Space programs Hidden Figures. Ms. Johnson was an engineer in huntsville, alabama working for boeing, the sponsor for tonights event. She worked on the team that determined the path the saturn v would take if the rocket fell back to earth. Their work was vital for safety planning. After boeing and a successful career in Computer Technology, she now teaches the next generation of computer workers. Please join me in recognizing and welcoming ms. Marion lee johnson. [applause] like ms. Johnson, tonights speakers certainly know what it is like to blaze trails and defy expectations. Throughout this years 50th anniversary celebrations of the apollo 11 mission, i have been moved by the stories that have finally shined a spotlight on the Inspiring Women who helped make our exploration of space possible. We are lucky to have three of them here on the panel tonight. Aerospace engineer joann hardin morgan, engineer poppy northcutt, and medical researcher dr. Carolyn leach huntoon. Each of our speakers tonight will tell us a bit about her journey, and then we will have time for audience questions afterwards. Joann, i am going to start with you. Joann hardin morgan. Joann worked in Launch Control at Kennedy Space center and was the only woman in the firing room during the launch of apollo 11. Your face has become incredibly familiar this year, which i absolutely love. She was also the first woman Senior Executive at Kennedy Space center, and her tireless advocacy for women in science and engineering spans nearly five decades. Joann, welcome. Ms. Morgan thank you. [applause] first, i want to thank you, dr. Stofan. Thank you, the historians, and boeing for sponsoring Something Like this. I mean, this is so unexpected in my life 50 years after i did something, all of a sudden, it is important. [laughter] and actually i knew at the time on apollo 11 that i was working on something incredibly important. I was a kid in titusville, florida, and i was lucky enough to see explorer 1, our countrys first satellite launch. And the satellite itself, discovered the van allen radiation belt. And at 17, in my mind, i thought, this is profound, new knowledge for everyone on our planet. And this whole launching business and going to space and putting satellites up there, its going to change the world i live in, and i am getting in on it. And i applied for a job as an engineers aide right out of high school. Id been accepted at the university of florida. And i was a wee bit of a math whiz in high school, and so i got the job. Thank goodness the ad said student. They hired one boy and me. If it just said boy, i would not have even applied. But i hit the Gold Standard in supervision. I had a wonderful, immediately, that first summer, supervisor who told everybody, no, this is not a coffee girl. Shes going to be an engineer someday. We are giving her engineering jobs. So i was lucky i had a great supervisor to start me down the path of my career. But we are celebrating apollo 11, and i wanted to tell you a few facts about women in 1969. 400,000 people across this great country worked on the apollo 11 mission to make it happen. There was no infrastructure in space. No satellites. Everything was on the ground. And you know what that meant, if you are old enough. Tons and tons and tons of paper. Keypunch cards, paper tape, procedure, everything written. We had to write everything by hand. We had to do calculations by hand. And women were there at Kennedy Space center. Of those 400,000 people, we had 24,000 people that year, 1969. 500 of the nasa team, which were about 10 , or 2,000 of the 20somethingthousand only 20 of those women were technical. And i knew each one of them, although each of us were separate, in different rooms. I was in Launch Control. Judy was a guidance engineer in the computer room, was looking at a guidance computer. Judy was over there helping buzz aldrin when he suited up. And her friend, anne montgomery. We were speckled around, just one here or there, and then somehow or other, we were part of the team. Apollo 11 was just such a great, great team, and so unified. And i think one of the most inspiring things to me in watching and every time i see it again, the landing itself, i think of not only were we, in our country, unified, but the planet itself were watching cared. , i remember watching the landing with my husband. I was on holiday in the gulf of mexico with him. And we saw the views and Walter Cronkite saying in here is and australia, and all over the world, people caring so much. I thought it was wonderful. And that launch launched my career. It was my first launch to be in the firing room. I had been there working on propellant loads and other activities, but they did not let me sit there at liftoff. There was always a man at that console. And my boss went to bat and got permission for me to sit there. And all of a sudden, it made a , difference. I got seen by everybody. And my boss said, well, she has been working here for 10 years, isnt it about time . So that is a little bit about my story, anyway. It is great to be here with you. Ms. Stofan thank you very much. [applause] poppy