when the great tale of american space history is written if only eight, 11 and 13 that are the true benchmark missions we all know why apollo 13 was a great deal of the survival, but apollo eight was the first time human beings it is the gravity well of earth and we managed to haul ourselves out of the dirt and get aircraft into the atmosphere, but orbiting the

earth is sort of dog paddling in the harbor. for apollo eight it is the first time that we sailed across the true deep waters and deep space and went to another world. for the 24 hours that they were there they were not creatures of another world, they were moving men for 24 hours. it was a mission that made all of the landings possible. >> i get what i wanted to ask about what makes it so special. it was because of the first steps on the moon, but apollo eight was a dramatic shift in the plan. talk about what he did so special with a particular moment. >> there were a lot of things that happened. 1968 as we know was the most bloodsoaked year in modern history. there was the bobby kennedy assassination, martin luther king assassination, the

democratic convention for the soviet invasion, more riots in mexico city, paris. the world was bleeding from a thousand self-inflicted wounds and then in the summer of 1968, a handful of people realized there was a way to right the ship of the space program and as a dividend sort of reading the country and remember this is one year after the apollo fire after nasa lost three astronauts on a launchpad fire. the dream of getting to the moon by 1970 seemed completely beyond reach now. the spacecraft had to be built from the bottom up. the rocket wasn't working, the lunar module was hopeless nowhere near ready to make a landing so here we were in the summer of 6816 months before

president kennedy's deadline and the guys at nasa and they were all men at the time of including the women from hitting figures who did such extraordinary work, they said we can fix this command module and if we do this work and we do it fast we can be in lunar orbit in 16 weeks and kickstart this and they did it. >> you mentioned the people that made this happen it's about the people that put all this effort into it. these are really dramatic events. talk about the people and you have three main characters, talk about those. >> they are left to right bill anders, frank. i never lose sight of the fact

on how privileged i am to call jim a friend. i've known him and the family for 25 years now but all three of these guys in some way represented something special and particular about why human beings travel in space and why we do these ambitious things. they all went into it with different motivations. he simply loves nothing more than being in space. he's never happy as when he's in space or when he's doing something totally crazy like being on the first crew to fly to the moon. bill adores machines, the counterintuitive way a machine like the lunar module worked. he made himself an expert of every little rivets and why your on the lunar module. on this mission he did get to

fly so he then learned the the system say that the command module. it was taking the machine and turning it into something amazing. frank is and was a patriot. he trained to be a fighter pilot and went to west point and joined the air force. he wanted to fight in korea. his country needed him and he was ready to fight. he was grounded for about a year due to a burst eardrum, and the window of opportunity passed to fight in korea and with his opportunity to be an astronaut and two fly this mission was presented to him h she knew this was his chance to fight this important battle in the cold war to go out to win and come home. for him it was a mission. all three of them knew about the nature of the mission. they knew that they were flying not just for nasa and america but for the species of large

they were going to make us a two world species. they were aware of that but they all came to it with personal agendas. and that is brought up nicely having people go there. so this is unique in many respects but in part because they played together before. >> if you go to the gallery, look at the spacecraft is the same model into space craft. it's basically to coach seats with inflatable suits so your shoulders are touching into the overhead is 3 inches above your head. jim and frank lived in that space craft without ever getting to open the door for two solid

weeks. he described a very glamorously as a fortnight in a men's room that's how he described it. they joked when they came home and said maybe we will get married. [laughter] they spent so much time together. but it was a mission nobody wanted. they performed brilliantly, and i think that is what made it work so well. they brought in bill anders who was a smart, energetic hotshot in all the right ways and he just rounded out the crew. >> and as you said he didn't get to drive the lunar module like he hoped that he ended up playing a substantial role kind of where the story has come today that he really immersed himself in starting the surface and we even have a photo it's probably one of the famous photo

was taken in history. i know he's talked about it extensively. these kind of things, these stories are covered through lots of academic histories, through biographies you can see here so what is your take on this that is new to add another voice to that story what did you learn that you can convey in a book that is new for the readers? >> before i answer that i want to say this is not by accident that this picture is sideways. in fact he insists on rotating a 90 degrees because remember they were flying around the flank of the moon's of th so the earth ay rises in a wonderful way. this is the way that it looks in space. what made this a new experience

i knew there was going to be thrilling to read everything that happened and my editor said to me i want them in the spacecraft if you haven't got them their cut 10%. and they worked hard to make that happen but struck me also s the 16 week window that they had to get this mission out of the planning stage and onto the launchpad, and it was the monomaniacal focus that they show that nasa particularly in houston to get the systems rea ready, to so too so the nationad on the idea of doing this. it was my original subtitle for this book that was good to be

