>> look for these titles and bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on c-span2. >> [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, everyone. my name is jennifer levasseur,, and the curator here in the smithsonian museum and want to welcome all of you to what's new in aerospace.

i want to spend a quick thank you to our sponsor bowling. today we have a really great talk. i'm hoping all you are as excited as i am, as someone who watches a lot of things on television about space, tranfive is a familiar face to me certainly. he is the editor at large for time magazine and is also a local big he grew up in baltimore and went university of maryland. he is author of multiple books everything from narcissism to polio. but notably for today at least in the context of this museum he is the author of two books that will bring up i think over the course of the time. first walkman -- lost men. the inspiration for the movie and today he will be not on talk but his new book but sign the book afterwards just outside the gallery if you're interested. we will give "apollo 8" the thrilling story of the first mission to the moon evolution in welcoming jeffrey kluger.

[applause] >> i mentioned the book lost men. you wrote in 1994. you do write about space in time i see quite a bit but what project back to that storyline, that exciting moment at this point on? >> the apollo 13 or paul abbate? a lot of it came from someone who's an audience today, jill, my young adult book editor who has a great book of her own. she and i were having lunch one day speaking about great yarns that could work for kids and work for adults. the story of apollo eight came up in my feeling had always been and has always been that with a great deal of american history, american space history is written it will be apollo eight, 11 and 13 that are the true benchmark missions. we all know what 11. first footprint on the moon. apollo 13 was a great tale of survival.

but apollo eight was the first time human beings left the gravity field of earth. we have lived for an entire existence as a species, at the bottom of a gravity well of earth. we managed to haul ourselves out of the dirt come get aircraft into the atmosphere, spacecraft around earth. orbiting the earth is sort of dog paddling in the local harbor. for apollo eight which is a first time we sailed across the true deep waters of deep space, went to another world and for the 24 hours those guys were there, they were creatures of another world. they were no longer earthlings. they were moon man for 24 hours. it was a mission that made all of the landings possible. >> so you get what i want to ask that which is what makes apollo eight special. for those who are alive at the time, apollo 11 was special because of the first steps on the moon. but apollo weight was a dramatic

shift in the plan. talk about what made it so special at that particular moment in time in 1968. >> 1968 as we know was easily the most bloodsoaked year in modern human history. bobby king, bobby kennedy assassination, martin luther king assassination, riots in the u.s., riots in the democratic convention. the tet offensive in vietnam, the soviet invasion of prague, more rights in mexico city, paris. the world was bleeding from a thousand self-inflicted wounds. then in the summer of 1968, a handful of people at nasa realize there was a way to right the ship of the space program and as a dividend sort of redeeming the year everything the country. this was one year after the apollo one fire, mass. have lost three astronauts on the launchpad fire.

, the dream of getting to the moon i 1970 seemed completely beyond reach. the spacecraft had to be built from the bottom up. the saturn five rocket wasn't working. the lunar module was hopeless. that was nowhere near ready to make a lady. here we were in the sum of 68, 16 months before present today's deadline, and the guys at nasa, they were all men at the time, not including the women from hidden figures who did such extraordinary work, they said we can fix this command module and we can fix this saturn five. and if we do this work and if we do it fast, if we get our guys trained and catch a couple of breaks, we can be in lunar orbit in 16 weeks and kickstart this program. and they did it. >> so you mention some of the people, the people who made this happen to get such as that technology. it's about peopl the people whot all that effort into it. are they what draw you as a

journalist to the stories? these are dramatic events. talk about some of the people, and your three main characters in your book. tell us about those particular people. >> these three guys, they are left to right, bill landers, jim lovell and frank borman, i never lose sight of the fact how privileged i am to call jim a friend. i've known him, i've known his family were 25 years now. but all three of these guys in some ways represent something special and something particular about why human beings travel in space and that's frank borman. why we travel in space and why we do these ambitious things. it all went into it with different motivations. jim lovell simply loves nothing more than being in space. he's never as happy as when he's in space and is never as happy in space as when he is doing something totally crazy like

being on the first crew to fly to the moon. bill anders adores machines. he adores the counterintuitive way a machine like the lunar module worked. he made himself an expert of every little rivet and why are ample on the lunar module. in this mission he didn't get to fly so he then learned the system of the command module. to him and was taking machine and making do something amazing. rank borman is and was a patriot. frank borman trained to be a fighter pilot. he went to west point. he joined the air force. he wanted to fight in korea. to him this was his country needed. he was ready to fight. he was granted for about a year due to a burst eardrum. his window of opportunity passed to fight in korea, and when this opportunity to be an astronaut and to fly this improbable mission was presented to him, he knew that this was his chance to