northcutt began her career in aerospace as a human computer but was quickly promoted to engineer, working in Mission Control at Johnson Space center on the return to earth trajectory. Her presence in Mission Control drew the attention of the media and placed her in the public eye, making her an inspiration to young boys and girls around the world. Poppy. Ms. Northcutt thank you. [applause] unlike joann, i did not have this big plan to be in the Space Program. I graduated from the university of texas with a degree in mathematics and went to look for a job. I am from houston. And i found a job as a computress. [laughter] that really was the job title. [laughter] as a computress. At trw systems, which was a contractor for nasa. I never worked for nasa proper. I worked for a contractor. Actually, most of the people who worked on the Space Program worked for contractors. Boeing was a contractor. Many, many contractors were out there. And i thought, a gendered computer . What is this . I had never heard such a title before in my life. Since then, i have found a lot of history about it. Many of you will have seen Hidden Figures and have learned that those women were called computresses as well. And then, actually, the job title goes further back than wheninto world war ii, women were used as cipher breakers. They, too, were called computers or computresses. I was very fortunate. I worked my butt off, but i got promoted and became a member of the technical staff, which was our word for being an engineer. And then, by chance, i ended up being the first woman in an Operational Support role in Mission Control during the flight of apollo 8. What i worked on was the development of the return to earth capability. That is a trajectory, calculating the trajectory to bring the spacecraft back to the earth from the moon. And i am very specialized. Lunar operations was what i worked at. Not bringing them back from earth orbit. Lunar, ok . We were not expected to be in the control center, but they accelerated the schedule on apollo 8. And we were a missioncritical function, for obvious reasons. If you are going to the moon, you do want to come back. [laughter] but they accelerated the schedule, and that meant that we were on, sort of, crash status to get our program into the realtime computer complex, get people up and aware. It was a complex program for the time. And there were the computers we did not calculate this stuff by hand. Maybe they did at Launch Control, but we did not. If you were going to the moon, you do not calculate it by hand. Ok . Or, coming back, you might miss the earth if you tried to do that. Not a good plan. But coming back to the earth from the moon is so different from coming back from earth orbit, that the officers, the people in the control center were not experienced at using the program. And so we were asked, the people who developed this program, to go over and sit in the control center to help on that. So i was privileged to be over for apollo 8. That was my first, and, to me, the most exciting mission, because it was new. 10, 11, 12, and, yes, 13. And my work was used in every one of the apollo missions. So it was a very interesting time and a very exciting time. And i am so happy to see all of these young women in the room. Because people think that we are inspirations i am inspired by you. And i hope that you will not be Hidden Figures. I hope you will be out and about and screaming your names to encourage other women to go into this exciting area. Dr. Stofan thank you, poppy. [applause] dr. Carolyn leach huntoon worked at the Johnson Space center, leading the study of how the human body adapts to spaceflight. In 1994, she became the first woman to serve as director of Johnson Space center. Carolyn. [applause] dr. Huntoon thank you. Dr. Huntoon thank you, ellen, and thank boeing for their support of this lecture series. And, of course, pay tribute to john glenn, for whom the series is named after. He was a hero for all of us. It is nice to be at the john glenn lecture. I went to the Johnson Space center i went as the National ResearchCouncil Research associate, you could say a postdoc. And the experiment i proposed and was accepted was to study the changes in the fluid and controlyte and hormonal in spaceflight crews. You think, ok, you got an experiment, go and do it. Accepting it was just the beginning. Getting the crews to participate and the people to get the involvement that we needed, from the trainers as well as all the medical people and all, that was a big chore to do. But we did it. I had studied at Baylor College of medicine with the researchers who had worked on the gemini program, and that was the first time that we had done actual measurements on astronauts from space. We got urine and blood samples and food samples and fecal samples. And the idea was to study, in great depth, that crew of the gemini, because we wanted to make sure we could send the apollo crew members to the moon and back without any problems. We worked on that for gemini, and we did a great job. I got very interested in it. So when i had the opportunity to go down