What?

Americans weren't winning the space race from the start.

The Russians are sprinting around the track and we are still at the starting block, tying our shoe laces.

ASA was in its infancy a large goal like Project Mercury.

It seems like science fiction.

It seems like something that is insurmountable.

Way need to work fast.

We need to work smart.

Our very way of life is at stake.

You gentlemen are accustomed to testing dangerous, unproven aircraft.

And yet you've made it this far in one piece.

These guys that went up that were treated as heroes, they were just regular people.

There was a lot of very, very young men in their twenties who were just trying to get something up on its legs.

In doing so with an incredible amount of success, considering how an experience they were and how little they actually truly had at their disposal.

Yeah.

Welcome, gentlemen, to the Center for Human Space Exploration, where the planes putting a man into space when making a long distance phone call was virtually impossible.

The tenacity They had to be able to do that all at the risk of a man's life all while the entire world is watching.

How incredible it waas that these people did this.

There was a lot of making it up as you go.

Where are we on the procedures manual?

We don't have any procedure.

We will have procedures when you write the manual.

There were a lot of people trying to figure out What do we even need?

What are the systems?

What is this?

We have a public launch of a test rocket in four days.

If we don't get these procedures down cold, we really could blow up Titusville.

But for NASA and for America, any of our setbacks are rockets keep exploding.

Congress thinks where the biggest money pit in the nation's history, any of embarrassment that the Russians would have him probably did cover up.

We let the entire world see the Russians are flying clear to the moon.

You guys can't even get a rocket off.

The manned space program was a stand in for ah, larger struggle between two nations in two sets of ideas T minus 10 seconds.

Nice.

Hey, seven.

The entire impetus of NASA was exploration.

We wanted to go further.

You look around and the globe is totally explored.

And what do you do?

You look up.

This opportunity presents itself and they have to see if they do indeed have the right stuff, right?