Sending a 30-story building into space with nothing but magnetic tape, slide rules, cigarettes, and skinny ties is incredible by itself. But then navigating a quarter of a million miles of empty space in a tin can with only the aid of a few celestial observations and a 16-bit guidance computer to land on the moon is some serious piloting.

I lived in Cocoa Beach at the time of the Apollo Program. My Dad worked at the Space Center at Cape Canaveral. I watched this launch from the beach. When these Saturn V rockets would launch all the windows in our house would rattle and sound like they were going to fall out of the window frame. Great memories growing up in Cocoa Beach during the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Sky Lab programs.

The fact that you are holding something with more technology than that entire spaceship had is the more incredible thing

As a teenage boy in Australia, I remember watching the moon landing on B&W TV, via satellite, at school. It was the most amazing thing that I ever saw. I will never forget what happened on that day. The school principle said that we could go home. It was obviously important to him. Most of us stayed at school (a miracle) so that we could see it happen on the TV in the library. I will never forget that day.

As a 7 year old at the time, this still ranks as one of the most amazing times of my life! Thanks very much.

Really brings light to how incredible the scope, and scale of mission control was. I knew it was massive, but this footage brings a new perspective to that I had not seen. Such as the scene panning through all the printers for telemetry with guys in IBM jackets.

This is absolutely FANTASTIC Fran. Thank you so much for the great idea and all of the time you must have devoted to put this together..

My dad worked for Grumman (the company that built the lunar module). I stood on the seawall on the Indian river by JCPenney’s in Titusville Florida on US one and watched this 🚀 in real time as a 15 year old. I also stood in that launch control room in the VAB the time my dad brought me to the Cape with him. It’s hard to imagine anything more exciting then this launch up to that point in my life. Thanks so much for posting Fran.👍🏻👋🏻🙏🏻

I watched every Apollo launch live when I was a kid. It's astonishing to think they accomplished all that with less computing power (on the rocket and in mission control combined) than I have in my pocket right now.

@20:07 If you look at the photos of the control room you will see many consoles that have 2 technicians one siting behind each other. I was told a long time ago that those operators were so crucial that they had back up technicians siting right behind them in case the primary tech had a heart attack or something, They were there to yank the guy away and take over his job.

Those of us fortunate to have witnessed this event as it happened will always have a sense of awe and pride in this astounding achievement. Imagine the individuals in Mission Control who were part of this and those who are still with us can always say, "Yeah, I was there; I was part of it." Sends chills up my spine. And it never gets old.

Thank you! For those of you who naysayers, we were all well aware of the artist representations of various phases of the mission. There was a lot about the Apollo missions that we could only hear back in the day, the representations allowed people to picture in their minds what they hadn't ever seen. Cudos to everyone who pulled off these missions and thank you to everyone keeping these memories alive. These missions were an inspiration to generations across the world.

Great video - I still remember and loved our "Mercury, Gemini and Apollo years", what a great time to be an American. Speaking as a retired mechanical engineer, I still regard our walking on the moon as the greatest moment in technology. It's hard to believe that our phones have more computing power than all of the computers on the rocket and NASA and yet we still did it. What a great step it was!!!!

Dear Fran, Thank you so much for this compilation, back in the day I was unable to watch the event as I was tramping around the boonies in South Vietnam. On the day that Neil walked on the moon I was in An Hoa with my Vietnamese scout, we were waling byt the Staff NCO quarters where there was a small black and whit TV and on the screen was footage of Neil jumping down and saying his little speech, the full moon was overhead and I pointed at the TV and then at the Moon and said, in Vietnamese, "Right now there are to Big Noses on the moon". and he looked at me and said "Bull shit". Which lead to a long discussion in Vietnamese, anyway he went into town and the next day he apologized because he'd heard it on the Vietnamese news.

I was 8 years old when I watched this live. It still brings tears to my eyes now I am 61.

Finally, we see and hear what was happening at the start of human beings greatest achievement of the twentieth century. No music , narration , or useless journalism in this documentary , it can be witnessed ourselves. The communication , coordination and purpose of the people involved in the first lunar landing is important to acknowledge.Thank you for presenting this in such a way that all will understand the complexity of that endeavor.

This is amazing, Fran. Thanks. I just saw my Dad sitting next to Warner Von Braun. I was only 5 years old and watched the launch from his office. Thanks for the great memory.

The greatest endeavour man has ever set out on. I never tire of watching these Saturn V rockets.

