A documentary film crew follows the final preparations for the first manned Apollo launch. Now behind schedule due to the Apollo 1 fire, astronauts and launch pad personnel bet their lives--and America's space future--on its success.

Geology guru Lee Silver helps Dave Scott and his Apollo 15 crew unravel the moon's mysterious origins by teaching them to become his lunar surrogates, and thus the first fully-trained “field observers” on another world.