John Denver: The Higher We Fly (1983) - full transcript
- We got the airplane
pre-flight and everything, so...
- We're ready to go.
- All we need to do is jump
in and head for Houston.
- After you, sir.
This is John Denver
inviting you to climb aboard
and join us for a trip
that can only be described
as far out.
We've got a date today with
a dream, one of man's oldest,
the dream of flight.
We're going to go places today
where even the birds have never been.
We'll be doing everything from ballooning
to barnstorming to blasting off.
Along the way, we'll meet some heroes,
a couple of geniuses, and
some people like you and me.
But most of all, I can promise you
we're going to have some fun.
I hope you folks recognize me,
but I'm not sure you recognize
the gentleman on my right.
He's my father, Dutch Deutschendorf.
He's been a pilot all his life.
He taught me out of fly.
Simply couldn't do this film without him.
- For a long time, I couldn't
even get him in an airplane.
Now, I now can't keep him out of it.
- Yeah, but I tell you
what, I think he enjoys it
as much as I do.
- You can say that again.
- Want you folks to sit down,
strap your seat belts on.
Over the next hour we're
gonna take you a few places
you've probably never been before.
You'd better hang on, 'cause
we're gonna be going for it.
That's it.
We're going to fire up a balloon
and float over the Colorado Rockies.
We'll take a sentimental
journey back to Kitty Hawk
to fly an exact reproduction
of the Wright brothers' original flier.
We're going to find out what made
those daring young men and women so daring
back in the romantic days of barnstorming.
And for a fantastic thrill,
we'll plunge through the sound barrier
in one of the world's fastest jets.
So check those seat belts again,
because this flight is ready to go.
(inspirational music)
The rockets of the '60s
took man beyond the pull
of gravity to float free
on the edge of space.
By the end of the decade,
the rock-covered moon
had become a stepping stone to infinity.
Who can say where the space
shuttle will take us tomorrow?
At Palomar Observatory, we'll
peer into the depths of space
and wonder at the possible life
forms we may discover there.
We'll experience the thrill of flying
the highest performance jets.
And then we'll just lie back
a little and enjoy the fun
of floating over the Rockies
or rocket into a barrel roll.
We'll even get a little hilarious
at New York's Rhinebeck Aerodrome,
where expert pilots spoof the
legendary aces of World War I.
You don't have to be the
Red Baron to figure out
that everybody from
Rickenbacker to von Richthofen
gets kidded in these weekend melodramas.
I fly every chance I get, I
love it, I really love it.
Hot air ballooning has been with us
for a couple of hundred years.
In those brave old days,
though, the way you did it was
to carry a bonfire in a basket
under a highly flammable
bag made of paper or cloth.
If it strikes you that
it wasn't the safest way
of getting off the ground, you're right.
But at the time, it was the only way.
In recent years, the development
of the propane burner
and flame proofing has been responsible
for putting balloons back in the air.
This ancient pastime has now
become a safe, spectacular,
and enormously-popular sport.
Rallies like this one
at Snowmass, Colorado,
now bring balloonists
together all over the world.
Here at Snowmass, the High Rockies
provide a majestic backdrop
for these colorful giants.
If anybody asks you what
time the balloon is going up,
you're generally safe if you
tell them right after sunup,
since the wind conditions
for hot air ballooning
are best soon after dawn.
It's the kind of sport
that gets you up early.
- Let me goose it one time.
- The very first time we
actually got off the ground,
it wasn't on the Wright brothers' wings.
In fact, it was before
the combustion engine
was even a good idea.
It was way back on
November 21, 1783, right?
- Right.
- In a hot air balloon.
Hang on!
Everybody up!
We're still doing it
today because it's great!
When the Montgolfier brothers
sent their first balloon up
in Paris in 1783, it
drew an enormous crowd.
Among the onlookers was Benjamin Franklin,
our ambassador to France at the time.
As the balloon rose into the air,
someone asked Franklin, "Of
what possible use is it?"
And Franklin's answer, as
usual, was right to the point.
"Of what possible use," he
replied, "is a newborn baby?"
Well, floating along
in the breeze suspended
from a bubble of hot air is great fun,
but don't ever confuse it with
powered, controlled flight.
It took 120 years following
that first balloon ascension
in 1783 and the genius
of the Wright brothers
to solve the riddle of the
ages and get man off the ground
in powered flight for the first time.
A hot air balloon can
get you off the ground,
but what about wings?
Men have always envied birds
their place in the sky,
but it took two bicycle
mechanics from Ohio,
Wilbur and Orville Wright, to show us
how to join the birds in powered flight.
Here on Kill Devil Hill near
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina,
we've returned to the exact spot
where the Wright brothers'
original flier first took
to the air on that historic
December 17th in 1903.
My dad and I have returned
here along with some friends
to see if we can make
history repeat itself.
With my wife Annie here
to give encouragement
and dad supplying plenty of supervision,
we're off to a good start.
We're all here to join
Ken and Nancy Kellett,
a young couple from Colorado.
Ken has built an exact replica
of the original Wright flier.
My dad seems to feel
that the untried replica
may be just as dangerous
to fly as the original.
We're here to answer the same question
the Wright brothers must
have asked themselves
on that December day
in 1903, "Will it fly?"
To really appreciate the giant step
the Wright brothers
took here at Kitty Hawk,
it helps if you imagine someone asking you
to design an airplane and
you had never seen one.
Since their flier had no wheels,
it was launched from a
trolley on a greased skid.
We'll be doing it the same way.
The brothers were far from
being ordinary bicycle mechanics
who somehow stumbled onto the
airplane through dumb luck.
It took years of study and experimentation
and repeated failure
before they got it right.
And along the way, danger
was a constant companion.
To attempt to take off from the same spot
as the Wright brothers has
to give you a feeling of awe.
If this flier takes to the air,
it will be like leaving hallowed ground.
(majestic music)
By today's sophisticated standards,
that attempt may look like a failure,
but when the Wrights
flew that long in 1903,
few would believe it had happened at all.
I guess everybody in
love with flying wants
to go farther, faster and higher.
I know we're ready to give it another try.
It was a strange combination
of Wilber's noticing the way
a buzzard's wing tips turned
down as it banked in flight
and his twisting a long box
from which he was unpacking
a bicycle inner tube that led the brothers
to a momentous breakthrough.
They theorized that by twisting
or warping the wing tips,
they might be able to keep
the machine on an even keel.
This they accomplished by
cleverly rigging a set of cables
which the pilots could
control by shifting his hips.
Our last flight of the
day does a little damage,
but the original flier also cracked up
before the technique was perfected.
But it flew.
- It flew, yeah.
- Well listen, I tell you what,
I really admire anybody that
sets out to do something
and goes for it and does
it, and you did that.
You built that airplane, you made it fly.
You proved you could do it.
I congratulate you.
- Thanks, John.
- Heck of a job.
Once the first plane was off the ground,
everybody wanted to get into the act.
The idea of flying took off overnight.
Hiya, folks, guess who?
(laughs) These biplanes are replicas of
what back in the 1930s and '40s
were simply the hottest thing in the sky.
In fact, now that I think
of it, they might've been
the only thing in the
sky back in those days.
In any case, replicas
like this Steen Skybolt
and the Pitts Special behind
me are being used today
by pilots to enjoy what I
consider the purest, truest,
and rawest form of flying.
Now, my friend Chris Woods and I are gonna
go take these things out and show you
what barnstorming is all about.
You ready, Chris?
- You bet, John, let's do it!
- Here we go!
It was in planes like
these that a generation
of daring young men and women barnstormed
and wing walked their
way across the heartland
of the country.
Along the way, they sold rides.
Two-and-a-half dollars for
a flight with no frills,
an extra five bucks for stunts.
But most important, they
sold the idea of flying.
Their enthusiasm turned
out to be contagious.
And since then, America has
never been quite the same.
Chris, give me a show here.
- I'll be back in a minute.
- [John] All right.
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
- Wow!
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
Whoa, all right!
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
Wow, that's incredible!
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
Now, watch out there,
Chris, Jiminy Christmas!
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
You know, the old-time
pilots' white silk scarf
wasn't an affectation, it's
a relic of the 1st World War.