to nasa to continue these studies with apollo, of course i jumped at the chance to do that. It was a small medical group, tremendous people. We worked long hours and hard hours. I was the only woman in the group except for a couple of technical types. And we also had, as it would happen, we had a nice support from the center management, as well as all of nasa. Not necessarily the great support from the astronaut office, because they did not necessarily want medical people working on them. [laughter] but it worked out. We had the opportunity, at that time, to do some most unusual studies. The job that i had did not exist anywhere else in the world. Not even in russia. No one was doing what i was doing at the time. So, i sort of had to find my own way with that, but i had tremendous support from many great mentors. And i would like to pay homage to those guys, because they treated me with respect as well as encouraged my work and supported the work that i was doing. That, i think, is a very important aspect of anyones job. And i have tried to do that and pass that on to people as i grew up in the Management System at nasa. The other thing that i would mention is that we did a lot of things the nasa way, or the apollo way, and people could talk about that is not how they did it during apollo, or this is the way they should have done it during apollo, or what have you. I came to washington many years years later, and people would talk about how they did things during apollo. And i was thinking, you were not there. How did you know . [laughter] but it became a reputation, and you all know that for sure. But the things that i would mention that have stuck with me is the teambuilding that we did with apollo. And i did that with my work all the way through the years i worked at nasa. And that is not just the people there at the Johnson Space center, but also the people we the people from academia. We brought in experts from all of the world to help us on issues that we had. We also brought in people from industry to help us a great deal in building, creating technical things that we needed for the spacecraft to do our medical experiments and our medical work. So, teambuilding, i think, was a very important aspect of the apollo way of doing things. We also followed by setting very high goals. We decided we were going to go to the moon, and we did. We decided we were going to learn as much as we could about humans in a weightless environment, and we did. We set high goals. We also i want to mention that we contracted to carry out things that we did not know how to do, and we worked with many people around the country to learn to do things. It was not an easy task, some of the things that we had. But we got help and were not afraid to ask for help. We were not afraid to ask after we got the help. We were not afraid to have things reviewed. And i think that is part of the way that we learn to do business. The other thing that i would mention is that we had a way of doing things, of looking at the way work was done. We called it configuration control. Once things got locked in, when you do things with nasa, when you do things with apollo, we kept them under a continuation control, and things did not get changed unless you justified the change to a high level committee. This held for the rest of my career, because i learned about getting it right and keeping it right, and then keeping it under control and not making a lot of changes. I mentioned that we had several other women in the medical group when i got there. There were only a few engineers at the time at the center, women engineers. We all eventually crossed paths and became friends. I think the big issue about having so few women at the time is that they did not know they could come to work there. They did not know. Decided tonasa advertise and ring women in bring women in as Research Associates and College Students and all, then women took a bigger role. And of course, years later, we decided to select and train women astronauts, and that really opened the doors for women to come to work there. So that also was very helpful. Thank you. Dr. Stofan thank you, carolyn. [applause] im going to stand so i can see you all better. So i am going to ask a few questions, but we are actually going to leave a ton of times for both people here and in the planetarium to ask questions. So, please be thinking of questions that you would like to ask. Amazing questions. Just to start out, poppy, you talked about working on the apollo 8 return to earth. Obviously, this is kind of a silly question, because no one had ever returned to earth from the moon before. But what was the most challenging part of it . Is the answer everything, because no one had ever done it before . But i am curious how you even start in that. Ms. Northcutt well, you start early is one thing. [laughter] you start early, and you work really hard. Ms. Stofan but you didnt have much time, because that whole decision was made in august. Right . But you had been working on it. Ms. Northcutt we had been working. We had been developing the return to Earth Program for several