Transcripts For CSPAN3 Washington Journal Apollo 11 Moon Landing 50th Anniversary 20240714

One giant leap for mankind. On this 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing todays washington journal in conjunction with cspans American History tv will focus on this historic event and its influence on modern spaceflight. For the next three hours we are live from the national air and space museum here in washington, d. C. Where we will talk about apollo 11 with historians, command module pilot Michael Collins and you. You can call us and let us know your impressions of apollo 11 if you watched the moon landing and you want to talk about that day, your impressions of it, 2027488000 and for all others, 2027488001. You can post cspan wj your thoughts and impressions of the 50th anniversary, do the same at our Facebook Page at facebook. Com cspan. Our show will be based here from the national air and space museum. A couple facts about the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 mission, it was astronauts Neil Armstrong, buzz aldrin and Michael Collins, the team for that day. The launch you will remember took place july 16th, 1969 at about 9 30 in the morning, 9 32 to be exact. The moon landing on july 20th in july of 69, that at 4 17 in the afternoon. The first step by Neil Armstrong at about 10 56 p. M. On july 20th. Buzz aldrin would follow along about 20 minutes later from that. That mission when the astronauts left the moon july 21st of 1969 and returning to earth back on july 24th, 1969. We will talk about the historical significance, we will talk about what it means for spaceflight today and also as we hear from historians and astronauts and the like, we will hear from you, too, and you can call and let us know those impressions. If you watched the moon landing 2027488,000. 2027488001 for all others this morning. This program is being done today in conjunction with our colleagues at American History tv. If you dont know cspan 3 on the weekends turns into that channel with historical programming, interviews, lectures and the like and also they have a way of talking to you about the 50th anniversary. You can if you want to share your impressions on their specific facebook, thats cspan history at facebook. Com. You can talk about the apollo 11 mission, you can participate on twitter, there is a poll there cspanhistory is how you do that. And ahtv all weekend long will give you programming specifically related to apollo 11 and you can watch that on cspan 3. Go to our website at cspan. Org. If you go to their website page you can find out all the programming that they have planned and all the other information for you specifically not only about apollo 11, but other programming they have as well. So a lot of interesting facts when it comes to the apollo 11 mission, the things they carried on apollo 11. Of course, the astronauts, of course, science experiments and things of the like, but some of the other things they carried as well, a plaque commemorating the landing, that was on one of the arms of the lunar modules, that plaque would eventually stay behind on the surface of the foon moon. They carried two large American Flags, also flags of certain nations and the United Nations flags, too. As youve seen pictures of people walking on the moon, especially armstrong and aldrin, that came courtesy of a tv camera that went on board the module as well along with other things. We will talk about those things in the course of the morning, but, again, to hear from you primarily during this three hours as we have a new location usually we are at our washington journal set here in d. C. , not too far away from the national air and space museum but theyre hosting us this morning as well. Jack in rhode island starts us off this morning on impressions for those who watched the moon landing. Jack, good morning, thanks for giving us a call. Go ahead. Caller thank you. And im showing my age because i did watch it with my father who was a little bit older, he is no longer here. Now, whats not really publicized because its not politically correct, the key people that got us to the moon were the technological geniuses that were germans. Okay. Von brown leaded the project. Okay. Then there was also Arthur Rudolph and then there were a lot of key engineers and scientists from operation paperclip. They were german scientists and german engineers that the u. S. Government let in after world war ii because they wanted their expertise in rocket engineering. For all that history caller what . For all that history and background, then, from the time that you watched it what are your impressions of the apollo 11 mission itself . Caller extremely successful. Absolutely amazing and it was because primarily of those men, but also, too, those astronauts were absolutely amazing. Their bravery, you know, was astounding and i have to admit, you know, im a little proud myself because my ancestry is german. Okay . Those german guys a couple of those were nazis and, you know, maybe they did that to protect themselves, but okay. Lets hear from lets hear from martha. Martha in Virginia Beach also watched the moon landing. Youre next. Go ahead. Caller hi. I wanted to thank you all for covering this from the very beginning. My husbands cousin james shea was in charge of an unfortunate accident where they burned before they even got out of space and a lot of pressure was put on them at that time to hurry up, we have to beat the russians. So i think that in hindsight maybe that there was some corners that were cut and they just jumped into the thing too soon and that may have been what happened. But ive been fascinated are you talking about the events of apollo 1 . Is that what youre talking about . Caller yes. Uhhuh. But thank heavens there was a gentleman on there the other day talking about that, you know, from the beginning to this point. So thank you for taking my call. Have a good day. Well, before you go, martha, whats a specific memory do you have about the landing itself or the mission itself . Caller well, my mother and i were fascinated with it and she died in 1976, but we sat up there at night and watched that thing, watched it go on. My husband had to go to sleep because he had to go to work the next day, but anyway so anyway but thats how you know, i was fascinated with t i worked as a Research Chemist but ive always been fascinated in science of any kind. Thats mar a that . Virginia beach, again, giving impressions on her impressions of the moon landing. 2027488000 if you want to call and you have specific memories of that time and you want to relate that. Its 2027488001. Mark in the bronx, new york, on our line for others. Mark, go ahead. Caller yes. I was in the navy at the time and we were in vietnam. I was on the u. S. S. Boston, 700 feet, 2800 ton displacement, tourettes up front. I was on the signal bridge where we did flashing lights and signal flags. When the word came from the bridge, it was during the day there and when the word came from the bridge the call goes out that says stand by your bag, meaning the signal bag with all the flags in it. Once the message is brought to you leading petty officer, the call is signal in the air at which point george pavinski who was a petty officer at the time hooked up the flags that read u. S. A. Man on the moon and then we hoisted it up to the yard arm. At the same time the captains gig was dropped over the side with a photographer on it who took pictures of the ship with the flags up. And that was it. Thats what we did. What was the reaction for those on board . Do you remember anything specific about that . Caller i was on the signal bridge so it was just three of us on the bridge. I dont know what was happening down below. You know, we had 1,200 men on the ship so i really couldnt answer that. I couldnt tell you. Some of the footage you will remember for those of you who watched the atlantic not only here in the United States specifically but worldwide, people in other countries and reacting to it as well. In fact, if you go to nasa and you see footage, you will see various images and pictures of people watching all over the world as this one event that took place in space became the fascination of the whole world. We will go to robert in baton rouge, louisiana, watched the moon landing. Good morning. Caller hey, good morning. Im glad im watching your program. I was 18 years old and i saw it on tv like most people. Amazing. Its still impressive today. I have an older son or a younger son, he cant really appreciate it as much as i try to tell him about it, but im a big fan of apollo 50 but what i have in my hand for those who collect coins, the United States mint produced a commemorative coin for the 50th landing and theres a historic picture where buzz aldrin i mean, excuse me, Neil Armstrong is taking a picture of buzz aldrin and the and when they when the films came out it showed the picture of Neil Armstrong standing, you see the Lunar Landing and the module i mean, the lunar module, if im correct on that. But anyway the coin is curved just like the facemask. The United States mint they had these and im not trying to sell them so to speak, theyre 5 ounces, theyre beautiful, theyre collectors, but on the backside of the coin itself it shows the first footprint and its unbelievably beautiful and it was pressed by the United States im looking at it now, i wish everybody on the tv could see this thing. Like most people i ran outside and looked at the moon to see if i could see them landing, im assuming a lot of people did that. It still stays with me today. Its one of those historic moments that grabs you. Did you watch it did you watch it with other family an friends or did you watch it by yourself . Caller i watched it with my mother, my father wasnt there, he passed away while i was a child, but my two brothers were there. I guess i can say like everybody else we were glued to the tv, you know, for three days when they would come back and forth. Of course, Walter Cronkite was unbelievably great on his narrative. When they landed on the moon my brothers and i we were just sitting there and of course holding our breath like everyone else i guess who was watching it and watching Walter Cronkite take his glasses on and he was smiling. So it was a great event. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, its really impressive. I guess as the years go by this may go down in history, but i would like to think that it will go down in history as something that people will truly to be able to go back in the past and be there. Luckily we had film of it and everything. Kudos to everyone who was part of this thing, especially the technicians and the people who built it. Thats amazing. The engineers. Okay. Thats i think thats thats robert in baton rouge, i believe, and he talked about Walter Cronkite, you will remember for those of you who watched on that day, it was Walter Cronkite while delivering the updates on the mission had a model of the lunar 1 himself that was provided to him and used that to demonstrate what was going on with the various parts of the flight. Again, these are historical images that you can find online and nasa as we tell the story of this 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 mission. You can join in the conversation, you can post on our Facebook Page, you can also post on American Historys Facebook Page as well. All that available to you. Dont forget that American History tv thats cspan 3, it turns into American History tv on the weekends, you can see a weekend of programming not only things youre seeing today, but other full length features as well. Go to our website at cspan. Org for more information on that. I believe this is mark from the bronx. I think ive taken that one. Lets go to lets go to david in chicago. David in chicago watched the moon landing. Good morning. Go ahead. Caller i did watch the moon landing i was just a kid just out of grade school and i remember it very well. But i want to talk about the fact that it took about 400,000 americans practically all the american born and educated to put a man to the moon and back. There were about 150 german refugee pow scientists, but this was all american made, american born talent and right now theres a bill going to the senate, s386, that would further entrench a lot of Foreign Workers into our labor force. When we think about what it took to put a man on the moon and back and win the cold war, this is all before the h1b visa and all the labor dumping started into our technology sectors. So when you think about the american the moon mission and the apollo, i want everybody to remind their senators and their congressmen that we did these two major apex in the 20th century, winning the cold war, sending a man to the moon and back before all this cheap foreign labor dumping started, particularly in the so when it comes to apollo 11 itself, caller, then, were you one of those during the time when the mission was announced and it was going on, were you a big supporter of the mission itself or did you have skepticism about it . Caller let me tell you something, my father worked on the integral technologies out of a major defense contractor that provided the precision trajectory technologies that sent a man to the moon and back and also for the multiple nuclear deterrents. It was in my family. And my father worked so many hours overtime during the 1960s. They even paid triple time back then on holidays that if you went in on a christmas or thanksgiving to meet a deadline because there was such a rush to meet these deadlines before the end of the decade that they would pay triple time. Companies dont do that anymore. They dont take care of their people like that. Okay. Thats david in chicago calling talking about the work aspects of the apollo 11 and the manpower that took place to make it happen. That is just one of the variety of things that you can talk about during the course of our morning. When it comes to the things that were taken from the moon, you will remember that part of the purpose of the moon mission was to take samples from the surface of the moon and those samples still being analyzed and looked at today. This is from the lunar and Planetary Institute telling us about 22 kilograms of material taken from the surface of the moon, i think that translates to roughly about 50 pounds. 50 rocks in total including the lunar soil samples and then the lunar and Planetary Institute tells us that two tubes of material from the moons surface is also taken from that. So thats just, again, some of the purposes of the mission and the things taken and brought back to earth from the efforts of apollo 11. This is christy from huntsville. Christy, good morning. Caller yes. Good morning. Youre on. Go ahead. Caller i probably watched it, but i was only ten years old, i dont remember if i did, but i probably did, but what i do remember is i live in huntsville where it all began and i used to hear the rocket tests and it was amazing. I still hear rocket tests out there on the arsenal. My good friend, her grandfather was a head of operation paperclip and i just feel proud living in huntsville, alabama, where it all began. Is huntsville still a major hub when it comes to space issues . I know you have a space museum out there in huntsville itself, but how much work of space still goes on to this day . Caller oh, its still not as much space as it is army because its a Red Stone Arsenal so its an army base as well as Marshall Spaceflight Center. And i worked for lockheed in Marshall Spaceflight Center in the past, but my dad was with ibm, we got transferred to huntsville in 1965 and, you know, rocket testing was being done at that point, and let me tell you, it was earthshattering to hear those rockets test. Baugh it was cool. It was caller as a kid, it was very cool. Thats christy from huntsville. Part of the efforts of linden banes johnson once president kennedy decided he wanted to send a man to the moon to put efforts across the United States to make that happen, primarily in the south, huntsville, alabama, being one of those major locations where work of the Apollo Mission would take place. In fact, you can still see some of the evidence there at that space museum. James in arlington, texas, hi, good morning. Caller good morning. Hi. Caller my dad my dad was a Senior Engineer on the Apollo Program. He worked for north american aviation now in southern california. He basically worked on almost anything from the launch escape towers down to the first stage. And how much did he talk about it caller can you hear me . Oh, yeah, youre on. How much did he talk about it with you guys at home. Caller well, technically there are certain things he didnt talk about but at the same time such as when apollo 7, apollo 8, 9, 10 for that matter, when they returned to earth we had a big event at the downey facility and the astronauts would be flown in for a ceremony, so we would all see them be driven by us in an electric cart and then we would be allowed to look at the capsules which had been recovered and been saved. So we had what we called the dei room which