fight a very important battle n the cold war, to go out to win and to come home. for him it was a mission. all three guys knew about the ethical nature of the mission. he knew that this was a mission there were fly not for nasa, not just for america, but for the species at large. they're going to make us homo sapiens a two world species. they were unaware that, but they all came to it with different personal agendas. >> that's brought up nicely in their mission patch defined by jim lovell, that sort of encompassing drawing things together, trying to earth and an the closer together by having people go there. lovell and borman had interesting connection and the fact they had already flown together. this is unique in many respects but in part because they had fun together before. >> that's right. if you go into the entry gallery, look at the gemini for space craft. those exact same model

spacecraft that these two guys, borman and lovell, flew in the first time the flu. it is basically to coach seats and inflatable suits so your shoulders are touching. the overhead is three inches above your head when the hatches were closed. jim anne frank lived in that spacecraft without ever getting to open the doors for two solid weeks in low-earth orbit. borman described as very glamorously as a fortnight in the men's room. that's how he described it. they joked when they came home that i don't know, maybe we will get married. >> they spent so much time together. >> spent so much time together. it was a nation nobody wanted. really lunch bucket mission. they didn't. they performed brilliantly and that crew cohesion once i think what made apollo eight work so well. they brought in bill anders who was a whip smart energetic hotshot in all the right ways,

and gauges rounded that group. >> he didn't get to command, didn't get to drive the lunar module like yelp but he really ended up playing a substantial role kind of where apollo eight story has come even today, which is to his photography. he really immersed himself in studying the lunar surface. we even have a photo composite one of the most photos -- famous photos in human history which is earthrise. he talked about it extensively. these kinds of things, these stories are covered to lots of academic histories, through biographies, even these astronauts and you can see earth rise here. so what is your take on this flight that is really new to add another voice to that story? what did you learn that you can convey in a book and that is for readers? >> first of all before you answr that i want to say this is not by accident that this picture is sideways.

bill anders in fact, insists on rotating it 90 degrees because remember they were flying around the flank of the moon. so the earth actually rises in a lateral way. the lunar surface was below them so they saw it right side up, but this really the way it looks in space. what made this a new experience for me, look, i knew it was going to be thrilling to write everything that happened when they got to the spacecraft, and my editor john sterling you happen to be my first editor when a road apollo 13, he said to me i want those guys in that spacecraft by 40% of the way to rebut. if you haven't gotten there by then, cut 10%. he's a very smart man. he knows how to pace a book. i worked very hard to make that happen. but what struck me also was that 16 week window that they had to get this mission out of the planning stage and onto the launchpad. and it was that monomaniacal

focus that they showed at nasa, particularly in houston, to get the systems ready, to sell the necessary nasa perhaps on the idea of doing this. it was my original very long subtitle for this book was going to be the ingenious and outrageous inspired and insane nation saving mission of apollo eight, marketing could almost hit me over the head with a rolled up newspaper and said enjoy that because it will never see print. but it did capture the nature of the mission. it was ingenious and it was inspiring and it was outrageous and was insane. and yet every single person who was brought into the moon come into the room for these quiet conversations, every higher and higher level of nasa brass and was told with a quick way to get to the moon in 16 weeks, they all said you're out of your mind, can be done. and then they listened and then they said well, i think it can

be done. i think we do have the hardwar. we just have to fix it. i think we do have the manpower and woman power and human power to sprint to this mission. we certainly have the astronaut personal. look, they were great people for this mission. but as chris craft, the director of flight operations once told me, i asked him what is the best pure pilot and the best group you ever flew? the people on assessment that and i always say you will think i'm making it up but my aunt was always it is whatever crew i'm flying right now. because every crew benefits and what the previous crew did. even if for some reason the three had not been able to fly, it scott schweiker would been able, armstrong, aldrin and collins. they had these trios of extraordinary gifted men. they just had to pick one that thought was right. >> we saw the image of the launch of apollo eight.