years. But to just give you an example of just how far you have to go, when we started working on developing the return to Earth Program, what people might not understand they always landed in the middle of the pacific ocean. Right . If you remember that far. That is because the miss distance when we started was bigger than the atlantic ocean. [laughter] now, by the time they were flying, they were landing almost in the ship. Right . But what way were doing was we were perfecting the solution to problem, which is not a closed solution. And the big challenge is that you have to do a lot of optimization, because you have to meet the reentry card, or you burn up. And you have to minimize fuel and you have to minimize time. So, it is just a tremendous amount of working on computers and improving your targeting and always trying to get better. But the last few months were just to crash as we tried to find every bug. Because you cannot have bugs when you are flying to the moon. Its too critical. We just had india just had a lunar mission. And, you know, im still hoping that they are going to be in contact with their lander. But, you know, the tiniest little error is magnified tremendously when you are talking about distances, especially distances to the moon. So, its super important that Quality Control is just everything. Ms. Morgan i just want to followup that. The folks at houston in Mission Control, we had 23 critical events to go to the moon and return safely. For the launch team, only five were what we had to worry about. But we practiced all five. We practice them on apollo 8 and 9 and 10. Marshall, where miss johnson, marshall, where miss johnson, was, practice engine testing, we rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed for five years. They did not get to practice lift off off the moon. They did not get to practice landing on the moon. They had to do it perfectly the first time. And that is the miracle of apollo 11. Dr. Stofan that is a good point. And joann, i am also really curious you said being in the firing room changed, when your boss advocated for you to go in, and you were actually in there, it changed how people actually treated you. But i am curious. Did it change how you felt about yourself and your role . Or was it just purely how people viewed you changed . But i am wondering did you change, knowing you were there . Ms. Morgan possibly, it did. You know, i had the height of an alligator and the tenacity of a pitbull dog. I wasnt going anywhere. So they were sort of stuck with me. But i felt more accepted and more confident in myself that i really was accepted, because the dr. Wernher von braun was sitting up on the top row and the chief engineer, and all these important people, and i was good enough to be in the room with them. And so, that built a lot of confidence in me. So after that, i was sort of unstoppable. I not only had that self pride and that tenacity, but i got be little bossy, too. [laughter] dr. Stofan carolyn, obviously, what we have learned over the years about the effects of microgravity on the human body has been enormous. But i am curious, from your perspective, the research that you did, that you were involved in, what has been some of the most interesting things that you think we have learned from sending humans, as a physical effect of spaceflight . Dr. Huntoon well, yes, you are right, we have done quite a bit of work. And the work began back in the 1950s, you may recall, because that is when they decided we would not send people into space, because it would be too hard for them and they would not survive. So the research started then. Some of the early flights with mammals or started before we followed with the mercury cruise crews. Each step of the way, we went on what we understood and what our fear was with spaceflight for the crew members. By the time, we got to the apollo program, we were pretty sure that we were not going to have any big problems that we were not aware of. There were some things that came up. We worked on them. It was really interesting one of the missions had an actual fluid and electrolyte problem, which was my specialty, so i got to go into the big meetings and talk about what would happen if we did not get that under control. So, that was an anomaly. But the thing that i am most proud of, i guess, was 13 team that we built that did the work s from healthyew on the ground, get them in space, keep them healthy during spaceflight, and bring them home. We were able to start collecting inflight data when we started flying skylab. And then, of course, space lab and Space Shuttle missions, we flew more experiments, and we learned more about various enzymes and hormones and how they worked in the body with in weightlessness. Dr. Stofan it is fascinating stuff. And it is one of the things, as we renovate our moving beyond earth gallery, where we talk about human spaceflight, we are going to really emphasize the work that has been done, especially on the International Space center, over the years, but this huge body of accumulated knowledge. A question for all of you, and then we are going to go to