had a lot of exhibits in it and people would once a year get a chance to see that. All the way well into the 80s, in fact. So i would see the surface module, capsules, eventually the mock up of the shuttle, you know. There were a number of things that we were aware of. And when i was ten years old i was taken by my dad to the seal beach facility, my dad worked at downey so i was kind of wondering where we were going to seal beach and they had a big event there for the delivery of the last second stage for the saturn 5, which is what they built at the seal beach. So they opened up the doors on the assembly building, so im witnessing this massive second stage being rolled out and it was quite an impression on a tenyearold. Are you in the Science Field or anything related because of those impressions, because of those influences . Caller my sister and i bothd my father into engineering. I worked for 11 years until 2009 in shuttle support and support for the National Space station. Originally i was Mcdonnell Douglas employee but were bought by boeing. My sister started with american rockwell and they, too, assets were bought by boeing. She ended up working with me, and is still working at this time, shes about to retire. We did a recent poll from viewers from reuters in conjunction with reuters, sorry, conjunction with ipsos, a poll of space issues. One of the things at the top of the list people want nasa to do or pursue, environmental efforts on top of the list, lower on the list, efforts like going back to the moon, going back to mars. What do you think of that, do you still support the idea of manned space Flight Missions . That caller is gone. Kathy is next from imperial, missouri. Hi. Caller good morning. Thanks for taking my call. Hi, go ahead. Caller i watched the moon landing, i was four years old. I remember it vividly. Everyone was rivoted to the tv, i was allowed to stay up past bedtime. I was worried when the astronaut went down the ladder he would sink in like quick sand. And my dad explained to me that if the lunar module didnt sink in, the astronaut would be okay too. Thats a big memory of yours. What else do you remember from it . I remember everybody being very excited and everybody thinking that, you know, this is a great day and that we can do anything. Do you still think manned space flight should be a priority for the United States . Caller yes. Why so . Caller i think we should start by expanding either increasing the number or size of our orbiting space station, establishing a colony on the moon, then going to mars like stair steps. Okay. Thats christine in missouri. That poll, if you go to our website at cspan. Org, that poll on space policy issues, a lot of questions, some about work of nasa, some about priorities nasa should pursue. Other information there as well. All of that available when you go to our website at cspan. Org. If youre just tuning in, a different set for us. At the national air and space museum in washington, d. C. As we talk about the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 mission. Youre welcome to join us for the conversation. Follow along on our facebook feed and twitter feed and follow along on cspan3 American History tv facebook and twitter feed, give those impressions. After this program, more programming on apollo 11 available when you go to cspan3, American History tv. In virginia, george. Hello. Youre on next. Good morning. I remember it very well. I was in norfolk, had duty for the weekend, driving back 95, had it on the radio. When they announced it, i had tears in my eyes, it was an impressive thing. I guess i was 27, 28 years old at the time. It is part of history. Other thing i remember, splitting it. Great time to be alive, participate in. Do you think the historical significance of apollo 11 resonates . Has it waned . Very much so. In the d. C. Area, we have a lot of government things. The significance of it is incredible. All of the side benefits of the technology, so much of our lives, the cell phone, the gps, i guess medical devices using advanced electronics, having a project like this accelerates all that. May have happened, i dont think it would have happened as quickly if it didnt have impetus to go ahead with the project. Well hear from jim in ohio. Hi there. Well, good morning, pedro. Thanks for cspan. If that were the only channel on my tv, i would keep it. So i was a young man watching this with my future wife and her family in 69 and unless my memory fails me, i think we went outside to try to look up at the moon when that happened. Just sort of imagine that we could see something that was going on, i dont know. It is a thing a young person would do. Maybe i dreamed that, but i think we did it. What i know for sure, i was working at goodyear at the time, apprentice pipe fitter, i went back to college after that, became a Science Teacher for 38 years. I dont know if i can draw a Straight Line from the moon landing to welcomingbecoming a teacher, but i can draw a crooked line to that. I get emotional when i hear the replay of the landing. The fella george from virginia said he got emotional when he saw it. Maybe thats what drove me to the science classroom. Just as an interesting aside, my son mike was born nine months to the day after the moon landing, so i dont know if i can draw a Straight Line on that one either. Thanks for cspan and for giving us a chance to reflect on maybe the high point of American History. Thanks for the call, jim. Appreciate it. Things left on the moon. As you can imagine a couple of things as the astronauts were trying to shed some weight from the lunar module before it left the surface of the moon. You go to the website, florida today, they have a list of some of the things. It was that section of the eagle as it was known, nicknamed during the space flight itself, an American Flag, you remember that one, iconic American Flag placed by the astronauts on the surface of the moon. Other momentos honoring the crew, in which the very first three astronauts died because of a fire in the capsule there. There was a small silicone disc with goodwill messages etched on, left on the surface, too, including experiments, tools, trash, and as they tell us including human waste left on the surface of the moon. Find out more when you go to the nasa website. More available to you on cspan3 American History tv. Well go to bobby in columbia, maryland. Youre next up. Good morning. Yes, i supported the apollo 11. We worked a solid year, seven days a week. I watched it that morning with my three children sitting on a lawn chair in the living room. I had no furniture. We had a tv. I went on to support the other Apollo Missions. Thousands of contractors were involved, i dont think people realize how many contractors are involved. Everybody from lockheed to honeywell to ibm, thousands of us worked and we produced a set of documents on the console, told what the astronauts were doing every minute, including the music that would wake them up in the morning. It was an exciting time. We worked hard, so many hours. Went on to support all of the other Apollo Missions, including the first Space Shuttle mission. I wrote the procedures for the first launch, Space Shuttle, i went on to support i retired in 2011, last mission i worked on was in 2012. It was an exciting time. I worked on missions in the 90s for the hubble. And it has been an exciting Space Program. It is so exciting. I want us to go back to the moon, i want us to go to mars. I think its all wonderful. I enjoyed every second. It was hard work. So bobby, before you go, couple of questions if i may. You said you wanted to go back to the moon, go back to mars. Should that be strictly a nasa thing . Theres this day and age where private companies are involved in the process. Private companies have always been involved. Nasa is made up of 80 of private companies, not just nasa, it has always been other companies involved, other contractors. They put out tons of contracts and they award tons of contracts to private companies. Honeywell is very much involved, lockheed is very much involved. There are thousands of Small Businesses that are involved all across the country. I dont think people realize, nasa is made up of tons of private contractors, thousands of them actually. Everybody from companies with 40,000 people to companies with six people. Might make the screws for a particular piece of equipment. Theres always been private companies involved. Thats bobby in columbia, maryland. Heres marsha. Shes in pennsylvania. Hi, marsha. Good morning. Good morning. Im calling on the line for all others because i have a somewhat unusual i would say completely neutral position on watching the moon landing and that is entirely circumstantial. That evening i was 23 years old. I had just been married two years, and my husband and i had just bought our first house and moved in less than a month before that. Had furniture stored in my parents house, had furniture stored in his parents house, moving back and forth, back and forth by hand with a little travel trailer. That was a saturday night, i was a church organist, didnt even consider plugging in the 10 inch black and white tv to try to watch stuff saturday night because i had to get up early sunday morning. That was i cant say i am for or against anything. I never got to watch it. I think the first time i actually watched it was some reruns probably ten years afterwards when we got to the first decade anniversary. Of course, we read it in the newspapers, that was 69. Newspapers were everywhere. We probably got somebody elses sunday paper that next morning because having just moved in, we wouldnt have had a Newspaper Delivery to the house. Any regrets that you didnt see it firsthand . No, no. And i wouldnt have been able to because we would have had to stick one of those funny looking antennas on the roof. Im 73. Im sure anybody else in my age bracket will remember those very, very little cable tv, if any. If you didnt get a picture on your rabbit ears, you were stuck. You had to stick one of those things on the roof, your husband had to be agile. Got you. Thats bonnie. Thanks for the story. Oh, thats marsha. Were taking a pause. Continue calling if you want to talk about your impressions of the moon landing. If you watched the moon landing, were hearing from ellen. Director of the national air and space museum, not only her impressions of apollo 11 and how the smithsonian handles this topic and what they relate to people that visit in washington, d. C. First i want to show you a little of something from a program called moon walk one. It was produced from nasa. Part of that included animation. That showed various steps of the apollo 11 mission. Here it is. The flight began with vertical lift through the heavy lower atmosphere and tilt to the east at 6,000 Miles Per Hour. The first stage is discarded to save weight, so is an adapter ring in the unused tower. It reaches 15,000 Miles Per Hour when it is jettisoned. The third stage places apollo inert orbit at 17,400 Miles Per Hour. When the spacecraft is thoroughly checked by the crew, the third stage fires again. Its speed tearing it free from the grip of earths gravity. While coasting outward, command Service Module separates and docks for access to lunar module, and empty third stage is left behind. Apollo loses speed through ninetenths of the journey until the moons gravity overcomes the pull of earth. Apollo fires in reverse direction, slowing down enough to be captured by orbit of the moon. Eagle slows still more, breaks to a touchdown on the lunar surface. From the Smithsonian National air and space museum, our program is based on the influence of apollo 11. Joining us, ellen stopan. Good morning. From a museum perspective, this is one thing you have to memorialize. How do you do that . We hold the apollo collection for the nation and the world. When you have an anniversary thats a big one like this one, you try to say how do you bring apollo to a jgeneration where more than half were Border Patrol post apollo. How do you bring that sense of excitement and achievement. You have to go big. How do you go about it . First of all, a combination of going over the history, what was it that happened, how did it happen, why did it happen, making sure people understand it is very much in context of the cold war. Really talking about a lot of origins. What i have been trying to come back to, all of the celebrations again and again, it took 400,000 americans to make this happen from the seamstresses who made the space suits to engineers that designed rockets to of course astronauts that ultimately flew on them. It is the idea of teamwork we have been trying to get across this summer. We have been doing a lot of events at the museum, a lot of lectures. We have a statue of Neil Armstrongs face suit, traveling ballparks around the country, trying to reach people all around the United States, let them look at his space suit. This week in washington, weve been projecting saturn 5 rocket onto the washington monument, and last night and tonight we have been launching it, not the monument, just the rocket. Lot of people attending that. Tell us what was the inspiration behind that . Two of my creative Staff Members from the beginning of the celebration said we have to do something on a grand scale. It was such an amazing achievement. How do you bring excitement of a launch to a generation that didnt see it. I think we succeeded. Last couple evenings when i have been on the mall watching kids faces, when they see that, the monument is shaped a bit like a rocket, it is not totally surprising, then the show called go for the moon the last night and tonight tells the story of apollo and sets it in context of kennedys Rice University speech, lets us look forward, of course. Thats another big aspect. Lets not have it be 50 years ago we did this thing. We want kids to think whats next. We have told people about the recent poll with ipsos, one of the thing that was asked, what should be the priority for nasa, concerns about the environment, low on the list, concerns of going to the moon and mars. How does that strike you for what you do . I think thats an important thing. I agree, i think climate is the most thing we can be working on, threat of Climate Change is so real an important. Nasa plays a Critical Role in that in observing the earth. Nasa also plays a Critical Role pushing technology forward, pushing us forward in exploration. I think it is a false choice between looking at nasas budget and trying to solve all of the problems, i think Going Forward nasa does need to send humans to the moon. Theyre going to eventually discover life evolved not just on the moon but onto mars, we think life coffuld have evolvedn mars and want to find signs of it. If you learn nothing else from apollo, when society does something really hard and challenging, it brings the world together, pushes Society Forward and inspires a whole generation of scientists, technologists and mathematicians. Folks can see behind you, lunar module 2. I suppose people will ask you if this is the real thing that went to the moon. We get that question a lot. It is a test article. It was built by nasa for the Apollo Program. They built more lunar modules than they sent to the moon. Thats one of them. All kinds of testing was done by nasa on it. Luckily at the end of the program we get it here to display. So you talked also about the space suits, armstrongs space suit recently refurbished. Talk about that. What led to that . The space suits are almost individual spacecraft. They need a source of air for the astronauts, they have to keep them protected from the lunar environment. Theyre very complex and they were made to protect astronauts on the moon, but they werent made to last 50 years. In places the suits are made up of 21 layers, and the layers were starting to degrade, werent in good shape. It has been off display 13 years to keep it out of light, but then to work on how do we stabilize layers, make repairs on the suit without changing it. We dont want to clean the lunar dust that remains on the suit, dont want to clean that off. How do we put it in condition where it is good for generations to come. We actually have an incredibly special mannequin in the suit that helps air circulate inside it to maintain temperature and humidity conditions and protect the suit. It is in great shape. Just went on display on the 16th. Visitors to washington can come and see it. Will armstrongs suit be the only one refurbished or are others planned . No, in the course of doing his suit, we learned a lot. It was a science experiment. We learned techniques we will be applying to other suits in the collection to make sure again that they last for long periods to come. Most suits now are stored in a dark room, very controlled conditions to protect them as much as we can. When it comes to apollo 11, what are the common questions asked of you or others at the smithsonian about the mission . One of the things people want to know, they want the human stories behind it. Who were the people involved in the mission. What are those