exciting as the moonshot yet, but i have worked on robotics teams. people like me on the engineering side thought we were the lifeblood of the team because without the robots, we would not have been a robotics team. the humanities side, writers, artists, speakers, thought they were the lifeblood because without the community support, there would be no team in all. both perspectives were right and never wrong. -- and they were wrong,. engineering and humanities are opposite sides of the same equation. technology is most valuable when it integrates human needs and desires, understands the impact on society, employs effective communication, and recognizes the human efforts that made it possible. >> as a student in humanities, i have had similar experiences. students view situations through their respective lenses. working for solutions on diverse teams. they have given us innovative classes, leadership and networking opportunities. and forums, like this one. it is our platform for making the most of communication skills we need to succeed. i cannot fully express the extent to which the close relationships i have built this institute have helped me grow both professionally and personally. students are giving access to industry leaders, journalists and analysts and other great communicators, and now the , founder and executive director -- [applause] >> good evening, everyone. let's hear it again for them. [laughter] -- [applause] they are part of a crew of fabulous students who have put together events like these may -- and they work very hard on the event tonight. would the students working this event please stand? let's hear it for them. [applause] you will notice a couple of the students here with handhelds -- i am sorry with laptops. , they are working on monitoring twitter. you will be able to ask questions tonight via twitter. @purdueicc. and you will be able to ask your questions live as well. the students on twitter are allison, connor, frank, and jonathan. so how do you build a better student? how do you build a better experience for our students? a better educational experience? it is what we are about. we give students the tools and we tell them to do it themselves. and they do. we have them write their speeches and deliver them. we have them produce forums like this. they come on experiential learning classes. we take students to washington. for part of a master class at c-span. we spent two weeks there. we send them for a summerlong internship. in partnership with our friends in engineering. this year, we will have 10 engineers going to washington taking a class and working in a meaningful internship periods. -- experience. that is real learning. it is real world application of what our students have learned in the classrooms. it will help them have a leg up when they go out to use the degree they worked so hard to achieve. if you are not a member of picc and you are an undergraduate student, we are university wide and why haven't you come by? we want the doers from purdue to be part of picc. if you are not comfortable writing a press release, guess what i'm going to ask you to do. if you are not comfortable speaking, guess what i'm going to ask you to do. --you are not comfortable, we will make sure you have the best learning experiences ever, learning from the people at c-span and in washington. last year we, we went to the white house and met with members of the national security staff. we met with john boehner. we met with both indiana senators. and we met with top officials at the state department, the new york times, bloomberg, just to name a few of the things we did. website, and it is on your brochures. i hope you picked it up on the an in, and give us, send us e-mail, give us a call. we would love to welcome you on board, and did i mention that we give out tens of thousands of dollars in scholarship money thanks to our generous donors, including the daniels fund. which has made the picc possible. next i would like to introduce you to the person who will be introducing our president. leah jamieson. [applause] >> thank you, carolyn. and i will before i say a few words about the connections between neil armstrong and purdue, i'm going to echo what carolyn said about this incredible partnership between picc and engineering. articulated by carolyn and by the students in their introduction. the partnership between the liberal arts, between communication and engineering and stem is probably the most promising hope we have for changing the world. i am very grateful to be a partner and to be a part of this evening. i will say a few words about the connection between neil armstrong and purdue. simplest description, purdue's most famous alum bar none. it has come to represent the dreams and aspirations of a nation and over time, over the world. but for purdue, it is more personal. images and memories of neil armstrong presenting to purdue president a flag that he carried with him on his gemini 8 mission. blueprints on our campus outside the neil armstrong hall of engineering for children to take their own giant leaps. from the astronauts' boots, casts, which are preserved at the smithsonian. our own purdue images that include neil armstrong waving the perdue flag, beating the world's biggest drum, and literally thousands and thousands of students, faculty, staff, visitors memorable images with a statue of neil armstrong as a student. it is more personal, i find, as i travel around the world and meet people from purdue. graduate students who talk about being a teaching assistant and having neil in class and i was noting that he was a really