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>> in october 1957 the soviets launched the world first artificial satellite sputnik one you're ordering american leaders that we were falling behind technologically and early 1960s president kennedy said the u.s. was in an hour of maximum danger. as a soviets were winning the space race.e. however, on february 20, 1962, french and seven begins orbit of earth with u.s. astronaut john glenn on board giving america back in space race of one of the most tense moments of the cold war and renewing belief in our countries stability. good evening and welcome to the program. take you for joining us. i'm liz brailsford, , president and ceo of the world affairs councils of dallas-fort worth. our program tonight features author, historic and speechwriter jeff shesol jointing conversation by chief

white house correspondent to the near times peter baker if you missed our program, a recent program with peter baker and susan glasser, you can find it on our youtube page. please check it out. i was just mentioning to peter that we are in bizarre times when you start to recognize his living room. we're happy to have impacted you can purchase your copy of jeff's book, "mercury rising: john glenn, john kennedy, and the new battleground of the cold war" at our local bookstore partner. our audience receives a 10% discount from the online survey using the code and just remember you can use that code for any of the books in your online store in your shopping cart, not just jeff's book. read the full schedule of virtual programs so remember to check out our website.

now i i n would like to welcoe peter baker to introduce our speaker and moderate to nice conversation. peter is the "new york times" chief white house correspondent. he spent 20or years at the "washington post" including four years as moscow bureau chief in collaboration with his wife journalist susan glasser, and he has authored six award-winning books. peter, thanks for joining us again. jeff, we are so excited to have you. thanks for joining us, and anyway, the floor is yours. thanks so much. >> liz, thank you very much for that kind introduction and i think your backdrop, your living room looks awesome. you have a terrific backed upouo we should be seeing more of that, in fact. jeff, what, i can tell you how excited i am to be with jeff shesol tonight. jeff knows this story some going to tell you anyway. just as written the book i wanted to write. i'm a little jealous honestly. a few years ago i was thinking

about who hadad not been subject to really good part of it in a long time and john glenn's name came to mind because in such an exciting and passing figure in american history. i started researching a little bit.rt i went, call people in ohio where his archives are and talk about what was available. getting all excited at the mention it to my agent and agency that's a good come jeff shesol is overdue netbook. i went, killer. not only was jeff shesol in the book i want to come he it almost certainly do better than i could get a turn that he is. he's in a fabulous book. he wasas very generous and spent time to tell me about it but the final product here, "mercury rising" is just a wonderful book. i've made at last year actually i guess in galley form and, i i urge everybody to go get it. i'm going to read the quote from doug brinkley, noted historian from texas. he's in houston. he writes, seems like a story

from a simpler altogether less jaded time, time jeff shesol captures in "mercury rising" which brings the the story alive again with nostalgia and a riveting fast-paced narrative that has movie written all over it. my first question is how much did you pay for that? it isn't t conversation about john glenn. i guess it's our first public conversation and i am relieved and excited and disappointed i didn't get to write the book. thank you for joining me and the world affairs council for inviting us to have the conversation tonight.

>> as everybody knows, he's the author of a number of other remarkable books on lbj and their fraught relationship. he wrote a fantastic book during the fdr era and this book tonight is fascinating because it comes at a time that it feels like heroes that are missing from our public sphere. it goes to the first point you made, peter, we all know john glenn is a hero, but i wanted to go a little deeper than that to understand what it is about john glenn that caused such an

incredible outpouring across the country when he died a little more than four years ago. what was it that we had when john glenn passed, what was it about the era that he represented or about the achievements that he represented and what it was the nation was able to do not just john glenn that the nation during the space race. i wanted to understand what it was in 1962 after that flight that brought them out in the cold war to get a glimpse of john glenn and his motorcade after he had orbited the earth. what was it that was so important in that moment was it that he was the other astronauts

referred to him. he wasn't able to accomplish this that caused him to convert at the beginning of his presidency from being reluctant to convince the nation to space exploration to a few months later committing it to the most ambitious project in the nation's history says those are some of the questions i wanted to address in my research in the book. tell us where did you go, who did you talk to, what sources were available and what really

surprised you? >> thankfully he saved about everything he touched or wrote and i'm not sure that that was the case of any of the other astronauts, but as you pointed out they are in columbus at ohio state and he's got an enormous archive but also all the years prior to that and his childhood. he's got papers that he wrote and an autobiography he was assigned to write for a class at the age of 18 to imagine what he was going to be someday. he said he wanted to be a research chemist. he didn't want to admit what he really wanted to do is fly. that goal was already sort of deeply embedded for him, but i had access to those papers and found all sorts of fascinating stuff that had never been published before and we can talk about some of those things.