stories. Those are ones i think people are most interested in. The other thing is they want to touch something. And were a museum. Dont normally let people touch things. One of the more popular exhibits is where you can touch a moon rock. Thank you for bringing that up. People remember what was brought back, moon rocks. What was done with them . The rocks are in possession of nasa at Johnson Space Center Available for researchers from around the world who do research, trying to understand the history of the moon and how it relates to earth. The moon is possibly a piece of the earth that came off very early in earths history. Understanding the moon helps us understand this planet. The surface of the moon with big craters tells us what early history of the earth was like. The moon is important for helping us understand this planet, and apollo moved that science forward. Your bio says your previous life you worked at nasa, you were chief scientist there. What were you involved in . At nasa, i looked at all of the science programs, helping move them forward, involved in plans to get humans to mars in the 2030s. When you hear about current efforts to get to mars, what do you think are questions that have to be asked, what has to be considered if thats the long term goal . I think were in great shape to get humans to mars. When president kennedy made the call to go to the moon, eight and a half years later we went to the moon. We didnt know the technologies to be developed. To go to mars, because of the long experience, and experience on the interNational Space station we answered most questions, know what we need to do and are ready to go. It is a question of national will. Do you think the will is there . I think it is. I worry about the long commitment. Eight and a half years the commitment didnt waiver, it wavered afterward but not during the eight and a half years, we kept going. Thats the time it would take to get humans to mars. I wonder if we have the National Commitment to stick with it. What encourages me is u. S. Wouldnt go alone this time, we would go with International Partners and private companies, and thats what makes me optimistic. As director of the smithsonian, youre involved in renovations. Whats going on there . The building wasnt built to last. It was built 43 years ago, but it is having issues. We have to do major repair work on the outside of the building. Thats going to be a seven year project. We closed half the museum. Were renovating that half. Well stay open during construction. Threeandahalf years, well open new galleries on the west end and begin on the east end. In the end we have a completely reimagined museum that to me is a true center for inspiration for kids to say i can do Something Like that. One of the things im most concerned about, i want to be sure every kid no matter what they look like comes in the museum, sees stories of people that look like them that have done Amazing Things in air and space. The stories are there, we havent been telling them. What do you think is the untold story then of the people behind apollo 11, what should people know . Again, people should know those people look like all our population. For most of us, we think of apollo 11, we think of astronauts, scenes from Mission Control. Face it, all those people looked pretty much the same except for joe ann morgan, the one woman in Mission Control. I think certainly when i was a kid, i looked at things like that, said people that look like me dont do things like this. The thing is there were people of color, there were women of color involved in the entire project, and we need to tell those stories so kids understand that people who look like them actually were part of this amazing achievement. Before we let you go, we talked about it a little bit. Your most distinct impression about apollo 11. When we put our minds to a problem, we can overcome it, if we have national will and teamwork and determination, we can take on any problem. This is ellen stofan. Thank you for housing us today, from the milestone of flight hall. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Were going back to your calls on the mission of apollo 11. 2027482000. If youre watching on cspan3, American History tv, you can do so and join in the conversation in a variety of ways. Post on their Facebook Page at American History tv, give your impressions of apollo 11, whats going on, especially on this 50th anniversary, on their twitter feed, take part in a poll as well. Give your impressions there too. All of that is available at cspan. Org and more about American History there too. This is from theron. Thanks for waiting. Whats your impressions of apollo 11 . It was an amazing event. I was 18 years old. I had just joined the navy week and a half before that. I was in boot camp in great lakes, illinois. We were excited, we piled into a room in the barracks that we barely got to use, got to sit down, watch the moon landing, smoke cigarettes. It was exciting. Everybody was pretty jazzed about it. Interesting story. My aunt lorraine, we had a bet that she would make me a 50 bet, a lot of money in 1969 we would not get to the moon. I said i will take that bet. She wrote me a check. She knew i was going into the navy. When i got back, i went and found the check at my parents house after boot camp, she never signed the check, i never did collect the 50 bucks, but go ahead. I was reading some articles. Some interesting things about automat apollo 11. The first computer was on that vehicle. There was a Software Developed by m. I. T. To do the landing. It basically started the digital revolution. Came out of that program. Another thing i learned about, on facebook, friend of mine, i came out of the video industry, friend of mine, an engineer said the original data tapes were lost. They were streaming data back from the camera on the lunar craft. They looked bad, they had to take that data, convert it to a signal at the time. But the original data tapes he said were lost. I said i seem to recall they found those tapes. What happened was the tapes, nasa decided to sell a copy of tapes in 1976 at a surplus sale, some nasa intern bought those tapes. Come to find out, they were the original tapes the guy bought. Theyre being auctioned off at sothebys today in new york. Theyre expected to fetch about a Million Dollars in fact. Why were you convinced the moon would happen . I was an 18yearold kid. Thought for sure, i didnt see any reason how we would fail. Thats theron in georgia. Daniel in tennessee. Good morning. Good morning, sir. Good morning. Youre on. I worked at the time, been there 30 years, i had a small part, supplied some nitrogen which was guidance. I have a series of pictures on my wall outside that shows the steps up to the landing. So proud of it. I watch it all the time. I look at it. Feel good about it. It was such a great thing for our country. I was so glad to be part of it. Were you worried that things would go wrong during the mission . On every launch that went there while i was working, we always worried about something happening, of course. We just prayed through it, that everything went well. Im proud of our country they were able to do that. From nancy in richmond, virginia. Also watched the moon landing. Hi, nancy. Good morning. Good morning. Im delighted to be here this morning to talk. In 1957, i remember watching sputnik with my dad as it passed over richmond. He said then, one day america would get into space. Fast forward into high school, i watched the mercury and then in college watched the program with the gemini program. Then that first year of teaching, i had the wonderful opportunity thanks to what is now virginia commonwealth university, they offered to Richmond School teachers opportunity to take a class in aerospace education. And as a first year teacher, this was such a wonderful opportunity because the Air National Guard took us teachers to the Kennedy Center and gave us a marvelous tour. I actually stood under an apollo rocket as it was being built. It was the most fascinating thing i think i had ever seen, next to michelangelos great statue. I was thrilled. Then the following year while i was in charlottesville studying at uva, my father again with me and my mother watched that marvelous moment when Neil Armstrong took that first step onto the moon. We were in awe and great hope. I think that even today, i think of the courage and trust that our astronauts put into the brilliance of so many that cooperated and developed the technology that our country continues to be so proud of. And the fact that we were a free country going into space and leaving that, im proud we have an interNational Space station. I think thats essential. I have continued to follow the program. I taught for 35 years, mainly at Quantico Military base. So my students were from all over the world. I did use that class, even though i taught english, there was not a year didnt go back that my students were not aware i was a lunatic. And i continue to follow this program. I just finished reading fishmans book, one giant leap. I love jane krants book failure is not an option. I am wearing an apollo tshirt all day today where i live. Age 12 to now 72, i remain glued to a program that i think is so essential for our country to accept those wonderful challenges, and cooperate and do something that brings positive vibrations to people, diversity, people all over the world who can get excited about something that is so grand. Thats nancy giving us a lot of history and her personal interest in the Apollo Program, a teacher. We thank you for the call. Again, it is 2027488000. If you want to tell stories like nancy did, feel free to do that. We go to carol in south carolina. Go ahead. Good evening. Good morning i should say. Good morning. Slightly different perspective. I didnt watch it but i heard it. I was in the u. S. Air force at the time stationed in vietnam, and we couldnt see the video but we did have live audio. So we had to imagine what pictures were broadcast to the rest of the world that we couldnt see. It was a sense of pride for everybody although i think the significance of it might have been lost on us at the time. What was it like hearing the audio and then when you had a chance to see pictures or video of what was going on . We got the video or the film, i dont remember which it was probably the next day and it was standing room only to get in to see it. And then we put the audio together with the pictures and it made it a whole lot more realistic. We had to imagine when hearing the audio what other people were seeing. Because you were just listening to it, what was the emotion like for you and others listening along . It was mixed because we couldnt understand what was going on, although we were hearing it. And i think what we keyed in on was what Mission Control was saying back to aldren and armstrong, so we could understand what their process was and what they were doing at the time. Carol from south carolina, heard the mission at first before seeing the video and pictures. Lets go to marlene in new hampshire. Hi. Hi. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Yes. Im watching the show on the American History tv and i am just finding this whole Space Mission replay is just amazing. I was 20 years old at the time. Just given birth to my second child. It was a totally amazing, amazing event for me. My son who is now 48 asked me at one time to please write down the things that i have seen in my lifetime, this has to be one of the top number one things that i have ever seen. I thank you for letting me share that. Well, before you go, marlene, why is it top of the list . Well, i just think, i mean, we came out of an age where kids played flash gordon and all of the make believe space things, and all of a sudden here it is real. Its real, happening in front of us. And i think culturally today people, kids need to be more and more aware of this. They need to be more involved. We need to get future scientists, we need to keep this going, you know. And keep kids aware of not only of our history but our future. Do you think that space flight should manned space flight should still be an effort by the United States . I do, i do. Should be abandoned . Why is that . No, i dont think they should be abandoned, no. No, i was asking if you think manned space flight should still be an effort by the United States, if they should still make that effort . Yes, i do. I honestly believe that they do. I think it is important not only as a country but as a world and i think it should continue on, yes. Okay. Marlene in dover giving her experiences and remembrances of the apollo 11 mission on the 50th anniversary. Well hear from willie in stearns kentucky. Last call for this segment. Go ahead. Hi. Thanks. I am fortunate enough to have a book of every front page of the columbus dispatch, and it stated july 21, 69. A good friend of mine, writer for the dispatch went , and nei armstrongs mother thought she thought he might sink into the surface of the moon. And i thought that was kind of ironic because i did too. It seems like a dream. As far as future exploration, i think it would be like watching the beatles on ed sullivan. You could only do that once. Were not i mean, we did it. We did it. I see no reason to do it again because we already did it. Thats willie in stearns, kentucky giving us his impressions of apollo 11. Our programming in conjunction with American History tv on cspan3, based from the national air and space museum. We will continue on until 10 00, talking about the 50th anniversary of apollo 11. Joining us next for that conversation, the founder of gorgeous Washington University space policy institute, author of the book john f. Kennedy, the race to the moon. We have a conversation with him up next. You remember going back to september of 1962, it was then president kennedy gave what would be known as his moon speech at Rice University in houston, texas. Why some say the moon, why choose this as our goal. And they may well ask why climb the highestwe choose to go to t. We choose to go to the moon. [applause] moon ine to go to the this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy but because they are hard. Serve tohat goal will organize and measure the best of our energies and skills because that challenge is one we are willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and others, too. [applause] one we intend to win. And the others too. To the [ applause ] if i were to say my fellow es citizens that we shall send to the moon 240,000 miles away from the control station a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not been es. Invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than p ever experienced, al fitted togetherl with precisio better than the finest watch, carrying all of the equipment nd needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food, and survival, on an unknown mission to a celestial body, enter the earth, reentering speeds over 25,000 Miles Per Hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun, almost as hot as it is here today, and do all of this and do it right, and do it first before this is out. Then we must evolve. Were 50 years ago today. Were celebrating the landing of apollo 11 on the moon. The launch, couple days before. That talking about historical, cultural, scientific significance. John is founder of the space tha policy institute at george Washington University. Good morning. Good morning. G. The drive of president kennedy do you think . Competition. Rity o the soviet union defined its space success as indication of superiority of the communist way of life. It is hard to recreate in 2019 e the zero sum cold war w competition of the late 50s, early 60s. Idea spa it was very real to kennedy. The idea that space was a nd was measure of national vitality, and that the u. S. Was behind was not acceptable to him, so afters the launch in april of 61, mo, asked advisers, i am quoting from a memo. Find a Space Program which he mo promises dramatic results in which we could win. And the answer came back lets go to the moon. That was from the scientists from nasa saying when kennedy made the pitch to congress, how was it received . E the first pitch may 25th, 1 before joint session of congress, said i believe we should go to the moon before this decade was out, reaction was very positive. Kennedy proposed a very significant budget increase and it was passed with very few opposing votes in the summer of 61. What was the role of Lyndon Johnson during this process . Lyndon was a Vice President ,e he was involved in setting up cl nasa inea 1958, and was clearly cheerleader for a very ambitiou Space Program. Urposes, when kennedy decided it was important for national purposes, he basically took the issue bacn from Vice President johnson andl madeve it a president ial issue. So johnson was there, he was involved, but kind of on the or margins. When itkennedy comes to pub sentiment for kennedys proposal,l, how would you gauge that . There was a gallop poll in in may ofg, a 61, before kennedy speech, asking are you willing c to spend xan pub billion dollaro to the moon. And 60 of the americannth publc said no. This was a leadership initiative. Didnt come out of a spa ground swell of public demand for a ths major space initiative. Ourcan do guest for this seg. If you want to ask questions, you can do so if you watched the moon landing, want to ask questions. 