good student. recently, a purdue alumna who grew up in ohio who met neil armstrong at a local outreach event. she was a high school student thinking about college and relating that he was the one that convinced her she should come to purdue and study aeronautics and astronautics and stayed in touch with her throughout her college career and throughout her career at nasa. my own personal experience of having him greet me with a huge smile and a hug. which is something i will never forget. for many of us, part of that special connection absolutely includes neil armstrong's pride in being an engineer. he was someone who did not demonstrate pride, rarely like to talk about himself, but he absolutely liked to talk about engineering and giving credit to the army of engineers who made spaceflight and the missions possible. he would note, for example, that some people say the glass as half-empty and some say the glass as half-full. an engineer always wonders why the glass is twice as big as it has to be. at the dedication of armstrong hall, he talked about engineering and his personal definition of engineering and engineering is about what can be. it is the single best definition of engineering that i have ever heard and neil armstrong, more than anyone in memory, gave us an unforgettable image of what can be. the special place that neil has in purdue hearts was never clearer than at the memorial service organized by students two days after his passing. for as far as the eye could see, at the corner of the stadium at northwestern people filling that , corner surrounding armstrong hall, to remember him. students who were far too young to have watched that first step on the moon and a faculty and staff, people from the community all gathered to remember neil armstrong. and, i would say, in our own way to say you belong to the nation. , you belong to the world. you belong to history. but in our hearts, you will always be a boilermaker. and this connection was on and is certainly one of the things that makes being from purdue very special. it is my honor now to introduce --purdue's chief boilermaker, president mitch daniels. [applause] >> it is not a new concern. it is not a new worry that americans know far too little about their history and about their traditions. every year, someone takes a new depressing survey of our fellow citizens and in 2012, one showed that only half could name the war in which the battle of the bulge occurred. fewer than half knew american general was at yorktown. some thought it was grant. some thought it was robert e lee. this was a multiple-choice test. only one in six knew the phrase of the people, by the people, for the people comes from the declaration of independence. that was a test, by the way. [laughter] over half of them thought that. however. i might have set it by way of preface, these are college graduates on whom i am reporting. now, a nation as ours is united not by ethnicity, not by tribe, not by religion, but solely by an idea and an ideal. a nation that made history and defied history, domination by kings and tyrants and generals, authoritarians and created a nation by consent of the governed. we better have great historians. if in that nation plurus is go ing to be unum. we better have great storytellers. people who can reach out to broad sections, not merely to the scholastically inclined, but to an entire population of people who would be free and self-governing and to teach them their history and remind them of their traditions, those things that ought to bring us together and not to make us proud. our speaker tonight has the typical midwestern modesty, the same modesty we associate with neil armstrong, described himself as a storyteller. he is a distinguished professor, he is the author of 36 books. he is so prolific, that number must slip out of date on a regular basis. if i could mention one personal debt that i over him. -- that i owe him. his book "wilderness warrior," a survey of theodore roosevelt's life and career and commitment to conservation, motivated me in a previous life to work extra hard on that same cause and to get something started in indiana, which have taken us well beyond any where we were before. and i would date much of my intensity to that wonderful book that he brought us. across that body of work, he has written about history shaping individuals from theodore roosevelt to henry ford to james forrester. history shaping events like world war ii, unification of europe, history shaping phenomenon, the mississippi river, hurricane katrina. if america had or named an historian laureate, our guest would the our choice. tonight, as leah mentioned, he is here to talk about a subject of very special interest and pride and reverence to every boilermaker, every friend of this university. it is a topic one might hope could become the subject of book number 37 or 38. we are about to be treated to a personal reflection about our most esteemed and favorite gift to the nation by another real gift to the nation. please welcome dr. douglas brinkley. [applause] >> thank you very much. i want to say governor. i am so used to thinking of governor and thinking of you as governor and not just president of purdue university. and not just a governor, but governor daniels, somebody i have admired for a long time. he is exactly what we need in american public life. someone who comes up with new ideas and grabs them by the scruff of the neck. it is an honor, governor, for you to introduce me. i also want to thank my friend brian lamb and this marvelous school of communication. he is a man of blinding integrity. anytime