to some degree additional what they did is they put people on top of the saturn five, this was the first time that had been done. it didn't just good orbit. it went all the way to the moon. there have been previous saturn five launches that would alright but not exactly perfect. >> the first one was perfect. the cycle and almost shook itself apart getting to orbit. chris craft again a very frank man, he went out to give his post-launch press conference on unmanned flight ms expected him to be politic about it. he had a two sentence statement. this was a disaster. write that down. disaster. there's no way to fix that. and walked out of the room. and then ate mostly listen overcome will put three guys on top. but because of their faith in their ability to sort out what the problem was, and he did sort it out. >> we are talking about technology and, of course, the museum itself isn't a lot of that technology of the apollo

era. apollo eight is housed at the museum of science initiative in chicago. we have an interesting picture of its arrival when sitting at but he will find interesting. when you see these objects how does that connect what you've done in terms of research, and what actually happens? you talk to the people and now using the technology. tell us about sort of what your reactions are to come into place were we have all that stuff. >> that's the thing, i was never quite savvy about my schedule this morning as when jennifer told me by the way, you have an hour to kill. get the security team and drag me away from the display of whatever it is. i believe these machines in these museums are powerfully in vocative is important for of reasons. first of all i don't think anyone fully realizes the scale of them until you're standing next to the in the case of the lunar module, it is, that

machine i voice said it is so it's beautiful. it is the perfect machine. i can look at pictures of the all day and distant innocent of it and see this is the scale, this is the tactile nature of it even though we don't get to touch it, this is what it would've looked like to be a person engaged with that machine. the apollo soyuz made a spacecraft at encounter over there are another example of that. you have this leak apollo spacecraft. you have the much more irregular looking soyuz spacecraft. you have two different machines built by two different empires on two different sides of the world, empires that were a a doctor points with each other, nuclear dagger points. and yet between them connecting them, there's this big lumpy chunk of seven-time black hardware that serve as, a dataport for the american ship, it at a port for ship.

it was the greatest engineering metaphor for global geopolitics, or how you can bring to spacecraft together, and in so doing so bring to nations together. to see the hardware is to make it tactile this, make it really is the reason i never tire of looking at these great space stores. >> we are happy to have you come anytime to take a visit. modern meditation what you're talking about these hanging guide which is international space station model. it's the size of the football field and yet many nations came together to build this thing. "time" magazine has chronicle some of this by way of a a document about one of the more exciting moments of the last few years especially going to the space station which is the mission of scott kellyanne mikael. thinking about those two stories together, the in a space station and soyuz, these partnerships,

how do you see sort of what you been doing lately with "time" magazine some of your articles and research in this political climate, in this climate of sort of technology sharing or not sharing, and this general public support for spaceflight? and we expect to see this continue? can we think something like partnership from the international space station is going to go forward, will take us to the next place? >> this is one of those questions that i actually feel like i can answer optimistically. i think the collaboration will continue at a think it should continue. part of it is simply because we are invested in it. 17 nations who have collaborated to build this come if you took 17 families and all build an apartment building and all that together, you're kind of stuck with each other. you better make this work. he put a lot of effort into it. i also think that will serve as a template for future international collaboration,

didn't spacecraft to more scum giving human beings to mars will be an order of magnitude more difficult than it was to get human beings to them and just because the distances are so much greater. but if you can bring 17 country together to do it, you cut costs, cut time, you build collaboration, bring special expertise from different groups of people. also i was touched by how readily and how poignantly the u.s.-russian collaboration in space transcends petty politics. when we were over, the time crew and you watched the launch of a soyuz rocket at 1:3 1:30 a.m. ie bitter cold steps of kazakhstan, first of all i could've died happy at the point to see a soyuz rocket take off, they're pretty spectacular. as i was saying earlier, there was such a granular level of collaboration. it were three astronauts are one astronaut and two cosmonauts

climb into that she did there was an american flag on the show of one and russian site on the shoulder of the other. all the way down to the full lie details when they gave press conferences and miniature american flag and a miniature russians liked it when he got to kazakhstan for the reentry, a miniature tos kazakhstan flickr everything about it is a symbol, the sum of not ask are all collaboration, cooperation. scott kelly who of course has a twin brother mark kelly, nothing is more defining relationship thawith his relation with his t, he nonetheless called the russian cosmonaut my mother from another brother because he had a year in space together. >> i wanted to sort of bring us back to the apollo eight story of it and we hav had seen a phoo that pop up which is the moon sort of as seen by the apollo eight crew. saying something like that,

seeing earth from that perspective is really something that was brand-new at this time. this was huge. they broadcast this, they broadcast on the moon. on christmas eve. this is a pivotal moment. is what people are equal to not only see the earth through photographs later they see it live on the television 250,000 miles away. is that really something that is helpful for us to think about today as far as how space any media, the space community and immediate kind of interactive? there's this partnership between the two. nasa's a job can be done without public support. the media bring that story to the public. tell us about your role as the sort of a writer in some of the space community. the excitement may be that your helping and part of that store. >> that is something that i like