2027488000. For others, 2027488001. You provided a picture of the , day of launch. 88001 thats true. You are highlighted in that. I talk about what, what were your impressions that day . I had chosen 1967 as a graduate student at New York University and alreadyyto wri an faculty member atat Catholic University in washington to write my dissertation on kennedys decision to go to the moon. By w 1969, i was pretty well do, the book on the way to being published as a book called decision to go to the moon. Press that earned me, i had be working with nasa in research, that earned me a press pass and invitation to launch. So i was at the press site at Kennedy Space center, about as close as a civilian could be to the launch on that morning at 9 32 a. M. Thats me in the red circle. Unforgettable experience, the sure power of the saturn 5 launch, low frequency noise which you could physically feel in your body, and slow acceleration, it seemed to hover before it gathered speed and headed off. You knew you were seeing going down in human history. That combination is unforg unforgettable. What was the level of confidence when you saw the launch that the mission could br accomplished . Probably higher than the creo because they knew more than i did. Armstrong is quoted as saying he thought that there would be a dw 90 success theyou would get to the moon and back. 50 that the landing would be successful. I guess by that time, had high n confidence. Nasa pulled off the very bold step of sending people around the moon on apollo 8 in december of 68, christmas eve, 68. And frankly, i stood there thinking this is going to happen. Mar our first call comes fro augusta, georgia. Mark. Youre on with john logsden. Go ahead. Yes. I first of all want to say thank you to all of the people at nasa that made it possible. I was a nineyearold kid watching when they were in orbit of the moon, we were at grandpas house. By the time we got home to indiana, where we lived at the w time, we watched them actually e land. My fathemom, she was basicallyf charge of our family, my fathero was off fighting a war called vietnam, and i dont know what they did in vietnam as far as listening to the broadcast froml nasa and everything, but i remember playing with a little cardboard toy you got from the gulf station, thing you hunt with a string, pretended this t was apr cardboard model of the lunar module that you pretendedo to be landing with. We were huddled around the tv set at that time. Got you. Up to john, public sentiment of the time at launch versus sentiment leading up tosu launch . By the time of launch and after the success of apollo 8 a few months earlier, there was building excitement, not only if the United States, but the worle was watching. Y the third of the three n put communication satellites necessary for global heir f communication had just been put in orbit a few weeks earlier, so this was the first event that was watched internationally. Something like 600 Million People were watching or lunar listening as armstrong as they descended to the surface. Gues it was a global event celebratet around the eresworld, not only w the United States. How did russiaay react to it . Well, its interesting. I have always thought that russia did not broadcast in real time. I was listening to a call in show like this with a woman that said she was in the soviet union and that they were watching it live. Thats contrary to my impression, but she was there andho i wasnt. Pids, mi it certainly was not big news in the russian papers. Lets hear from grand rapids, michigan. Lenay. Hello. Hello. My name isank you lenay. I and thank you so much for taking my call. Youre on. Go ahead. It is my birthday. I was 15. Turning 15 the day they landed on the moon. Today im 65. Er celebrating the 50th anniversary and my birthday all at the same time. Happy birthday. Thank you. It is an exciting day. I remember watching the moon landing with my family gathered around the tv set which was of course black and white, listening to Walter Cronkite. My memory that day of them landing on the moon, not only for the first step for mankind, and all that happened with that, but also because i dont know how many people realize that the moon is a planet, you look at the only planet thats a lone planet is the moon for month oft july. I dont know if nasa knew that, why they landed just before leo which is ruled by the sun. Caller, thank you. Happy birthday. Anything from calle that . Well, people talk several of the callers talk about watching that moon landing. They didnt do that. There was no camera that caught the landing, 4 17 in the ut the afternoon that sunday. A camera caught armstrongs first step, but the landing was all simulation on various networks. They to puzzled how to show thi. If they had been able to show the reality, they would have showed something really remarkable because as has been said a lot the past few days, right before the landing, the lunar module pitched over, and k armstrong and aldren saw where they were headed, a rocky field full ofth boulders. Neil had to take over, fly the lunar module, parallel to the lunar surface for a few seconds, i am sure it seemed longer than that, to find a level spot to land. They landed with 17 seconds of r fuel left. Remarkable piloting achievement. The scientific efforts at thd time. Talk about them. Self, what was involved with the module itself, getting it invested and ready to go. Well, i suspect viewers can see the lunar module over my shoulder here. Its a very weird looking spacecraft. Nasa chose a way of getting to the moon whichthat had m a mothp go to lunar orbit. Crew that mother ship was designed to get to lunar orbit, and importantly get the crew back to earth. Had fuel anden t heavy heat shi for reentry. Then a separate lunar module that was only going from lunar orbit to the surface. Didnt have to deal with an atmosphere, didnt have to deal with atmospheric pressures and w so theay skin of this was basically paper thin and flexedi aze lot. Nd so it is not a strong spacecraft. But it was optimized for one purpose and did it very well. Was this the final design . How many versions . This was real. S is how many versions went through or designs went through beforee you had a final design . From the time this approach called lunar orbit run was chosen in 1962 to the final versions built, there are probably with x being a big number of designs, one of the concerns was weight. There were great incentives to shave every pound of possible weight off this spacecraft. When nasa was ready after the apollo 1 fire to resume flights, the lunar module was still not ready. And one of the reasons we sent apollo 8ex around the moon was that was a way of testing the wa whole system, except for the d t lunar module, which if we had waited for the lunar module, it would have potentially delayed meeting kennedys end of the decade deadline. Here is thomas. Go ahead. Shi. Thank you for taking my call. I have two short stories. The first was i was in vietnam in 1969 and we didnt know for a couple days. Somebody passed me in the mess hall or someplace and said oh, by the way, we landed on the moon. And i said oh yeah, when. Oh, couple days ago, like it was nothing. That was what was going on when i servedd in the army. Hood and the second story was my Old Neighborhood there was a gentleman who neverwa served, t only father on the block never served in world war ii, but 10 or 15 years ago when i read the obituary when he passed away, i found outt why. In world war ii, he designed bombs for the air force, and when it came to the Lunar Landing, he also designed two o it was in his obituary, designed two of the electric motors on the lem. And im calling because im so h proud i lived so close to a ok, gentleman that had to do with the Space Program. Ng to thank you. Okay. Thank you, caller. One thing to say is this was a truly National Effort to get those two people on the moon, and the ten people that followeo them. There were only 12 people that walked on the moon, only four of them still alive. With 400,000 people spread all over the country that worked more or less directly on apollo. It was a very peaceful but warlike mobilization of human financial resources, which is alikely to happen again. How did armstrong, aldren anh collins, how are they the ones a to come to do the mission . As they saall say over and or again, mainly look, there was ar rotation of crew, so if you were the backup crew on a particular mission, three missions later, e would be the primary crew. So armstrong and aldren were backup to apollo 8. Collins had neck surgery, but was restored to flight status. When it came to 11, they were by normal rotation the prime crew. T you have to remember that it wat not at all a given that apollo f 11 would be first. H it was going to be the first attempt. But there were lots ofuc things that could happen to make it not successful. And then i think the nasa management recognized that the s piloting skill andon personalit of Neil Armstrong made him an ideal person to be first. What is it about that personality that strikes most. Steady, calm, solid, exuding confidence, not calling attention to himself. A true leader of the team. The kind of personality that neil demonstrated after the n mission, and ill get a cheap shot in here, and was not portrayed in the first manned movie. That was not an accurate portrayal of the Neil Armstrong that i knew. From orlando, florida. Richard, go ahead. Caller good morning. Good morning, america. I have the pleasure of visiting the Kennedy Space center twice, once when i was 4 and, of course, back then you were t, i allowed into the Vehicle Assembly building. And when i first went, i saw the gemini spacecraft inside the building, and i thought, wow, you know, a little kid like me, that was huge. But then when i went back, the spacecraft that was in the building then was apollo 13, and then i went, oh, my gosh, this g thing is a monster. And by that time, i was a young teenager. I was lucky enough to, you knowh have a venus big venus television. It was black and white, but that was okay with us. And that,li when apollo took of it just seemed like it took forever like for that spacecraft to clear the gantry. He once it cleared the gantry it f was like, boom, and then as you look att the footage, about halfway up, you can kind of see where the sonic boom like kind of rolled off the top of the tee spacecraft. And then seeing it land, i remember my father is a Science Teacher. Took m so, you know, he was very encouraging. Took me to nasa every chance he cou could. And when they were going to was land, and i was watching them, and i was hearing 60 seconds, my dad came flying in the house ou because he wasan a real estate broker, and i said, dad, whats 60 seconds mean . He said theyve got 60 seconds of fuel left, and i said, oh, wow. You okknow, because it didnt lk like they were close to the ground at all. Lie dook they got down. It was charlie duke who later walked on the moon on apollo 16. That was the capsule as th communicator. The capcom wasgot calling out s time of the fuel left. He got down to 30 inseconds. He i was interacting with charlie earlier this week and he tells the story of by the time they got to 30 seconds and they said picking up some dust, whatever the rules were about calling ane abort, he knew that armstrong was going to land because the commander had the finall re vis authority. He was there. He saw where they were visavis the lunar surface. So, again, armstrong was the man to be able to pilot that spacecraft to a landing and it took a lot of nerves of steel to do it. What was it particularly about where they landed on the moon. Why there . Well, why there is basically because it was a the easiest place to get to. Ation i mean, apollo 11 was if th fundamentally a demonstration of the atability to land on the mo and get back. They did a little science but very little science. It was really a demonstration ln that we could meet kennedys goal of landing a man on the moon, returning him safely to earth before this decade is oute so they were looking and then all the prior robotic and the two missions that had gone to lk the moon, apollo 8 and apollo 10 had looked for the best, easiest landing site and picked the sea of tranquillity. Turned out that the specific spot the Guidance System picked was the wrong spot but overall, it was a kind of flat place where you could land the spacecraft with minimum risk. Here is from alabama, jimmy. Youre on with our guest, john logsdon. Hi. Caller i just want to [ inaudible ] the people come up to see it. And the various equipment they use okay, thanks, callers go i basically didnt hear much of that. Did you understand what lets go to new york. Sally, hi. Caller thank you. I do have a question for mr. Ndr logsdon, but i wanted to say that i i watched the landing frw bogota, colombia. A big h i was on vacation with my one te parents. We were in a in th big hotel, a there was one television in the television room. So we watched it communally, which is in itself a gift. And i heard a bit of walter as cronkite. I heard aed aroun lot of la lun luna, la luna. But the best part is the next day as we walked around the streets of bogota, people knew we were americans and they would say felicidad as if we had al anything to do with it atl. Alll my question for mr. Logsdon, i would like you to comment on thn role that george lowe played in initiating this project. Ell, thank you. Le well, for your viewers, lets first say who was george lowe. Rd he was a nasa career engineer and even with the organization that preceded nasa, in 1960, 61, he did the first study of the technical requirements for landing on the moon at nasa headquarters. It was his study that allowed. Nasa to say to president kennedy, yeah, give us enough money and we can do this. Then george, who we had the good fortune of knowing well moved tn houston with the establishment of the was the manned spacecraf and was the number two person to the Center Director bob gilroad and kind of the daybyday soulp of the operation. Then after the apollo 1 fire, he demoted himself to be the head e of the apollo spacecraft program, and he was the one that oversaw the redesign of the command and Service Module to dt get rid of all the problems that were the source of the fire than killed grissom, chaffy and white. So hes kindof apo ofll an unsu of apollo in my view. Out of the blue, two days ago, s got an email from his daughter who is in the Washington Area g saying id love to get togetherc and shareh memories of george lowe and his role in apollo. Tha so im very much looking forward to that. Ear so its good that you know thatn sally. Who are the other unsung rend heroes, in your mind, of this mission . The man that came up with tho idea of lunar orbit, john hubolt, a man that managed human space flight. Back then manned space flight. Man in washington named George Mueller who was associated min w administratoras from manned spa flight. He was able to manage the program to success and keep then relationships with the contractors and with the e numb congress goinger and then jim wr and bob siemens were steady and kept the program on target. This is john logsdon who if joining us. Hes the author of john f. Kennedy and thehe race to the s moon. Atlanta, georgia, this is dottie. Hi. Caller hello. , georgi my name is Dottie Drummond smith, and im from atlanta, georgia. And my husband and i were very interested in the Space Program during the 60s. We actually were standing on the jetties at Cape Canaveral im sorry, dottie, i didnt hear that holdm on, dottie, for a ia u second. She wass19 talking about she wa. Atlanta, georgia, and watched it during the 60s. Cape try one more time. Ca caller yes. My husband and i were at cape eo canaveral hn im not hearing you. 1962. Watching when with glen, john glenn in february of 1962. And then with my son was named scott after scott carpenter. And then my who was the second mercury or astronaut in orbit. Go ahead, dottie. That is correct. And then my husband and i, we h were watching the moon landing and jumping up and down with much enthusiasm and excitement with the landing in 1969. So we actually grew up so you lived the program. Caller yes. Thats dottie in atlanta, georgia. I have to say,s work i have glenn story in here. Please. I was working in manhattan in a totally different field, technical writing in 1962. O and on march the 1st, i went over to a couple streets over s2 and o watched john glenn parade through manhattan after his 196e orbital flight. And thats what got me interested in the Space Program soha there was a direct line between john glenn and my career. I had the good fortune of being able to say that to by then exsenator glenn later in life. I am from cincinnati, ohio. Glenn is an ohio person. Neil armstrong is an ohio per n person. Those connections have beenow e gratifying. How were the three astronauts received once they came back to earth . Well, on august the 13th, they started the day in new york with a ticker tape parade. Then flew air force two to s chicago for a ticker tape on. Parade. Then flew to los angeles for a banquet presided over by president nixon. And then nixon sent them on what was called the giant steps tour around the world. 