the audience. You know, in a sense, i would be shocked if you all had not encountered obstacles along the way. A man telling you you are a woman, you cannot do that. And i am curious, did all of you have some incident like that . I certainly did, and i am sure i would like to say that some of the women in this audience are never going to encounter it, but i doubt it. So i am curious how you handled it. And be thinking about the young girls in the audience when you answer. To give them some ms. Morgan you want me to go first . Dr. Stofan sure, go ahead. Now that we know you have the skin of a crocodile. Ms. Morgan alligator. [laughter] dr. Stofan sorry. Ms. Morgan first of all, i want mentioned those primates. I knew the two monkeys. They were in a hut behind the hangar where i worked when i was a college student. So we were friends. I never had a chance to tell you. I knew those two monkeys. [laughter] i had something happen to me it was on the apollo 1 mission. I was working at the block house. The first time i went in, my director had said go and run this test. And i had my procedure, which i had developed. So i went in to run the test in the block house, complex 34 where apollo 1 was. Plugged in my headset. And the test supervisor came down and literally thwacked me on the back. Thwack. I mean, it hurt. And he said, we dont have women here. I thought, uh oh. I have this german telling me to run this test, and i got this guy, who i think is exnavy, hitting me on the back. So i called quickly and said to my director, i said, soandso the name. ,i said he said they do not have women here. He said, plug in your headset and go to work. I want the test results by 4 30. So i used my chain of command, and they responded. I am sure phone call after phone call after phone call happened. But nobody made me get out. I went to work. I did my job. Later, apollo 11, i am sitting at my console. In the tradition for apollo 8, 10 was the test supervisor, the same man who hit thwacked me in the back, would hand out cigars to the workers. On apollo 11, after launch, he came up and gave me a cigar. [laughter] it was pretty ironic. That was one of the confidence boosters for me. But they i always like in these incidents that happened to me, everything from obscene phone calls and man following me in the stairwell to watch my legs or rear end or whatever they like to do behind you, i thought that was like mosquitoes. We had a lot of mosquitoes in florida. [laughter] andknow, you just swat them you are done with them. You know, you make may kill them, but they are mosquitoes. Dr. Stofan how about you, poppy . Ms. Northcutt you know, i never had anyone say i couldnt do it. Except society as a whole said you couldnt do it. Why need individual people telling you that when society as a whole tells you you cannot. I guess i did not really appropriately get the message. I came in as a computress. I was crunching numbers for these engineers. About two months or three months in, i just looked around the room and said i as smart as am these guys. But they made a lot more money than me. And i decided that i was going to become a member of the technical staff. And engineer is what they called them. Some had his ax degrees. Some had engineering. But we were all functioning as engineers. Took stuff home and reverse engineered it. And i did not Pay Attention to the laws. Ok . I disobeyed the laws. The laws were that woman, at that time, if they were hourly workers, and i was, waere not supposed to work for an employer for more than nine hours a day or 54 hours a week. I read that has, really, the law was you werent going to get paid by an employer. I paid no attention at all to that. My supervisor would tell me, poppy, time to go home. It was 6 00. I recognized that, in order to be excepted as a member of the team, in order to be thought of as the equal of these guys, i the same aso work these guys, whether i get paid or not. So i just persisted in that. I think because of that, i became accepted as a member of the team. That was really key that i was , not thought of as different. Although, once i was in the control center, that was a whole different experience. Because i was sitting there on apollo 11, sometimes listening to the chatter, because we would hear three channels, four channels five channels at once. , and i kept hearing one channel being mentioned. Someone saying, hey, have you seen what is on whatever . I finally thought, i wonder what is on that channel . I tuned it in, and it was me. [laughter] were was a camera there cameras all over the place. But they are supposed to be on the room as a whole. This camera was just on me. I had no idea how long it had been on me. I did not say anything about it. We didnt even know the term Sexual Harassment or hostile workforce. There are two different ways to think about that. One is that it is a little voyeuristic on the part of the dudes, and it is harassing and uncomfortable. Another is let them look and let anybody who is in this damn room know there is a woman here, get used to it. [laughter] [applause] carolyn, how about you . Dr. Huntoon i think