Masterful editing of an incredible historical event in history. Thank you for all the hard work Fran.

Guidance is internal.. All these after 1969 & I still get goose bumps watching the mighty Saturn V take off.Truly magnificent!!

Thanks for publishing this. Struggling to imagine how anyone could doubt that this ever happened. No actors, no CGI, just real people who invested blood, sweat & tears into this project.

I was 3 years old. Watching this launch on the old 19" black and white TV is one of my earliest memories. Everyone was so excited. Even now as an old man I sit on the edge of my seat, holding my breath with the awe of a child, every time I see the old footage.

I was 4-years-old at the time, so my recollection of Apollo 11 was pretty much limited to being dragged out of bed to watch the moon landing. I feel privileged that I did see it live and there can’t be that many people younger than me who remember watching it. By the time of the next few launches I was old enough to really get into it and get wrapped up in the excitement. Indeed, here in England, Kelloggs cornflakes would include Apollo stickers and they were seriously tradable in our street among the kids. My early school years were at a time before calculators, and we learned to use slide-rules before calculators became affordable, and having done so, it really gives you an understanding of how complex and ambitious the Apollo program was. The period was an interesting time to grow up and provided endless opportunities for our teachers to engage us in theoretical mathematics (calculating escape velocities etc). What I find fascinating now is just how small the SpaceX control room is, compared to Apollo.

Saw the launch from the Atlantic Ocean aboard the U.S.S. Ault. An moment in History that will always be and I was there !

When one thinks of how complex this machine is, and how reliable it was required to be. I hope we don’t lose our impetus to continue exploring and engineering.

_I won't lie, seeing Saturn 5 pushing through the the sound barrier like it's nothing is a truly epic sight_

I believe ,and this is my own personal opinion, then going to the Moon and coming back is still the greatest thing that humanity has ever done

Thank you for sharing. I have vivid memories of this famous day in our history. I was an Air Force medic stationed at Stewart AFB in Newburgh, N..Y. watching this on the TV in the day room in my barracks in July 1969.

The bravery of the astronauts, the engineering brains (before the computer age as we know it) and the achievement of these guys is off the scale.

I loved this whole thing! Especially enjoyed the Com check with Buzz's wife Joan at their home on the squawk box.

I had the measles. My priorities were: Pillow, blanket, ice water with a bendy straw, and best CBS interception via rooftop antennae. I was America's most devoted Apollo 11 live coverage viewer.

I cannot imagine how much work went into making this. Many kudos to you Fran! And many thanks!

Excellent video Fran I remember Dad getting us up at about 3 am to watch moon landing live , I was 9 (10 in couple of weeks) . Amazing achievement for mankind , if we could only get over our differences and channel it into technology rather than wars imagine what we could do

Watched this as it happened with my mom. Thank you for your time and effort in putting this together. Lost mom to cancer in 71, remember her being more excited than us kids.

Was 13 in 69....we'd always watch every launch. We were so proud of our scientists, engineers and pilots. Such a nobel endeavor.

I remember this day very well. Me and my dad paused doing chores and listened to his truck radio. My dad being a veteran was very interested. I was 11yrs old,my dad 55.

wonderful, I watched this live on the day, didn't get as much coverage then, so glad you've managed to pull this together, glad an thankful

Excellent Fran. I can't get enough of this having lived through the 60s space missions. Although some great things are happening today, it is unparalleled with what they had to do back then. So many technologies that had to be pushed to their limits by so many companies to achieve what could have easily dismissed as impossible.

Just awesome! Love to hear all the coms as they calmly run the script and work the errors. Took a lot of nerve to just keep rolling and go for launch. They relied on a lot of cameras to confirm everything "looked OK". Fantastic work Fran!

This is a wonderful document, Fran! You continue to make great contributions to the world. My most sincere thanks to you.

My god that's awesome!! I'm old enough to remember that day but I've never experienced it like this. Thanks Fran!!

Most impressive of all was how those Saturn 5 engines were able to lift off a fully loaded Apollo rocket weighing 6.5 million pounds, 2,900 Tonnes, amazed me in July 1969 and still amazes me today in 2024 😊

Thanks Fran! I remember watching the TV when this originally aired. I was about 5 years old. My super nerd elder brother dragged the whole family down to his Lab/She'd to watch history being made.

To all the people out there that say we never went to the moon: Why would you try to completely disregard the pinnacle of human achievement? An immensely uniting experience, but those shadows though... I mean, seriously.

