Engineers at Grumman Aviation work with NASA and the Apollo 9 astronauts to design, build, and finally test-fly the world's first true spaceship—a “lunar module” which will hopefully land the first humans on the moon.

As the life-threatening consequences of the Apollo 13 accident escalate in real time, so do the tensions among the NASA press corps covering it. Among them, a respected, old-school TV journalist questions the confrontational methods of a younger, slicker colleague.