the ingenious and outrageous and insane nation saving mission of apollo eight marketing crew almost hit me over the head with a rolled up newspaper and said it will never see print. but they did capture the nature of the mission. it was ingenious and it was inspired and outrageous and insane, and yet every single person who was brought into the room for these quiet conversations, every higher level was told we think we have a way to get to the moon in 16 weeks they al all said you are t of your mind it can't be done and then they would send and said i think it can be done and i think we do have the hardware we just have to fix it. i think we do have the manpower and the woman power and human power to sprint to this mission. we certainly have the astronaut personnel. they were great people for this

mission but as the director of the flight operations once told me i asked him what is the best you ever flew and people always ask in a bat and he says you'll think i'm making it up but my answer was always its whatever crew i'm playing right now because every crew benefits from the previous did so even if for some reason he hasn't been able to fly, armstrong, aldrin and collins, they had seized ceos that were gifted men and they had to pick the one that was right for the mission. we saw the launch if that is really audacious about what they did because they put people on top of the saturn five and this was the first time that it was time and it went all the way to the moon. there were previous ones that were all right. >> the first one was perfect and the next one almost showed

itself apart. he went out to get his press conference and if they expectedy expected him to be very politic about it. he had a two sentence statement this was a disaster. then they said we are going to put three guys on top because they have the ability to sort out what the problem was and they did sort it out. >> we are talking now about technology. it's at the university of chicago and we have an interesting picture of its survival which i think everybody will find kind of interesting. but when you see these objects, how does that connect with what you've done in your research to what actually happens.

talk a little bit about your reactions where we've got all that stuff. that's the thing i was never quite so happy about my schedule as when jennifer told me you have an hour to kill then they dragged me away from the display of whatever else it is. i believe these machines and these museums are powerfully evocatively important for a lot of reasons. first of all i don't think anyone fully realizes the scale until you are standing next to them and in the case of the lunar module, it is so ugly it is beautiful. it is the perfect machine i can look at pictures all day and stand in the vicinity of it and see this is the scale even though we don't get to touch it this is what it would have looked liked to have been a person engaged in that machine.

the spacecraft in the gallery over there is another example that you have this spacecraft and much more irregular spacecraft you have two different machines built by two different empires with nuclear dagger points and get between them connecting them there's this lump of black hardware that served as the docking collar and at a port for the american ship and the russian ship. it was the greatest engineering metaphor for how you can bring them together to see the hardware.

>> we are happy to have you take a visit. a lot of the manifestation is the international space station model and yes many nations came together to build it by way of the more exciting moments bring tgoingto the space station whics the space mission. thinking about those stories together, these partnerships, how do you see what you've been doing lately in this political climate of sharing or not sharing and this sort of general support for spaceflight can we expect to see this continue and think something like a

partnership from the international space station is going to go forward and take us to the next place? >> this is one of those questions i actually feel like i can answer optimistically. i think the collaboration will continue and should continue. part of it is simply because we are invested in it. the 17 nations who've collaborated to build this if you took 17 families and they all build an apartment building in with together you were kind of stuck with each other so you better make this work you put a lot of effort into it. i also think that will serve as a template for future international collaboration. getting spacecraft to mars will be i an order of magnitude more difficult than it was to get human beings because the distances are so much greater but if you can bring 17 countries together to do it you cut the costs and time an in tid collaboration and bring special expertise from different groups of people and also, i was

touched by how readily and how poignantly the u.s. and russian collaboration in space transcends petty politics. when we were over at th the timw and watched the launch of the rocket at 130 in the morning and the bitter cold steps first i could have died happy at that point seeing the rocket takeoff. they are produced at delete this particular. there was such a granular level of collaboration. there were three astronauts and two cosmonauts all the way to the little details with the miniature flags and when they got to cause extensive reentry,

everything about it, the symbiotic sort all the collaboration. scott kelly and has a twin brother mark kelly, nothing was more important than the relationship with his twin. he says my brother from another mother because they had this year in space together. >> i wanted to bring us back to the apollo eight story a little bit of a photograph that popped up which is the moon as it is seen by the apollo crew. seeing something like that, seeing earth from that perspective is something that was pretty new at this time, this was huge. they broadcast this from the moon on christmas eve. this is a pivotal moment when people were not only able to see the earth for a photograph later

but live from the television from 250,000 miles away. is that something that is helpful to think about as far as how space and of the media kind of interactive? there's this partnership between the two. the job can't be done without public support and you can't bring that story to the public. talk about your role in the space community and sort of the excitement that maybe you are helping i them part of the stor. >> that is something that i like to think about. i would love to be an astronaut. i want to be an astronaut. i still want to be an astronaut. i always realized though even as a little boy i am so ill equipped to be an astronaut. it's not something i am to do. but to be in the vicinity of

that, to be in mission control, to be sitting here, it was once said to me on the set of the apollo 13 movie and this is when i already started to feel close to the family at large, she said something. i've come to believe jim was born to fly the apollo and i know she wasn't us to make a disparaging the other things i'd written but that's okay with me to think if i was a little boy in pikesville maryland and my favorite astronaut was jim lavalle into the randomness like subatomic particles we just flew around randomly and collide.

