wind collector are set up; Aldrin leaves objects in memory of Apollo 1, Gagarin, and Komarov. After ascent and docking with Columbia, the crew splashes down on July 24, 1969, near the USS Hornet and undergoes 21 days of quarantine. Armstrong leaves NASA in 1971 and dies in 2012; Aldrin struggles with depression and alcoholism; Collins directs the National Air and Space Museum and dies in 2021.