i was pretty fortunate that the timing that i went to the Johnson Space center, which was then the spacecraft center, i was very fortunate that there was so much work to be done that, if you were willing to work and not complain and stay late and go on trips and come in late, bring in samples and all of that stuff if you were willing to do that, they let you do it. They would have left to have 10 more like me, i guess. So from that viewpoint, the job was not difficult, in that sense. Personally, i had people say unpleasant things to me. Like, i would like to get him promoted because he deserves it, not because he is a woman. Those kinds of things. But as i may have mentioned earlier or should have mentioned is i outlasted those people. , theyed they retired died, they went to work somewhere else. I stayed. [laughter] dr. Stofan awesome. All right. I would like to open it up to the audience for questions. Hi. So both nasa and boeing have strong Stem Education for all students of all grade levels. I was wondering if you guys had that in your schooling growing , up. Dr. Stofan so the question is, because we are videotaping this so i will repeat all the questions. The question is boeing and the smithsonian really focus on Stem Education programs for girls. So the question was where there any kind of programs like that for you, for any of you . Ms. Morgan you want me to go first . Dr. Stofan sure. Ms. Morgan no. There were zip, zero programs when i was in elementary, junior, high school. However, i had great teachers. Inmath teacher, who was second year algebra, who was also the basketball coach, saul saw me do all my homework in class while he was teaching that chapter. And he looked at that and i never know whether it made him mad he just thought i need to give this girl more work. So he would go over five chapters. You know, if we were on chapter three, he would say, joann, your homework as all the problems to chapter eight. So i am thinking i am getting ahead on my homework, doing it on the school bus, but i had all this other homework i had to do. But teachers liked that. My biology teacher, who let me and my sister dissect an armadillo instead of a cat or a dog we were not going to dissect a cat or a dog, so we went out and got an armadillo. [laughter] they are all out in the orange groves and everything. Sadly, for us, when we dissected it, we had seven perfectly formed babies. So we were in lab crying, because we were mid arrest is murderesses. For me, the teachers and our parents my dad gave me a chemistry set. It was my favorite toy. I blew up the concrete on our patio. And my mom and dad did not fuss. They said, how did you do that . [laughter] so between wonderful parents and great teachers, we didnt have a special program. Think probably all three of us might have been lucky in that, because we were a generation that we had wonderful quality teachers. Was it teachers for you that sort of mentored you and encouraged you . Ms. Northcutt no. I do not really think i had mentors. The whole expectation, that i recall, was if you went to college, you are expected to be either a teacher, a nurse, or an executive secretary. Even after my of the company i worked for featured me in their National Advertising around apollo 8. Keepspoppy northcutt bringing astronauts home. But my fathers remark was that he was really, really proud of me. The only thing that would make him more proud was if you saw my engagement announced in the local newspaper. [laughter] so i was a self motivator. [laughter] dr. Stofan what about you carolyn. Dr. Huntoon that same group as joann. I had tremendous teachers. I went to a small college, and went to high school in louisiana. But in both of those places, i had teachers who liked what we were teaching. And i had a very supportive family. I am the youngest of six children. So each one of them had to tell me what i was going to do in life and what i could do and couldnt do. It worked out really well. I had a lot of support. Dr. Stofan ok. More questions. Was a challenge, at the time, each people challenging with all of your specialties, looking today with the technology and how it has progressed, do you look back and say, boy, i wish i had that some of the that wes, the things did not have other time but looking now, if you had an iphone or Something Like a computer that effing fast, whatever it was regarding it dr. Stofan the question is, with all the changes in technology, from 1969 to today, what technologies do we have today that really would have made your lives and careers much easier . Carolyn, why dont we start with you . Dr. Huntoon obviously, with a medical science and research we were doing, so many of the sensors and the computers we were doing, the Computer Technology and all, we could have used that a lot in spacecraft, as we were making sure it was safe for the crews to be there. The other thing is medical testing today, we know how to determine that to the chromosome and gene level of things that back then, we were very proud a drop of blood to do a sugar on. So technology has advanced. Technology has advanced they are doing more in