good afternoon to welcome to the seventh annual san antonio book festival. how many have been here all day? great festival so far. absolutely. here's the good news, we saved the best for last. welcome with douglas brinkley one of the authors who was closest to us because he and his family that are here drove down i. 35 from where they live for today's event. he's a distinguished professor in humanities at history at rice university but for the purpose of the conversation today, he's one of the great historians in our country and if you are an armchair historian like im, he

is a must read, and i've been reading douglas for years, but i, american moonshot is the best work you've done if i can say so. a really terrific book. there are some younger people in the audience, but i am a cold war baby and catholic at that and i can remember them a interrupting school in second gd drafting school in second grade to announce that the commies have launched sputnik and a month later there was a second announcement that they had launched sputnik 2 and this was a prelude to them coming into the mission classroom and taking over and there was quite a bit of fear and loathing. so, the space program and the cold war, one of the same in my childhood and if there's anybody my age and he or, you experience the same thing. you've done a magnificent job capturing it, taking us from the beginning all the way through you are the only one i've ever known that has talked to neil armstrong and any journalist

about him walking on the moon. so anyway, douglas, thank you and welcome. [applause] my wife and my two daughters came with me today. i try to come every year to the festival. it's incredible and it's great to bring young people here and a privilege to be back. the idea that my book was born with neil armstrong, i grew up in ohio in a town called perrysburg and he was from about 80 miles away. when you are 9-years-old and the whole world is watching, 550 million or more watched television and the famous journey it was an eight-day bus trip.

sometimes we think it is just a one-day event. it was like a week to come up with that famous moment when neil armstrong stepped on the mound we have changed our sleeping schedule to one, and i just couldn't have been more excited. i collected all sorts of memorabilia, plates and all of the light, the idea of just looking at the moon and thinking human beings have a broken the shackle the earth was deeply inspiring. but the reason i got to talk to him is a few years back, decades later i wrote my first book on harry truman secretary of state dean acheson then secretary of defense during the truman years and i have signed copies to neil armstrong because a friend of a friend gave me his p.o. box at a farm in ohio near cincinnati and i forwarded the box with a note that i would like to interview

him and i got back a note from his assistants except mr. armstrong will read one of the books, he said. .. >> part of it was he didn't trust celebrity culture who did the transatlantic flight

and his baby and child was kidnapped. so the idea that he wasn't directly so in that direction. and when 9/11 happened and then it was supposed to be a few days after that and i watched all of this going on in washington dc and the shanksville pennsylvania and all the airports were closed and there was an interview in houston and said neil armstrong doesn't cancel. he said he will be there and he will be there at the exact time. so i showed up and i drove he flew his own plane and from cincinnati. he landed and walked out he

had a box lunch and then off he went to the wild blue yonder. and at that point i realized i loved space and wanted that opportunity and i got a job offer at rice university and that's where nasa was the incubator with the space center being in houston but also that's where jfk famously came september 12th, 1962 to stand on the football stadium in front of 30000 people, 10000 scouts to give that famous speech we choose not because it is easy but because it is hard and went on to give one of the greatest presidential speeches about what we call stem studies of

exploration, romanticism of exploration, all funneled in to that incredible speech. 's why really started to think my big question was neil armstrong test pilot and other astronauts in space but why did jfk wanted to spend $25 billion to go to the moon which is $185 billion in today's dollars when we had no technology to do it? and it was a challenge date we had to meet he put the new front tier capital with his agenda with lyndon johnson and the great society and put it with the heart and soul of the new frontier so the big part of my book is exploring why kennedy ended up doing that with mercury and gemini and apollo programs mimic president kennedy's spent his

last good day on earth in san antonio with the astronaut training program before he went to dallas on the 22nd. if you go back five years from that great speech, he was a cold warrior democrat and used the space race to campaign both against eisenhower and other democrats to become the presidential candidate in 1960 and leapfrog johnson who was doing the same thing but who did not get his crack as quickly. >> your first point, yes, the day before he was killed he was in san antonio and he gave a speech which i quote quite a bi bit. to promote space medicine because a big part of the rationale to go to the moon was technology. may be computer or rocket technology but what does medicine have to do with space?

he gave a speech on space medicine talking about the funding for all the medical things like foldable walkers to cat scans and mris and kidney dialysis and heart defibrillators. and on and on. here was the birthplace san antonio of space medicine with amazing results. here in san antonio is where kennedy tells the irish story if you take your hat and put over a high wall and can't find the other side you have to figure out a way to get over the wall and that's what we have just done going to the moon. we are not sure how but we wilt retrieve it and climb the wall and get over it.