Fighter pilots wore
them to keep their necks
from getting chafed as they
continually turned their heads
to look for enemy planes.
- [Chris] You want to give it a try, John?
- [John] No, I don't think so.
I'm not quite ready for that yet.
I'm learning.
It's a lot of fun, I think.
- [Chris] You gotta do
things the safe way.
- Tell you what, Chris,
I got a different treat for you, though.
Why don't you follow me?
I'll give you a little
tour of these mountains.
We'll go dance with them.
- [Chris] Okay, I'm right behind you.
- [John] Isn't this beautiful?
(majestic music)
Look, Chris, this mountain here
on the right is Capitol Peak.
We'll go up through this notch here
and make a little bit of a left turn,
go back out over the next shoulder.
(majestic music)
Okay, if we come around here, Chris,
this mountain straight
ahead is Snowmass Peak.
Let's not look at it too close, though.
- [Chris] Okay, I'm with you.
- [John] Well, they may
be building them hotter
and faster now.
In fact, we're going to
fly one of the fastest jets
in the world in a couple of minutes,
but for sheer, unadulterated fun,
give me an old barnstormer any day.
We've come to the 1099th Physiological
Training Flight Center here
at Andrews Air Force Base
in Washington, D.C. to
begin training for flight
in the supersonic F-15 Eagle.
I can't wait, I'm so excited about this.
- John, I think we've covered
all the necessary material
in the classroom and we're
ready to go in the chamber.
Are there any questions
you have at this time?
- [John] Well, no, I'm
just kind of anxious to see
all of this applied to experience.
If you think those barnstormers were fast,
you ain't seen nothing yet.
Lieutenant Colonel Frank Mayberry,
the chief of physiological
training here at Andrews,
is going to check me out in
his high altitude chamber.
This pressure cooker can
simulate all the conditions
of high altitude flight
right here at ground level.
We're going to find out how the pilots
of today's hottest aircraft learn to avoid
or deal with such high altitude killers
as decompression sickness
or a shortage of oxygen,
which is called hypoxia.
- You will not, you'll have a super IP
and you're going to be in good hands.
Okay, sir, we got our act together
so we're fixing to make our ascent now.
Very good, here we go.
(audio distorted)
In the pen, are you ready?
Okay, we're going to take
the altitude chamber up
to 35,000 feet (audio distorted).
- [Frank] When we get our
denitrogenation completed
and we get our ascent to altitude,
it's the only time in an altitude chamber
that you will be purposefully exposed
to the area of decompression sickness.
At this time, if you're ready,
why don't you just reach
up, touch the button,
drop the oxygen mask down
from the side of your face.
- All right.
(audio distorted)
It's not suffocation, but I
feel not getting the amount
of air that I'm used to
getting when I breathe.
- [Man In Booth] It's okay?
- Yes, sir.
- [Man In Booth] Okay, fine.
- [Frank] If everybody's ready,
here in about 15 or 20 seconds
we're going to experience
a rapid change of pressure.
- [Man In Booth] Here we go.
- [Frank] Back on oxygen?
Okay, yes sir, that's not bad at all.
- [Man In Booth] Mark
when you want that on.
- [Frank] Hands?
- [Man In Booth] Yeah.
- [Frank] Beautiful recovery.
You can knock it out of emergency
if you would like there, John.
I noticed that, one, you're getting better
each time you don your oxygen mask.
That's typical of familiarity
with the equipment.
- [Man In Booth] And we're
coming into 8,000, sir.
- Well, John, the altitude
chamber of flight is complete.
You passed it, did a great job.
You could fly in the F-15.
- I can't wait, sir, thanks very much.
Handshake, that's it, all right.
Langley Air Force Base, Virginia,
home of the 2700th Fighter Squadron,
the oldest fighter
squadron in the Air Force,
and the one I'll be flying with.
As my dad and I roll
past the parked planes,
Eagles, they're called,
I can't help thinking
it's nice to see some Eagles that aren't
on anybody's list of endangered species.
If Orville and Wilbur could only see
how their baby has grown.
I still can't believe
that I am actually going
to be flying one of them.
Here to meet us, the Commander
of the First Tactical
Fighter Unit, Colonel Don Miller,
and his associate, Colonel Doug Priester.
- J.D., you probably
wonder why we've hung you
in this thing called suspended agony.
- Yes, I certainly understand the term.
And what is the deal, you guys mad at me?
- Oh no, John, all of us
go through this training.
- [Don] Everybody gets it.
- Okay.
- You've gotta go through
a parachute simulation
before you go fly your Eagle jet.
- Great.
- Okay, John, now that you've gone
through the egress trainer,
you bailed out of the aircraft,
now you've got a lot of sentry lead,
the parachute's over your
head, now what do you do?
- Here to get me out of this mess
and into his airplane, I hope,
is Lieutenant Colonel George Dvorchak.
Flanking him, Captains Frank
Pickert and Roe Staton.
If I'm in the wires, I
don't want to hang anything,
I should just wriggle a little bit.
I ought to slip right down through.
If I don't, just hang there and be cool.
And I'm ready to fly!
- Let's go!
- I'm ready.
- John, you know you're flying
with the 2700th Fighter Squadron,
the oldest fighter
squadron in the Air Force.
- The oldest, flying the newest airplane.
- Flying the newest airplane.
- All right!
Thanks you, guys.
- [Man] Time to check six.
- [John] Yeah, check six.
- Frank will be right along
to help straighten you out
in the back there, okay?
- [John] Great.
- [Woman] Go ahead, left,
right, closed, clear.
- [Man] Thank you much for your help.
- [Woman] All right, enjoy your flight.
(audio distorted)
- [Man] Langley Wolf-5-1-Taxi-3
Eagle jet standing by
for clearance for 5-1 and a 5-2 flight.
- [Dispatcher] Wolf-5-1 and Wolf-5-2 taxi
to runway 07, wind 010 at 1-4.
Altimeter 3015.
- [Pilot] Okay, John, you ready?
- [John] I am ready, sir.
- [Pilot] We are going.
- [John] Whoo!
(majestic music)
- [Pilot] Okay, I'm gonna
check in the other flight.
Wolf 5-1 flight check.
- [Pilot 2] 2.
- [Pilot] There we go,
there's our players.
We gotta roll it on over.
- [John] Whoo!
(John laughs)
- [Pilot] Okay, John, you go it.
Try equipment, just bang
that stick over to the side.
Good.
- [John] Whoo, isn't that great!
Yes!
(dispatch audio distorted)
(majestic music)
- [Pilot] Okay, go ahead and
start pulling it up to steep.
Now, just go ahead and roll it on over.
Pull it down to the horizon line.
A very important afterburner here.
That looks good.
(pilot audio distorted)
- [Pilot] Okay, look behind you, John.
- [John] That is great!
(majestic music)
- [Pilot] Just modulate the
power where you want it.
Altitude doesn't make a difference now.
You can clear it down to
the ocean or to 50,000 feet.
(majestic music)
Wow, that's a flight to remember.
You know, it's almost
impossible for the mind
to comprehend that we've come
from the Kitty Hawk flier
to this baby, which knives through the air
somewhere close to three
times the speed of sound,
and all in the same century.
Flying this plane is a little
like riding a bolt of lightning.
If I had noticed how fast
Colonel Dvorchak got out,
I might've been ready for the aftershock.
(crowd cheers)
Well, I guess that makes
me a baptized member
of the 2700th, and I'm proud to be.
This sculpture is called "Ad Astra,"
and it means "to the stars."
And that's what this place is all about.
This is the Air and Space Museum
at the Smithsonian Institute
here in Washington, D.C.
And this is the most incredible
museum I've ever been in.
Everywhere you look around
here are fantastic dinosaurs
of space and flight.
I mean, that's the real Kitty Hawk flier.
Over here is the Spirit of St.
Louis, the X-15 rocket plane
that bridged the gap
between man and the stars,
the Pioneer spacecraft.
More people have visited this museum
than any other museum in the world,
over 33 million people
since it opened in 1976.
I'm here because this place
supports one of the things
that I really strongly believe in,
and that's our continued
exploration of space.
This is like a grand history
of American achievement,
keeping the memories alive in
our hearts and in our minds.
- [Controller] Nine, eight,
seven, all engines are started,
two, one, zero, we have a liftoff.