being able to make people understand why that story was important and being able to make people understand that is a good day's work and i feel both humbled and privileged to be able to do it. >> if you have a question feel free to sit in the back row, where we have an area for you to stand. so the crew obviously successfully returned. they parted ways of course. in the immediate aftermath of the, where do their lives take them? >> their lives went to very different places. frank was done when he landed. it wasn't like he didn't have a good time, he did. it wasn't like he didn't realize the nature of the mission, he did. but he also knew this was a cold

or mission. i'm home for the mission and at the end of the book we have him on the deck of the carrier and he gives the apollo spacecraft and affectionate pat and he walks off and doesn't look back. he was a man with a patriotic job to do and he did it. the bill would have loved to have gone back into space but he also knew that the byzantine flight rules would have meant if he ever did get assigned to another mission odds were good he would have been in the center seat of the apollo which would have meant he would have gone out to the moon again and still not gotten to land so he was offered a position in government as a consultant or as an advisor to then president nixon and he then went into the private industry and i think he was happy doing that. jim said i'm coming back here. he knew what he wanted to do and then he traveled to get to the moon and got within five dozen

miles of the surface and he was determined to close the last five dozen miles as history proved and as i say in the book jim who flew apollo eight learned what happens when a spacecraft does everything right and would later learn what happens when it does everything wrong. >> on a personal note for me i was born after that we have lots of the audience but don't remember apollo eight, 11 or 17 the last missions to go to the moon. i grew up watching the space shuttle, the international space station and my children won't even remember so what does apollo eight in those days thinking about the experiences of this particular astronauts how does that turn helpful for thinking of her career in the spaceflight or inspiring new generations to think about where

they can go? >> there's a couple things about that. i will just briefly included an anecdote in the summer of 2012 we went out to stay at their home for the weekend. my daughters were then and 11 and nine and jim was taking us to the museum to see the apollo eight space craft and on the way over, i pulled my girls aside and said 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 and they did seem to until they got back to the house and saw their big shaggy dog and then everything was about toby. but for a minute they had that appreciation. the other thing and you and i spoke about this earlier is if you look at the three qualities i was talking about the three astronauts, he was a man of

exploration, a man of patriotic duty, those are three pretty darned good qualities to take into any career 16, 17, 20-year-old student looking at your future so you could do worse than follow the example of these three guys in planning your future. i think we have a question from the audience. >> i was a college student home for christmas during the apollo eight mission and i would love to hear your experiences but broadcast. i know i cried it was so beautiful but how did you experience it and how did the crew experience it lacks >> i could say that i was too young to remember but that would be an untruth.

i was a very young adolescent and i'd already learned one of the rules which is show no emotion and i couldn't abide by that rule. i knew this was something totally different. they didn't grow up in an observant family. you could be a person of faith were an atheist it didn't matter. it's a beautiful verse. i was speaking about a way.

i was devastated watching the death. i lived in baltimore and burned in the riot. i knew how dreadful that year have been and i think it was the ability to receive and i believe the astronauts themselves appreciated that but not until they came back. of all of the telegrams and and butters and towards takeoff from leaders around the world all three of them sa see what got tm the most was a simple card for the identity still remains unknown, a female wrote a card and simply said to the crew upon apollo eight thank you for saving 1968 and i think they thought that is what they did. so they all went back to the rest of their work but consumed

them afterwards but they knew what they had done for the world and i think that is pretty good. >> i think there was an element of surprise to hear religious text coming from a mission because already, we were thinking of the spaceflight as being all about science and technology and the fact that they literally were asked another world and how can the cosmos. i don't think anyone expected them to come the day that particular message. >> right and if you remember the famous activist she filed the suit because it was a government enterprise and when he addressed

in his talk the supreme court was sitting down and he said i was happy to read the verses of genesis and i wonder if maybe we shouldn't have done that because the separation of church and state that broke the rules for such a grand good. >> thank you for your comments. >> i want to thank all of you for joining us today. please join me in thanking jeff for joining us. [applause] if any of you are interested he will be signing books by the gallery.

thanks for joining us and have a good afternoon. [applause] ♪ [inaudible conversations] my name is valerie thank you so much for coming today. your talk was wonderful. and [inaudible conversations]

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you'd to realize sherbert -- church generation has the responsibility to get us to mars? i appreciate it. i hope you like it. of the things that makes me happy is to work on the weekends. >> we really enjoyed it in their.

you are inspiring me to become a better person than a writer. [inaudible conversations] and good luck to you. it. >> that is on c-span i did

radio to a yesterday 29 interviews over eight hours and there may be reason. nice to meet you. where you go to school? boston university. >>