so it is remarkable that we did it and that moon shot stands for that american ingenuity and that can do that moonshot was popularized from the l.a. dodgers baseball player because vince scully would say there it is it is going on a moonshot. he had a very hot september and october and so the term spread. now everybody asks what is the new moonshot. buzz aldrin says a mars shot i think maybe we need an earth shot for climate change to take care of our planet. [applause] but as you mentioned sputnik all of this was born out of sputnik going to the moon because the soviets surprised

us cia knew they were doing a satellite but once it happened and was successful the whole world was swooning russia and we were caught flat footed. and his politics go, johnson and others like scoop jackson saw an opening to start slamming eisenhower to be asleep at the wheel and kennedy runs on the space cap and the missile gap with the soviets so much so that when he runs against nixon he wins the nomination and 60 looking back at the debates there is an incredible couple of scenes were kennedy scores real points against nixon when he says in the famous kitchen debate that we have colored tv and we are more advanced than

russia but i will take my tv in black and white i want to be number one in rocket thrust. [laughter] then in another moment kennedy said if eisenhower and nixon policies continue i see a soviet flag planted on the moon i want to see an american flag on the moon. so he was running on the moonshot. he could have backed off once he became president and toyed with it but then the soviets on kennedy's watch but the first human ever to be in space was a russian and kennedy did not like losing to say we have to do something mayh , 1961 we put alan shepard into space on the freedom seven for may 25th, may 25th, 1961, kennedy called the joint session of congress and that's when he

made the news flash. >> don't forget the first dog. >> the first soviet dog in space that was a big deal for russia except here is what the intelligence people did not like they knew how to put them into space but not how to bring them back alive. he dehydrated in space for go there is no peta in moscow. so we started to think but do they really know how to bring them down? and yuri did not landed a notion but they had a parachute in a weird way in the field and also all of our space activities cut cameras were allowed to cover them but the soviets did their launches in secret. so you may have seen vanguard

rockets blowing up on the launchpad we were filming that but once kennedy got a hold of that in the ratings he recognized the mercury astronauts was a windfall to be associated with nasa there were six mercury missions during kennedy's presidency and all were successful and they became full key rose overnight as the tv ratings were groundbreaking. >> this is live television news not only were hundreds of millions of americans around watching but every schoolroom in the united states stopped and televisions were turned on to watch throughout the gemini program i remember both liftoff and recovery. >> i wrote in the book i could

pick any but i picked john glenn to do a snapshot across the country and how time stopped you had to watch john glenn's lunch a-letter you were. that one was a bank robber in the middle of the bank heist he got stopped and arrested because he was staring at john glenn on television. [laughter] it was nerve-racking because it's not just going into space but the launch itself apollo 11967 we lost three astronauts when they blew up on the launchpad just on a test and talking to neil armstrong and others they had a 5050 chance coming back with apollo 11 it was a very high risk effort to

go to the moon some of you have seen apollo 13 and how hair-raising that was that scared nixon off he canceled the last missions what i saw of the documents everybody was worried about dead astronauts because what in the cold war we would look like bad technology. because we cannot retrieve them they would be floating in space so that was so moving when they went to the moon there was a second right before they leave you can hear armstrong say did you leave the packet? they are metals that included

metals to honor all the soviet cosmonauts that had blown up and died so on the moon are memorial coins to each of the soviet astronauts because without russia or that competition we never could have funded something that would have been part of the moon without somebody spurring us forward. >> i thought i knew the jfk story inside and out but i have learned so much from your book but his youth reminded me nothing so much as george w. bush and world war ii and his experience coming back but he also became a true devotee of churchill and came to understand the power of the

rhetoric and was a visionary. so it is a little nostalgic to talk about the earth shot because the unity he inspired of all political persuasions and socioeconomic backgrounds was such that moonshot wasn't until seven years or six years after he was assassinated but yet we never once veered away as a country for go that would be impossible today. >> it's hard to imagine all of the cosmology has to sit. you need the right circumstances. ironically most of the young people i teach on campus he apollo 11 as the beginning of modern era technology that nasa creates headquarters all over the country and texas

mentioning san antonio, houston, huntsville alabama, the florida coast , the reason kennedy did that and barely won the south he was afraid he would lose the south so if you put money into texas it would help so nasa begins modern tech like silicon valley by the seventies so that is the idea for modern technology. but also the last act of world war ii because we develop radar and the manhattan project and the engineering feats and it was the hangover effect for most of the rocket engineers, scientist 400,000 people put the apollo 11 mission a success.

