From Sea to Shining Sea:
A Film Treatment by Paul Gasek and Gene Carl Feldman
These are kindred missions of pure discovery, carried out by two crews in two space ships, each facing a voyage out of our atmosphere - and into the unknown.
Historical footage: NASA, CBS, and Grumman footage to support text.
Original: Interviews with Bob Ballard, Scott Carpenter, Sylvia Earle, et al.
Animation: posing both "spacecraft" side by side, illustrating text.
Both crews - three astronauts and six aquanauts - are experienced and highly trained to survive and accomplish their missions. The physics, chemistry, and biology of each mission are challenging, complex, and unforgiving. With very little margin for error, both crews face annihilation in the event of catastrophe.
Both space ships - the LEM and the Franklin - have been built by Grumman, the LEM in the US and the Ben Franklin by a Swiss firm under contract to Grumman. Both are special craft designed to withstand the hostile environments they encounter, as well as provide life support and protection for the crews within. Both craft are sealed, self-contained micro-environments.
The differences are more obvious. The Lunar Module will attain speeds in excess of 24,000 miles an hour. The Ben Franklin will never exceed 6 miles an hour.
For Apollo 11, the mission is the destination. For the Franklin, the mission is the voyage.
Historical: CBS footage — Mr. Cronkite begins our coverage of the moon mission.
While Walter Cronkite narrates every detail of the Moon mission to an enthralled world, no one except the few who are intimately involved with the Ben Franklin mission will be aware of the six men sealed in a 50 foot steel mesoscaphe drifting a thousand feet down in the dark and cold of the Gulf Stream.
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