i also was lucky to get the chance to interview both of his children who were very forthcoming about their father and i interviewed anyone i could track down who was associated with the program and i was very lucky to get to know some of the engineers and others. there is a gentleman that you might know joining us tonight that said he might call in. he not only helped select john glenn as an astronaut but also helped to define the criteria by which they would select. he was there and present at the creation and about the mission at the times.

in the chat function we are asking people to put questions. why do you think glenn was different than these other astronauts because there was this fraught relationship and tribal division between them. scott carpenter's wife describes them as talk a little bit about that dynamic. it's really fascinating. there were seven mercury astronauts and the split happened pretty early on between five on the one side and they wouldn't admit that he was their

leader. the other two as you mentioned were more like minded than they were with the others. the others, the majority of the group these were classic fighters you have seen them portrayed in the movies. they were kind of tough talking, profane. they weren't interested in pleasing anybody. they were interested in flying and racing cars and frankly women that were not their wives. that was one of the issues that emerged between the two groups is whether the questions like that were at all anybody else's business. they felt what they did and what they called their extracurriculars was up to them but he lived by a different code and told them whether they liked it or not, they were all models

and national assembles and is one of them messed up and it became public that it would be an embarrassment not just to their families, but the programs and the nations. >> he connects in the public. he's the first american in space. he really does connect with the public. there is a number of aspects to this. glenn had spent some time on the national stage and was the only one of the astronauts in the years prior to the program he was the only one spending time in front of the movie cameras and television cameras. it was weeks as a contestant on the popular program on cbs after he had set a speed record flying a jet across the united states

from la to new york so he had developed some skills but also was born with a lot of these skills. when you go back to the childhood as i did to try to describe the world with which he emerged he was one of those guys that had those skills and qualities from the beginning and he was given this opportunity to develop them so by this time it was introduced to the country and the world as a part of this first core of astronauts. and literally climbing over each other to get to the astronaut and the others take a step back. they've never seen anything like this before and as i mentioned before, they were too cool for some of them including especially al sheppard he's

charming the hell out of everybody and sort of sitting back looking around whispering something to the others there's not a moment in this press conference it's not clear to us at the moment is that there is a moment somewhere where they all recognize that he's changing the rules of engagement and they are not sure that they like it and they are not sure that they like it or can help it. >> talk about the other man in your book for the new generation. he wasn't that interested in space and yet he becomes the godfather of this program before he became president of course, but there's something about his invocation that transcends even though he's the one that started the mercury program.

tell us about kennedy in space. >> it really is one of the ironies associated fairly enough with the success of that program because he was reluctant as i said before to commit the country to it and its prestige and scientific expertise. so, kennedy in the late 50s and in particular 1960 when he runs for president, space is assembled and that's what the great speechwriter said. it was mostly a symbol of the lack of energy and initiative and creativity and boldness kennedy's all in the 1950s. there was a sense and it wasn't just campaign platforms. there was a sense that had lost its age in the years after world war ii enjoying its material splendor a little too much and

it's color televisions, enjoying its very large and colorful cards. what it wasn't doing was keeping up with the soviet union and so the incredible achievements beginning of course with sputnik in 1959 and 57 but followed in short succession of a whole wave to landing the first unmanned craft on the moon that they were committing themselves to exploring outer space and the united states didn't seem to have the drive to do it so kennedy saw a great campaign issue and he ran on it including other things like a missile gap that didn't actually exist, and everyone could see it. the problem was kennedy didn't really have a plan to leapfrog the soviets in space.

