Behind the Google Doodle 50th anniversary of the moon.
JACK KING: 3, 2, 1, 0, liftoff.We have a liftoff, 32minutes past the hour, liftoff on Apollo 11. We're celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. PEDRO VERGANI: Yeah, and [INAUDIBLE]going to be able to travel from Earth to the moon and find out more about how things worked back then. JESSICA YU: AstronautMike Collins, who was part of this mission, provides the voiceover to bring you through this whole experience.
PEDRO VERGANI: On a project like this, everything starts with research, as much research as you can do.JESSICA YU: We all did a ton of conceptualizing and tossing around ideas and refining them. We watched documentaries and did a lot of sketching and figuring out how we could take this monumental achievement and translate it back to what it means today. PEDRO VERGANI: Forevery doodle, we try to be as accurate as possible. And we try to go to somebody who is an expert on it. And that's why we went in to talk to NASA and [INAUDIBLE] them. And we asked hundreds of questions, especially to Bill, who is the chief historian there. He's absolutely brilliant. He knows everything about everything related to NASA history.
BILL BARRY: I can completely geek out about random facts about the Apollo program. And the folks at Google are just eating it all up. It's been a great collaboration. But the schedule called for the astronauts to take a sleep rest period after landing on the moon. JESSICA YU: Yeah, right.[LAUGHTER]BILL BARRY: Yeah, exactly, exactly
JESSICA YU: One of the greatest things about this doodle is that we got astronauts to make Collins help. And so we presented him with a rough idea of a script. But he really injected a lot of his own thoughts and his own feelings and details in there that we would have otherwise never known. So that was incredible.
MICHAEL COLLINS: Hi, my name is Mike Collins, an astronaut on Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon in July '1969.I was the one who stayed in orbit. I was about 60 miles, going around overhead while Neil and Buzz were-- whatever they were doing--frolicking, I think, on the surface of the moon.
JESSICA YU: His perspective on it was really amazing and inspiring.PEDRO VERGANI: Yeah, especially when he talks about when he was by himself on the other side of the moon. And he was just drinking coffee. And he was happy there. He had hot coffee. And he was reading a book. And it makes it so much more human.
MICHAEL COLLINS: The first view of the moon up close was awe-inspiring. But even more than that, it was looking back on the tiny little Earth. You know, one time I said, hey, Houston, Apollo 11 here. I've got the world in my window. Houston, Apollo 11.SPEAKER: Go ahead, 11.MICHAEL COLLINS: Guys, I've got the world in my window for a change and looking at it through the binoculars.For one brief moment, the first lunar landing brought people from all over the globe. Instead of saying you Americans did it, they said we did it.
BILL BARRY: I think it'll be a fun doodle that I think people will enjoy. But I also hope they learned a little bit about something and they remember how much work was done by 400,000 people around planet Earth to make that happen50 years ago. PEDRO VERGANI: I think it's a testament to inspire people to go further and go where you haven't been before.MICHAEL COLLINS: The things that we do, we hope will not be forgotten. So I'm glad that Apollo is remembered 50 years later. Good night from Apollo 11.