to think about. look, i would love to be an astronaut. i want to be astronaut when i was a little boy. i still want to be an astronaut. i always realize though even as a little boy i was so ill-equipped to be an astronaut. it's just not something i have the brass to do. but to be in the system of that, to orbit around as itwere, to be in mission control, to be sitting here. marilyn lovell once said to be when we were on the set of the apollo 13 movie, and again this is what i already was turned to feel really close to marilyn and to the family at large, she said something to me that i took exactly the way she meant it. she said look, i have come to believe that jim was born to fly the mission of apollo 13 come and you were born to tell that story. i know she wasn't disparaging my

other things i have written, but that's okay with me. you think that i was a little boy in pikesville maryland and my favorite astronaut was jim lovell and the randomness of come these moves are sort of like subatomic models which is mr. brown randomly and boom, to calais. if the cliché appalled by running into jim lovell and being able to make people understand why that story was important, and with apollo eight being able to make people understand that, that's a good days work. i feel both humbled and privileged to be able to do it. >> i want to invit buy the audit committee of the question please feel free to go sit in the back row. before i get into, want to mention before i give my last couple of questions. so the crew successfully returned. what happened next? they parted ways of course. we ought to do other things. in the immediate aftermath, sort

of where did their lives take them as far as the crew? >> their lives with two very different places. frank borman was done when he landed. it was like he didn't have a good time. he did. it wasn't like he did realize the ethical nature of the nation. he did. he also knew this was my cold war mission. i'm home from the mission. at the end of the book we have to serve on the deck of the carrier and he gives his apollo spacecraft and affectionate pat and walks off and doesn't look back. he was a man with a patriotic job to do and he did it. bill anders would've loved to a con back into space but he also knew that the byzantine nasa flight rules what it meant if he ever did get assigned to another mission, the odds are very good that he would've been in the center seat of the apollo which would've meant he would've gone up to the minute again and still not gone to land, that two other people would've landed. he was offered a position in

government as a consultant or as an advisor to then-president nixon, and even went into private industry and he was very happy doing that. jim lovell, he was halfway to the moon and he's a baby i'm coming back. he just knew what he wanted to do. he knew that he had traveled a quarter of a million miles to get to the moon and got within five dozen miles of the surface. he was determined to close that last five miles. as history proved as i say in the book, jim lovell wh of flu n apollo weight and learned what happens when a spacecraft is everything right would later learn what happens when a spacecraft that everything wrong. >> so certify more personal note for me, i was born after apollo. we have lots of visitors who don't remember apollo weight,, don't remember apollo 11 or 17, the last mission to go to the moon. i grew up watching the space shuttle. of course the international space station still like today

and my children what they remember space shuttle flight advancing discovery in our building. what does apollo eight, think about the experiences of those particular astronauts, how does it may be, has a instructive or helpful for thinking about maybe a career in spaceflight or inspiring new generations basically to think about where they can go? >> there are a couple things about that. i will just briefly include an anecdote when the sum of 2012 we went out, my family went out to visit the levels to stand down for the weekend. my daughters within 11 and nine and jim was taking as to the museum of science and industry to see the apollo eight spacecraft. and on the way over i told my girls -- i pulled microsecond you may be too young to appreciate this right now, but this is columbus showing you the santa maria. keep that in mind for later. they did seem to keep that in

mind untilthe cutback to the house and he saw the lovell big shaggy dog toby and have things all about toby. but for a minute they had that appreciation. the other thing, you and i spoke about this earlier, is if you look at the three qualities on talk about with the three astronauts, anders is a management level a man of exploration. borman a man of patriotic duty. those are three pretty darn good qualities to take into any career if you are say, a 16, 17, 20-year-old student looking at your future. you can do worse than follow the example of these three guys in planning your own future. >> i think we have a question from the audience. >> good afternoon. i was a college student home for christmas during the apollo eight mission and i'd love to hear your experience of that christmas eve broadcast.

i know i wept, and was so beautiful. but how did you experience it, and even more importantly, how did the crew experience it? >> well, i could lie and say i was way too young to remember it, but that would be a complete untruth. i was plenty old enough to remember it. i was a very young adolescent, and as a young adolescent male i already learned one of the rules, which is showing no emotion. your tough, you sorely don't cry over things. could not abide by that rule. even as a kid i felt that excitement. i felt tears coming into my eyes. because he knew that this was something wholly different. and when they read on christmas eve, when they read the verses of genesis, didn't grow up in a terribly religiously observant family, i knew what genesis was. you could've been a person of

