book, "one giant leap: neil armstrong's stellar american journey." armstrong who died in 2012 had lifelong dream of going to space. the book also details the moon landing and the scientific advances that made the moonwalk possible. this is about 45 minutes. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for coming. this book started about 15 years ago when an english magazine asked me to go to ohio in a little town that i had never heard of at that point. neil armstrong's hometown and write a story for the 20th anniversary of the moon landing. i went there and found it was a charming little town and not far interestingly far from dayton

where the wright brothers had tinkered in their bicycle shop and started flight. and talked to numerous friends and family in the town and in doing so, discovered that no book had been written about neil armstrong, which i was very, very surprised. the only thing close to it was life magazine at the time of the space landing put together more or less of a biography of the three astronauts that landed -- that were on apollo 11. no proper biography had ever been done. over the years i thought it should be. gradually learned more about him and about five years ago, i put a proposal together and took it to my publisher and sold them on

it. began in earnest and interviewed people who shared his journey some included other astronauts as well as the men he served in korea with. i talked to just about all of the surviving men who was in his -- flew off an aircraft carrier with him in the korean war. i talked to many of the people he attended purdue university with. and learned much about his remarkable life. when i first came to this i shared some of the myths that have built up over the years about neil armstrong. first, he was a recluse that was one of the words that is

unfairly that has been hooked to his name for some reason. he more or less was mistakenly chosen to land on the moon an afterwards disappeared to a hole somewhere. none of that is true, none of that was true. it is interesting to see what an engaged person he has been in over the years in his life. remarkable as a young man in that he decided he wanted to go to the moon when he was very, very young. he told me he wanted to go to the moon and he intended to do that but the really remarkable thing is not only that he did it but his entire life was geared towards establishing that goal. i think in terms of a role

model, it is a commendable thing to have never once faltered and to pretty much make all of the right moves over a lifetime. he learned to fly on his 16th birthday he got his first license to fly before he got a driver's license. he signed up for the naval reserve air training program just before the korean war. he went to purdue where he studied arrow aero nottics. he was called up for active duty to go to korea. in korea -- well, before he went to korea, he was chosen by happenstance to fly one of the

first jet combat flyers that america ever launched, which was the panther f-9. in korea he flew 79 missions. he was shot up pretty badly once and had another plane's wing ripped off by the cables that the north koreans during the conflict used to string across canyons and over sites they wanted to protect and had to bail out and was nearly killed. coming back to tell the tale he learned a lot, obviously. he was well on his way toward a career in aero nottics. graduated from perdue and went

to work for then naca the forerunner to nasa, which was the national affiliate -- the group that per seeded it. he was assigned to lewis flight center in cleveland where they were working on some of the daunting problems that space travel proposed. he got in really in the front door on space. two of the things he was looking at lewis one was metal mettology. in order to get into space you needed a metal that did not exist at the time. you needed a metal that could tolerate the enormous

temperatures and the stress of going into space and returning would involve. the other thing that was interesting at lewis was the investigation into using atomic energy to travel into space. it was thought that atomic energy would be the only one that would be powerful to do it. it was considered very seriously in the years of the early 1950's. he was recruited after two years at lewis to go where he wanted to go where all flyers wanted to do things like go to the moon wanted to go to where lancaster california where the high-speed driving test center was. this was where the real tests were being made in the air to go

into space. he was able to fly several of the x-planes, including the f-15. people at that time, i think neil included believed would be the forerunner of the rocket that would go to the moon. it would be flown by the pilot rather than launched and the pilot would have complete control over it and go to the moon. this, of course, turned out not to be true. nobody at the time new how fast you had to go to escape the earth. the feeling at the time was these rocket planes were powerful enough to do it. the f-15 was an extraordinary

craft. it was only 55 feet long. the wingspan was 22 feet. it went from zero up to 44,000 mile with an 85 second burst of explosive ammonia and liquid oxygen. it was a plane that a lot of the pilots who flew it seemed to agree was that you were happy when the engine stopped unlike most other planes. but it was a big step. it was something that allowed man for the first time to touch space, to go nearly 70 miles in the air. to see that deep purple of space for the first time.

it was also important because it allowed men to determine whether or not the affects of zero gravity or nearly zero gravity whether man could tolerate that, which was, obviously increasingly important element to go to the moon or anywhere in space. turned out that indeed you could. also you could maneuver in airless space that the thrusters on this little plane could be used to move to maneuver. it was a big step. neil in the early 1960's became convinced rather reluctantly that what they were doing finally wasn't going to work. what was going to work was going on in houston with rockets.