The satellite is moving off the pad.
It has now cleared the tower.
(audio distorted)
("The Higher We Fly")
♪ Oh, I have slipped the
surly bonds of Earth ♪
♪ And danced the skies on
laughter-silvered wings ♪
♪ Sunward I've climbed and
joined the tumbling mirth ♪
♪ Of sun-split clouds and
done a hundred things ♪
♪ I've wheeled and soared and swung ♪
♪ High in the sunlit silence ♪
♪ Hov'ring there I've chased
the shouting wind along ♪
♪ And flew my eager craft
through footless halls of air ♪
♪ The higher we fly, the father we go ♪
♪ The closer we are to each other ♪
♪ The darker the night,
the brighter the star ♪
♪ In peace go my sisters and brothers ♪
This place is a reminder
of the mind-boggling places
that we've already been,
but even more importantly,
it's an inspiration for the
challenges that lie ahead.
♪ Up, up the long delirious burning blue ♪
♪ I've topped the wind-swept
heights with easy grace ♪
♪ Where never lark or even eagle flew ♪
♪ And while with silent
lifting mind I've trod ♪
♪ The high untrespassed
sanctity of space ♪
♪ Put out my hand and
touched the face of God ♪
♪ The higher we fly, the farther we go ♪
♪ The closer we are to each other ♪
♪ The darker the night,
the brighter the star ♪
♪ In peace go my sisters and brothers ♪
To meet those challenges,
NASA's giant space shuttle,
the world's first reusable spaceship.
- And you've got control of the airplane.
- Okay, got it.
- And I'm holding 249.
- [John] Designed to
blast off like a rocket
and land like a glider, this
is our ticket to the future.
But you'll see for yourselves.
We're about to leave on a
simulated flight into space.
- [Man On Right] So at 36 I'm online,
look at the Mach number, 3.4.
Now this thing is really
moving at this time
and we're coming down rapidly.
We're at any 83,000 feet, 290 knots now.
Okay, we're gonna ask
you to give us a nice,
gentle 30 degree bank turn when you get up
to the head in alignment circle.
- [John] Roger.
- [Dispatcher] Hello,
Columbia, Chase 1 onboard.
- Okay, I'm starting to
see a runway up here.
Got 265 knots, we're lined up.
12,000 feet, I'll arm the landing gear.
- [Dispatcher] All right, Dan is asking
for that little pitch
down to get 290 knots.
- [Man On Right] Roger.
We're at 300 knots, we're looking
good, we're at 7,000 feet.
- [John] Designed for
earth orbital flights
of up to 30 days each, the
shuttle can carry seven people
and 65,000 pounds of payload,
including research equipment
for studying astronomy,
weather, and communications,
among other things now.
- [Man On Right] Okay, go ahead
and let the nose come on down.
Wheels on the way, nose coming up.
- [Dispatcher] 400 feet, 300 feet, 250,
200, 150, 100, 80, 70, 40, 30,
20, five, five, three, two.
Touchdown.
- [Man On Right] Okay,
nose wheel on the ground.
We'll steer back over
the runway center line.
Okay, John, you're on
the ground, looks good.
- Okay, folks, keep your seats,
next stop, Palomar, and a
thrilling look into infinity.
I'm on Palomar Mountain riding the dome
of the Hale telescope.
Now, people call this
the world's greatest eye
because its powers are so enormous.
It collects the light
of a million human eyes.
It can pick up candlelight at
a distance of 10,000 miles.
It can see 10,000 million
light years into space.
I mean, far out.
Come on inside with me.
We are about to look eight
billion light years into space,
and here to guide us through the galaxies,
world renowned astronomer
Dr. Jesse Greenstein.
- Hi, John.
- Hiya, Doctor.
- How'd you like it out there?
- Well, I think this
is pretty far out, sir.
- Do you want to start turning the dome
just to see how that works?
Before we do that, we've got to open it,
so let's get the opening, that's right.
- [John] Look at that.
Now, the whole roof moves
independently of each other.
- [Jesse] That's right,
takes a skilled operator.
And of course, then the
first thing you want to do is
open the mirror cover.
If you want to do that, that
switch is right over here.
Why don't you just push
the switch away from you?
You'll hear a noise opening
the 200-inch mirror to the sky.
- Look at that, that's really
the heart of the telescope,
that incredible mirror.
- The pie-shaped segments,
one goes over another
like an iris, in a sense.
- [John] Isn't that amazing?
- Okay, I think it's about time now,
we can get into the cage.
- And we get to take a look.
- We get to take a look.
- You can actually see,
you have a view piece here-
- Yeah, we have an eye
piece we could use mainly
for centering of the field.
We tend not to actually look
during any serious observation.
- [John] The Hale
telescope weighs 530 tons,
but it's so delicately
balanced that the tiny motor
which moves it generates
only 1/12th of a horsepower.
- The best thing, since
this seat is tilted
at a crazy angle now, it'll
be more comfortable later,
just back in.
- Now, I can hold on, there's nothing-
- Hold on to everything
except for one button,
which you can't rest-
- [John] I'm a little
sideways here, actually.
- [Jesse] All right, are we hitting it?
- [John] No, sir.
- All right, now see if
you can get your eye up
to that eye piece here where the lights-
- [John] Right here.
- [Jesse] Yes.
- Now, what am I gonna
see, what am I looking at?
- You're looking, oh, just at a star
10,000 times brighter
than the sun or something.
It's in the Andromeda,
you've seen the Andromeda.
- Is that right?
You mean this is a star in Andromeda.
- That's right, that's right.
- You're kidding.
- I'm not kidding.
We seldom, at least we
hope we're not kidding.
- I beg your pardon.
Far out.
In 1919, astronomers saw
something only visible
during a total solar eclipse.
The sun's gravity bends passing starlight.
Astronomer Edwin Hubble's later discovery
that the furthest
galaxies moved the fastest
added further confirmation of Einstein's
general theory of relativity.
Einstein and Hubble and
redefined the universe.
- You see now how we can
move that in the sky.
Now, if you lean forward,
I think you can see
this object in the distance.
- Before us, a gigantic nebula,
the spectacular remnant of
an ancient stellar explosion.
Wow.
What we are seeing in the night sky
may be the death of a
star, a long past event
the light of which is
only just now reaching us.
Not even the stars are eternal.
- [Jesse] The stars live and die.
- [John] It's a living entity.
- [Jesse] As far as I'm concerned,
the stars are life in the universe.
The star is born out of dust and gas,
it lives and it dies.
- What is a galaxy?
- The galaxy is a family of stars.
- [John] That's how you would describe it.
- It's a hundred billion
stars moving together
under their mutual gravity
in a giant spiral pattern
like Andromeda.
- Now, our galaxy is the Milky Way.
- [Jesse] That's right.
- So what was at the beginning, then?
- [Jesse] It was like a cosmic egg.
The universe began with this big bang
of hydrogen and helium
in which all the energy
and ultimately all the matter
of the universe was concentrated.
By finding that the more
distant objects move faster
and faster away from us, we deduced
that it was not just a simple motion,
but that space itself was expanding.
The sun gave birth to
the planets, we think,
in a much more peaceful way.
At a very low temperature, in fact,
against this enormous
temperature measure bologna
in the billions and billions of degrees
at the beginning of time.
- [John] What was the
earth like originally?
- [Jesse] Well, we sort
of think it was like
these more planets that
we see from space now,
covered with debris formed
by the gradual accumulation
of impacting small asteroid-type bodies,
tons of rock hurtling in.
- [John] The early history
of our planet and the origins
of life on it remains shrouded in mystery.
Scientists can only
speculate on the convulsions
which led to the
formation of cells capable
of reproducing themselves.
In one of my favorite poems,
Langdon Smith says it best.
"When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
in the Paleozoic time, and
side by side on the ebbing tide
we sprawled through the ooze and slime,
the eons came and the eons fled
and the sleep that wrapped us fast
was riven away in a newer day
and the night of death was passed.
Thus life by life and love by love
we passed through the cycles strange,
and breath by breath and death by death
we followed the chain of change.
- [Jesse] With space exploration,
we looked through our own solar system,
a rough dozen planets and 20
satellites or thereabouts,
and they're all miserable
places, we wouldn't live there.