he talked about the dangers of being second in space and said to be second in space is to be second in the eyes of the world militarily and between three and totalitarianism but he didn't have a plan to be first. when he became president and took the oath of office, it wasn't anywhere near the list of the top of the concerns and it remained fairly low on the list until april of 1961 when the soviets surprised the world by sending the first person into space and orbits the earth and delivered to such even though the united states expected it and kennedy himself expected it, no one was prepared for the blow that it dealt to the prestige around the world so kennedy understood immediately that he needed to compete. >> and the idea of course he wasn't even the first to orbit the earth on that first trip yet he seems to capture the imagination outside of our own

borders. maybe that's because we got to see it. is that what your thought is? people outside of america seem to like it, right? >> they absolutely did. it's hard to overstate the degree to which he was an international celebrity and it really seemed to the americans and the rest of the world even when nasa was elevating others, sheppard and gresham and putting them ahead they put him forward to speak for the program which was the bitter irony so the international appeal but it was also it had to do with the contrast between the program and the u.s. program.

the soviets managed but no one's all the spacecraft. the soviets didn't announce and they also didn't let anybody see the launch. they didn't even reveal where the launchpad was. but all of this was surrounded in sort of typical where they would do this in the plain light of day so when american rockets were exploding on the launchpad and going awry in the sea instead of in space, it was there for all the world to see. the flipside of that is when the americans triumphed and sent him around the world three times. the rest of the world came along

for that ride as well and got to launch the watch -- watch the launch and they got to see the splashdown and participate in the celebration. a lot of the international commentary focused on this contrast between the two systems. >> is it just because he's a good political judge and saw somebody he recognized from his own background? they do latch onto glenn not only as an american but as a democrat and a partisan figure they try to entice into politics. >> kennedy understood the space as a symbol and also john glenn as a symbol and as unlike any of the other astronauts he was able to sort of bear the symbolism on his shoulders. the story lined up.

he became a hero in korea he was actually the other fighter jets were pilots or they wouldn't have gotten picked to be in the space program. but glenn was the most decorated combat veteran of the entire group so he and kennedy both had that experience in world war ii. but kennedy also saw a balance. one of the amazing things about the kennedy inaugural is the balance that it strikes between invoking the nations traditional values and projecting forward to a new era in the 1960s into the future and kennedy was trying to strike that balance. john glenn is somebody that did exactly the same thing. john glenn was traditional in his values and conventional in all of the kind of comforting ways and at the same time he was

in that silver spacesuit towards 1957 that set the speed record flying faster than a speeding bullet across the united states and now he was going off into this new frontier. so, glenn was an avatar of both what had traditionally made americans feel good about themselves and their country and what made them excited enough and fearful about the future. >> of course all heroes are mythology stories and you've portrayed a three-dimensional character. i'm struck by tell the story about what he does when it's not a pretty picture it is a more complicated one. >> it's really not glenn at his best. one of the things to say is

everyone expected john glenn to fly first. as i said he was the most famous and decorated pilot of the entire group and it just seemed a given that he was going to go first. the press felt that way and a door to john glenn and they were rooting for him and made no secret about that in the article. >> the press in many ways was rooting so there was a sense of inevitability and glenn bought into it. the thing about these guys they were all at the top of their game. glenn was no exception and he also felt that there was another

aspect of this beyond being able to do the best simulator and having the best instincts but it was also the ability to anybody and he felt frankly there was no concept when it came to that and he felt that was an important part of his job as an astronaut as well so when the head of the group brought the astronauts into his office and said just before kennedy's inaugural he said i've made my decision and al sheppard is going to fly first and glenn, you are going to be back up it was almost worse that he was the backup than if he had been out of the rotation, but to be the backup twice, now as i mentioned before he was sort of the other leader of the group so there was competition that he didn't feel that way so the blow to his ego

was like nothing he ever suffered to his life and it was going to be a public humiliation. nasa asked him to keep his eye on it and only sort of said these are the three finalists and that allowed the press to jump to the conclusion that they would be the winner. this went on for months after he knew he was not the winner and he took it very hard. he was miserable and his friends found him difficult to deal with and i would say he refused to take no for an answer so he wrote a letter and said i think it should be me and i think i'm being unfairly punished which frankly was true. he didn't even respond to the letter so it was a dark period.