29 cities in 36 days or she w Something Like that. As one of your callers said she p t saw was in bogota, colombia, which was the first stop on this giant steps tour. And they got unanimous acclaim. The world said to them, we did f it. We, the world, landed on the moon. The idea think that this was an. Of all humanity was very powerful and very successful. This is lisa, louisville, gmo kentucky. Hi. Caller hi. Thank you for cspan. I appreciate this segment todayt i remember 1969. Ther a our whole neighborhood talked about nothing that day but the moon landing. We decided we had to get together and do something. Little i was only 11. Was and one of our neighbors took a little took a motorola tv. We hooked it up on the outside of the porch, ran an extension g cord through the window and od s somebody had to hold the antenna in the air so we could get good reception, but our whole neighborhood was sitting there on that night, 1969, watching the moon landing. And i have four heros in my life, during my lifetime. Muhammad ali, jfk, Neil Armstrong and john mccain. And two of them had to do with s that great moon landing and it seemed like after that, science boomed in schools. Ta we did all kinds of aerospace projects. All tim kinds of moon talk. It was just a wonderful time, and i was so happy i could see it. Lisa, thank you so much. Yeah it was great to be alive and be aware of what was happening. I mean, sending people to the moon was remarkable. Its been since december of 72 that anybody has been back. Its well past time, i think, for us to return. Acefligh i was going to ask, what do r yousu think is the sentiment no whenen it comes to space flight manned space flight, human space flight versus what you experienced back in apollo 11 . Its good you say human space flight. We the current policy of the u. S. Government is that the first person to go back to the moon will be a woman. Oon president trump, Vice President declared the intent to get back to the moon within the next five years. 2024. And theres a program. Its logo its official if ita has a logo, was just unveiled et artimus. Y called its a stretch. Its a challenge, but so was kennedys. Everything has to go right. Congress has to be willing to ac fundan it. American public, i think, right now is, and particularly in thee kind of excitement of this an anniversary celebration, is interested in seeing the United States lead inpu internationa Public Private coalition of companies and countries to get 1 back to the moon as soon as possible. Did that sentiment, as far as after the apollo 11 mission, what was public sentiment like after that . Did it sustain . Did it wane . How would you gauge that . Apo if you gauge it by the media, always a little risky. By apollo 12 followed in november of 69. By apollo 13, until it had its problems, Television Networks u had stopped live coverage of th. Missions. So if thats an indication of their judgment of Public Interest, it waned rather all quickly. It doingwas, after all, repeti. All you were doing is landing in a different spot. Rld so it transitioned from being n. Something that captivated the world to voyages and exploration that those that were close to it were interested in. By the time of apollo 17 in december of 72, if anything could be described, anything related to flying to the moon could bee described as routine,i think people began to accept, yeah, we can do this. And so the intense Public Interest really anticipated really quickly. In your mind, is mars s a di achievable as far as a human space flight . Achievable. Is achievable when is a different question. But i think that most of the technologies we need to get humans to mars are achievable. Oo we really dont know how to protect the crew from radiation in a long voyage. We really should have a better propulsion system, something that has negative connotations, but it thshouldnt, of a nuclea rocket engine that could cut the travel time down from nine months to a couple of months. E and if we develop the systems that would maximize the mission, i think its achievable by midcentury, if not sooner. Ing my from murphy, north carolina, jack. Heard go ahead. Caller yes. Thank you for taking my call. I had always heard that armstrong was specifically selected because he was a civilian. Is there any truth to that . That armstrong was selected because he was a civilian, i lya think he said. Caller yeah, i dont think that was it was certainly a consideration that neil pi i mean almost all the astronauts had beenhe military test pilots. Neil was a test pilot but he was t a civilian test hepilot. Sion. I dont think that was very high on the list of selection criteria for the mission. As i said earlier, his crew was in the rotation that made them the choice for the first landing attempt. Be t and then his bosses recognized that he was particularly well v suited to be the first man. And the fact that he was j civilian may well have been an element in that. Lets try from peoria, illinois. Well hear from herb. Hi. Caller hi. Ng what i was a 20yearold mathematics and physics major in college, not knowing what i was going to do. Nasa was on my list. And i ended up being a college teacher. Ive been acs college in profesn for over 40 years. Teaching history me, too. Colu caller history andndblink mathematics in particular. When i think about watching the apollo landing, 66 years is a blink of the eye in the history of the world. And only 66 years after the Wright Brothers. Dad was and i remember that hitting me s that, my god, my dad was just born two years after the wrighta brothers, and he was sitting gu there watching them land on the moon. And thats a perspective i thin a lot of people lose. At a right. A couple of things to say about, that. One, a ceremony the night beforo the launch of apollo 11, lindbergh was there. Not very public. He didnt like being out in public. A man named herman obirth who was von brauns mentor back in germany and one of the on the recognized 20th century rocket pioneers was there. Wi there was a compression of history that indeed we stepped on the moon within 66 years of the Wright Brothers first flight. American historian Arthur Schlesinger said when the re history of the 20th century is recorded, hundreds of years from now, the one thing that will be remembered is apollo and apollo 11. Well see whether thats well, i wont see, but i think that may be the case. Did a upstaitrue armstrong took. Piece of the wright flyer up. With him . He did indeed. Id it belongs to this museum. Tak its upstairs here today. Pract and he did take i mean, neils dedication was to the practice of flight, whether its airplanes, rocket planes or take spacecraft. And so the museum loaned him some pieces of the wright flyer to take to the moon with him to kind of demonstrate that historical continuity. Our conversation with john logsdon. Hes the author of john f. Kennedy and the race to the moon. The founderthank yo of george wn universitys space policy institute. Thank you for your time today. Its been a pleasure. We are live from the national air and space museum today as we talk about the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. S the apollo 11 mission. Were doing this program in conjunction with american ly history tv today. You s if you go to American History tv website, not only can you see everything weve taken in for this event but on American History tv all weekend long, yos can see programming specific to apollo 11 and, again, the best e way to find out what is going on is at our website at cspan. Orgo in about 20 minutes were going to be joined by one of the apollo 11 astronauts, the pilot of the command module, Michael Collins. Up until then, were continuing your calls on the moon landing. D 2027488000 if you watched the moon landing. 2027488000 for all others. And you can also tweet us and ja put our thoughts on our facebooo page, too. Nasa want to show you a and little bb from our Washington Journal Program thathe tal featured a conversation with the nasa chief historian bill berry. He talked about the technical accomplishments of apollo 11 but other factors that led to its success. Steps to get to the moon were extremely complex and there were things we hadnt really done before. Wed never really flown to the moon before with humans until december 1968 and apollo 8. This was the first time we launched people on the saturn 5 rocket. Saturn 5 rocket had over 3 million parts. And its full of explosive things. Basically a big bomb thats designed to go off in a certain way. Any number of things could have gone wrong with that rocket. Saturn 5 performed beautifully. Minor glitches, engines turning off too soon. Theyre all recoverable things. Even got hit by lightning on apollo 12, during the launch for apollo 12 and it kept chugging along and heading into orbit. Great vehicle. The spacecraft were well designed. Very robust. A lot of the strength of that program came from the fact we suffered a disaster early on in 1967 when apollo 1 fire happened. We lost that crew. And after that, nasa and all the people who were working on the program, about 400,000 people, and redoubled their efforts to. Fix everything they could. And so we got lucky, but we also worked really hard at it, too. On this 50th anniversary of apollo 11, were taking your calls. For all other in just a few minutes from now were set to be joined by Michael Collins, the commander t of o the module pilot of the command module and hell join us in just a bit. This is from timothy in maryland. Timothy, thanks for holding on. Go ahead. Caller yes. This is timothy from maryland. And im excited to be on cspan. I was 10 years old before the ch landing and today im proud to support nasa with the Earth Science Climate Research program. I have a question, one that has. To do with simulation. Today we have computerbased simulation, virtual reality, but im really curious about what type of simulation was done wito the original mission . . Youou mean as far as simulats that are used today in the training of astronauts . Caller or simulating the rn actual flight and the preparation of the command module and reconnect with the u. Lunarr module and making sure that that was all going to be successful. David in palm beach, florida. Good morning. Youre next. Caller good morning. Can you hear me . Yep, youre on. Caller hello. Youre on, go ahead. Caller i just i work at Kennedy Space center for about t ten years. Specifically during the lunar module, but my really point that id like to make is that there has never been a real credit tom the contractors that design. Ace. Grumman, mr. Tom kelly, the designer, the builder of the n lunarit was module of grumman ee aerospace. Rs aat spent it is that company that put it e together. It wassneve never really mentio. The technicians who spent many not hours, who have never been credited with the work that we did. And i wish you would mention, not just grumman, but companiesm like piw, boeing, mit. We made it possible for these astronauts to make it safely. You guys dont know really the technical problems that we encountered, and we had to make sure that when we change a switch, a panel, the intense testing we did day and night until we were sure we had it safe and to be able to get the astronauts to the moon and back. And it was apollo 13. We used a lunar module as a lift boat to come back around the moon and come back to the earth. But i wish they would mention that because, yes, the astronauts deserve the glory. They took a high risk, but it was we, the contractors who made this impossible. Thank you very much for ot gt why do you think thats important to mention . You mentioned some of the why do you think it doesnt get y mentioned a lot . Ronauts. Caller because, you know, all i read is, yeah, the glory t goes to the astronauts. And theres no doubt about it. Its a high risk. Slaves but it was never mentioned the o contractors who made this thing possible. We were slaves. You have you guys have no idea the technical problems we faced, and we had to resolve and prove and demonstrate that everything was okaye spacec bef give the spacecraft to nasa. R. I worked for nasa myself, too, but it is the contractors who really put this thing together. Okay. Dule thats david. In fact, if you come to the national air and space museum, t we talked about it earlier, lunar module 2, one of the manyi test lunaron modules that are iu available. You can see it. Nllo it gives11 you a good representation of what you might see if you had seen apollo 11 up and close and personal. Today. Of the national air and space museum for our program today. Our next call comes from alan ig ft. Pierce, florida. Hi there. Caller good morning. Morning. Caller this is so fascinating. I was th11ese years old when is the moon launch and the moon landing and these guys were my heroes. This is so had a fascinating wh youre doing. I want to mention that i had a great experience about 18 yearso ago. I workedd a community in port st. Lucie, florida, as the ary, recreation director. R. And there was a gentleman who lived there who is retired from the military. Colonel ralph williams. And he told me he was on the team who that came to florida to look for a site for the space center. And it was so fascinating hearing this man talk. Down a he was probably in his late 80si at the time. Going and he would talk about what it was like coming down and looking for the location where they were going tore put this space cente. So i wondered if your guests could also talk a little bit about that. What led up to the actually, he took off already, alan. I apologize for that. But as far as the heroes that you spoke about, of the three,e do they all stand in equal standing when it comes to your heros . Does one stand out over the other . How would kid that rank . Caller all three of them were my heroes. When i was a kid, my father had a framed portrait. I think its the print of the same one you showed. Ed in th he had a framed portrait in his store. And so every time id stop in the store, i would look at that. All three of them were my heroes. They were amazing people. P it was amazing what they did, and it was just so cool that, you know, that they went up there and then you could look a the moon and youd think, men ln went up there and landed on the moon. And its really great youre doing this whole program so that people can recognize how important this was. How monumental it was. U are se alan, thank you for that. N i want to lets you know this program today, even though youre seeing it on our cspan, our Washington Journal Program, this is a production of American History tv, which is cspan3 on the weekends. De and as far as their programminge for the weekend, a lot of programs just dedicated to , apollo 11. And if you want to go to the website at cspan. Org, go to the American History tv section, you can see all the program they have planned for today looking at this event. Pan. Org if you go to our website overall at cspan. Org, you notice theres a Video Library box there. Type in moon landing. Type in apollo or any spacels t related term you want. I you can see all the program that weve taken in on this topic. All of that available at happe cspan. Org. Logsdon talk e about what happened when the three astronauts came back to earth. They went on a press tour. Thatr one of the things they did was participate in a press conference. And it was during that press [d conference where theeo astronau had a chance to talk about what they thought was the meaning of the mission. I believe that what this country set out to do was something that was going to be done sooner or later, whether we set a specific goal or not. Po i believe that from the early spacee flights we demonstrated potential to carry out this typ. Of a mission and again it was a question of time until this would be accomplished. I think the relative ease with which we were able to carry out our mission, which, of course, came after a very efficient andd logical sequence of flights, i k think that this demonstrated that we were certainly on the in right track whenk we took this a commitment to go to the moon. I think that what this means isk that many other problems perhapi can be solvedn a in the same wy taking a commitment to solve them in a long time fashion. I think that we were timely in accepting this mission of goingo to the moon. Mplished it might be timely at this point to think in many other areas of many other missions that could be accomplished. Everybody looking at me . Well, to me, there are near and farterm aspects to it. In the near term, i think its a technical triumph for this country to have said what it wai going to do a number of years ago and then, by