We seem to be in a very
strangely fortunate world.
- [John] What you're looking
for most specifically is
that other stars like our
sun probably have planets
around them, is that right?
- [Jesse] I was interested mostly,
since there is a great interest
in other intelligences and other worlds,
in first finding if
there was one other world
in which anything could live.
- [John] How many galaxies
are there, do we know?
- Well, we really don't know.
That's one of the main goals
of the study of cosmology
and the expanding universe.
But the guess is that there are somewhere
between hundreds of millions
and some billions of galaxies.
And each one has a population
of a hundred billion stars
like our sun, there's no end to it.
- Is there no end to it?
- We don't know.
- [John] Oh really?
- We don't know, science is built on-
- Science cannot tell you that.
- Not yet, we look at these things,
we look at more and more distant ones,
we strain our equipment and our mind.
It's the process that
we're trying to find out,
because there's no point in
giving an answer in advance.
Doors beyond doors I wish
we could see through.
- [John] Yeah!
- [Jesse] It's gonna
take very special means,
it's gonna take different
kinds of telescopes.
For example, work in infrared
where you detect the heat
radiation of a planet
relatively more easily
than its reflected light.
- [John] We also send messages into space,
abstract attempts to explain who we are.
Since life as we know it
is most probably near stars
like our sun, we aim our electronic ears
in their direction.
- [Jesse] Carbon is formed in stars.
Oxygen is formed in stars.
Everything else was born in stars.
And we're born of the same
kind of material from stars.
- So if that is the case, then,
and we feel that all the materials
are pretty much the same in the universe,
then if there is another planet
in a situation like ours,
what are the probabilities
that this creation of life,
living organisms, does that
get to be probable then?
- [Jesse] To me it
would seem that the fact
that we are made of the
commonest elements synthesized
by nuclear burning in stars make us,
so it's very difficult to believe that,
if there's a platform at
about the right temperature,
that life might not develop spontaneously.
Well, that's pretty far
out, as you would say.
But it's true also.
You couldn't sit up in that chair eight
or 10 hours a night
without having some belief
that'll be novelty.
Well, life is the ultimate novelty.
- [John] But novelty
implies unpredictability,
and nowhere is it chiseled
in stone that life,
if it exists beyond the earth,
would necessarily have evolved
the same way it has here.
A tree-like creature capable of movement,
guided by some primitive impulse
to seek the nutrients necessary
to survive and reproduce,
may be the ruler of some alien planet
a billion light years away.
Harvard's Nobel Prize winning biologist
Professor George Wald
believes emphatically
in extraterrestrial life.
He said, "I think there is no question
that we live in an inhabited universe
that has life all over it."
- [Jesse] That sense of wonder
is what forces us to work
and it may be that that sense of striving
for the impossible.
- [John] But it is precisely
this sense of wonder,
of curiosity, and our
compulsion to satisfy it
that sets us apart from all
our fellow creatures on earth.
Perhaps our search will
lead us to discover
that the king of some
distant planet resembles one
of the giant predators of our own ocean,
a throwback, by earthly definition,
to a time before animals
had crawled out of the
water to survive on land.
No one can predict where our
sense of wonder will take us
or what we will find on the
voyage to distant worlds.
And it would be rash of us to assume
that man represents the
highest form of life
in the universe.
Compared with what we may discover,
we may be more primitive than this monarch
from the depths of another world.
What about intelligent life?
- [Jesse] First, we've gotta look.
Without information, there's no knowledge.
We have to expect miracles,
but we have to make them work.
- [John] It may be presumptuous to assume
that an alien creature could resemble us,
but considering the odds,
it's just as presumptuous to rule it out.
And it might not only be
similar, but far superior.
Astronomer Richard
Berendzen had this to say
of life on other worlds,
"The question has become
not so much one of if as of where.
And who knows, many of these forms of life
are possibly far more technically
advanced than ourselves."
How would you define science,
what is science to you?
- [Jesse] Science is the use
of the most sophisticated technologies
which one can develop to
satisfy individual aspiration.
It's a song, it's a dream where
you're limited by reality,
but you can twiddle a lot of
knobs to manipulate things too.
- I love that, that you said it that way,
that science, too, this
incredible mathematical
organized thing is a song, it's a dance.
It's a miracle, it's a work of art.
Human beings are pretty incredible.
- My name is Cole Palen,
and I've been working
on these things really all my life.
Why did I start the Rhinebeck Aerodrome?
I just thought old airplanes
ought to have a fine old home.
Why are people interested in old airplanes
with such marvelous,
sophisticated airplanes
flying around today?
With the old airplanes, it can be one man
by himself controlling
the whole situation.
I think it's human nature to want
to do the whole thing
themselves, the individuals.
- Boy, that thing is
gonna need some grease.
My name's Dave Fox.
I'm been flying here for
25 years at old Rhinebeck,
and enjoying every minute of it.
I started flying in 1934 in Texas,
and I've got about 20,000 hours now.
And I guess these are more fun
than anything else I've flown.
There's not only a certain
amount of ego to it,
but there's a euphoria
that comes over you.
If you fly the thing and fly it well,
you know that you've done
it, and nobody can tell you,
there's no electricity, so
there's obviously no radio
for somebody on the ground to tell you
that you're doing wrong or what
you're supposed to do next.
And of course, it was always a thrill
to get up and look down.
There's nothing quite
like it on a beautiful day
when you break out and see
the ground for the first time.
It's a thrill, I never got over that.
- [John] The crowd jams the bleachers
every summer weekend here at
the old Rhinebeck Aerodrome,
a hundred miles up the Hudson
River from New York City.
What they've come to see is
an old fashioned air show
put on by some of the best
stunt pilots in the world.
The planes they fly are the
tuned up relics of World War I,
open cockpit plane with
names like the Sopwith Camel,
SPAD, Jenny, the Fokker DR-1 triplane.
These are the planes that made
legends of the famous aces,
Immelmann, Rickenbacker
and the Red Baron himself,
von Richthofen.
Here at Rhinebeck, the
legends are gently kidded.
Like the aces they are spoofing,
these pilots too fly by
the seats of their pants,
but their dog fights
are more bark than bite
and their bombs more smoke than shrapnel.
(bombs whistle and explode)
(lively music)
In Rhinebeck's Flying Circus,
you don't need a program
to tell the bad guys from the good guys.
The damsel in distress
may be tied to a barrel
instead of a railroad track,
but nobody doubts for a
minute that she'll survive.
(dramatic music)
The heroes are all fewer apart
in this nostalgic look back
and we know before it's all over
the villain will get it in the end.
(dramatic music)
(crowd applauds)
- The space program, I think
it's a marvelous thing.
My father delivered mail
in a horse and buggy,
and he lived to see Sputnik.
A wonderful time to be alive.
- The use of space is gonna be necessary
to continue the progress of man.
It's gonna lead the way to
long-term space populations.
They're actually gonna be generations
within the next 100 years who
were born and raised in space.
To keep it going, they're gonna have
to make the space shuttle
do things for people,
because people is the key to
anything we ever have done
as a nation or will do as a nation.
- In 1948, the experts said
it would be another 200 years
before we'd make it to
the moon, but in 1969,
this Saturn V rocket was the initial stage
of a deliver system which
carried two Americans
to its surface and
brought them safely home.
Today, this rocket is
practically obsolete.
The space shuttle has been born,
and with it the promise of new
and even greater discovery.
It's kind of hard to imagine,
but someday even the space
shuttle will become obsolete
as we continue to step into
the future and out of the past.
So what does all this mean, these dreams
of the past turning
into modern day reality?
Well, I'm convinced that it means
that we can accomplish just about anything
we set our minds to.
We can continue to solve
the most difficult problems
that we face here on
earth and learn new ways
to improve the quality of our lives
and the lives of our children.
But first of all, we have to decide that
that's what we want to do.
And then we have to learn
how to work together
toward those goals.
I know that it's true
that you have to climb
to the top of the mountain
to see the other side.
Well, we wanted wings, we got 'em.
And we're beginning to
use those wings to fly
beyond familiar peaks to the
far side of those mountains.
We can't not do it.
We must continue our explorations.
We must open our eyes and
our minds and our hearts
to accept being the first among humans
to enter the far reaches of space.