we've seen the footage of the parades and so forth, so we know it comes out okay but most people don't recognize is those three orbits, the last two mission control spent in a total panic. the less serious of the two was after a flawless first orbit at the end of that first circuit around the earth he began to report the capsule was skating to the right and the automatic thrusters would kick in and then

it would drift again so glenn had to take over manual control and frankly he didn't mind doing that. none of them were happy about having to spend time on autopilot so ultimately that wasn't that dangerous but what seemed to me to be incredibly dangerous is around that time a light went on on one of the consoles with all of the flashing lights and black ties. one went on that wasn't supposed to and said his heatshield had actually started to detach and it was supposed to detach a little bit just before splashdown after the heatshield had done its job it was supposed to detach a little bit to cushion the blow in the water.

it wasn't supposed to detach in space and it was a little tiny gap that opened up then glenn would be incinerated on the way back into the atmosphere and there seemed to be nothing they could do to protect from that so they did a couple things. one, they debated and i questioned whether they could save him if the warning light was correct and the other is they kept going in the dark. they didn't tell him what was going on. they began to ask indirect questions and this is in the transcript they said are you hearing any banging noises? that isn't what you want to hear when you are more than 100 miles above the earth. they think that he's going to panic and in that, they are underestimating but they are also misunderstanding the thing about these pilots which is that

they don't panic. what they want is information and control. the flight controllers particularly the flight director felt that mission control was going to figure this out and there was no reason to worry so they asked him to move a bunch of questions that over time led him to kind of figure it out for himself. we are going to open up the questions here. how did your opinion change while writing the book? >> thanks for joining us. the thing i didn't appreciate before i began to work on this project was just how >> how interesting and in a way how interesting a character he was. he was a tough-minded as the rest of them, maybe tougher than some of them and because he didn't talk about it, just

because he didn't sort of have that same swagger that some of the others did, i think that he too often had been kind of written off as a boy scout, as i said, a sunday school teacher. he was both of those, by the way, he was a lot more than that. he was a guy in korea, when his commander officer told him to get out of there when they were flying in, strafing a target, he wound up going back again and ended up with a hole in the tail of his jet, the size of a basketball and he went back to base and there was a picture of him posing pictures. that's been lost in pop culture portrayals of john glenn. you mentioned that he was a fighter pilot. how essential do you think it was for the first astronauts?

>> not all of them were fighting pilots, but all of them were test pilots, but i think both of those skillsets wind up being important not just for glenn, but for the astronauts. on a certain more obvious level, they were used to flying high performance, high altitude aircraft in dangerous situations. they were used to taking new craft up in the air, very, very high up in the air and testing the limits of this new equipment and understanding at some point, something was likely to go wrong and that's why not safe occupations that they'd had. they'd seen a lot of colleagues die along the way. they understood the stakes and yet they had the cool and the skills to push these aircraft and ultimately spacecraft to the limit and themselves to the limit. i think for combat pilots like john glenn, there's another

level of coolness that sets in when you have been in many life threatening situations and you have made it, as i said, back it base. i talked about that hole in the tail of his airplane, but one of the stories that really struck me, when i learned about it, was that early in glenn's time in korea. he was along the chinese border with a commanding officer and he circled, he knew long enough he was going to run out of fuel, he want going to have enough to get back to the base in south korea. and yet, he continued to circle in the hopes of identifying where exactly his co went down and then what glenn did, he shot his plane up to altitude of 40,000 feet and the engine cut out as he knew it would, the power cut off and he glided

that plane across korea and windshield frosted up and he landed and then he got in another plane and went to find his commanding officer. and separating that from you might die was important for some of these astronauts who found themselves. what for anyone else would be a terrifying predicament. >> amazing. we had a question from barb, what was his relationship with james webb, who was nasa's director. >> hi, barb and thank you for raising the question about james webb who was such an instrumental figure and james webb was appointed by kennedy as the administrator of

nasament and inherited a space agency who had little morale. the years of being behind the soviet union and seeing their rockets explode and the payloads destroyed had ground down the space agencies to such a point when kennedy was elected, even though he was talking big about, again, leapfroging the soviets in space, there was concerns from nasa he was going to fold it up and allow the other branches the armed forces to take over the space effort. so webb came in and took a job not many people wanted, a lot of people turned down and he immediately began to turn things around. and was tasked within a couple of months arriving at nasa, tasked with this incredible job of somehow getting america on the path to the moon. so in terms of the relationship between glenn and james webb,

they didn't spend a ton of time together. the astronauts were kind of in a bubble of training for the mission and webb was mostly in washington managing not only the agency, but also its relationship with the white house and also its relationship with congress. but certainly, webb was someone who appreciated, again, the kind of three dimensional ability that john glenn brought to the space program. >> john sanders asks, you describe jfk's role in developing the space program. could you speak to l bj's involvement. >> lbj was one of the unsung of the programs. and kennedy stood before congress and said i believe this country should send a man to the moon by the end of the decade and bring him back safely. kennedy owned that program, but that was decision was driven more by lyndon johnson than by anybody else.