We went to the moon. That is so amazingly cool.

WOW. Amazing! This is a great add-on to the 50th Anniversary Apollo 11 documentary film with the amazing new high quality high resolution 70MM images...!! Thank you so much!

Seeing this just now did my heart good. Thanks Fran! Kudos on your editing, telecine and audio mixing. The footage of KSFC and the details of the consoles was amazing (nixie tubes). The trucking shot of the rows and rows of consoles was astonishing. I never knew just how big the Kennedy control room was! Just great...

Fran as a lifetime technician and engineer I love your channel!

The shots of rows of people at desks and the constant chatter compared to 2022 launches of a dozen or so people shows just how much automation has taken place in the intervening years. Brilliant footage. Love it!

I was there at the launch that day (16 years old )with my father (NASA engineer at Redstone Arsenal) and a cousin. A proud day for me!! In 5 years I was a Sonar Technician on a submarine (SSBN 641 - USS Simon Bolivar) and my cousin was a AO (Aviation Ordnanceman) in the Navy - go USA!!

This took place on my 7th birthday. Even though I am 60 now, I still am happy about it. Great document Fran.

That was very cool! All that behind- the- scenes audio. I've always loved hearing that uninterrupted. Everyone was glued to the TV. It was an incredible 3 days.

Amazing that 3000 tones started on the launch pad and 7 came back, but it was amazing to watch.

I watched this live on tv and I was14 in summer school at that time. One of the most wonderful summers of my life!

I'm surprised there are no flat-earthers in the comments

Amazing edited film of one of our planet's greatest achievements! Thank you for your time and effort in making this experience!

Thanks for posting this, Fran. 🙂 Great work, and I know this was a LOT of work for you.

I was 8 years old and watched this at a friends house because we didnt have a colour TV - thank you for sharing Fran

Wow Fran... Just wow. This is incredible work you've put together, thank you for sharing, it was excellent to watch!

Thank you Fran!!! I was 21 yrs old and listened to the launch on radio from South Africa. I was with 2 friends of similar age. I recorded it on casette tape. It was all so exciting!!!

I am privileged enough to have been able to watch all of the early Mercury and Apollo missions which were televised. My parents were big fans and we also visited Cape Kennedy in the late sixties or early Seventies. I visited there with my dad in the early Nineties as well. This was a different time back in the early years of NASA.

It still amazes me that most of the math done for this mission was done on both chalkboards and paper. Early NASA is still my favorite era of the organization. Thanks for your hard work, Fran!

If you think the moon landings were faked, you'd have to explain every single one of these frames of film. There is so much evidence that these missions were real, I don't believe anyone really thinks this didn't happen.

Love this Fran! Some of this was sourced for the Apollo 11 movie a few years ago but there is so much more here that they left out. Stuff that doesn't make good cinema but is really interesting for space nerds!

Awesome never seen before . I was 11 when 11 blasted off, Great memories of little boy dreams. Thanks Fran

It is amazing how many people were actually involved in these launches. All most people ever see are the astronauts and the Mission Control people. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of other people keeping up with different systems during the space flights. There are several times in the video where you see the people in other rooms.

Thanks for the video! Perhaps many people do not know that the footage of the separation of the stages of the Saturn 5 rocket in this video was shot earlier on Apollo 4 and Apollo 6. There was no Milliken camera at all on Apollo 11. The footage is wonderful and shows how it was also on Apollo 11. Everything connected with this great event in the history of mankind is very close to me, especially after 1994, when Neil Armstrong personally answered my letter.

This is some incredible editing, wonderful experience to watch

This is spectacular! Thank you for your time and hard work in assembling this. Watching this, I felt like a 9 year old kid again, my heart pounding, my eyes like silver dollars, and my jaw hanging and oblivious to everything around me. I remember this, like the old saying, "just like it was yesterday". Thank you for allowing me to experience this again. Just wonderful!

I was on the floor at my Grandma's feet , we were glued to the TV . She in her 80's at the time was thrilled . I was 9 .

The reliability of the Saturn V first stage engines was almost miraculous. Engines of that size present so many physical challenges. To my knowledge, not one of them ever failed in a manned launch. Beautiful job compiling all this footage.

Fran, you've made a significant contribution to the history of the Apollo program! I've watched hundreds of launch videos, but nothing compares to the scope and accuracy of what you've done here. In addition, this is the only launch video I know of that integrates the activities and coordination of the LCC and the MCC during launch preparation. (At first I thought some of the video was from other launches, but then I started to notice some of the controller's lips sync up with the audio, and realized my mistake.) Bravo Fran! Thank you for your Herculean effort to pull this together! This is one for the books.