(majestic music)
pre-flight and everything, so...
- We're ready to go.
- All we need to do is jump
in and head for Houston.
- After you, sir.
This is John Denver
inviting you to climb aboard
and join us for a trip
that can only be described
as far out.
We've got a date today with
a dream, one of man's oldest,
the dream of flight.
We're going to go places today
where even the birds have never been.
We'll be doing everything from ballooning
to barnstorming to blasting off.
Along the way, we'll meet some heroes,
a couple of geniuses, and
some people like you and me.
But most of all, I can promise you
we're going to have some fun.
I hope you folks recognize me,
but I'm not sure you recognize
the gentleman on my right.
He's my father, Dutch Deutschendorf.
He's been a pilot all his life.
He taught me out of fly.
Simply couldn't do this film without him.
- For a long time, I couldn't
even get him in an airplane.
Now, I now can't keep him out of it.
- Yeah, but I tell you
what, I think he enjoys it
as much as I do.
- You can say that again.
- Want you folks to sit down,
strap your seat belts on.
Over the next hour we're
gonna take you a few places
you've probably never been before.
You'd better hang on, 'cause
we're gonna be going for it.
That's it.
We're going to fire up a balloon
and float over the Colorado Rockies.
We'll take a sentimental
journey back to Kitty Hawk
to fly an exact reproduction
of the Wright brothers' original flier.
We're going to find out what made
those daring young men and women so daring
back in the romantic days of barnstorming.
And for a fantastic thrill,
we'll plunge through the sound barrier
in one of the world's fastest jets.
So check those seat belts again,
because this flight is ready to go.
(inspirational music)
The rockets of the '60s
took man beyond the pull
of gravity to float free
on the edge of space.
By the end of the decade,
the rock-covered moon
had become a stepping stone to infinity.
Who can say where the space
shuttle will take us tomorrow?
At Palomar Observatory, we'll
peer into the depths of space
and wonder at the possible life
forms we may discover there.
We'll experience the thrill of flying
the highest performance jets.
And then we'll just lie back
a little and enjoy the fun
of floating over the Rockies
or rocket into a barrel roll.
We'll even get a little hilarious
at New York's Rhinebeck Aerodrome,
where expert pilots spoof the
legendary aces of World War I.
You don't have to be the
Red Baron to figure out
that everybody from
Rickenbacker to von Richthofen
gets kidded in these weekend melodramas.
I fly every chance I get, I
love it, I really love it.
Hot air ballooning has been with us
for a couple of hundred years.
In those brave old days,
though, the way you did it was
to carry a bonfire in a basket
under a highly flammable
bag made of paper or cloth.
If it strikes you that
it wasn't the safest way
of getting off the ground, you're right.
But at the time, it was the only way.
In recent years, the development
of the propane burner
and flame proofing has been responsible
for putting balloons back in the air.
This ancient pastime has now
become a safe, spectacular,
and enormously-popular sport.
Rallies like this one
at Snowmass, Colorado,
now bring balloonists
together all over the world.
Here at Snowmass, the High Rockies
provide a majestic backdrop
for these colorful giants.
If anybody asks you what
time the balloon is going up,
you're generally safe if you
tell them right after sunup,
since the wind conditions
for hot air ballooning
are best soon after dawn.
It's the kind of sport
that gets you up early.
- Let me goose it one time.
- The very first time we
actually got off the ground,
it wasn't on the Wright brothers' wings.
In fact, it was before
the combustion engine
was even a good idea.
It was way back on
November 21, 1783, right?
- Right.
- In a hot air balloon.
Hang on!
Everybody up!
We're still doing it
today because it's great!
When the Montgolfier brothers
sent their first balloon up
in Paris in 1783, it
drew an enormous crowd.
Among the onlookers was Benjamin Franklin,
our ambassador to France at the time.
As the balloon rose into the air,
someone asked Franklin, "Of
what possible use is it?"
And Franklin's answer, as
usual, was right to the point.
"Of what possible use," he
replied, "is a newborn baby?"
Well, floating along
in the breeze suspended
from a bubble of hot air is great fun,
but don't ever confuse it with
powered, controlled flight.
It took 120 years following
that first balloon ascension
in 1783 and the genius
of the Wright brothers
to solve the riddle of the
ages and get man off the ground
in powered flight for the first time.
A hot air balloon can
get you off the ground,
but what about wings?
Men have always envied birds
their place in the sky,
but it took two bicycle
mechanics from Ohio,
Wilbur and Orville Wright, to show us
how to join the birds in powered flight.
Here on Kill Devil Hill near
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina,
we've returned to the exact spot
where the Wright brothers'
original flier first took
to the air on that historic
December 17th in 1903.
My dad and I have returned
here along with some friends
to see if we can make
history repeat itself.
With my wife Annie here
to give encouragement
and dad supplying plenty of supervision,
we're off to a good start.
We're all here to join
Ken and Nancy Kellett,
a young couple from Colorado.
Ken has built an exact replica
of the original Wright flier.
My dad seems to feel
that the untried replica
may be just as dangerous
to fly as the original.
We're here to answer the same question
the Wright brothers must
have asked themselves
on that December day
in 1903, "Will it fly?"
To really appreciate the giant step
the Wright brothers
took here at Kitty Hawk,
it helps if you imagine someone asking you
to design an airplane and
you had never seen one.
Since their flier had no wheels,
it was launched from a
trolley on a greased skid.
We'll be doing it the same way.
The brothers were far from
being ordinary bicycle mechanics
who somehow stumbled onto the
airplane through dumb luck.
It took years of study and experimentation
and repeated failure
before they got it right.
And along the way, danger
was a constant companion.
To attempt to take off from the same spot
as the Wright brothers has
to give you a feeling of awe.
If this flier takes to the air,
it will be like leaving hallowed ground.
(majestic music)
By today's sophisticated standards,
that attempt may look like a failure,
but when the Wrights
flew that long in 1903,
few would believe it had happened at all.
I guess everybody in
love with flying wants
to go farther, faster and higher.
I know we're ready to give it another try.
It was a strange combination
of Wilber's noticing the way
a buzzard's wing tips turned
down as it banked in flight
and his twisting a long box
from which he was unpacking
a bicycle inner tube that led the brothers
to a momentous breakthrough.
They theorized that by twisting
or warping the wing tips,
they might be able to keep
the machine on an even keel.
This they accomplished by
cleverly rigging a set of cables
which the pilots could
control by shifting his hips.
Our last flight of the
day does a little damage,
but the original flier also cracked up
before the technique was perfected.
But it flew.
- It flew, yeah.
- Well listen, I tell you what,
I really admire anybody that
sets out to do something
and goes for it and does
it, and you did that.
You built that airplane, you made it fly.
You proved you could do it.
I congratulate you.
- Thanks, John.
- Heck of a job.
Once the first plane was off the ground,
everybody wanted to get into the act.
The idea of flying took off overnight.
Hiya, folks, guess who?
(laughs) These biplanes are replicas of
what back in the 1930s and '40s
were simply the hottest thing in the sky.
In fact, now that I think
of it, they might've been
the only thing in the
sky back in those days.
In any case, replicas
like this Steen Skybolt
and the Pitts Special behind
me are being used today
by pilots to enjoy what I
consider the purest, truest,
and rawest form of flying.
Now, my friend Chris Woods and I are gonna
go take these things out and show you
what barnstorming is all about.
You ready, Chris?
- You bet, John, let's do it!
- Here we go!
It was in planes like
these that a generation
of daring young men and women barnstormed
and wing walked their
way across the heartland
of the country.
Along the way, they sold rides.
Two-and-a-half dollars for
a flight with no frills,
an extra five bucks for stunts.
But most important, they
sold the idea of flying.
Their enthusiasm turned
out to be contagious.
And since then, America has
never been quite the same.
Chris, give me a show here.
- I'll be back in a minute.
- [John] All right.
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
- Wow!
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
Whoa, all right!
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
Wow, that's incredible!
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
Now, watch out there,
Chris, Jiminy Christmas!
("Rocky Mountain High" Playing)
You know, the old-time
pilots' white silk scarf
wasn't an affectation, it's
a relic of the 1st World War.
Fighter pilots wore
them to keep their necks
from getting chafed as they
continually turned their heads
to look for enemy planes.