johnson was always convince that had we should go to the moon. it was johnson after sputnik in 1957, kennedy was showing little interest in it. when eisenhower was doing little to respond to it, was johnson who stepped up to try to catch the soviets and saw political opportunity for it without question, he was quite frank with his advisors about that, but johnson was absolutely committed and believed strongly, like he said many times, if the soviets controlled space, he understood life on earth. it was not just brace, but an existential struggle and kennedy came around. it was not only johnson who put the decision in front of kennedy and had lined up support to essentially force kennedy's hand, there really was no other solution at that point after gagarin, to go to

the moon. >> and glenn's wife could you tell us about that. >> john glenn and annie are one of the great love stories of the last century. this is a couple together for nine decades, and how did that manage that? because they first met in a playpen in their little town of new concord. their families were friends. this is a town of about a thousand people. the families would get together and put them in a playpen and for glenn there was not anybody else. and they began to date during an appropriate age, and they dated through college and married after pearl harbor. one important thing to know about annie glenn, she had a

severe start, a severe and disabling start and glenn remarkably seemed not to notice it. the stutter was so severe, they would describe annie would walk in a store and people would turn and walk away or talk past her or around her. and glenn acted not only like it was no big deal, but almost like it wasn't happening. and he managed to help her way through the world until much later when she got treatment for it as an adult and able to conquer it bravely and remarkable. and the two had a remarkable partnership and thought of it. >> raymond tourney, i may be mispronounce it. john glenn was a 33 free

rights, which i didn't know, did he ever describe how free masonry affected his service? >> i think that glenn, the most important affiliation for him was his membership in the presbyterian church. he was very active in the church and as i said before, he taught sunday school and he delivered sermons. this was a big part of his eyedy. new concord, you went to one presbyterian church or the other in town those days and that was central to his identity. i don't actually know. that's an interesting question. >> i'll look into that. >> glenn didn't fly again at least when he's a young man. speculation was jfk didn't want him to because he was a valuable asset. >> it's hard to say, but no evidence that kennedy said anything like that to anyone even if passing and there certainly was no order that

filtered through. it was a rumor,en ultimately it was a rumor that made glenn feel better about the fact that he was iced out of the flight rotation later. i talked before, the beginning of this conversation, you asked about the split with other astronauts. >> glenn ultimate i will wasn't that popular with his senior nasa officials either. they didn't like all the attention that glenn got. they thought it was a distraction and blamed him for seeking it. although ultimately the spotlight sought him. >> they felt that glenn's celebrity colored their decisions in some way. they felt a little ham strung when they want today pick shepard. they were unhappy and knew there would be huge blow back in the press and there was. they thought about glenn and his willingness to tell it like it is. he was a very good soldier, a

marine pilot for the most part, i talked before about defying orders, that wasn't generally his approach. when it came to his nasa superiors, so-called he'd tell them what he thought and there was a concern that he'd talk to reporters on the side. although there's no evidence of that. glenn didn't have a lot of supporters in the hierarchy in nasa. and after his triumphal flight he was edged out of the rotation. it took him a couple of years that that this was the case. he got the message and '64 to run success. i not the first time, but run for the senate. >> it takes another 30 years for him to finally get back to space. tell us how that happened and i love the scene talking about the children's reaction to what he's thinking about doing as a