i am in his presence, i feel very honored. this is my first time to purdue. my wife is here with me in the front row and we will be circulating around and meeting students tomorrow. i am greatly looking forward to my time here. now i got involved with neil , armstrong because i was a boy growing up in ohio near toledo. and i am now road, 53 years old, so i was born in 1960. so i was nine years old at the time of neil armstrong's going to the moon and that was everything for me. some people talk about remembering the vietnam war. i remember that and i remember watergate. but just what that meant from the hometown boy went up to the moon and broke the shackles for the first time. so imagine how excited i was when i got a chance to interview neil armstrong. but it happened at a very odd time in american history. just days after 9/11 happened. i was in new orleans and nasa had asked me to do an oral history. i will not get into all of the details tonight about that, but i was going to get to do an oral history of neil armstrong. he turned 70 and said he would do one for nasa and they wanted somebody like myself who had some enthusiasm for the topic to come down to johnson space center and go interview him in houston. well all airports were canceled. ,everything was shot, so i , so irything was shut figured, there goes my interview. i finally get the reluctant hero, even his family calls him a reluctant hero, and he does not like talking to the press. on 9/11, this is a washout. he said, oh, no, i do not cancel things. he flew from cincinnati to houston and it was an old fashioned a lesson in carry-on. e-warn you,to pr there are many great engineers and aeronautical engineers in the audience associate with purdue university. i am not that. and, in fact, i almost embarrassed myself because at one point, and it is in the transcript to prove it. i did a real humanities question. i said, mr. armstrong, do you ever just get out there and stand and look up at the moon and say, my, gosh, i was there? no, i don't. [applause] -- [laughter] that was it. it was not like he was giving me a hard time. it was just that he just did not process like that. in fact, not only is he a boilermaker, he was most proud of being an engineer and he thought engineers got short shrift in american history. and one of the quotes that he said that i like great deal, i am and ever will be a white sox pocket protector nerdy engineer and i take substantial pride in the accomplishments of my profession. science is about what is. engineering is about what can be. so my lecture today is about what can be when an engineer puts his mind to something. and you all know, many of the people here who knew neil armstrong, he always felt that it was 400,000 people that got us to the moon. and he never really liked the idea of celebrity hero. particularly. and so the thought of even , having a lecture on his life and his biography, he would be a little allergic to the concept. he has a great authorized biographer, james hansen, who did a book in 2005. i recommend it all to you. i was lucky enough to review it for "the new york times" when it came out. and it is terrific and it has some of the more detailed information about his life. if my talk tonight spurs you on to read one book, that is the one i recommend. now, i mention neil armstrong's flying down to houston and it reminded me, in 1947, when he was only 16 years old, he left the town to come here to west lafayette and most kids would have their parents take them. if they are going to come here. he was coming to do his paperwork to enroll. but neil armstrong, at age 16, flew here from ohio. a couple hundred miles. he landed here, filled out his papers and went back. i always thought, i mean how , many kids at that age can do that, and particularly in 1947, who was always so accomplished at flight. he had gotten his pilot's license before he got a drivers license. he was born august 5, 1930. stephen armstrong, his father, for the most part, worked with the state of ohio as an auditor. this meant that he had to move around constantly. his father was very stern. you know, the famous saying was straighten up. to his children. a loving father, but tough. and his mother, viola, was a very devout christian woman and always talked about god and her belief in the bible. and so, you know, those were the two seminal influences on him. and when i say they moved around and that town gets credit for neil armstrong, and, of course, today, there is a museum there. there is a neil armstrong museum and i recommend you go. but i just wanted to name some of the moves, 16 moves in 14 years. here is a list of his ohio odyssey towns. lisbon, 1930. warren, 1930. robina, 1931. shaker heights, 1932. cleveland avenue -- cleveland heights 1932. ,warn jefferson, 1934. , 1933. warn, 1936. moulton, 19 37. st. mary, 1938. upper sandusky, 1941. walk in that it, -- waup akinetta, 1944, he graduated from high school. always in the state of ohio. and his love of being a pilot was not that unusual for that area. here at purdue, i do not know if some people realize, a man named cliff turpen in 1908, helps the wright brothers redesign their engine and their controls. that early from purdue university in aviation, and the wright brothers were great heroes to any kid growing up in ohio because of their famous bicycle shop in dayton. today it celebrates aviation as much as you do here at purdue. six years old, neil armstrong goes on his first flight. he goes up in a ford trimotor and it had a big impression on him. at that point, he was quite hooked about it. at least that is one