In 1980 I met and befriended 2 engineers who had a large part in fabricating the Lunar Landers for these missions. Still a teenager at that time, I learned a lot from these men and I will always respect them for what they accomplished !!

My gosh, thank you! I was three years old when this happened. Watching this 53 years later made me realize I do have some memories of this. I recall watching on my parents black and white TV in Australia . Today I think this is a reminder of when America really was great.

I clearly remember this launch and moon landing. I watched the launch on TV from our home in Florida and traveled to New York as the spacecraft traveled to the moon. I watched the landing from my grandmother's house on Long Island. What an incredible summer!

What brilliant work, Fran! How did I miss this last week? Fantastic.

34:41 All the vintage machines are amazing !

Love watching that beast fly. I wish that I'd have been able to see one fly in person. And that zoom at 35:20, seeing the pressure cones as it continued to accelerate? Amazing.

I was 4 months old when this happened. My dad kept the papers and magazines from that day and it’s so cool to look back through them.

Really, really nice job Fran. I thoroughly enjoy this. Well done.

I was 12 when I watched this wonderful piece of space history, It was, and still is the most profound occasion my mind has ever experienced !

I was at camp that year and I didn’t see the launch, but I SURELY saw the landing on the moon and Neil Armstrong saying his famous quote. The happy laughter on Walter Cronkite’s face and the joy that he had seeing the landing was priceless! Thank you for posting this. It brings back memories and God bless✝️🌕!

Mission Control in Building 30 (the rocket's control & monitoring room) is pretty well gutted out now and the mezzanine main flight control room is partially gutted now. You can see the old cellular floor duct stubs for feeding rows & rows of monitoring stations that are just gone now. Mission control was huge compared to the mezzanine central flight control. Anyone who denies this happened needs to go visit that facility. Even gutted out it was impressive. Sad but impressive. They had a man or woman on a monitor watching every switch, wire, pipe, pressure sensor, valve, load cell, volt meter, ammeter, IR sensor & thermocouple on that rocket. They were all down below the flight control mezzanine.

Yeah, Fran, thank you. Have never seen all this footage before. This happened 8 years before I even existed. Appreciate all the effort to put this together

Fantastic, did not disappoint! And for the even fuller experience I watched side by side with LunarModule5's version. Nice to see all the different footage.

Fran, thank you for your content! Born in ‘84, this brings back so many memories. I didn’t understand the depth of what was happening but I appreciate it now.

The real footage during stages separation is absolutely stunning , insanely stable for a camera system from 1969. Jaws drpped ❤. Thx for sharing.

When America had balls.

A masterpiece. Thank you for the hard work Fran! What an emotion. Imagining all the things they had to think about to launch this rocket and to make the mission successful makes me believe in Humanbeings. Let's not waste all they have done and make our planet better now! People have the power.

Thank you very much for such an excellent job editing this historical video. I was celebrating my third birthday that day, and don’t remember the launch, but still have vivid memories of me watching on TV the first steps on the moon.

What's amazing is in that time to today, all of those monitors, people, and slide rules could be replaced with one console. This was 1969. By 1975 I was learning how to use a slide rule in senior HS physics class. Can you imagine?

Brilliant! Thanks for your efforts Fran,It is amazing to think that all of those personel at workstations would be replaced nowadays with 3 or 4 with laptops!

Frantastic video! It was great to watch, thank you for this amazing job!

Love that you edited together so many channels of information and video. Thank you!

Just amazing to think that you have more computing power in a calculator today than you did on the Apollo mission

Amazing job, thanks for editing all this stuff together

Superb work, Fran. Perhaps the best "you are there" video of the launch ever made. To this day, as I watch, all I can think of is, "How the hell did they make that thing work?" More so, even, because we've learned so much about what was really going on.

This is awesome, Fran. Fun to be 'there' during the launch and hearing all that goes on.

That line from Neil Armstrong at 37:44 -- "They finally gave me a window to look out." I love that energy.

Very nice editing job. I remember those days well. And then the Space Shuttle launches became so routine that the major networks pretty much stopped covering live launches. Then the Challenger disaster occurred, and the major networks were pretty much caught flat footed. For the next launch, there was more media, including ABC, NBC, and CBS than ever before. Not so much for adoration of the space program, but to be first in line if another tragedy occurred.