70-something year old man. >> you know, i think one of the things that maybe we all underestimate particularly when there's a successful mission like glenn's. he came back okay and we see the cheering crowds and the family with him in those celebrations. that this was agonizing. if you can just put yourself in the mind of a couple of teenagers and glenn was the oldest of the astronauts so his kids were the oldest of the astronaut children. >> some of the children were too young to remember when their fathers went up in space, but glenn's kids were in high school and they were well aware what was going on and they were scared and even let this out from time to time to reporters who were quizzing them. at one point, lynn said, they asked lynn who was 14. they said are you excited about your dad going to space? and she said, yeah, if he gets

back alive. so this is what it felt like for them and the sense of relief, we can't imagine, when he got back safely. so you fast forward to late 1990's and here is glenn having served, in his fourth term in the senate, he was in his 70's and he decides, quietly at first and then less quietly that he wants to go back in space. that he never got the chance to go back in space and he begins to lobby dan golden who heads nasa, puts in a world with president clinton he'd like to go to space to see how an old person reacts to the stresses of space flight and they had all of this data on how glenn reacted the first time around when he was, you know, only 41. how is he going to react now in his 70's? and he managed to convince everyone. the hardest, i think, people to convince were his own family. annie turned on her heels and

walked away when he first announced it and came around to it. and david frankly said how unhappy he was, he said to his father, how can you put us through it again? it was agonizing and they came around and understood this is what he needed to do and happiest doing. and of course he came back safely a second time. >> you have the book, a script that he had written out for the first flight for his children in case he did die. is that something we've never seen before, is that right? >> it was never discussing before with, tucked away in papers at ohio state, and as we were discussing before, and you get chills when you read something like this. to lift these pages of yellow legal paper out of this file and realize what it was. i knew that glenn had made a couple of recordings for his

family that he sent to them on the eve of his flight, but i didn't know what-- they had been mentioned, but no one knew what they contained and what this document was was a script that he had written himself. there was one for the message for his children and another one, which i was not able to locate for his wife annie. but the script for his children begins, stating exactly what would be going on under the circumstances. he says if you hear that i've been killed and here it is in his cursive handwriting, he's written it out in isolation at cape canaveral just before his flight and he writes himself this long script that contains his meditations on life after death which he believed in, instructions on his kids how to behave themselves-- but how to behalf themselves at

a funeral, could be at arlington with no body. and publicly when glenn emerged from time to time with reporters, he was relaxed and putting the nation at eve and even his president. and kennedy said is this safe? and he said absolutely. this is an incredibly poignant letter and one of the last things he says to annie, at the moment before his launch, glen is strapped into his capsule at the top of this atlas rocket at cape canaveral and they patch him through to annie to say goodbye. one of the last things he said to her was did you get the recording? it was important for him to leave them for his family. when i asked the children recently about the recordings, they didn't know anything about them. >> is that right? >> whether they were destroyed

or in an attic. >> they never had to hear them. >> and did you show them the script. >> i didn't show them the script, about them. >> and i would add why wasn't he able to translate that celebrity and popular appeal into, you know, a presidential race? >> well. >> not the subject of your book exactly, but as a speech writer you have a better look at that than most. >> it's something that i've certainly thought about and an interesting and puzzling question. i would say that probably he wouldn't have had a much better chance if he'd run earlier. the translation problem you've described happened right away. it's interesting that glenn from again, the first moment on the national stage, 57 and 59

when he becomes an astronaut. people are talking about them not just as a future politician, but president. he had that magnetism and seemed to touch the right chords at the right moment, but yet, at the time that glenn learns-- so i said he ran in 64, but it was a brief contest with glenn because he slips in a hotel room and damaged his inner ear, and he essentially capitol walk. and he ran in 1970 and finally in 1974 and won, but he found in the 1970 race that his celebrity wasn't enough. and that to the credit of ohio voters, they wanted to know more about what he was going to do in the senate and what he stood for and he had not invested himself enough in that set of questions.

and so by 1974, he was able to make the case, but he was never as effective on the stump as a politician as he was in front of the cameras as an astronaut. >> it's hard to explain, i'm not sure itch an explanation for it. the difference as a pilot and astronauts, he was a well-prepared senator as i'm sure you remember. john glenn did his homework and he came to the hearings prepared and he took the job swum. seriously. and he wasn't just slapping people on the back, and sometimes to the detriment. he did not thrill the crowds. he was elected four times to the senate because he was a very effective senator, but he didn't have that stuff on the campaign stuff. >> a different kind of right stuff. i love that picture of him, a

younger harrier joe biden back in the day. we have a number of questions to try to bring this forward in the day a little bit and i'll pull some of them altogether in one sort of question. vena asks william liquori recently spoke to the council. what would you share from the book about the newest branch of the armed forces and what would john glenn think of the space force. and would the president be credited with space force as jfk? >> and wanting going to the moon and biden has been doing that so far.