he talked about as an adult, and there is a story about his love of aviation that armstrong has never refuted. and, believe me, he refutes a lot of stories about him. he had a lot of people say wrong things and he would always try to correct the record. nothing drove him crazier than that. he talked about a reoccurring dream that he had. he said, by holding my breath, i could hover over the ground. nothing much happened. nor fell those dreams, i just hovered. the indecisiveness was a little frustrating. i just hovered. if you know anything about neil armstrong, he never talked about anything that might be considered vaguely occult or mystical. this notion of hovering more -- or floating, when you think about it, what happens in space you can see why that dream , circulated. norman mailer, this sort of nonfiction new journalism, they used to call it he tries to milk the dream for a , lot of insights. but armstrong asked people not to think much about that. dreams that did not add up to too much. just like when he was a boy, he climbed a tree -- as all boys like to do in the midwest -- and he fell 15 feet and hurt himself terribly. he was trying to man up and not be in pain. and finally, he said, go get mom. he was in excruciating pain. but when people asked him, did you have something about getting high, you know, you needed to be in the branches? he said, the only thing i learned about that was never trust a tree branch. that was a typical answer of his. he never wanted to read too much into things. by all accounts, when 1969 happened at the time of apollo and journalists went all around 11, collecting stories, everybody said they knew neil armstrong. and had their neil armstrong story. i got to be the biographer of rosa parks and i believe there were 13 people on the bus. on december 1, 1955. about 13 more on the bus that day. i interviewed 37 of them in montgomery, alabama. when i was writing on her. [laughter] everybody was on the bus. and now everybody in that part , of ohio had a neil armstrong and one has to and still has two sift through it all. he loved model airplanes, build them so they could work. build them so they could fly. and undeniably, beyond parental influence, or the influence of his siblings, the big deal was the boy scouts of america. he was a boy scout all of his life and the scouts are often talked about, theodore roosevelt was the big champion of the boy scouts. when it got founded. fdr, a big champion of the boy scouts. i do not know if you realize, but fdr contracted polio in 1921 from swimming at bear mountain he was swimming with kids with the poliovirus and fdr contracted it. it manifested itself in his summer home. they called it a cottage. it was 36 rooms. he could not feel his lower half. he talked about the boy scouts as the greatest thing in america. after march of 1933, he created the ccc, 250,000 young men planting trees and parks. digging your attention to just -- irrigation ditches. not often talked about is -- i want to read this statistic. of the 200 94 individuals selected as astronauts between 1959-2003, 200 of them were boy scouts. four out of every five astronauts were boy scouts and stayed active in scouting. many of them made it to the eagle scout level. of the 12 men who walked on the moon, 11 were boy scouts. this is so important. when neil armstrong was here. -- was here, he did not take things lightly. he was not glib. when he was in apollo 11, in 1969, while flying towards the moon in the columbia, armstrong said, "i would like to say hello to my fellow scouts and my scoutmasters at farrington state park in idaho having their national jamboree and send my best wishes." here he is, thanking the scouts at a jamboree in idaho. getting a call out to the whole world heard. that was his thank you to what scouting meant to him. when you do oral history interviews and you talk to people who knew neil armstrong, you can find things that are similar. when you talk to engineers or test pilots or astronauts or hometown or family members, everyone agreed with what eugene, the head of nasa said, he never got angry. he had a commander mentality. he never got angry. it was hard to find circumstances where he was angry. he could forget something or make a mistake. that was an emotion that he refused to let out. he bottled that up. he was to self-willed to show anger. he is leaving ohio to come to purdue and to go to college. you guys should be proud of oil or makers here. he got accepted to m.i.t. and told m.i.t. no. why he chose purdue was because of the great program that already existed here and he did not feel that he had to go that far away to get a good education. as you all know, he was in love with ohio and purdue. after he walked on the moon, he moved back to cincinnati. michael collins, the third of the apollo astronauts, who was in the columbia, went armstrong left nasa to go to ohio, he took a swipe at him. he said that neil armstrong was locking himself in a castle and pulling up a drawbridge by going back to the midwest and abandoning the fame of being in washington or new york. armstrong usually did not file back -- fire back. he said about collins, you know, those who live in the hinterlands think that the people inside of the beltway have the problem. he wanted to get back to his roots. what he decided when he came to purdue and why aviation meant everything -- i want to read a line. by the time i was old enough, things had changed. the great airplanes that i had revered were disappearing. the chivalry of the world war i pilots, frank luke, eddie rickenbacker and billy bishop. by world war ii, ariel