the feeling that you could do it if you pull together which is part of the world war ii e-those. that's why it's hard to do today we don't have the impetus that we did like the vietnam war and to see the country torn apart i'm not sure if they recovered from that or if we could really focus on the moonshot objective. >> world war ii is the dark side because as the war came to an end and the soviet troops and the russian troops and the american troops were racing to berlin we were in the hunt for german scientist like rocket scientist i never realized until i read your book how much accommodation of

the senior nazis in that chapter of our country and how critical they were i thought robert goddard was the father of rocketry but there was some public relations to that and really the saturn rocket made everything else happen. >> a big part of my book one of the great things is he is a careful reader of everything some people don't read the book and he always does. [laughter] [applause] can you tell when colbert is faking? [laughter] >> he was the genius and i don't throw that around lightly. he was a genius rocketeer. goddard understood the

principles that he developed but warner had a budget for hitler and during world war ii he built the rockets the vengeance weapons but the two is the birth of the ballistic missile rocket to be used for warfare. we are lucky he could not develop that nazi germany put 5000 the two they use largely jewish slave labor and that was one of the worst situation where the rockets were built in unhealthy and horrific conditions to put it mildly.

when the war was ending hitler committed suicide and he knew he would be arrested for war crimes so he was trying to figure out his hand so he took all the top german rockets and they hit all the blueprints in a cave and blew it up and then moved away from the site and then he sent his younger brother to go find the american army and surrender on a bicycle down a little road. then the guy from sheboygan wisconsin said the first time ever we went into outer space was during world war ii humans had never put a projectile into outer space before that rocket. so he was the number one person we wanted to capture now handed over on the silver

platter so they looked at him and he made a decision if he went to london to help the british they would try him for war crimes because he tried to flatten london and in russia he did not want to live under that total lawn - - totalitarian regime so his goal was america and we created operation paperclip and we moved him to texas and el paso because roswell new mexico was the only rocketeer of robert goddard was doing tests in roswell in the white sands ground so than in those refugee prisoners practicing the rockets and by 1950 get to

huntsville alabama that becomes rocket city usa and he is the one that builds a saturn and that's what takes us to the moon when kennedy met him in 1953 in new york city they were judges four times man of the year the reason he was picked he was writing articles about going to the moon in mars there wasn't much animus against germans as you would have thought. i would've thought there would have been disney put him on his tv shows so he came a celebrity. and kennedy just won the senate seat 1952 so they

should chose the west german chancellor as the man of the year but it tells you at that moment in time we were trying to braying west germany into nato and as our ally so he wasn't stigmatized and i did not like him a lot because al - - because he was the allied supreme commander so maybe with those vanguard rockets but they were defective so kennedy is a beneficiary to go with von braun who said say what you want his rockets were flawlessly constructed and he would work quickly but was even mocked for being so safety prone he would not shortcut so that giant saturn five was done by von braun.

>> intelligence authorities at world war ii carefully scrubbed the records creating false records and identities they weren't considered ex- nazis they didn't have to answer for their crimes against humanity. they were germans. >> they were tried in nuremberg but churchill came in 1946 to give the iron curtain speech in missouri so we were thinking we need them we have no missile program and they have that intelligence we didn't realize how many they got because we thought we had the best but oddly both russia and the united states are starting to compete in missiles because of german rocket intelligence.

they had no atomic program , the germans. they put so much into missiles and to day living in a world of icbm and intermediate range missiles that is a whole world of technology but now space is too crowded there are so many weather satellite satellites, telecommunication privatization no space with blue origin and elon musk so there is still a space craze but not focused on one mission but more commercial defense enterprise. >> one of eisenhower's defenders who tried to help ike weather the storm that the russians had gotten ahead of us the next thing they will do is come up with a preposterous story someday there will be a

russian sitting with binoculars looking down reading our mail. [laughter] >> lyndon johnson's aid has an incredible letter than saying sputnik is great all over people think the soviets are looking in on your bedroom and watching you from above. they created a frightening thing in the democratic party that was a big opening and eisenhower we were doing well with technology but it was more incremental but kennedy wanted to go all the way up he wanted to leapfrog the soviet union he would use that word over and over leapfrog to go to the moon instead of tit for