>> one of the things prescribed in the book is the hard work by eisenhower and kennedy to avoid the militarization of space. and eisenhower agreed of nasa in 1958 in support to take that responsibility away from the military. he was afraid of carrying the arms race up into the heavens and he had heard all of these sort of the outlandish plan for the military contractors and defense contractors in space, they wanted to build armed space stations and fighter jets that could engage in battle. he didn't like the sound testify. he thought was a waste of money and incredibly dangerous and so did yesterday. so the success of nasa and the success of a space program that was dedicated to peaceful purposes, that was dedicated to peace as the space act put it

for all mankind was critically important and also for the same reason, catching up to the soviets, leapfroging the soviets was important. nobody doubted that the soef's intentions in space were peaceful. >> nobody believes their purposes in space work were peaceful. it wanted to show its mastery in space and didn't want to spark an arms race. and difficult for kennedy to manage. fast forward to the present text, both of them would probably reguard it as a defeat to see the extent that space was militarized. >>, but if kennedy had been faceed with what biden is roux right now. with russia into space and

others as well. nations whose purposes are not always peaceful. that kennedy would say that they have to compete on the terms that they set today. the chinese are looking to build a space station and ramping up what the defense analyst called counter space. the ability to disable or destroy the satellite systems on which so much depends here in the united states from our national security and communication. so it's a very dangerous thread and by one means or another, the united states has to be better prepared for it. >> two quick questions, hector marques notes they were asked whether you think that speaking how we moved away from the fighter aspect of it, the fighter approach shifted after and wonder if that's in part

due to glenn's influence. coming out of america, not just fighter jocks. >> it's an insightful question. while the test pilot presence in the area is strong, because you can't beat that skillset. there was a shift, and more interest in science. glenn and carpenter were made to feel embarrassed for science experiments in space. some of that ends after glenn and carson go to space. and there's a recognition to the extent to which the astronauts are an example of the best of americans.

there was a speed, you know, in the united states and the world for this set of ideals. and some of the astronauts carried that and some better than others and glenn set the program on that. >> jeff, as an author, you're among the best in america. thank you for doing this tonight and thank you for including me. make sure to purchase this through the world affairs council at worth. if you want to pay full fare, i don't think that jeff is going to object with that. good luck the rest of the tour-- >> it's always a pleasure to talk to you about glenn or anything else. >> thank you. >> thanks to both of you. i could listen to you two or a lot longer. this was a fascinating conversation. you too two such a good job. so thank you for that. and peter, you did my job.

i was about to remind everyone to buy jeff's book and you did it. >> no, i would do it again. >> thank you, you're wonderful. come back to see us. >> thanks for having me. ♪♪ weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday america tv documents america stories. and nonfiction books and authors, funding from c-span2 comes from these companies and more. including nico.

♪♪ mittco along with these television companies support c-span as a public service. ♪♪ on june 13th, 1971, the new york times began publishing the pentagon papers, a classified history of the vietnam war, subsequently led to a special investigation in the white house known as the plumbers. author michael dobbs formerly of the washington post, wret a book "king richard", that ultimately led to the event and well-known today as watergate. >> michael dobbs on this episode of footnotes plus. listen at c-span.org/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

>> here is a look at books being published this week. in "how i saved the world", fox news commentator jessie waters reflects on his career and weighs in on politics. elly hoenig takes a critical look at barr's time, and michelle eastman talks about how to pass down conservative values to young women. published this week, columbia university professor hendricks, jr. argues that conservative key evangelicals. a look back at richard nixon's

decision on the gold standards. and a look at ending hiv and aids in africa. watch for many of these authors to appear in the future on book tv. >> hello, everyone, i'm max and would like to thank you all for vroman's bookstore. and discussing nicholas' book, and if you would like to ask nicholas had a question at anytime, click the action button and lastly if you'd like to buy the book, click the green button. thank you so much. >> hi. >> nick, greetings for whatever