chivalry seems to have evaporated and air warfare becomes impersonal. the record-setting flights, harold gaddy, charles lindbergh, across the corners of the earth, had all been accomplished. i resented that. for someone who was immersed and fascinated and dedicated to flight, i was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that brought me along one generation late and i had missed all the great times and adventures in flight. he came here, you know, not knowing where the field was going to go. he came to purdue because of the plan. governor daniels mentioned this. i wrote a biography. forestall pushed the holloway plan. he wanted to push a post-graduate school. the scholarship allowed neil armstrong to come here at purdue. we talked about coming to purdue in the 1940's after world war ii. a want you to keep this in mind, in that era, less than one in four americans received a high school education. fewer than one in 20 ever went to college. let alone graduate. it was a big deal to go to college. purdue's interest -- i am embarrassed to talk about it with some in the audience here. purdue produced 23 astronauts. 35% in recent years of all of the recent space shuttle astronauts have gone to purdue. the first man on the moon was from purdue. the last man on the moon was also from purdue university. when he started the engineering program, it was from september 1947 through january 1955. it included a three-year stint in the military. he had 7.5 years here one way or another. it became an amazing era in aeronautical development. it was different then the pilots that neil armstrong wanted to be liked. he had things going on here. out in white sands new mexico, making the the-two missile -- out in the white sands, new mexico, making the v-2 missile. the department of air force was part of the truman administration and navy administration -- aviation became large because of aircraft carriers. neil armstrong was a naval aviator. people thought he was in the air force. he had a great time in a fraternity on state street. phi delta theta. he met his future wife here at purdue. i do not want to gloss over it. his real education is being part of the korean war. he got his jet pilot wings when he was called to active duty in pensacola naval air station in florida. this is a time when the cold war is really heating up and president truman had signed a 5000 mile guided missile test range area to be established at cape canaveral. he is the engineer pilot. you would look at him and want to ask him for his id. here he is as the first american, you know, on the moon. he is getting his first times really flying and extraordinary ways in the korean war. from 1950-1953, he went on 78 combat missions. that is just a number. in museum business, you study one combat mission and it tells you more about the others. that is about 121 hours and the little of the korean war doing high risk combat missions. the most famous one is september 3 of 1951. he has to eject himself from the panther because he had ran through anti-aircraft cable and it had knocked off 6-8 feet of his right wing. he was flying so low that he hit a cable and had to eject himself. he said, if you are going that fast, the cable makes a good knife. he cut the wing. part of this time in the war with the heroics and, you know, taking the fight to north korea and landing jets on aircraft carriers on the uss cabinet and the uss right. -- cabbot and the uss wright. i asked neil armstrong about james's time in korea. he said, -- i thought he would not like the novel. a lot of people in the military do not like what is being fictionalized as war. he was a good reporter. here's what armstrong said. i thought it was an excellent representation of the kinds of flying we were doing. it was identical. they put girls in the movie. i did not remove her that from my experience. he was on our ship and went for three chores -- tours. he would sit around the ward room and the ready room and listen to us tell stories. he did not ask questions. he absorbed it all. most of the things that happened in the book, which is a different book than the other books he has written. they were actual events. they were basically all adaptations of true stories he was told. so, you want to understand that if you read this book and his fictionalization, you understand why neil armstrong won a gold star and a service medal and why he came out of the war so incredibly decorated. keep in mind with korea how excited everyone was when the war finally ended. harry truman used to say that to err is truman. he was so unpopular. korea was dragging on. eisenhower runs for president in 1952 by saying that he will get us out of korea. i am going to visit. this is the eisenhower plan to get out of korea. he wins and we get out of the korean war. it is over. neil armstrong had an intense experience. he had a band of brothers with his naval aviators. he comes back to purdue and ends up, you know, trying to decide exactly what he is going to do in his life. by 1957, he gets to fly in his first rocket play -- rocket plane. there are many great stories about what it is like in the desert. i asked neil armstrong about the movie, "the right stuff." he, i talked to him about you here -- joeger. he tried to land on an area that was difficult and the plane got stuck in a dried-up lake. joeger lorded it over armstrong a little bit. they were different men, chuck yeager and neil armstrong. he had such composure. he was more of a flight boy. more light buzz aldrin. chuck jaeger was not afraid of braggadocio. armstrong was afraid of being seen as bragging. at this time, here he is at edwards air force base. by 1957, it is the big moment when we have sputnik. history changes and the soviet union launches sputnik one. the thing that amazes me is that sputnik was the size of a beach ball. it weighed 183.9 pounds. the whole world heard about sputnik and it only took about 98 minutes. it orbited earth on an elliptical path. that ushers in a new political, military, scientific and technical age. when sputnik was launched, the united states did not see it as a one-off event. a space race began. eisenhower created nasa and space now becomes a big deal. can we play -- i have a little -- let's play a little bit of neil armstrong talking about where he was when he heard about sputnik. >> yeah. i was holding a symposium in beverly hills. 