tat you do a cause will not lead to an astronaut you do three times we do four times. he said go big and go over. >> we will go to questions but as people get ready to ask thomas we substitute our wonderful interpreters, let's ask about the contemporary missile race in the cold war with vice president pentz talking about a space military force and being announced more recently that we are going back to the moon. what are your thoughts about the current moment we are in and the near-term future of nasa quick. >> what i learned about kennedy is he told the american people exactly what it would cost and say it is

expensive to go to the moon. very expensive and will cost 50 cents a week you will pay this like a donation of your taxes. but people took that okay that you are being upfront but what i don't like with the trump administration is they / the nasa budget but the kennedy effect four.4 percent of the national budget annually going to nasa now it is one third of 1 percent. you can't do these things on the cheap. if we really do a big moonshot platform as a steppingstone than with real presidential leadership you have to pull the democrats and definitely

have to up the nasa budget until the trump administration does that, i don't take them very seriously others talked about even 41 was a believer only the public is excited for people in space purple. im excited about jpl with the mars rover and i am a bit of a space buff but nasa isn't just moonshot but a global positioning of earth and telling us weather forecasting , serving the planet earth for science and a very serious way. kennedy thought scientist where the coin of the realm this was also for schoolkids to teach science education to

get excited about exploration of the oceans he called space the new ocean but also wanted to explore the oceans he thought drought was unnecessary and hunger could be solved if you could use seawater and make it fresh drinking water he just never could fund it both the moon and the oceans but maybe in the future the moonshot could be oceanography. [applause] >> i'm glad that you referenced that last point because people don't realize nasa is taking the lead quantitatively in climate change and global warming et cetera and if we take that out of the political cabinet and give it to the scientists in

nasa give them a better funded role then i think we could achieve unity much more quickly and what to do about it. >> and briefly but i never saw government agency as well run as nasa in the sixties because they did incredible public relations with spokespeople, books, poster spokespeople, books, posters, kg to everybody what their money went for even today people will bear the nasa logo i don't see anybody wearing the commerce department logo. [laughter] even epa could learn from their way of how to promote it. one of the reasons james webb was a great technocrat and old capital and money guy that had a real sense of what the

public know where the money is going and show them and excite them what government can do and we can use more of that now. >> remember we will use the microphone. who has a question quick. >> first of all thank you for your book on walter cronkite and roosevelt. there is a scene where it shows a protest saying that is a misappropriation of resources. how much was that counter movement quick. >> great question. talking about james hansen and the biographer they made a film. there was protest going to the moon. there was skepticism with the naacp and the southern christian leadership conference with ralph abernathy the successor to mlk junior he went to the moon lunches but he was not anti- astronaut but questioned why

aren't we putting that money into the urban poverty efforts and edward r merle was not keen on it working for kennedy he said if we do it and he's to be a person of color not white men only most of the world is not white if we can put an african-american or native american or latino into space that would say a lot about our culture of inclusion and nobody listened for go there was a group of women maybe not angry, yes angry they couldn't go. they didn't behave publicly with anger but because there were 13 women trained for mercury on a secret program called mercury 13 they passed

all of their endurance test they were pilots and ready to go and they really wanted to have a historic woman go if not to the moon but at least participate and they were next. there was no woman and tell sally ride 1983 a missed opportunity for the united states not to have the first woman in space waiting that long. so by no means, it is complicated bet by and large no matter how you felt of the color of an astronaut you cannot help but being impressed to go to the moon in that regard that barry goldwater from the right wanted the money to go to the air force not nasa.

why not put more money into the military? and on the left even liberal senators like fulbright and mondale thought the money should be spent here at home and lbj who backed kennedy would argue this is home producing technology and jobs. like fdr did the tennessee valley authority and we are employing people. but is an interesting dynamic building rockets to go to the moon in jim crow huntsville and to be fair nasa does move into integration pretty quickly by the mid-sixties their sense of bringing minorities into the program was a little slow but they are there and the good news today

women astronauts it is an incredible place for women to work and they are trying with the first woman spacewalk or so that glass ceiling has been broken so if anybody is listening in the audience and are interested there are great opportunities for women working at nasa and in space we have come a long way in that regard. >> and those doing the five shuttle missions coming into the san antonio aviation hall of fame this week is now a professor. >> somebody talked about conspiracy theories the early ones.

