Astronauts report it feels good T-manus 25 seconds.

20 seconds and counting.

T-minus 15 seconds. Guidances internal.

12, 11, 10, 9.

Ignition sequence starts.

6.5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.

All engine drummer.

Lift-off. We have a liftoff.

32 minutes past the hour. Lift-off in Apollo 11.

Tower cleared.

Hello and welcome. This is Michael Annison. You're listening to Episode 214 of the Space Rocket History podcast.

And now, Apollo 11, the climb to orbit.

To the spectators, four miles away from the launch pad, the scene was mystifying, surreal. The rocket moved. It seemed to levitate,

inching upward on a tower of incandescent fire. But there was no sound, only the unsuspecting

sea-gulls wheeling in the silent sky. And then, the surface of the lagoon in front of the press grandstand

suddenly rippled as the shockwave flashed across and thudded into the chest of the spectators

and shook the ground beneath their feet and filled their skulls with a crackling thunder that overwhelmed the atmosphere itself.

To the million souls who watched Allstruck as the great machine ascended,

there could not have been the slightest doubt that this thing was leaving the planet.

As the rocket disappeared downrange, Dave Levine and the rest of the spacecraft

systems experts jumped from their consoles and dashed for the parking lot, where helicopters

waited to fly them to the airport for the two-hour ride to Texas. Von Braun, Miller,

...