1957. i was working on -- i think i may have been program chairman. i am not sure. i was very much involved in the symposium. the los angeles press was interested in the kinds of technical presentations that were being produced there and getting a little coverage of what our industry was doing and what was happening. it was a hard sell and it became completely impossible when it came across the sky and we could not get any people to listen about airplane flying. >> the -- i had written about walter contrite -- walter krokite. he was a military reporter. cbs decided when nasa is created that they will start covering the rockets that are going to fail or not fail. it was cheap. it is a camera on a site and kronkite rises to fame on the coverage. john f. kennedy becomes the gray television president if fdr was the master of radio, said he was the master of the press conference. -- kennedy was the master of the press conference. you get john glenn's extraordinary feat in 1962 when he becomes the first american to orbit the earth. it is a "back at you" moment. alan shepard was a hero of the kennedy years. as his launch vehicle propelled the mercury space vehicle, it allowed glenn to circle earth three times and the flight lasted for 4:55. the time steame -- seemed to stand still. everyone watched on television. a huge screen was built in grand central station to see john glenn. remember that he disappeared for a little while. nobody knew if you was dead or alive. cronkite was covering it all and came down and became the great hero. a group of media people rushed to john glenn's mother and said, are you going to reunite with your son? you must be so excited to see him. mrs. glenn said, i am really excited to meet walter cronkite. he had become a star. in fact, cronkite got the anchorship. cbs and all of them went space-mad. our country is in on it and neil armstrong is part of this, what i call, the greatest adventure. the greatest adventure is when john f. kennedy goes to congress and rice university. he says to rice university that we are going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. of course, he does and we do. kennedy gets high marks in history for achieving that, even though he was killed. the gemini programs kick in. they were going to be called the new nine. there was intense training and the media started covering it all. you also had the apollo one blowing up on march 16, killing gus. and, killing ed white and roger. the one time in my interview with mr. armstrong when i got goosebumps was when he said -- these guys did not mind that they are putting their lives on the line. to die on the ground was the worst thing for them. he gets more and more notice, neil armstrong because of his cool head and his grace under pressure. he knows how to inject himself properly and land by parachute. by all reports, he is calm on all things. as calm as can be. he gets picked because he is not in the navy. here it is, 1967-1968. after the tet offensive, johnson gets his administration destroyed. nixon wanted to have a civilian in space. he did not want to militarize it. there are debates what to put on the moon. some wanted a united nations flag. neil armstrong did not make that decision and i was interviewing hugo chavez. he said, neil armstrong never went to the moon. he was a real not, hugo chavez. it got wrinkled up. it looks like it is blowing. it is stationary and had wrinkles that made it look like the wind was blowing. hugo chavez thought it was shot on a hollywood lot. he is not alone. there is a group of people who think that apollo 11 was forged or faked on a hollywood back lot. conspiracy theorists. i asked mr. armstrong if he ever looked up. he said, no. the reason i went that way with him was because most of the astronauts almost had a religious or spiritual experience. they were aiming for the moon and what shocked them was the beauty of earth floating out there, looking so vulnerable. no borders of countries or city lines. many of the astronauts came back with a religious feel for it. william anders, in apollo eight, took the photo that all of you know. "earthrise." it is the most -- it becomes ubiquitous. we forget that we are now starting to see the planet and color. the whole earth catalog begins and many people are saying that the modern environmental movement begins with these photographs of earth that moves people. neil armstrong was selected when richard nixon came in around the knob role in 1969 and neil armstrong was elected to be the commander of apollo 11, the first lunar mission. he had flown different aircraft's, including ex-fifteenths -- x-15's. there is a big drum going into that summer of 69. at 9:32 a.m., eastern standard time, armstrong and collins and aldrin lift off from the kennedy space center in florida and off they go. millions of people