so he somewhat reluctantly applied to the astronaut program and went down and got involved in the gemini mission. he flew jem gemini 8, which was the first orbital missions where he would dock with another craft. it was essential to do if you're going to the moon. the idea the proposed idea to go to the moon involved going in a mother ship that would orbit the moon and a lander that would break off from it and settle down on the moon, which it eventually did. so gemini 8 was an important part of that. unfortunately, everything went wrong with gemini 8 that could

short of a catastrophe. once they hooked up with the spacecraft that was also orbiting the earth at 17,000 miles an hour, thrusters turned bulky and sort of misfiring. neil and dave scott, his co-pilot started spinning around, the craft started spinning around at a speed that was so dangerous that they came close to passing out. fortunately, they were able to break away and take manual control and return to the earth. that event had several repercussions one that neil and dave scott did very good to come back alive and not have a

disaster up there that could have ended the space program. at the time, there's was a tremendous amount of opposition in congress. it was enormously expensive. at the height of the space program, 400,000 people were involved full time working on it. so you can imagine the cost. a lot of people had estimates of what it costs and i don't think any of them were accurate. they were so enormously big that all you can do how much money was finally spent. one of the reasons i decided i wanted to spend a big chunk of five years working on this book was because i grew up in the

maryland sub wishes suburbs of washington. the space program always interested me. i think my first recognize collection ofrecollection ofit was it being personalized. i believe it was in the third grade and we were waiting to go into classes, waiting for the bell to ring at forest grove elementary school in silver spring. one of the monitors, an older boy, i guess he was a fifth grader or something, came and said to us solemnly with nearly a drum roll that sputnik, which was in the air and each time it flew over he said it was spouting out germs. that is what was causing everybody to have the flu.

[laughter] so we looked pretty wide-eyed at it and you have to say you never know. fortunately, my parents and my teachers assured me that wasn't the case. but it personalized it for me. i saw as a young kid for some reason all of a sudden this space race business and sputnik had bearing and that we indeed were in a race, a technology, scientific fight to see who could have the technology to see what it takes to go to the moon and do the things that we needed to do as a society. it was clear that the russians

were doing it and we were not doing it. i think that was the something that influenced me. neil was on the other side of the country at the time attending a conference in los angeles on test pilot meeting. he said that his feeling at the time was that's great. it meant that the united states is going to wake up and his goal of going to the moon was enormously raised that day. in fact, other people have said and speculated that if that hadn't happened, if sputnik hadn't been launched and we had.been embarrassed by that then the apollo program wouldn't have come to fruition.

there would no bet the drive that president kennedy said at rice university that we would do it, we would get to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard. we would do it by the end of the decade. so i think everybody who was involved in the space program felt the day of sputnik was the most important forral of for all of us. the generation now i think is not too impressed by going to the moon or even going to mars because they are convinced that people have already flown at warp speed and have done things

so far beyond that that this is kind of small change. to go back to 1969 and take a look at the kind of technology that was available. the computer that was on the eagle when neil and buzz landed on the moon is amazing considering how weak it was and how much it needed to try to accomplish to land. the reliability and safety for space transportation systems, he said at the time, i know it wasn't publicized very much but their calculation was the odds were between five and 10 to one against the men going to the

moon and returning alive. the astronauts knew that assessment and were full l aware how dangerous it was. they thought they had a 50/50 chance of accomplishing it. other people involved in the space program at the time said compared it to a long chain of connections that everything had to fire pretty much perfectly on. if one of these things fell down it could be catastrophic and it would be catastrophic. the feeling at the time was that they very well might not come back. neil also said he hoped that if they didn't come back that the space program would go on anyway. they wouldn't martyr them or consider that no lives should be lost on it.

richard nixon then, the president asked his speech speechwriter to write an an opitchary for neil and buzz then it was put aside but it was ready to go if the worst happened. i've included in the book because i think it is an extraordinary bit of writing and it is chilling today to read it. nixon would have said fate is ordained. the men who went to if moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. these brave men know there is no hope for their recovery but they also know there is hope for man kind and their sacrifice. these men are laying down their

lives and man's kind most noble goal, is search for truth and understanding. they will be mourned by their family and friends. they will be mourned by their nation. they will be mourned by the people of the world. they will be mourned by mother earth the dared sent two of her sons into the unknown. in their exploration they stirred the people to feel as one. in their sacrifice they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man. in an chapt days, men looked at stars and saw their an says ancestors in the consolations. others will follow and surly find their way home. man's search will not be denied. but these men were the first and they will remain the foremost in their hearts. for every human being who looks up in at the moon will know there is some corner of the

world that is forever man kind. it is quite moving, actually. i would like to also read a little bit from the last seconds of the landing on the moon. columbia was the orbiter and eagle was the little strange-looking creature that looked sort of like a praying mantis with upside down praying mantis is what some people called it to land on the moon. neil and buzz climbed into the eagle and separated from columbia to land. when it was time, columbia fired the thruster, enough to separate

the craft and give eagle more room to maneuver. slowly, the landing modular separated and arced into its obituary orbit drifting down 60 miles an hour above the surface. neil began the powered descent. looking out a triangular window, the pilgrims plunged feet first into their goal. then gradually eagle rolled over until its crew was face down parallel to the surface watching the dead, silent craters and canyons grow larger and clearer. the landing rastle creeked and growned as threatening to come apart. sapart.