the International Space station than we ever did 50 years ago. Ms. Northcutt the miniaturization of computers is just an incredible advance. It would have made a lot of difference. On board the spacecraft, something you may not appreciate yes, they had an onboard computer. But that onboard computer did not have as much Computing Power as you have in an overnight ordinary reading card where you say hi, mom. So they basically had such limited computer power on board. Now, they have tremendous computer power. Dr. Stofan my favorite example of that is your keyfob for your car has more Computing Power than the voyager spacecraft which has now left the solar system. Ms. Morgan today, we have such rich, spacebased technology. Compared to 50 years ago. We had to do our own weather predictions. We are to create coils to measure lightning. The complexity of doing groundwork when youre having to build new devices to measure environment around you or a valve position in the propellant line, or vibrations, which we needed to understand with the first firing of those engines. Observationsof from space, communications, data navigation,ather, and all of that was having to be done with these massive amounts of paper. So the computers were tools, but having it in space, where we are not having to duplicate it on the ground that is what took 400,000 people. Was a lot of the stuff had to be done on the ground. Now, we dont have to do that. Thats why going beyond the moon is such a feasible thing. We have infrastructure. We have a Weather Satellite around mars. You know . There are things we can do now. Because of spacebased allergies. Dr. Stofan lets take one more question from in here, and then we will see if we have a question in the planetarium. And i actually have to take a question from our young astronaut in the front. I want to be an astronaut and go to mars. Do you have any advice for girls who want to be an astronaut . Dr. Stofan and after this show, you have to meet a woman named serena who is two rows behind you. She might give you advice. So she wants to be an astronaut. What is some advice you could give her . She is 10 years old. Dr. Huntoon i will take that question. Dr. Stofan i think that is a question for carolyn. Dr. Huntoon i would recommend you study hard in school. And you participate in sports, whatever your choice is. But learn to be on teams with people. So when you get to high school and college, get a good degree. A broader degree but specialize in something that you are very excited about. Whether it is medicine or engineering or mathematics or what have you. Do something that really excites you. So when you apply to be an astronaut, that comes through in your application. That comes through in your interview. That you are doing something you want to do. You have to study hard. You have to make good grades. Dr. Stofan do we have a question from the planetarium . Yes, we do. Hello, sheroes. Thank you for your service. And i noticed, and all the language you use so much scientific jargon, but i also heard you say bring them home. And thats not scientific. Is the concept of bringing our astronauts home, is that how everybody in Mission Control look at this . Or was that your point of view . Ms. Northcutt i dont know whether everyone in there thought about that. Certainly that was a major , concern. But i worked on a program that was return to earth. Every day, every thought was bring them home. And, to me, people applauded the landing, and there is all this celebration when they landed on the moon. To me, the time you celebrated was when they splashed. Splashed down. Because no matter how successful Everything Else is, its not a success unless you get them home. So that was always top of mind to me. Dr. Stofan lets take one last question from in here. Over here. Do you have some behindthescenes stories for us for the different apollo missions, be it 11 or 13 . Dr. Stofan ok. Can we get a quick story from each one of you, something behindthescenes, that meant something to each of you . Dr. Huntoon well, apollo 13 was a particularly frightening mission for all of us that were working at the center at the time. But we did our jobs. Just one after the other. Anything you were asked to do, you did, no longer how it no matter how long it took or whatever, because we had to get the guys around the moon and home. But one of my remembrances of apollo 13 was i was the Senate Center director when it was filmed at the Johnson Space center. The movie, apollo 13. I got to meet the guys who are playing the astronauts. Actually, they did all the filming in the zero g aircraft. At the center. So we saw quite a bit of them. So it was nice to see them and nice to see how they wanted to get it right. Dr. Stofan poppy. Ms. Northcutt i saw the launch for apollo 13. Because i would not go to work until they were getting close to the moon. So i had about two days after launch where i am not working. So i paid my own way. I had not seen a launch before and really wanted to see i paid one. I really wanted to see one. And i paid my way to florida. When i arrived, i wasnt sure if they were