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Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 On The Moon

This reader's theater adaptation summarizes the book "Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon" and depicts the immense team effort required to land astronauts on the lunar surface. It highlights the contributions of thousands of engineers, technicians, and staff who designed and built components like the lunar module and space suits, as well as the mission control employees who monitored the landing from Earth and solved problems in real time. The dramatic performance concludes with Neil Armstrong's famous first words upon stepping onto the moon's surface.

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Amparo Sánchez Fariña
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246 views4 pages

Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 On The Moon

This reader's theater adaptation summarizes the book "Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon" and depicts the immense team effort required to land astronauts on the lunar surface. It highlights the contributions of thousands of engineers, technicians, and staff who designed and built components like the lunar module and space suits, as well as the mission control employees who monitored the landing from Earth and solved problems in real time. The dramatic performance concludes with Neil Armstrong's famous first words upon stepping onto the moon's surface.

Uploaded by

Amparo Sánchez Fariña
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A Reader’s Theatre adaptation of Catherine Thimmesh’s

Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon

By Dixie Allen
June, 2008

Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon by Catherine
Thimmesh. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. All non-amateur performances must be secured in writing from
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Approximately 7 Minutes

Readers
Narrator President Kennedy
Astronaut Lunar Module Employee (LEM 1, 2, 3)
Kennedy Space Employee (KSC 1, 2, 3)
Mission Control Employee (MC 1, 2, 3)
The number of performers can be reduced to just 6 if the sets of employees are
acted by the same set of 3 performers. The different characters can be identified either
through a sign they wear, a sign that is on the back of their scripts so the audience can
see, or even the wearing of different “hats” (Lunar Module Employees might have a lab
coat, the Kennedy Space Employees might wear a hard hat, a space helmet for the
astronaut, and so forth) to signify their role. The possibilities are endless.

Narrator: This scene is taken from Team Moon: How 400,000 People
Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon by Catherine Thimmesh. We open
with words from President Kennedy.
.
President Kennedy: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and
returning him safely to Earth.”

Narrator: It was mind-boggling. The television itself had been a flat-out


miracle. And now, that technological wonder of wonders would
very soon transmit pictures of a man, on the moon!

Astronaut: “All this is possible only through the blood, sweat, and tears of a
number of people...All you see [are] the three of us, but beneath
the surface are thousands of others.”

LEM 1: There were 7,500 of us. We designed, developed, and built the
lunar module, christened Eagle for Apollo 11, from the ground up.
LEM 2: There was no such thing as a random failure. We eliminated them
one by one.

Astronaut: Our lives depended on it.

LEM 3: It was OUR baby. It was OUR handiwork. It was eight years of
OUR lives

LEM 1: And soon, very soon, it was going to land on that giant glowing
ball in space.

LEM 2: Space, it’s dangerous out there. “In designing the command
module, the one thing we had to be sure of was that we could keep
the crew alive.”

Astronaut: And we appreciated that.

Narrator: To help keep the crew alive required 14,000 other folks at North
American Rockwell and a hodgepodge of 8 thousand other
companies who worked on the command module itself. Could their
command module keep the crew alive?

Astronaut: I think that’s a perfectly good question.

Narrator: Launch operators at Kennedy Space Center in Florida was its own
little town.

KSC 1: There were seventeen thousand of us at the Kennedy Space Center:


engineers, technicians, mechanics, contractors, and managers. All
of us were needed to pull together a launch.

All: Whew!

KSC 2: Check, check, check, test, stack the 3 rocket stages, roll it out,
check and recheck, fuel it, and ready it for liftoff.

All: Whew!

KSC 1: We even did a Countdown Demonstration Test!

All: Whew!

Narrator: And then it was time. July 16, 1969, they were ready.

LEM All: We were ready.


KSC All: We were ready.

Astronaut: We were ready.

Narrator: The world watched when at 9:32 A.M…

All: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Blastoff!

Narrator: Apollo 11 rocketed to the moon after orbiting the earth. When they
got to the moon, they began circling and studying the moon for 12
revolutions. On the 13th orbit the Eagle undocked from Columbia
and prepared to descend to the lunar surface.

Astronaut: “The Eagle has wings.”

Narrator: Mission Control waited, and watched, and monitored the controls.

MC 1: “You are Go for PD!

(aside to the audience)

MC 2: That means “Powered Descent Ignition”.

Narrator: In twelve minutes the astronauts would be on the surface of the


moon. (Pause) Oh no, suddenly alarms are raised.

MC 3: BAM! We’re told it’s a twelve-oh-two! (aside: which means


trouble).

Astronaut: We have a problem! What is it? Do we land? Do we abort? Are we


in danger? Are we blowing up? Tell us what to do. Hurry!

Narrator: Challenge number 1: Suddenly the people at Mission Control went


into a flurry of activity.

MC 1: Searching.

MC 2: Sifting.

MC 3: Sorting.

MC 1: Plucking.

MC 2: Juggling.

MC 3: Judging.
Narrator: And finally they were told to go ahead with the landing.

Mission Control All: We are Go on that alarm.

Narrator: Then the alarm sounded again. Challenge number 2.

MC 2: They’re almost out of fuel.

MC 3: It’s taking too long to land.

MC 1: We held our breaths!

Narrator: Click! The astronauts had landed on the moon.

All: Whew!

Narrator: Challenge number 3. The temperature in a fuel line started to rise.

MC 3: From table to table, rushing.

MC 1: Telephones, dialing.

MC 2: Telephones, ringing.

Narrator: Suddenly, though, just as the procedure was about to be relayed to


solve the problem, the temperature dropped! And it stayed down.
The frozen slug had melted.

All: Whew!

Narrator: It was finally time to walk on the moon. Roughly 500 people
worked on the space suit alone to make that possible. And just
what would happen when Neil Armstrong, the commander, put his
feet on the surface of the moon? Nevertheless, the time had come
for him to take that first step on the Moon.

Astronaut: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Narrator: And the world went...

All: Whew!

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