golly, do it. Just like we said we were goingy to do it. Not just perhaps purely technical, but also a triumph for the nations overall determination, will, economy, fr attention to detail and a thousand and one other factors that went into it. Thats short term. I think long term, we find for the first time that man has the flexibility or the option of t w walking this planet or some other planet, be it the d o moon or mars or, i dont know where. And im poorly equipped to evaluate where that may lead us to. I just see it as a beginning. Not just this flight but in this program which has really been a very short piece of human history. An instant in history. Entire program. Its a beginning of a new age. Lets hear from james in roanoke, virginia. Hi. Caller good morning. N th ie would like to find out if t two space vehicles that are still on the moon are still operational. Whats yourty interest in. Finding that out . Caller just curiosity. I watched the space landing when the man landed and stepped on the moon, but ever since then, ive been wondering now over all these years, if the space on. Module you know, the mobilese up theret are still operational as far as go back to them and get them and do missions with them is what im asking. Ab whats got you. From watching apollo 11, what d. You remember most about it . Ive watched when armstrong stepped on the moon. Amazing it was an experience to, you know, back then to even watch e . That. It was amazing. I sure were you in support of the mission back at the time . Yes. I sure was. That was amazing to see that. Here is gail in florida. Watched the moon landing. O than hello, gail. For th good morning. Thanks for calling. Caller hello. Yes. I want to thank cspan so much for these programs. Lived at i am i was 24 years old. Nche. Im 76 now. I lived in Cape Canaveral during the apollo launches. And the inspiring thing was a sense of unity. The sense of the whole world as human beings. And we have such division right now. This these programs maybe help us remember that were all human beings and were all the same and we all have the same kind of dreams and sense of adventure. And i hope that that positive the inspiration that i certainly felt when these apollo astronauts went to the moon. There were a lot of sacrifices to do that. Families, all the people who worked on this program were 24 7. Myted to family was working forn there, and i just want to thankn you for doing this. O anyt i hope this will remind us thatt we arehe human and we can do anything we put our mind to if. We just do it together. Thank you so much. So, gail, before we let you r go, did you watch the event by yourself . Did you watch with other people . Do you remember that . Caller yes, i was by myself. My husband was at work. It was and i was went out in my thqk front yard. Im like a lot of people say. It was stunning. It was like an earthquake that you knew was you were safe but the earth shook like crazy. And i think one of your callers said that it was almost like the craft hovered for awhile instead of just like you think of rockets taking off. It hovered. And the power of it. And i do know that the astronauts and all of the personnel, i was watching it by myself, and i think its the mostst inspiring things that ive its kind of like a sense of inspiration that, look what humans can do if they just, you know, try hard and really focus on things that are important and that will help usn so, yeah. This is tim in minnesota. Hi, tim. Good morning. Caller how are you . Fine, thank you. Go ahead. Caller i was only 6 when id they did this. It. And i really didnt understand the significance of it. But i have read a lot of books since then, obviously, and i am interested in a lot of these aid guys have said that were hundreds of years behind where were really supposed to be technologically. You know, we should be a lot and further, but we spent trillionst on wars. The last bunch thats going to n congress now is about 700 billion for the National Defense authorization act. And, yeah, i just think by some of these books ive read and that were way behind where we really should be. One lady called and said, yeah,v we should have had bases on the moon by now. We should have platforms up in space. I really wish the gentleman wasl still there because i would like to hear what he had to say, but thanks very much. Thats our caller from e comm minnesota. Joining us now, Michael Collins the command module pilot here on cspan. Rw thanks forard to joining us, si. Thank you. I appreciate your time with l us. Looking forwardf questi to io you get asked a lot of t questions about apollo 11. What do you wish people would [u ask you, other than that . How much did i get paid for it. How much a other than thay a lotou of the same questions t about this. Hehat but what would you like people to know aboutut the mission thae maybe theync wouldnt know from your especially from your experience. Well, i think it starts withe john f. Kennedy. He was our president. Of course, was assassinated, but he, for one reason or another, o became fascinated by space. He thought it was something this country ought to undertake. And so he made his famous speech and said we ought to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and return him safely to earth. Earth. And that was a masterpiece of simplicity. Such a short, succinct but very, very direct set of instructions to us as we trained to get dirc prepared to go to the moon. Uld we could getge things done. Kenn we could say kennedy wanted this and youre late there and it , m pulled a wholeen tremendously large group of people together t at its peak. There were about 400,000 americans working on the apollot program. Well, i shouldnt say apollo. D i should say Space Program. Y was there were other aspects of it i as well. Atthat were you doing the time when kennedy made the call and did you think it was possible when he made t it . I dont know what i was doing at that moment, but my vision im of, was it easy or difficult, e. Possiblele or impossible, kind oscillated. There were times when i thought, oh, sure, weve got four years to go before 1969, and all theso problems seem to be falling into place. And t other times i thought, uhuh, were not going to nmake it at all. In difficulty would come up. Some snag. Lating something we had not understood before that we had to solve. So it was a vacillating kind of goal as far as im concerned. Wasnt like the moon was that sn big and there it was. Sometimes it was pretty big and sometimes itmiss wasi itsybits tiny. When you heard you were going to be on this mission, what weno through your mind . It was all culmination of jo k. Kennedys goal and the judgment of the Apollo Program which had a lot of high points of in itmi. Two people i was going with werm wonderful and highly competent. So i was very pleased to be view joining them as well. I heard during an interview about the command module itselff that you were very close to it. You had, i guess, a direct hand in maybe its design and building. Is that the case . Well, we were we were generally assigned to a flight at a point where the our s n machine that we were going to fly was not yet finished. O the so we used to go to the factory and help it down the assembly line. And they have to undergo a series of tests. And so it was helpful to the contractor saying, in this case, it was north american rockwell out in california. It was helpful to them to see that their customer was there helping this to be designed. R pn and, of course, it was necessary, really, from our point of view so that ultimateli we would understand the machine with a great deal of intimacy. How much input did you have s when the in designing the gu machine. What did you tell the folks there . As visiting astronauts, we probably had too much too st much hipower, i would say. Tle if we said something, they would all scribble it down on a littlt notepad and we might have been dead wrong. But there was a lot of give andt take to that process. And as our machines, in this t i case itsh was columbia the commy module. When they finally got finished with it, it was pretty snafufree. If i could use one col that teri term. Whenen columbia and eagle separated, what were your responsibilities while you were orbiting . I i was their den mother. Ome, i i was their ticket home. I was in orbit an orbit 60 mile circular around the moon. I and i just was, you know, ile keeping home fireses burning an everything in order while they were doing their work on the surface of the moon. Which involved what . Rbit . Give us specifics. Of what you were doing while in orbit. I was pouring myself a cup of coffee. I turned the thermostat up to 7m degrees. Littlele music, if i wanted. And then i had a volume switch for Mission Control. And it sometimes, dont tell Mission Control operated the cutoff switch. The as far as when you were est orbiting, what went through your mind as far as your ability to complete the mission . I thought wed complete the mission. The aspect of it that worried me the most was not the Lunar Landing. I thought armstrong was an melyc extremely competent pilot. Wed seen thousands of photographs of the area in whica he wass supposed to land, and i dont want to say the decent o was a piece of cake. Mputers it was not wonot. They had a lot of problems with their computer along the way. But i really was not worried about neil landing safely at his target or somewhere close to it. The thing that worried me the most was the ascent when they were ready to come back up to c. The command module. We at nasa really believed in redundancy. When we have a gadget, we wanted two gadgets. Prime gadget. If it broke, we had a backup. And that was true in almost all cases. However, it was not true in their ascent. We just had the lunar module th just had one ascent engine. Get small little thing. Combustion chamber. One combustion chamber. If he didnt get ignition, they were two dead men. So that was what was upper mostn on my mind when they were on cn their way down andg when they were coming back. Once you got back to earth, you we had a previous guest n tell us that you guys went around the world to talk about the mission. What was the reception like . Thig the reception of our around the world trip, i think we hit h Something Like 29 cities. It was amazing. Big i thought that the people would. Say, well, big deal. Good. Thank you. You americans finally did it. Instead of that, they all said unanimously, we did it hought t they felt participatory. They feltn board like they had crawled onn board with us that we, humanity, had put this thing together and had carried it off and they felt very proud to be a part of that. Time. Just to be a human, to live during that time when we were if you want to get technical, we wererethey w exceeding escape v. We were on our way somewhere. And they were part of that. Michael collins, every mission has a patch assigned to it. Yes. We found out that you y designed the apollo ou11 patch. Yes, i did. More or less, the i think itf was jim lovell, one of our agre. Backups who thought the eagle was a proper the ide motif, andd with that. So i kindnd of took that idea aa ran with it. I went into a National Geographic book and got a proper eagle trying to fold its wings as it was coming in. Poppin and, ofg course, i had to havee little earth popping b up over e horizon and little, by little, the patch emerged. So also, on the patch itselfh on some of the other patches of the missions, they had the names of the astronauts. Yours did not. Why is that . I didnt want any names on it. It was a tradition that started with gemini 10 which i flew with john young. And john and i agreed that there were thousands and thousands of people deserved a name on a patch somewhere, and they werent going to get one, and if they werent going to get one, then we shouldnt have one. O ge that we were so dependent on thousands. If you go into Mission Control in houston, the walls are lined with patches. And i just like to see the ap gemini 10 and apollo 11, no ofh names one those. And names on just about all the others. Notto put n to denigrate the ot. Its fine if you want to put a bunch of names on it, but i were thought we were better offff st without it. When you look at the moon, de you still think about the you th mission . How often do you think aboutout . I dont think about it often unless someone pokes me in the s ribs. I go outne pok and walk down thi streetng after dark and, you kn, i kind of sense something up there. A Little Silver sliver up theres and i look and its the moon. Oh, hell, ive been to the moon. It kind oflow lear takes me by e every time. But im a slow learner. Does it shock people when you tell them that . Does it shock people when you tell them that about how you , look at that . Did n i dont know. I dont know what i do. Not t im hisorry, i didnt get the iu questionch properly. T when you tell people you dont talk about the mission much, does it shock people . Does it shock people . I dont know what gives people 110 volt ac shock. I dont think so. I think its hard to shock people. Theres a current effort to . Moon, even go further to mars. What do you think about that effort . I came like it. When i came back from the moon, i always used to joke that theyd sent me to the wrong planet and that nasa ought to be renamed the National Aeronautics and mars administration. 20something years of going and wrote a book mission to mars. Im a big mars addict. And if you asked me today, i would say i would go for a jfk, in his memory, mars direct missi mission. And i think going back to the moon is a solid idea. A lot of research has gone into the current plans to use the moon as a jumping off base to go to mars. But im entitled to my dissent and i say, no, mars direct, go. Do you think that people havs the same awe of space flight that they did when you went tot the moon . How i dont know how people consider space. Its so remote from our daily lives. You know, in the normal course of events, i dont think about. Space very much at all. And, of course, its been a large part of my life. But, you know, if you are a dentist, you worry about i th cavities. You dont worry about space. So i think its way out on the u periphery of our consciousness now. R cons its a good thing. E theres so many bad things that are out on the periphery of our consciousness that its nice to have one. Nic its a good one. One that you can get behind. T io getn interested in. Support. And well have benefits, tangible and intangible. What didid you do after you left nasa and the Space Program . I went to work for the statee department. I was assistantof secretary s o state for Public Affairs for a t while. Ands locati at that time, this where im sitting on the mall in washington was an empty field. Nl and we wanted to convert it into a national air and space museumo and so with the help of Barry Goldwater and some other influential politicians, we were able to get 40 million appropriated, and so this building was built. I work here for longer, about r. Six years, than i had worked at in the Space Program as a matter of fact. U Michael Collins, i asked what you wished people would ask you. You said about your salary. How much did you get paid for the moon mission . Zero. I was kidding about that. You know, but, no, we were we got paid whatever our salaries were in the organization to which we belonged. Ir i was an active duty, i guess, colonel, in the air force at that time. And so whatever air force host colonels i was probably overpaid considerably. Michaelel collins, the commae module pilot for apollo 11. We thank you for your time today and giving us that time. Thank you very much. Air and coming up, well hear from teasel muirharmony. The space history curator and author of apollo to the moon of history and 50 objects. L well have that conversation up next. Veiled first, the national air and space museum recently unveiled s the newly refurbished space suit of apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong. We had a chance to talk about it with the museums space suit creator kathleen lewis. Its one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind. Wrig right now, we are in the Wright Brothers gallery of the national air and space museum. And im standing in front of Neil Armstrongs space suit he which we put on display for the first time in 13 years yesterday morning. We took Neil Armstrongs space suit off display in 2006 because we determined that the materials that were inside the suit were d beginning to ndeteriorate. They were degrading. And we didnt think that the case that we had it in was adequate to preserve it. So we decided to put it back on take it off display and put it in storage where the temperature and humidity were strictly controlled. And give it a rest until we could come up with a plan for displaying it in a climatecontrolled case. Thee materials that were used i the space suit of almost all synthetic materials. And because they are synthetic b materials, they degrade. This is especially important ar about thet rubber bladder thate in the suit. Ps this is the essential part of the suit that keeps the oxygen inside the suit and allows the astronaut to breathe. The rubbers that they used, the technicians knew had a very limited lifespan. Use, it was a combination of naturalw and synthetic rubbers. And they knew that it could o te break t it would start to bra down after six months. They had to time the manufacture of the suit to six months from the planned splash down of the astronauts in the conclusion of their mission. Ired we knew thatt when we acquired the suit that there would be problems. But the science was not there for us to determine what was tht best environment for the suit. Vn having the space suit on display preserved and digitized is very important. Mo its not only important for the generation of people who remember when Neil Armstrong mr stepped on the surface of the moon 50 years ago. But its even more important for the Young Children who come here who have no memory of the Apollo Program. And even their parents perhaps dont have a personal memory of the Apollo Program. N this suit is here for that icone standing in for the icon in history, but its also standingh there as a starting point for s future generations. From that suit, they will learn what space suits did and what they will haveve to do if we a return to the moon. We travel to an asteroid or even go on to mars. We are live from the air and space museum here in washington, d. C. Joining us now for a conversation is tees teesl muirharmony, the space history curator here specifically on the apollo 11 l durator issues and the author of apollo to the moon a history in 50 objects. When it comes to apollo 11, what are you in charge over . So the apollo spacecraft collection. The lunar module and the command modules. Ge things like that. Is itself . And so whats your as far as the collection itself, whats included . How large is it . Wi its very large. So over 2,000 artifacts within the spacecraft collection, and m then we have our apollo collection in general. 