crowded in florida to see this. all sorts of people. the whole world watching. there are wonderful reports to read about the buildup to the extraordinary moment. most of us say that we remember it. will we remember is watching -- what we remember is watching walter cronkite. he had an anchor buddy and we were all pulling for this adventure. young people do not like old people. the civil rights was going on. we were all in it together. we were all pulling for these three men to make it to the moon. apollo 11 passed into the gravitational influence of the moon on july 18 and circle the moon twice. armstrong and aldrin entered a lunar module, called "the eagle." cronkite was giving all of the detail. i am focusing on him because he was the most rated. they were playing duke ellington, who had written a composition about the moon. science fiction writers were talking. we had a lot of time to kill as the big moment arrived. at 4:17 p.m., on july 20, major portions of the population tuned into armstrong's transmission that reported that the eagle has landed on the moon. they had 40 seconds of fuel left. it was a touch and go situation, in some ways. there is the moment we all remember when the door opens and neil armstrong says, that is one small step for a man and one giant leap for mankind. i asked him about that. >> the question i get tired of the most is the most famous words of the 20 century. i know you've answered this question. are you curious that nasa did not script a line and allowed you personal freedom to? i wouldn't want to say, neil, here is the line would like you to say. >> in retrospect, they may have wished that. julian, who really led the nasa relations with the outside world in many ways was absolutely adamant that headquarters never put words in the mouth of other people. not just astronauts. anybody. beyond that, they never, to my knowledge, controlled the -- the statements, public statements, of others. they insisted that the flight crews not be told what to say and that the statements of the crew be their own electricians -- elocutions. as far as i know, that prohibition was never violated. >> we were actually crafting. >> can we shut that? the most famous words of the 20th century. they had 2.5 hours on the moon. they set up scientific instruments on the moon and left behind a metal plate that read, "here, men from planet earth first set foot on the moon. we come in peace for all mankind." armstrong did his best to scoop up rocks. they hooked up with collins. on july 24, the columbia returns to earth and neil armstrong is a national hero. the reason they had to move quickly was because there was fear about their suits. armstrong said that he did not write the words in advance and wrote them when he was there. he knew that the chances were about 50-50 that they were going to make it. there was a 50-50 chance that they were going to a board the mission. -- abort the mission. he becomes the most sought after man. charles lindbergh had a baby kidnapped and was worried about his privacy. nixon talk to him on the moon and greeted them when they got back. neil armstrong decided that, after it all, the presidential medal of freedom. he stays and works as the administrative aviator. he felt like joe louis. everyone wanted to meet him and get his autograph. his fame was stopping the job that he wanted to do. he wanted to be an engineer. he decided that he wanted to go back to being a professor of engineering. he would have come to purdue. he was so humble that he did not have a doctorate and only had an ma that he did not want to seem like he was bigfooting the real engineering investors. he went to -- professors. he went to the university of cincinnati. it did not have the intensity that it would have had here in purdue. he was a good teacher. he went around the world and talked about the moon, when it was necessary, in a non-commercial and non-flamboyant way. he went to the soviet union and met with the soviet leaders. he famously look at their technology and made the quip that it is a bit victorian. unusual comment from him. a fierce patriot. he loved his country. some of my interviews with him and china in space, we might want to get in. he believed in our country keeping ahead in aeronautics. his life has all sorts of different meetings -- meanings. he ended up always loving perdue and doing whatever he could. he sued hallmark cards for taking his quote and marketing at. -- it. he gave the money he won the lawsuit to purdue. he came and would not be at the ceremony when it happened. he stayed as active as one could hope for and you guys have honored him here with the neil armstrong hall of engineering. he tried to make some money after and he worked for chrysler. he did a commercial. some people criticized it. it was a tasteful commercial and i think the people who criticized it are fullest. he served on many boards. politicians called him to step forward. we lost him of a bad heart. he made it into his 1980's. -- made it into his 80's. i thought i would end by reading to you a question i asked him. he famously said, we missed the whole thing. we were up there and we missed all of it on earth. we had to catch up later. i asked him right after 9/11, mr. armstrong, were you disappointed after apollo 11 and the days of the kennedy and administer -- johnson administrations. they started cutting the nasa budget and we de-prioritized space. as i continued my question, do you feel like we lost interest in continuing on the role that we had as a society? what you attribute it to? his answer was, i think it is the responsibility of the human