Cigarettes & Rocket Fuel

It’s Sunday, May 25, 1969 and Apollo 10 has almost completed its eight-day mission testing the lunar module in the moon’s orbit. The mission has been so successful that top NASA officials said that if there was enough fuel in the lunar module, they would have given Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan the go-ahead to land on the moon.

It’s Sunday, May 18, 1969 and Apollo 10 rocketed out of Earth’s atmosphere flawlessly. Over the next eight days, the spacecraft will fly the same path around the moon as Apollo 11 is scheduled to fly in July. The lunar module Snoopy is intended to separate from Charlie Brown and descent toward the moon — and do everything the next Apollo mission will do except actually land on the moon.

the country is just one week away from the launch of Apollo 10 -- the final flight before America tries for the moon in July. Apollo 10 -- scheduled for launch on May 18 from Cape Kennedy, Fla. -- will be the fourth manned Apollo mission in just seven months. 

It’s May 4, 1969 and Alex and Andy have a ton of space news to catch you up on, including plans for a space station orbiting earth, the case of Gordo Cooper and the difficulties astronauts will face walking on the moon.

It's April 27, 1969, and we are just three weeks away from the May launch of Apollo 10 -- the last dress rehearsal before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin attempt to land on the moon this summer. Today we’re talking about the magnificent feat of engineering that will push these brave heroes out of Earth's atmosphere: the Saturn V rocket. It. Is. A. Beast! Standing at more than 360 feet, it is taller than the Statue of Liberty. It was launched for the first time two years ago. 

It's April 20, 1969 and KHCN-AM 4747 remembers the three brave Americans who died in the Apollo 1 fire a little more than two years ago. But these heroes – Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee – did not die in vain. Procedures were changed and a newer, safer capsule was designed. The program, likely, was saved.

It's April 13, 1969 and, if you folks have been following Space Talk Sunday since the beginning, you know what it's time to talk about: Project Gemini. Gemini was NASA second human spaceflight program and bridged the Mercury and Apollo projects. It started in 1965 and had three main objectives: Collect physiological data about the impact of longer spaceflights on astronauts; Conduct spacewalks to determine how astronauts could function outside a spacecraft; and dock one spacecraft to another.

It’s April 6, 1969: The weeks between Apollo flights gives Alex and Andy time to look back at Project Mercury, America’s first foray into human spaceflight. The goals of the program were: Orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth, investigate a man’s ability to function in space and recover both man and spacecraft safely. And we accomplished every. Single. One.

It's March 30, 1969 and our beloved president, Dwight Eisenhower, has died. We at KHCN-AM 4747 are deeply saddened by this news, especially since it could be argued that Ike was the father of NASA. Less than a year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, and as the country panicked, Ike signed a bill creating the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, a civilian agency "devoted to peaceful purposes."

It's March 23, 1969 and with the incredible success of Apollo 9 secured and Apollo 10 being prepped for a May lift-off, Alex and Andy dig into the story behind how the Manned Spacecraft Center came to be located in a south Texas pasture and why Houston became NASA's home for human spaceflight.

It’s March 16, 1969 and the country is one step closer to beating America's communist enemies, Russia, to the moon. The Apollo 9 mission, flown to ensure the lunar module works properly, splashed down this past week and was a rip-roaring success. The lunar module was built to take humans to the surface of the moon. Will NASA attempt a lunar landing with Apollo 10? Stay tuned …

It’s March 9, 1969: After a three-day delay, NASA astronauts Rusty Schweickart, Jim McDivitt and David Scott launched out of Earth’s atmosphere on Apollo 9. Their mission? Test the lunar module, which will eventually bring astronauts to the surface of the moon. With the mission going smoothly so far – despite a few vomit incidents – NASA must decide when to land on the moon. Will they bump the flight up to May from the original July date? Stay tuned.

It’s March 2, 1969: the Vietnam War is rages on, campus unrest is at an all-time high and America’s new agency, NASA, is racing to put a man on the moon before the year runs out. But, they’ve had a hiccup. The launch of Apollo 9, the first test of the lunar module, has been delayed after the astronauts came down with a common cold. Will this delay U.S. footprints on the moon? Stay tuned.

*Cigarettes and Rocket Fuel* is a podcast from the past, a show-within-a-show and *that* show is an as-it-happens radio talk show on (fictional) radio station KHCN-AM 4747 — Houston, Texas — covering the 1969 Apollo missions and the final sprint in the race against the Soviets to set foot on the moon.  Come for the drama. Stay for the 39-cent bacon. Lifting off Feb. 28 and posting until America puts a man on the moon. *Crayola Girl* by Ferrill Gibbs, produced by Brent Busby.