faith, you could've been an atheist. it didn't matter. the verse of genesis is beautiful. it's a beautiful verse. what was a speaking of the? it was speaking of birth, or in the case of apollo 1968, rebirth figure was speaking about a way to redeem this year. that was not lost on me. i was devastated watching robbie kennedys half, martin luther kings o death. i lived in baltimore. baltimore burned in the rides that followed the death. i knew how dreadful, mortal that you had been. i think it was the billy to redeem the year. and they believe that the astronauts themselves appreciated that, but not until they came back. of al all of the telegrams, allf the letters, all of the awards they got from leaders around the world, all three of them say that what impress them untouched in the most was a simple card from someone who, their

identities to remain unknown, it was a female, a woman who wrote them a card and simply said to the crew of apollo eight, thank you for saving 1968. and i think they felt that that was what they did. so you know, they all went back to the rest of their work, to the work that consumed them afterwards, but they knew what they had done for the world. i think that's a pretty darn good legacy. >> i think it was an element of surprise there, too, to hear religious text coming from a mission here because already we were thinking of nasa and spaceflight as being all about science and technology, and the fact that they literally were at another world and they were out in the cosmos. i don't think anyone expected them to convey that particular message. >> right. if you remember the famous

activist atheist madeleine o'hare back then, she filed a suit because this is mixing church and state, it was a common enterprise and they had read scripture. the world basically said fight at different fight. please don't fight this fight. when frank borman spoke, they all addressed congress and when he addressed in his talk, the supreme court was sitting right down in front, and he said i was very happy to be able to read the verses of genesis just a few years the supreme court had ruled prayer could not been school for any said that now you seen the nine judgment in the front row i'm wondering if we maybe shouldn't have done that. everyone laughs because everyone knew, abiding stricken by separate of church and state, course that technically broke the rules. but it broke the rules for such a grander good. i don't think reasonable people judge them.

>> thank you for your comment. >> thank you. >> i want to thank all of you for joining us today. join me in thanking jeffrey kluger for joining us. [applause] it be that you are inclined and interested he will be signing books just outside the gallery. thank you for joining us. have a good afternoon. [applause] [inaudible conversations] apollo white has always been my favorite. i back.

>> thank you for coming today. your talk was wonderful. >> i really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> if you can do it on that page. [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> thank you. >> i haven't bought my book yet. i will pay for it after you sign it. i work with jim lovell. he's donating his book. >> i'm going to see jim in a couple of weeks when i'm out at -- [inaudible] >> wonderful. i hope he comes and visits here again. >> a pleasure.

>> thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> hello, my dear. >> how are you? i completely forgot as is will i

would have a copy that you sign for me. [inaudible conversations] >> i hope i didn't embarrass you. >> no. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] >> i enjoyed the talk. thank you so much.

>> i went to space camp before there was a space can't. there was a space age camp in waynesboro pennsylvania. a great place. who do i make this out to? [inaudible] >> take a look at our film, the modern generation. i look like a crazy old man, so forgive me. thank you. >> just an autograph. >> i hope you enjoy it. hello. nice to meet you. >> can't wait to read it.

>> how're you? >> thanks for being here. >> my son graduates in my school next week and asked what he wants to do for living, and he said if it exist, space law. >> i said as long as it takes you to get your law degree, then it might be real. >> it might be real. >> thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] >> thanks so much. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you.

you're fine. >> what's your name? >> david. >> nice to meet you. >> you do realize that your generation will get us to mars. so i'm counting on you guys. men and women. boys and girls. thank you so much. i appreciate it. [inaudible conversations] >> i hope you like it. it really was a delight to write this book. one of the few things that make me happy to work on weekends.

[inaudible conversations] >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> i really enjoyed it in there. >> thanks so much. >> you're a great storyteller. >> thank you. >> you are inspiring me to become a better person. >> that's sweet of you to say. >> kim davis. >> okay. >> can you do one more? to jim. >> okay.

>> thank you. >> good luck to you. >> thank you. >> hi. how are you? [inaudible conversations] >> i think it is on c-span. >> believe me, i did a radio interview yesterday like 25 interviews over eight hours. i'm very tired sent in my own voice. >> i got back to my hotel last night, my throat was sore. i wonder why. i think there might be a reason. what's your name? >> jenny. >> where decode to school?

>> boston university. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you. >> thank you so much. >> booktv is on twitter and on facebook and we want to hear from you. tweet us, twitter.com/booktv or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. >> this week and where life at the chicago tribune annual lit fest book fair. we felt we look at the most popular nonfiction books according to the chicago public library.

our look at the most piper nonfiction books according to the chicago public library continues. ..

>> come join us. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. welcome to barnes & noble tribeca. tonight i have the pleasure of introducing heather cabot and samantha walravens as they join us to discuss "geek girl rising." heather is a former abc news correspondent, adjunct professor at columbia university school of journalism. samantha walraven is the editor of torn, a recognized speaker on