character. we do not have a long attention span and needs and pressures vary from day to day. we have had a difficult time remembering two months ago or looking into the future. we are very "now" oriented. i'm not surprised by this. i think we will always be in space, as americans. it will take us longer to do the new things than the advocates would like and, in some cases, it will take external factors and forces we cannot control or anticipate that will cause things to happen or not happen. nevertheless, looking back, we were very privileged to live in that vein slice of history -- thin slice of history where man changed how he looked at himself. i am thankful that we got to see it and be a part of it. he became like the pilots that he loved and i named you many of them. he became like one of them. he lived to be part of the thin slice of history when america was moon-crazy and there was still a belief in can-doism. that republicans and democrats can pitch in. i asked him if he hoped to go back into space one more time after watching john glenn go back in the 1970's. he said, if they offered me command of a mars mission, i jump a would jump at it. thank you. [applause] >> we are starting with a question from twitter. >> a member in our audience asks if you can evaluate the effects of neil armstrong on youth culture. >> yeah. it's a good question. i was the youth culture. i talked to a few of my friends at purdue. we all said that we were asked for non-crazy. -- astronaut-crazy. i collected glasses from the apollo missions. these were our heroes in the 1970's, these astronauts. it got people interested in space and science. it brought a lot of people to come to purdue to become an astronaut. i always cringe when i say 'men'in space. what about women? look at how many women became astronauts. the whole sally ride phenomenon and what not. he was a class act. he did not commercialize space. some things were sacred. science and engineering is not about getting accolades or ribbon-cuttings. it is not about getting credit. that is what he was worried about. it is about doing it right. the engineer cannot afford to mess up because lives are at stake. so, he really is the best of all things that i would call the american character and he well knew that engineers were undersung in history. what made america great in the 20th and 21st century are our engineers. they made a whole grid of america so functionable. >> we are out of allotted time. we will take audience questions. one more twitter question. >> how can confidence be restored to the space program? >> well, money. the money is short for the space program. most -- i will say it, 80% of americans would like to go to mars. you have to look at budgetary concerns and where we find money to do it. in the talk i was doing, we had an enemy and a dark hat. kennedy and johnson deserve great credit in getting us to go to the moon. they framed it as a sporting event. so much so that the original draft of jfk's speech said, why does rice dear play texas in football? why do we take on things that are difficult? because it is human nature. we want to explore and no more. that's why all of the countries wanted. we wanted an answer. some people said to move on to another story. we would not. will was great about kennedy was him expressing a desire. kennedy and president johnson did a tremendous job with money dealings. i'm sure that governor daniels remembers charlie from the state of indiana. if you listen to the lyndon johnson tapes, they are amazing. 50 years ago, johnson was trying to get the civil rights act pushed and he would say, you know, purdue, i know if you back civil rights, there will be funding coming your way. you guys care a lot about the space program. where i am mad, rice university, lyndon johnson started trying to get -- that land used to be owned and political deals were made to get it going. it is bipartisan, going to the moon. neil armstrong tried to not be political. if you ask me and james hansen, an authorized biographer, i would venture that he was a moderate republican who believed in states rights. he would have voted for john glenn from ohio and was for glenn in the senate. he judge people by their character. that last quote i read about him, he wants to go to mars. where does the money come from? he was a pragmatist in these ways. if he could do anything, just promoting -- one thing he wanted to do and never got to do was write a great engineering textbook. it showed that he had interest in writing. even though -- i quizzed him enough that he had read all of hg wells and jules verne. he's exceedingly well read. he is not someone who thought only in engineering terms. he had a great humanity's side. he tended to read texts about exploration and war more than novels. >> two of our picc students want to close the program. >> great. >> first, i like to thank you for attending this forum. my name is jonathan goodwin. i'm a third-year student in political science. >> i am a senior in political silence. science.cal dr. brinkley, please accept this token of appreciation. [applause] >> thank you all very much. >> you are watching american history tv. follow us on twitter you for information and to keep up with the latest history news. all weekend long, american history tv is joining with our partners to showcase the history of des moines. to learn more about the city's honor 2014 tour, visit see cspan.org. this is american history tv on c-span 3. while in des moines we spoke brandstant.rry >> why the draw for candidates in des moines? >>

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