going to do a launch or not. Because one of the astronauts had been exposed to measles. So the mission was being held. It was on hold. And nobody knew. Are they going to go or not go . What was going to happen . So finally, they decided they were going to go. They substituted for that astronaut. So it was delayed. I get on a plane, i go back home, i think i am going to be able to relax. So i am puttering around the house. I am not paying that much attention to what is going on. And i get a phone call from a journalist. And the journalist is the one who tells me there has been this explosion. And he wants to know, are they going to have to fly around the moon, or are they going to turn around and come back . I just asked him how far out they were. I was able to answer his question. I hung up the phone and thought thats weird. You would have thought someone was going to call me. Besides journalist. [laughter] i had an unlisted number. Anyway, so i thought i should go into work. So i put on my clothes and go over there. And the people that are at my console, they are just really happy to see me. Because they say they did not know how to reach me. And i go over to the console, and there is a glass top on it. I point. There is a large sign sitting there that has my name and phone number. [laughter] i guess they were a little distracted. [laughter] my morgan well, behindthescenes tail is one of tale is one of john young and i having lunch with Lady Bird Johnson. The first lady of our land. She was in a beautification of america tour. And she brought her daughter down to Kennedy Space center. And john had just come back from his loop around the moon on apollo 10. I think it was. And he did not want to do photography, but they gave him a fancy, specially modified camera and he had to make pictures of the moon. They did not land, but they went around, and he made these pictures. And he was a nervous wreck about having lunch with Lady Bird Johnson. So he sat on the end of the table. I was here. Lady bird was next to me. Was waltnk it cunningham, another astronaut, on the other side of the first lady. And the white house protocol officer had come down and given us a little briefing. He said, joann, you are from alabama. The first lady is from alabama, so i think youll be able to understand each other. [laughter] ms. Morgan i never really knew quite what that meant. And he said but she is not technical. So walt and john young, here are these astronauts. Twoand they said dont say anything technical. So we started with our lunch. And i thought, man, no one is saying anything. We just sitting here. So i asked a question or two, and then she leaned over and she said you work here . ,i said, yes we do. I work in Launch Control. But john young just came back from making wonderful photographs around the moon. And she said, i love photography. I make all of our christmas photographs. I hate having a white house photographer. I want to do it. And i got john young and Lady Bird Johnson talking about photography. [laughter] myself orery proud of my diplomacy. By was also glad the first lady got to have a sincere interaction with an astronaut, which is why we were all eating lunch together. Dr. Stofan that is wonderful. Youve given us so much to think about. And this is so hard, because frankly, if we could, i would keep doing this for another few hours. And im sure many people have questions and reflections based on these three incredibly amazing women. So thank you so much for sharing your stories with us tonight. We hugely appreciate it. And thank you for joining us tonight. [applause] dr. Stofan and i would also like to thank boeing once again for making tonights lecture possible. Our celebration of Apollo Continues next month with another great Panel Discussion on october 22. Our aviation letter will be about the uss hornet and the recovery of the apollo 11 astronauts and spacecraft. And i hope we will all see you there. And we will have no stargazing tonight, i am sorry. The clouds have been rolling in and out. Sorry about that. Thank you so much for coming here tonight. And please exit through the rear doors of this theater. Thank you all. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] on American History tv, today at 6 00can artifacts p. M. Eastern, we will preview the votes for women exhibit. She was well ahead of her time here she started her own since as a wall street banker. Lawsdvocated for state that would allow sex outside of marriage. And at 6 30, author Sophia Rosenfeld discusses her book democracy in truth. No one person, one sector, Research Body we get to call all the shots. Pastplore our nations every weekend on cspan 3. Next, on the civil war, ryan quint talks about the battle of dranesville, fought in Northern Virginia in december, 1861. He argues that the conflict, while not wellknown, is significant, because it was the first victory for the union after several defeats early in the war. This talk was part of a forgotten battles of the civil war symposium hosted by the emerging civil war blog. Colonial williamsburg foundation. Please join me in welcoming ryan quint