5 its thousands of objects from saturn 5 down to small things like space food. So a huge range of material. Estn s. Including the lunar module that we have behind us. Im sure you are asked a lot of questions about that. What do people want to find out about it . Look qui i think it surprises people when they look at it because it doesnt look quite like an ons aircraft or Something Like that. Its not aerodynamic at all. A lot of people have questions about how it works and whats that gold stuff usually. Its a common question. What is it for . Why does it look the way it looks. What is the gold stuff . Its a lum inized mylar. Its basically thermal protection. It kept the spacecraft su regulated. He temperature. Regulated while it was in the in direct sunlight or in shadows. A huge range of temperatures on the moon. Important to have thermal rom yo protection tour keep the w spacecraft sort of temperate. Ver so from your personal perspective, whats important about this day, this 50th anniversary . Its such an exciting day. And i have been speaking with a, lot of people about what is the sig enough canc of today is and the Apollo Program generally. Its a wonderful reminder of how space flight can inspire and wt encourage a sense of unity. And so you see that with ission hundreds of thousands of i peop that worked on the mission and coordinated effort on a huge scale across the country and across the world. And then also the huge audience that it attracted. Stoppe half the worlds population stopped what they were doing to watch the first Lunar Landing rf together. And i think its an important part of that legacy is that this mission really inspired people i to comepl together in various ways. Is there a diplomatic role in the mission itself as far as how it was perceived worldwide . Kenn i think well, if you look back to whyhy kennedy proposed project apollo in the first place, he was motivated by larger geopolitical concerns. And the interest in alignment al morere generally. So with the hope that it would h win the hearts and minds of the world and people would align with the United States, and i think in many ways, apollo 11 did contribute to that sense of alignment with the u. S. Ry so mike collins who you just spoke to, he tells this wonderful story about how the astronauts travel the world after their flight on their diplomatic tour and everywhere they went, people said, we did k it. And there wasas a a sense that it was an accomplishment of human kind and people were aware that the United States sent humans to the moon but that it was this larger project. So itpr was a u. S. Led Global Project in a way. R and that was seen as really important politically. Our guest is thethe author the book apollo to the moon a history in 50 objects. Were going to talk about that. But if you want to ask her questions. Give us a call. If you watched the moon landing. 2027488001. A little bit about your book. What was the purpose behind it . D well, i wanted to tell the ia history of project apollo, but in a different way. A way that were not as used too so it is such a complex program. It involves so many people and often you can read an overview of the program but you miss some of the nittygritty details. W and one of the ways that you can tell those stories is through artifacts, i thought. Gether and so i selected 50 artifacts, and then together i sort of see it as a tapestry. So you get a picture of the sto, history, the social hrough history, the cultural history,. Thehe technological history of apollo through these individual stories. It allowed me to dive deep witht each of these small stories and bring them together to tell a . More full picture. You talked about the lunar module. Talk about the command module. What should people know w talkie misdemeanmodule, talk about command mod umm. What should people know about that. Multiple spacecraft involvede certain time d of the mission a as one, the other times divided. Command module can be seen as the astronauts home during the mission. They lived in it for roughly a little over eight days in total, but it was also their laboratory. Everything had to happen there. It was a combination of spacecraft and home and back room and kitchen and dining room and a really complex ship that included sort of two parts. So you have sort of pressurized interior and then a really sophisticated heat shield on the outside. Also a you talked a little about the camera that eventually would record the astronauts on the moon and other actions. Talk about that artifact. Thein o Data Acquisition cam. This is a really special artifact for a number of wasons. The role it played in apollo ng mounted in the window, buzz aldrins window an recorded the landing. We had anticipated that this camera is going to be left on tl the moon. Ould bri so the astronauts left a lot of material behind on the moon so g they could bring lunar material home. It turns out Neil Armstrong took this camera and put it inside g the bag, we call it a mcdivot purse or Neil Armstrong, he put a number of things in there and brought them back as souvenirs. It ended up in one of his closets. After he passed away, his wife contacted the museum because she found it. We looked at this material and were just thrilled to see this camera was in there, and it was not left on the moon. Is itgu currently on displaye keptnt elsewhere. Its currently on display so we have a special apollo 11 o case that west brought out artifacts for the anniversary, so you can see it on display. One of the other things before we go to calls was the computer that was used. Talk a little about the computer that actually was versus what wi havet today as far as its competing power . Compared to computerspower, it had limited Computing Power r but it wase extremely robust an sophisticated for the time. This is a point in history where there was a huge change between computers getting larger and hih larger andap larger. S a lot with apollo they had to be verye small. See this huge shift ent th happen here and there was a lot of investment in research and development in Apollo Computers that then would pay off later on in the development of that s industry. Apollo computer itself was quite small, and it was extremely reliable. The software was hand woven with ropes. So it was quiteyou ar robust. Well continue on with that conversation. First call from you isith0 from carol. Carol is from new york. Youre on with National Space and air museum. Go ahead. I worked for the air station in 1965. I was a college student. They hired summer help for employees whose children were in college at the time. It was a huge thing for me to work with the excursion module. I typed thousands and thousands of part numbers, actually, on vellum which they produced later. My father worked there for many years. He was hanga part of the scaffow that put up the scaffolding in a the rdhangar, the mockup for t limbs. Apparently ihen th heard when t had when the lunar excursion hdule was in the air, they also did the same maneuvers in this hanger on the mockup that my father was privileged enough to be a small part of also. And my family watched the lunar excursion module. Art of i it was a thrill. It really was a thrill to watcho it on tvna and be a part of it. I got to meet a few of the astronauts at the time. Gotcha. Hank thank you, carol. P miss muirharmony, any more on that . Thats ahat wonderfulha stol it points to a few important things that happened during o mt apollo, a lot of the people working on the hardware got to meet the astronauts and got a sense that these were the people we are sending to space. Y in it contributed a sense of responsibility and duty and ensuring that the spacecraft and all the different components were reliable and the astronautt would not encounter any problemh in space. So that was an important element of the program. One of the people you highlight in the book is a woman named margaret hamilton. Are who isfo she . She was the head of Apollo Software for both the lunar adule and the command module and abs pioneer for her time. She studied abstract math. She was from indiana, ssachu originally, i believe, and came to cambridge, massachusetts with her husband whenily whic he wen graduate school there and endede up supporting thehe family, whi was also unusual at the time and working as a software engineer. R she helped popularize that phrase. When she first did, there was some jokes about it because it was seen as grandizing that profession. It really caught on and was an e important contribution. She herself ended up overseeingc a very, very large team in the development of the software of h the program. Theres a picture of her standing next to a stack of ld i books. Thats the codeon cards apollo g at the time. Printed out. What they would do, put it on cards and feed them into the simulate er simulators. Then it would print what o you see. How many lines of code do you know offhand . Me . I will leave that to the computer curator. Thats a little out of my area. Joanne, go ahead. Caller hi, hello, hi. Can you hear me . I yeah, youre on. Wat go ahead. Caller okay. I just wanted to say i was in school and watched with my family. One special thing for our family was it happened on my fathers birthday. His birthday was july 20th, and he was an avid viewer of all the shuttle shuttles, apollo, everything. Our he was very american oriented and just loved the fact we were involvedd in these things. Our whole family is very proud to be a part of the whole group that did all this and supported it and just a wonderful memory and awesome experience to see ir on television. I caller, thank you. Lebrat thank you very much. What a wonderful day to have a birthday. I think thats a great celebration. Ive heard stories of people vec having either wedding anniversaries or weddings on july 20th as well, which is a good way to dacelebrate. I have a colleague whose parente were married in germany on thatn day. He saysys part of the wedding party, part of the reception included following the mission. This is from alabama. Bill, good morning. Youre on with our guest. Caller yes. I just wanted to say that, you know, i was there. I actually worked for the Space Program. I was in the launch support team, worked on the limb, the building, p out that all togeth. The backpacks for the it was astronauts, we built those, myself and three or four other s guys in the shop. It was an exciting time. Ive got movies from where i wal standing on top of the vab building filming the apollo, saturn 5, as it took off. It was an awesome thing. It was just spectacular for me to work on it. It was like going to disney land every day. Iting fo it was something new. No one had ever done this before. So it was exciting for us and i was glad to be part of it. I wanted to add a little thing. I dont know if many people s or notice it, but when the saturn 5 launches, if you watch the rocket it will lean over a little bit so it can clear the tower. One of the tail pins would have hit the tower. We built swing arms and put them together in birmingham and moved to huntsville where we finished, worked on the lunar rover up d d there. Went to florida, moved down prd there i three and a half years. Just wanted to add that and say how glad i was to be part of ito caller, thank you very much. O thanks. Thank you for sharing the e g story. I love hearing the stories. Its wonderful to highlight the contributions of the people who contributed to the program, over 100,000 people, a huge coordinated effort. Everyone was doing their part. An interesting thing about apollo, the way it was structured, nasa oversaw the program but there was a huge ov percentage of contractors working on the mission. N. Over 90 of the people who nd contributed to project apollo coming from coming from universities or programs. Reated the type s of program so many people involved and coordinating their efforts. D i get so excited to hoar details of those that contributed. Mentioned theres supposed tk be ane auction of private tapes bought it for a Million Dollars. Dont you wish you have those . I hope they are preserved carefully. Its a reminder when apollo flight happened, spaceflight wa brandnew. First artificial satellite in space 1967, in space, kennedy n proposedth apollo and by 1961 c humans landing on the moon. That things had to be done quickly. Expectations about protocol, br perhaps, we have today, werent exactly in place at the time. This was brandnew and a pioneering effort. Things figuodala if out in realtime, like the inclusion of cameras within a spaceflight. Tell us about the moon rocksd brought back from the s mission with apollo 11, it was ramn roughly 50 pounds of lunar material was brought back. Helpf in the Apollo Program in general is 842 pounds. That material has been really helpful in our understanding of how the moon formed its age. Ests the material content of the moon as well as answering questions about our solar system more generally. But there are three primary types of rocks. They are very similar to earth rocks and thats an important part of the lar key. Its substantiated the idea, the theory, that a large mars size body impacted the earth and the moon was formed through that collision. Where are the rocks kept nowu are they still being tested on . O they are still being used foa scientific study. Some of the material, i believe, from 11 was just released for scientists to study. For it had been carefully protected since that time and not used inl scientific studies. But all the material that was i brought back from the apollo. Mission, the majority of it is in nasas possession. We have lunar material. Its on loan from nasa. Nasa lends it to scientists for scientific study. Over the years as scientific instruments have improved, weve been able to learn additional sh information from thisis lunar material. This is t. L. From sun city, california. You are next with our guest. Good morning. Caller hi. I wasnt alive when the Lunar Landing was broadcast 50 years ago, but i have a direct connection to Apollo Program. Naa my father worked for both nasa and rockwell. , rockwell was then known as north american aviation. California is in a way the ng t ground zerosp to the space age. I was hoping to speak with mike collins to tell him how handsome he is at his age. My dad worked on perhaps the command modulejects in the seco phase of the project. There were also other projects such as x15 rocket plane. Im just calling to say that the Apollo Program in a way is like a legacy of my dad, because i never got to know him because he passed away before i was born. In a way, the moon landing is a way to get to know him. While elves alive he got to know a lot of his coworkers and an actor who later became president himself. Thanks, t. L. Thanks for the stories. Down in california, north american aviation is an important part of that apollo story in many ways. The command module was developed there. This is the home spacecraft of the astronauts. They have to go through a lot of modifications. So there was the apollo 1 fire 1 in january of 67. It really alerted to everyone to some of the dangers in space that they needed to improve then capsule toto