- [Chris] You want to give it a try, John?
- [John] No, I don't think so.
I'm not quite ready for that yet.
I'm learning.
It's a lot of fun, I think.
- [Chris] You gotta do
things the safe way.
- Tell you what, Chris,
I got a different treat for you, though.
Why don't you follow me?
I'll give you a little
tour of these mountains.
We'll go dance with them.
- [Chris] Okay, I'm right behind you.
- [John] Isn't this beautiful?
(majestic music)
Look, Chris, this mountain here
on the right is Capitol Peak.
We'll go up through this notch here
and make a little bit of a left turn,
go back out over the next shoulder.
(majestic music)
Okay, if we come around here, Chris,
this mountain straight
ahead is Snowmass Peak.
Let's not look at it too close, though.
- [Chris] Okay, I'm with you.
- [John] Well, they may
be building them hotter
and faster now.
In fact, we're going to
fly one of the fastest jets
in the world in a couple of minutes,
but for sheer, unadulterated fun,
give me an old barnstormer any day.
We've come to the 1099th Physiological
Training Flight Center here
at Andrews Air Force Base
in Washington, D.C. to
begin training for flight
in the supersonic F-15 Eagle.
I can't wait, I'm so excited about this.
- John, I think we've covered
all the necessary material
in the classroom and we're
ready to go in the chamber.
Are there any questions
you have at this time?
- [John] Well, no, I'm
just kind of anxious to see
all of this applied to experience.
If you think those barnstormers were fast,
you ain't seen nothing yet.
Lieutenant Colonel Frank Mayberry,
the chief of physiological
training here at Andrews,
is going to check me out in
his high altitude chamber.
This pressure cooker can
simulate all the conditions
of high altitude flight
right here at ground level.
We're going to find out how the pilots
of today's hottest aircraft learn to avoid
or deal with such high altitude killers
as decompression sickness
or a shortage of oxygen,
which is called hypoxia.
- You will not, you'll have a super IP
and you're going to be in good hands.
Okay, sir, we got our act together
so we're fixing to make our ascent now.
Very good, here we go.
(audio distorted)
In the pen, are you ready?
Okay, we're going to take
the altitude chamber up
to 35,000 feet (audio distorted).
- [Frank] When we get our
denitrogenation completed
and we get our ascent to altitude,
it's the only time in an altitude chamber
that you will be purposefully exposed
to the area of decompression sickness.
At this time, if you're ready,
why don't you just reach
up, touch the button,
drop the oxygen mask down
from the side of your face.
- All right.
(audio distorted)
It's not suffocation, but I
feel not getting the amount
of air that I'm used to
getting when I breathe.
- [Man In Booth] It's okay?
- Yes, sir.
- [Man In Booth] Okay, fine.
- [Frank] If everybody's ready,
here in about 15 or 20 seconds
we're going to experience
a rapid change of pressure.
- [Man In Booth] Here we go.
- [Frank] Back on oxygen?
Okay, yes sir, that's not bad at all.
- [Man In Booth] Mark
when you want that on.
- [Frank] Hands?
- [Man In Booth] Yeah.
- [Frank] Beautiful recovery.
You can knock it out of emergency
if you would like there, John.
I noticed that, one, you're getting better
each time you don your oxygen mask.
That's typical of familiarity
with the equipment.
- [Man In Booth] And we're
coming into 8,000, sir.
- Well, John, the altitude
chamber of flight is complete.
You passed it, did a great job.
You could fly in the F-15.
- I can't wait, sir, thanks very much.
Handshake, that's it, all right.
Langley Air Force Base, Virginia,
home of the 2700th Fighter Squadron,
the oldest fighter
squadron in the Air Force,
and the one I'll be flying with.
As my dad and I roll
past the parked planes,
Eagles, they're called,
I can't help thinking
it's nice to see some Eagles that aren't
on anybody's list of endangered species.
If Orville and Wilbur could only see
how their baby has grown.
I still can't believe
that I am actually going
to be flying one of them.
Here to meet us, the Commander
of the First Tactical
Fighter Unit, Colonel Don Miller,
and his associate, Colonel Doug Priester.
- J.D., you probably
wonder why we've hung you
in this thing called suspended agony.
- Yes, I certainly understand the term.
And what is the deal, you guys mad at me?
- Oh no, John, all of us
go through this training.
- [Don] Everybody gets it.
- Okay.
- You've gotta go through
a parachute simulation
before you go fly your Eagle jet.
- Great.
- Okay, John, now that you've gone
through the egress trainer,
you bailed out of the aircraft,
now you've got a lot of sentry lead,
the parachute's over your
head, now what do you do?
- Here to get me out of this mess
and into his airplane, I hope,
is Lieutenant Colonel George Dvorchak.
Flanking him, Captains Frank
Pickert and Roe Staton.
If I'm in the wires, I
don't want to hang anything,
I should just wriggle a little bit.
I ought to slip right down through.
If I don't, just hang there and be cool.
And I'm ready to fly!
- Let's go!
- I'm ready.
- John, you know you're flying
with the 2700th Fighter Squadron,
the oldest fighter
squadron in the Air Force.
- The oldest, flying the newest airplane.
- Flying the newest airplane.
- All right!
Thanks you, guys.
- [Man] Time to check six.
- [John] Yeah, check six.
- Frank will be right along
to help straighten you out
in the back there, okay?
- [John] Great.
- [Woman] Go ahead, left,
right, closed, clear.
- [Man] Thank you much for your help.
- [Woman] All right, enjoy your flight.
(audio distorted)
- [Man] Langley Wolf-5-1-Taxi-3
Eagle jet standing by
for clearance for 5-1 and a 5-2 flight.
- [Dispatcher] Wolf-5-1 and Wolf-5-2 taxi
to runway 07, wind 010 at 1-4.
Altimeter 3015.
- [Pilot] Okay, John, you ready?
- [John] I am ready, sir.
- [Pilot] We are going.
- [John] Whoo!
(majestic music)
- [Pilot] Okay, I'm gonna
check in the other flight.
Wolf 5-1 flight check.
- [Pilot 2] 2.
- [Pilot] There we go,
there's our players.
We gotta roll it on over.
- [John] Whoo!
(John laughs)
- [Pilot] Okay, John, you go it.
Try equipment, just bang
that stick over to the side.
Good.
- [John] Whoo, isn't that great!
Yes!
(dispatch audio distorted)
(majestic music)
- [Pilot] Okay, go ahead and
start pulling it up to steep.
Now, just go ahead and roll it on over.
Pull it down to the horizon line.
A very important afterburner here.
That looks good.
(pilot audio distorted)
- [Pilot] Okay, look behind you, John.
- [John] That is great!
(majestic music)
- [Pilot] Just modulate the
power where you want it.
Altitude doesn't make a difference now.
You can clear it down to
the ocean or to 50,000 feet.
(majestic music)
Wow, that's a flight to remember.
You know, it's almost
impossible for the mind
to comprehend that we've come
from the Kitty Hawk flier
to this baby, which knives through the air
somewhere close to three
times the speed of sound,
and all in the same century.
Flying this plane is a little
like riding a bolt of lightning.
If I had noticed how fast
Colonel Dvorchak got out,
I might've been ready for the aftershock.
(crowd cheers)
Well, I guess that makes
me a baptized member
of the 2700th, and I'm proud to be.
This sculpture is called "Ad Astra,"
and it means "to the stars."
And that's what this place is all about.
This is the Air and Space Museum
at the Smithsonian Institute
here in Washington, D.C.
And this is the most incredible
museum I've ever been in.
Everywhere you look around
here are fantastic dinosaurs
of space and flight.
I mean, that's the real Kitty Hawk flier.
Over here is the Spirit of St.
Louis, the X-15 rocket plane
that bridged the gap
between man and the stars,
the Pioneer spacecraft.
More people have visited this museum
than any other museum in the world,
over 33 million people
since it opened in 1976.
I'm here because this place
supports one of the things
that I really strongly believe in,
and that's our continued
exploration of space.
This is like a grand history
of American achievement,
keeping the memories alive in
our hearts and in our minds.
- [Controller] Nine, eight,
seven, all engines are started,
two, one, zero, we have a liftoff.