>> and another great question. i encounter that firsthand and as a historian and hugo chavez and sean penn or christopher hitchens with vanity fair and we got this interview like the three stooges and this interview with hugo chavez in the middle he said you always take things like you never went to the moon he said what do you mean he said that was a hollywood studio that is american cia propaganda and he really believed we had never gone. subsequently today about 60 percent of people in russia think we never went that it

was a stunt and fake space even more sad the people of america that swallowed the conspiracy theories. so now you would be amazed now they say that flag how could he be blowing there is no wind. that is stupid to say with a wire that's the easiest part of going to the moon. what is interesting. [laughter] but today it is there and all the footprints it would be exactly like it was except the flags colors have faded the stripes now it is like light to beige due to uv rays. >> how do we know that quick. >> nasa. [laughter]

>> how did you feel throughout all of the interviews quick. >> good question. i love taking questions from the audience is. and also a moderator that reads the book so you have to get behind your book when you get an opportunity on tv they give you two minutes and instead of talking about space they will ask about trump. it is hard to get history because it is hard in that regard but i have been blessed i just launched the book in april and pr put me on for an hour i talked with brian lamb

with c-span for an hour for one hour you can get a conversation but just when they are so short trying to do quick sound bikes it's not one - - soundbites it's not very fulfilling. >>. >> and looking at movies like hidden figures or first man in the documentary and apollo 11 in apollo 13, are they close or am i just in love with anything nasa? [laughter] >> those are fine movies hidden figures is a story about a nasa mathematician and

sexism and as a mathematician a great book. and that was made into a movie. >> that what i like a lot is the 2001 space odyssey by stanley crew brick but it wo and then irk consider also its nothing space but i don't know if you remember a writer from texas, terry southern, did doctor strangelove, slim pickens riding like a missile to earth. some of that satire of the cold war culture is pretty neat. apollo 13 is a flawless film.

tom hanks when he does history really does his homework. he's kind of aim american historian. he might -- he wants everything to look like it would and in those ways that film to me is particularly well done. >> host: didn't terry southern right candy? >> guest: he wrote candy. >> host: one last question. >> you mentioned the environmental movement a couple times, earthrise, blue marble photographs are given credit for starting the environmental movement. you talk about how prepared nasa was to market causes it believed in. were they slow on the draw or was it a matter of time? wasn't motivated by certain death to rekindle that spirit

of can do? >> guest: many astronauts who went into space and all the mercury, gemini and apollo, looking at the moon as the target, to fulfill kennedy's pledge but they said forget the moon, we saw the earth, the blue-green marble floating out there and it was spiritual and extraordinary feeling to be there and how lonely we are and there are no borders and we have to protect it. it helps create the environmental movement. there is a direct lineage from 1969, july, neil armstrong, buzz aldrin. by the end of 69 walter concrete could sit on new year's day and tell cbs we are making 1970 the year of earth. behind cbs nightly news was the earthrise photo as the bumper. walter cronkite showing that. cronkite made the first earth

day in 1970, a major national event. the media could make a difference when they were bringing cameras all over earth day so much so that by the end of that year nixon was forced to create the environmental protection agency in 1970. the mayor of california, the counterculture adopted different things from going into space and you got the whole earth catalog and like many of today's entrepreneurs like steve jobs or jeff bezos, they are all about the moon. apollo had a big effect on a certain group of tech people. that is why many of them are trying to get into space as an occupation or financial investment. they are into it.

>> host: you brought us back to earth from taking us to the moon and back, thank you, douglas brinkley. [applause] >> host: by the way, i'm getting frantic waves. we are going over to sign some books. we will be in the barnes & noble tend in the plaza. you might have an informal question or two. [inaudible conversations] >> this is the story of how this whole new economy was built. i have always been interested in working in washington and how business and government interact with one another.

they have an antagonistic relationship, the real story of american history is one of public-private partnerships in many ways. sometimes in ways that are not seen. this was a great way to get into that. >> university of washington history professor margaret o'mara discusses her book the cove, silicon valley and the remaking of america sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a. watch c-span's campaign 2020 coverage of the democratic presidential candidates as they captured democratic convention, live coverage saturday at 9:00 am eastern on c-span, online, c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio apps. >> host: the university of southern california, author james donovan. here is his book, "shoot for the moon: the space race and the extraordinary voyage of apollo 11".