ensure the host astronauts safety. Many improvements in downy werei part of the reasonsew we didnt have any mishaps in space. In part of theg to book deals w human waste. Can you tell our viewers why . Thats one of the questions o people thatmeone travel in spa asked the most. Mike collins was asked that last night. Someone asked him how he went to the bathroom in space. It is his response was very carefully, which was the correct answer. Its really complicated. In it hasgs a been an issue from tl very beginningat itiv make su t that, you know, things are hygienic, relatively clean. Men youu think about close quarters, the command module, compared it to the space ofvery three british phone booths next to each other. So very limited space. The early like the urine collection device astronauts would have warn on lunar surfacn fitted to their bodies. B very much a reminder all the di. Astronauts were men because they are specificallym. Designed for mens bodies. But they had issues with them leaking sometimes. In the and fecal collection is one of the less glamorous aspects of spaceflight. One of the many photos apollo to the moon 50 objects by our guest teasel muirharmony. Lad tt our next guest from ohio. G to by hi. Caller hello. O. Im so glad you wrote that book and im certainly going to buy it. My wife and i grew up with the face program, and we watched tha moon landing. What saddens me is when i speakt with enthusiasm about the Apollo Program especially, and i talk about all the benefits that came from it, that we take for r granted in our daily lives, a d lot of people i talked to in sd their 20s and 30s, they just grew up with this stuff. Ste of they dont understand there was a benefit. Why are they said, oh, no, my parents said it was a big waste of money. Why are we going to waste more pony trying to go to mars. G siem saying, wow. The apollo, the whole piece comt transformed our society. These guys are just waking up and saying, oh, okay, i can e computer miniaturization, food preservation, waste management, greener technologies, complex polymers for sports, et cetera. Could you number rate on some oc these things and possibly educate the public on just how much we got back from our investment . Gotcha caller. Quite a few technologies that were important, apollo helped seed the computer industry. A lot of people who were working on project apollo at the mputin Instrumentation Lab and m. I. T. That went on to contribute alsor greatly to the development of computi computing. I would say with project apollo, its important to look at the political spinoffs. As a president kennedy proposed project apollo primarily as a th response to ae larger geopolitical situation. It was done within the context a of the coldn war. You had jeres flight in 1961, the first human in space. It was a huge blow to u. S. Prestige. That was followed by bay of pigs, another blow to u. S. Prestige. Kennedy asked his Vice President Lyndon Johnson to find a space i program that would beva highly impressive to the international win. N. That we could e so project apollo was really motivated by politics and a political situation. So when we evaluate it, we on i shouldn evaluate in terms of it impact on diplomacy and u. S. Pm position in the world in addition to technological spinoffs. The United States did not primarily invest in project apollo for theit i spinoffs. They are a wonderful outcome ofs the mission but it is not why the program was funded and it also shouldnt be the primary reason or primary means we evaluate it. When it comes with fascination of spaceflight, do you think it still exists as it did at the time of apollo 11 . I think its quitete different. I think there is a huge fascination. Here at Thee National air and space museum, we have a wonderful visitorship. People from all ages, all over s the world come ighere, millionse and millions a year. Thats a great sign of the interest in spaceflight. But at that time in the 1960s, spaceflight had just sort of evolved from science fashion to science fact, it was brandnew. S cant create that sense that tii this was cutting nedge, brandnew, different today. The it was also coupled with a revolution in television and media and communications. Ev and soisio the first lunar land was also the first live global n television d broadcast. Thats an important part of that history and legacy and impact of the mission as well that allowe people from around the world to do something in unison and to ml follow explorers in realtime. That was really memorable and sc that gave people w a sense of participation and thats part of its historic weight. From candice in vero beach, florida, youre on with our guest. Good morning. Caller good morning. Around t want to say anyone whos around to watch the moon landing, what an amazing, amazing accomplish mement weve had. My o connection is my best frief was judy resnick, who was on thn challenger. Because of her, i was privilegee to be involved one way or another with many things going on at nasa. A highl i knew john glenn and Neil Armstrong and quite a few others. Its just been a highlight of my life and continued success. And i know all of them they are such a different breed, these astronauts and engineers. They are very, very courageous. I know that if they could, theya would goller up in space seven a week. I was very, very honored to be a part, some small part of all of this and i thank you for your t time. Thanks, candice. A different breed. What do you think about that characterization . Caller i think if you meet the astronauts, they are very, veryy impressive. E. Reallyy capable, confident, ris takers, extraordinary people. Y iveea had the privilege of bei able to have a number of conversations with mike collins over this year. D he did the forward for the book. He is a remarkable person with so much ability, poise, thoughtfulness, intelligence. Of stand in awe whether or not they were able tohey brou ah and the risk they were able to e take and the focus they brought to their jobs. Yet he fligh told us he does think about the flight much these days. It h does that surprise you . Well, its been 50 years. R tn i think its a good sign he has other things that interest him and occupy his mind. You wouldnt want an eightday period of your life to take up w the entireas life, i would imagine. Attached to the module, there wasfore a t plaque. What was on that plaque. That was carefully designed. A few months before the lunar vs landing t Symbolic Activities Committee was formed to plan out all the symbolic activities that would take place on the moon. In addition to collecting lunarp material, in addition to scientific experts, the astronauts performed symbolic sy activities. The plaque was part of athat. It was supposed to symbolize and signal to the whole world following the flight, this was a mission for all human kind. So it depicts the two hemisph e hemispheres of the earth. You you see no political boundariess that was part of the symbolism. The earth from space, you cant, see political boundaries. S. Me a sense of unity and that were all on the planet together. Underneath that at message carefully crafted. H firs youll see theres a line about here men from planet earth first set foot on the moon. The reason it says foot instead of landed, there was some concern soviet union was going to land their probe just ahead of the mission so they changed it to foot to make sure it symbolizes humans. Theres a. D. In the date. Nixons speechwriter said that o was a great wayd to of sneaking in. A subtle in ordnod to religion. Then it has the crews name and president nixons nape as well. From niall opinion troy, michigan. Hi. Caller yes. Thank you for takingi my call. I have two pieces id like to t add for your viewers. Number one, i had a first cousin, who was a naval aviator and flew moon rocks off of the d carrierly back to california. P secondly, i think its important for the viewers to put time and distance in perspective. In 1969, just a prior 100 years earlier, it took americans almost five to six months to cross the United States in a y f covered wagon. Once the Trans Continental Railroad was completed in may of 1869, it just took seven days to cross the United States in a train. Now that the moon landing has o occurred, wen reduce the time i takes to get to the moon to four days of space travel, over s 240,000 miles. I think people often forget the compression of what mankind has done what human kind has done to reduce time and travel and distance to something thats soe taken for granted. Today we live in an era where it takes just a few hours to cross the country. Thanks caller. Thats a story we tell here at the Smithsonian National air and space museum because the first power controlled flight, Wright Brothers 1903, first Lunar Landing 1969. Behind me we have lunar module r from Apollo Program. Hanging above it is the spirit of st. Louis, which Charles Lindbergh used to cross the of e atlantic in the first solo airplane flight. Thats, i believe, 1927. Thats really compressed history, the story of 20th at wr century, huge leaps and bounds, especially in terms of flight were taken within that century. Its remarkable to come here an. See it all in one place and get a sense for Technological Development that happened in ac short period of time. Y from minnesota, brian, good morning. Yes. Youre on. Go ahead. Miss muirharmony, you m minn mentioned Charles Lindbergh. Yes. Caller hes from minnesota. My question ive got a couplb of questions. Number one, apollo 1, those three guys were burned to death. How about apollo 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,9 and 7 and apollo 8 circled the moon. What about apollo 9 and 10. Ne another question is when Neil Armstrong one step for man, one small step for one giant leap for mankind, who was running tha camera. Mike collins, im disappointed, ive been h on the phone for qug a while. I want to ask mr. Collins, he wass Drinking Coffee and bit music, what kind of coffee was it and did he play a little johnny cash, bob dylan and neil young. Well, hes gone now but well let our guest answer what she o can. Yeah, i n spaccan. He had the benefit of drinking e warmy coffee in space. H so on the lunar module, they didntt have hot water to heat p their coffee or their food, so a they were eating cold food. But in the command module, one of the technologies that was introduced for the Apollo Program was hot water. So he had coffee. O 11 it wasas lukewarm but it was coffee. Can actually listen to the soundtrack from the apollof 11 mission. Mus its an interesting combination of music. But if you go online, you can google it and findnd it. It spotify has put together the wee list. Its fun to hearng to. The musin were listening tog in space on that mission. Im not sure what mike collins was listening to when he was onh board by himself but he had a range of options. Its an eclectic mix of music. Since you mentioned food, talk about the first meal. It was more of a snack. Pace it wasnt a robust full meal. They had bacon squares, which were some of the most popular bs food items in the program. Sal they were saltyca and flavorful. When youre in space, you lose a lot of sense of taste because your nasal cavity is filled with i wont go into details. In space people like spicier and saltier, more flavorful. Bacon squares, sugar cube cookies, pineapple drink and light coffee. A light meal. I should say buzz aldrin also performed communion on the moon, so he would have a little wine and wafer as well. After they did the moonwalk, 2 n 1 2 hours long theyg came back and had a more substantial meal. Beef stew, cream of chicken soup, fruit cake. Fruit cake was a Standard Food from that period. Larry in houston, texas, hi. O caller hello. E did the thing i would like to say, when they said were going to the moon, we didnt have enougha geology, so we put a lot of money into getting more people in geology. Ona. One of mymy friends, a female, s one of the first females to go to Geology School in arizona. There were no bathrooms in the geology building when she was r there. So a little bit of women got te into programs they hadnt been , able to a before. The other thing was i was living i just turned 21, and i was working at dow at the time for a summer job. I spent the afternoon at nasa at the hotel across where they had i think its nbc. We were watching on the tv there, they came down, we were able to see them in the lobby of the hotel. So i got to meet a fellow oklahoman, tom sanford, after he got through talking. Then that evening we went over to another hotel and watched the landing. And a lieutenant in the navy essentially bought all us young. Whipper snappers champagne while we watched the event. Got it, caller. Thank you. Thats great to hear. Thank you for telling us that story. I think one thing thats so e co heartening tont me during this anniversary is this greater focus on the contribution of was women to apollo. I was in graduate school during the 40th anniversary of project apollo and apollo 11. There was some mention, but i think at this 50th anniversary,. Theres much more attention. There was really important contributions of women to the program. Then as theng des callerig ment having to deal with things like not having designated bathroom or beingg the only woman in thea room. There are suchch important stors to hear from the people who contributed to the program and the women who c are really pioneers within that field. Le teasel muirharmony, when the astronauts came back to earth,. They were put in something called a silver trailer. The mobile quarantine facility. Thats one of my favorite a artifacts. It tells this great story about how project apollo happened at such a short time scale. It happened so quickly. From 61 kennedy proposed it until 69, the landing. A lot of the Technology Used for project apollo was off the shelf and already available. So this is an airstream trailera and it was modified to quarantine the astronauts. B the question is whether or not g astronauts might bring back problematic by logic path agai r pathogens from the moon. Hot theyon wanted to make sure. Lunar receiving lab where they , quarantine. , an so theyd came up with this solution to have an airstream trailer. Th it was small enoughey to be on o Aircraft Carrier and transferre by airplane to houston. They did a number of modifications. But if you look at it, it is an airstream trailer from that owaa period. They left the beds able and tht the kitchen and they have a hava microwave in there. They were able to eat steak and drinkai martinis when they came back and have a hot shower. They changed the pressure of the airstream trailer to make sure nothing would escape and put in. Like l filters and stuff that. It was a comfortable little cao vacation trailer for them they were able to live in for a bit. Letss go to clay in north carolina. Caller hey, good morning. Ga thank you. Itss an honor to be on. I would just my grandfather,d carl, who worked and lived in newport news, norfolk area, he would always as a little child tell us stories about this. And see the anniversary now, hee was involved in it. Hang he was part of the one of the scientist trainers that would be up in the hangars when they were training the astronauts to landt on the moon. Just over the weekend watching all this and listening, my mom would tell me back in the day , they would do a 20 tax. Back in that time, 68, 69, it was a lot of money for a lot of folks. So all of america had a lot to do with landing on the moon. Its just a privilege and honor to be att part of it, to know oe of my family members had something to do with landing on the moon, apollo 11. Thatss awesome. Fi caller, thank you. Thank you very much. Teasel muirharmony, final thoughts on apollo 11 prosecute of a great point, apollo cost over 4 of the federal budget. Der wh it was a Huge National investment. To think about that, its a good reminder of why the country invested in a program like that of that scale. To be reminded of this cold war context and the significance placed on soft power fighting that war as part of u. S. Brand strategy. The book is called apollo to the moon, a history in 50 objects. Our guest is also space history curator here at the national air and space museum. Teasel muirharmony. Thanks for your time today. Thanks for having me on. Here is a look at oprime tim schedule on cspan networks. 8 00 p. M. Eastern remarks from Alan Dershowitz on president ial impeachment and free space. Cspan2, book tv, authors that have written memoirs. Cspan2, programs on American Revolution and George Washingtons character. Watch book tv for coverage saturday noon eastern. Our coverage includes author speaker views from Ruth Bader Ginsburg on her book n my own words. Sharon robinson talks about her book child of the dream. Rick atkinson, author of the british are coming. And thomas malone, finding director of m. I. T. Center for collective intelligence discusses his book, super minds. The National Book festival Live Saturday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on book tv on cspan2. 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