The satellite is moving off the pad.
It has now cleared the tower.
(audio distorted)
("The Higher We Fly")
♪ Oh, I have slipped the
surly bonds of Earth ♪
♪ And danced the skies on
laughter-silvered wings ♪
♪ Sunward I've climbed and
joined the tumbling mirth ♪
♪ Of sun-split clouds and
done a hundred things ♪
♪ I've wheeled and soared and swung ♪
♪ High in the sunlit silence ♪
♪ Hov'ring there I've chased
the shouting wind along ♪
♪ And flew my eager craft
through footless halls of air ♪
♪ The higher we fly, the father we go ♪
♪ The closer we are to each other ♪
♪ The darker the night,
the brighter the star ♪
♪ In peace go my sisters and brothers ♪
This place is a reminder
of the mind-boggling places
that we've already been,
but even more importantly,
it's an inspiration for the
challenges that lie ahead.
♪ Up, up the long delirious burning blue ♪
♪ I've topped the wind-swept
heights with easy grace ♪
♪ Where never lark or even eagle flew ♪
♪ And while with silent
lifting mind I've trod ♪
♪ The high untrespassed
sanctity of space ♪
♪ Put out my hand and
touched the face of God ♪
♪ The higher we fly, the farther we go ♪
♪ The closer we are to each other ♪
♪ The darker the night,
the brighter the star ♪
♪ In peace go my sisters and brothers ♪
To meet those challenges,
NASA's giant space shuttle,
the world's first reusable spaceship.
- And you've got control of the airplane.
- Okay, got it.
- And I'm holding 249.
- [John] Designed to
blast off like a rocket
and land like a glider, this
is our ticket to the future.
But you'll see for yourselves.
We're about to leave on a
simulated flight into space.
- [Man On Right] So at 36 I'm online,
look at the Mach number, 3.4.
Now this thing is really
moving at this time
and we're coming down rapidly.
We're at any 83,000 feet, 290 knots now.
Okay, we're gonna ask
you to give us a nice,
gentle 30 degree bank turn when you get up
to the head in alignment circle.
- [John] Roger.
- [Dispatcher] Hello,
Columbia, Chase 1 onboard.
- Okay, I'm starting to
see a runway up here.
Got 265 knots, we're lined up.
12,000 feet, I'll arm the landing gear.
- [Dispatcher] All right, Dan is asking
for that little pitch
down to get 290 knots.
- [Man On Right] Roger.
We're at 300 knots, we're looking
good, we're at 7,000 feet.
- [John] Designed for
earth orbital flights
of up to 30 days each, the
shuttle can carry seven people
and 65,000 pounds of payload,
including research equipment
for studying astronomy,
weather, and communications,
among other things now.
- [Man On Right] Okay, go ahead
and let the nose come on down.
Wheels on the way, nose coming up.
- [Dispatcher] 400 feet, 300 feet, 250,
200, 150, 100, 80, 70, 40, 30,
20, five, five, three, two.
Touchdown.
- [Man On Right] Okay,
nose wheel on the ground.
We'll steer back over
the runway center line.
Okay, John, you're on
the ground, looks good.
- Okay, folks, keep your seats,
next stop, Palomar, and a
thrilling look into infinity.
I'm on Palomar Mountain riding the dome
of the Hale telescope.
Now, people call this
the world's greatest eye
because its powers are so enormous.
It collects the light
of a million human eyes.
It can pick up candlelight at
a distance of 10,000 miles.
It can see 10,000 million
light years into space.
I mean, far out.
Come on inside with me.
We are about to look eight
billion light years into space,
and here to guide us through the galaxies,
world renowned astronomer
Dr. Jesse Greenstein.
- Hi, John.
- Hiya, Doctor.
- How'd you like it out there?
- Well, I think this
is pretty far out, sir.
- Do you want to start turning the dome
just to see how that works?
Before we do that, we've got to open it,
so let's get the opening, that's right.
- [John] Look at that.
Now, the whole roof moves
independently of each other.
- [Jesse] That's right,
takes a skilled operator.
And of course, then the
first thing you want to do is
open the mirror cover.
If you want to do that, that
switch is right over here.
Why don't you just push
the switch away from you?
You'll hear a noise opening
the 200-inch mirror to the sky.
- Look at that, that's really
the heart of the telescope,
that incredible mirror.
- The pie-shaped segments,
one goes over another
like an iris, in a sense.
- [John] Isn't that amazing?
- Okay, I think it's about time now,
we can get into the cage.
- And we get to take a look.
- We get to take a look.
- You can actually see,
you have a view piece here-
- Yeah, we have an eye
piece we could use mainly
for centering of the field.
We tend not to actually look
during any serious observation.
- [John] The Hale
telescope weighs 530 tons,
but it's so delicately
balanced that the tiny motor
which moves it generates
only 1/12th of a horsepower.
- The best thing, since
this seat is tilted
at a crazy angle now, it'll
be more comfortable later,
just back in.
- Now, I can hold on, there's nothing-
- Hold on to everything
except for one button,
which you can't rest-
- [John] I'm a little
sideways here, actually.
- [Jesse] All right, are we hitting it?
- [John] No, sir.
- All right, now see if
you can get your eye up
to that eye piece here where the lights-
- [John] Right here.
- [Jesse] Yes.
- Now, what am I gonna
see, what am I looking at?
- You're looking, oh, just at a star
10,000 times brighter
than the sun or something.
It's in the Andromeda,
you've seen the Andromeda.
- Is that right?
You mean this is a star in Andromeda.
- That's right, that's right.
- You're kidding.
- I'm not kidding.
We seldom, at least we
hope we're not kidding.
- I beg your pardon.
Far out.
In 1919, astronomers saw
something only visible
during a total solar eclipse.
The sun's gravity bends passing starlight.
Astronomer Edwin Hubble's later discovery
that the furthest
galaxies moved the fastest
added further confirmation of Einstein's
general theory of relativity.
Einstein and Hubble and
redefined the universe.
- You see now how we can
move that in the sky.
Now, if you lean forward,
I think you can see
this object in the distance.
- Before us, a gigantic nebula,
the spectacular remnant of
an ancient stellar explosion.
Wow.
What we are seeing in the night sky
may be the death of a
star, a long past event
the light of which is
only just now reaching us.
Not even the stars are eternal.
- [Jesse] The stars live and die.
- [John] It's a living entity.
- [Jesse] As far as I'm concerned,
the stars are life in the universe.
The star is born out of dust and gas,
it lives and it dies.
- What is a galaxy?
- The galaxy is a family of stars.
- [John] That's how you would describe it.
- It's a hundred billion
stars moving together
under their mutual gravity
in a giant spiral pattern
like Andromeda.
- Now, our galaxy is the Milky Way.
- [Jesse] That's right.
- So what was at the beginning, then?
- [Jesse] It was like a cosmic egg.
The universe began with this big bang
of hydrogen and helium
in which all the energy
and ultimately all the matter
of the universe was concentrated.
By finding that the more
distant objects move faster
and faster away from us, we deduced
that it was not just a simple motion,
but that space itself was expanding.
The sun gave birth to
the planets, we think,
in a much more peaceful way.
At a very low temperature, in fact,
against this enormous
temperature measure bologna
in the billions and billions of degrees
at the beginning of time.
- [John] What was the
earth like originally?
- [Jesse] Well, we sort
of think it was like
these more planets that
we see from space now,
covered with debris formed
by the gradual accumulation
of impacting small asteroid-type bodies,
tons of rock hurtling in.
- [John] The early history
of our planet and the origins
of life on it remains shrouded in mystery.
Scientists can only
speculate on the convulsions
which led to the
formation of cells capable
of reproducing themselves.
In one of my favorite poems,
Langdon Smith says it best.
"When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
in the Paleozoic time, and
side by side on the ebbing tide
we sprawled through the ooze and slime,
the eons came and the eons fled
and the sleep that wrapped us fast
was riven away in a newer day
and the night of death was passed.
Thus life by life and love by love
we passed through the cycles strange,
and breath by breath and death by death
we followed the chain of change.
- [Jesse] With space exploration,
we looked through our own solar system,
a rough dozen planets and 20
satellites or thereabouts,
and they're all miserable
places, we wouldn't live there.
We seem to be in a very
strangely fortunate world.
- [John] What you're looking
for most specifically is
that other stars like our
sun probably have planets
around them, is that right?
- [Jesse] I was interested mostly,
since there is a great interest
in other intelligences and other worlds,
in first finding if
there was one other world
in which anything could live.
- [John] How many galaxies
are there, do we know?
- Well, we really don't know.
That's one of the main goals
of the study of cosmology
and the expanding universe.
But the guess is that there are somewhere
between hundreds of millions
and some billions of galaxies.
And each one has a population
of a hundred billion stars
like our sun, there's no end to it.
- Is there no end to it?
- We don't know.
- [John] Oh really?
- We don't know, science is built on-
- Science cannot tell you that.
- Not yet, we look at these things,
we look at more and more distant ones,
we strain our equipment and our mind.
It's the process that
we're trying to find out,
because there's no point in
giving an answer in advance.
Doors beyond doors I wish
we could see through.
- [John] Yeah!
- [Jesse] It's gonna
take very special means,
it's gonna take different
kinds of telescopes.
For example, work in infrared
where you detect the heat
radiation of a planet
relatively more easily
than its reflected light.
- [John] We also send messages into space,
abstract attempts to explain who we are.
Since life as we know it
is most probably near stars
like our sun, we aim our electronic ears
in their direction.
- [Jesse] Carbon is formed in stars.
Oxygen is formed in stars.
Everything else was born in stars.
And we're born of the same
kind of material from stars.
- So if that is the case, then,
and we feel that all the materials
are pretty much the same in the universe,
then if there is another planet
in a situation like ours,
what are the probabilities
that this creation of life,
living organisms, does that
get to be probable then?
- [Jesse] To me it
would seem that the fact
that we are made of the
commonest elements synthesized
by nuclear burning in stars make us,
so it's very difficult to believe that,
if there's a platform at
about the right temperature,
that life might not develop spontaneously.
Well, that's pretty far
out, as you would say.
But it's true also.
You couldn't sit up in that chair eight
or 10 hours a night
without having some belief
that'll be novelty.
Well, life is the ultimate novelty.
- [John] But novelty
implies unpredictability,
and nowhere is it chiseled
in stone that life,
if it exists beyond the earth,
would necessarily have evolved
the same way it has here.
A tree-like creature capable of movement,
guided by some primitive impulse
to seek the nutrients necessary
to survive and reproduce,
may be the ruler of some alien planet
a billion light years away.
Harvard's Nobel Prize winning biologist
Professor George Wald
believes emphatically
in extraterrestrial life.
He said, "I think there is no question
that we live in an inhabited universe
that has life all over it."
- [Jesse] That sense of wonder
is what forces us to work
and it may be that that sense of striving
for the impossible.
- [John] But it is precisely
this sense of wonder,
of curiosity, and our
compulsion to satisfy it
that sets us apart from all
our fellow creatures on earth.
Perhaps our search will
lead us to discover
that the king of some
distant planet resembles one
of the giant predators of our own ocean,
a throwback, by earthly definition,
to a time before animals
had crawled out of the
water to survive on land.
No one can predict where our
sense of wonder will take us
or what we will find on the
voyage to distant worlds.
And it would be rash of us to assume
that man represents the
highest form of life
in the universe.
Compared with what we may discover,
we may be more primitive than this monarch
from the depths of another world.
What about intelligent life?
- [Jesse] First, we've gotta look.
Without information, there's no knowledge.
We have to expect miracles,
but we have to make them work.
- [John] It may be presumptuous to assume
that an alien creature could resemble us,
but considering the odds,
it's just as presumptuous to rule it out.
And it might not only be
similar, but far superior.
Astronomer Richard
Berendzen had this to say
of life on other worlds,
"The question has become
not so much one of if as of where.
And who knows, many of these forms of life
are possibly far more technically
advanced than ourselves."
How would you define science,
what is science to you?
- [Jesse] Science is the use
of the most sophisticated technologies
which one can develop to
satisfy individual aspiration.
It's a song, it's a dream where
you're limited by reality,
but you can twiddle a lot of
knobs to manipulate things too.
- I love that, that you said it that way,
that science, too, this
incredible mathematical
organized thing is a song, it's a dance.
It's a miracle, it's a work of art.
Human beings are pretty incredible.
- My name is Cole Palen,
and I've been working
on these things really all my life.
Why did I start the Rhinebeck Aerodrome?
I just thought old airplanes
ought to have a fine old home.
Why are people interested in old airplanes
with such marvelous,
sophisticated airplanes
flying around today?
With the old airplanes, it can be one man
by himself controlling
the whole situation.
I think it's human nature to want
to do the whole thing
themselves, the individuals.
- Boy, that thing is
gonna need some grease.
My name's Dave Fox.
I'm been flying here for
25 years at old Rhinebeck,
and enjoying every minute of it.
I started flying in 1934 in Texas,
and I've got about 20,000 hours now.
And I guess these are more fun
than anything else I've flown.
There's not only a certain
amount of ego to it,
but there's a euphoria
that comes over you.
If you fly the thing and fly it well,
you know that you've done
it, and nobody can tell you,
there's no electricity, so
there's obviously no radio
for somebody on the ground to tell you
that you're doing wrong or what
you're supposed to do next.
And of course, it was always a thrill
to get up and look down.
There's nothing quite
like it on a beautiful day
when you break out and see
the ground for the first time.
It's a thrill, I never got over that.
- [John] The crowd jams the bleachers
every summer weekend here at
the old Rhinebeck Aerodrome,
a hundred miles up the Hudson
River from New York City.
What they've come to see is
an old fashioned air show
put on by some of the best
stunt pilots in the world.
The planes they fly are the
tuned up relics of World War I,
open cockpit plane with
names like the Sopwith Camel,
SPAD, Jenny, the Fokker DR-1 triplane.
These are the planes that made
legends of the famous aces,
Immelmann, Rickenbacker
and the Red Baron himself,
von Richthofen.
Here at Rhinebeck, the
legends are gently kidded.
Like the aces they are spoofing,
these pilots too fly by
the seats of their pants,
but their dog fights
are more bark than bite
and their bombs more smoke than shrapnel.
(bombs whistle and explode)
(lively music)
In Rhinebeck's Flying Circus,
you don't need a program
to tell the bad guys from the good guys.
The damsel in distress
may be tied to a barrel
instead of a railroad track,
but nobody doubts for a
minute that she'll survive.
(dramatic music)
The heroes are all fewer apart
in this nostalgic look back
and we know before it's all over
the villain will get it in the end.
(dramatic music)
(crowd applauds)
- The space program, I think
it's a marvelous thing.
My father delivered mail
in a horse and buggy,
and he lived to see Sputnik.
A wonderful time to be alive.
- The use of space is gonna be necessary
to continue the progress of man.
It's gonna lead the way to
long-term space populations.
They're actually gonna be generations
within the next 100 years who
were born and raised in space.
To keep it going, they're gonna have
to make the space shuttle
do things for people,
because people is the key to
anything we ever have done
as a nation or will do as a nation.
- In 1948, the experts said
it would be another 200 years
before we'd make it to
the moon, but in 1969,
this Saturn V rocket was the initial stage
of a deliver system which
carried two Americans
to its surface and
brought them safely home.
Today, this rocket is
practically obsolete.
The space shuttle has been born,
and with it the promise of new
and even greater discovery.
It's kind of hard to imagine,
but someday even the space
shuttle will become obsolete
as we continue to step into
the future and out of the past.
So what does all this mean, these dreams
of the past turning
into modern day reality?
Well, I'm convinced that it means
that we can accomplish just about anything
we set our minds to.
We can continue to solve
the most difficult problems
that we face here on
earth and learn new ways
to improve the quality of our lives
and the lives of our children.
But first of all, we have to decide that
that's what we want to do.
And then we have to learn
how to work together
toward those goals.
I know that it's true
that you have to climb
to the top of the mountain
to see the other side.
Well, we wanted wings, we got 'em.
And we're beginning to
use those wings to fly
beyond familiar peaks to the
far side of those mountains.
We can't not do it.
We must continue our explorations.
We must open our eyes and
our minds and our hearts
to accept being the first among humans
to enter the far reaches of space.
(majestic music)