buzz mused at the less than comforting thought that he probably could have made a hole in the craft's wall with a screwdriver. adding to the hurried design was the bundles of exposed wires and plumbing that littered the craft. eagle began a 12-minute power drop. as they decented, buzz rattled off numbers while kneel kept rise eyes glued to the window grid making sure that the information melded with reality before them. suddenningly there was an alarm the onboard computer was overloading telling them it couldn't quote for the data. houston overruled the data.

everyone was involved that the computers were inadequate that was a given. armstrong continued a fast-sure approach that the computers had chosen for a landing site after analyzing thousands of photos taken by unmanned crafts as well as previous apollo flights flights that scareflights thatcircled the moon. the astronauts were no longer checking decisions made by the computer. instead, they were concentrating on the instruments. one minute later at 4:15 houston time, eagle passed through 400 feet. the sun was to their backs and the landing site could be seen in sharp contrast. straight ahead, looming towards them fast was geography baring no likeness to a smooth plane. it was a 600-foot deep crate their would tear the eagle to

shreds. later armstrong remembered i was surprised by the size of the boulders. some were the size of motor cars. it seem itself like we're coming to them pretty fast. at the time, he said nothing, he just reacted disconnecting the computer and taking manual control. skimming just over the top of the boulder field. from his position, he could on see straight ahead or to the right where the boulder field that appeared to the football field was to the left and out of sight. he could not see it. we were coming into the northeast slopes of it and there were a lot of big boulders on the slope, not a good place to land. a radar warning light flashed uselessly late. previously undisturbed for a billion years raised a massive cloud of moon dust that

encircled them and severely decreased visibility. controllers in houston had been listening intently to ailed to aldr erveg n's attitude. everything to them seemed to go going smoothly. suddenly that was dashed. eagle, apparently coming in for a landing at a dead slow 8 miles an hour had accelerated to 5 50* miles an50 miles an hour. nothing in the years of planning had predicted this. armstrong silent and every time houston tried to get a message to eagle it sounded like chicken scratching and cut out do to problems with the ship's steerable antenna. when armstrong was desperately searching a planet, houston was

not an option. another warning light signaled that eagle had 94 seconds worth of fuel left. without the cushion of its retro engine, a drop of 10 feet would damage eagle sufficiently to sentence both men to death on the moon. aldrin wrote i felt the first hot edge of panic. their altitude was 150 feet. at that moment, armstrong spoke for the first time. i got a got spot. finally, we found an area. it was not a particularly big area only a couple hundred square feet but it looked sat

tis factory and i was concerned about the fuel level. he called out the figures like a mississippi steamer. at 40 feet eagle was kicking up a blinding dust storm of sparkly, grainy dust. 30 feet from the surface eagle began drifting backwards, the spot was good but not great. it was impossible to tell if the boulders were behind them. he gunned forward a tad. the dust was so thick he was flying blind. houston crackled a reminder, 30 seconds and there were more moments of waiting and four lights flashed indicating the landing struts made contact whether soft contact or hard remained to be learned.

eagle was at rest. the blinding dust was explicably was gone. armstrong marveled the dust didn't settle, it disappeared after the engine shut down. conscious the world was waiting armstrong announced in a strong voice, the eagle has landed. his heart beat registered 155 heart beats per minute. is there any questions? post moon landing, armstrong was very busy and a lot of this, i think has been completely overlooked. he immediately became or soon

after quitting the space program became a professor at the university of cincinnati where he worked with doctor henry heimlich of the maneuver fame. the two of them started a program adopting the technology that had been developed a space flight for health needs. one of the things that heimlich was most concerned with was that in heart surgery, it was impossible to go for a long time because the blood would be damaged terribly by the motion of the machine that recycled it. so he wanted the device that had been developed to move oxygen and cooling water through the space suits, which they found out caused 90% less damage than

what the conventional heart pump did. this in one fell swoop meant that they could operate for hours more than what they had before. it saved many lives, i think to be sure. it went on for some years they worked together working on things that were not that dramatic but things that were helpful. yeah? >> have you got any idea about what mr. armstrong's feeling are about the future of the space program that the point, whether it is going to be active or what the president has in store for it? >> well, he was in houston about three weeks ago i guess speaking

about that. pretty much at the time the announcement was made by president bush. he said that he thought it was great idea in so many words and he said it made sense. he also said that it was something we can afford. that is all that he said at the time. i think it is affordable, too. the reason is because the apollo program created a tsunami of technology progress and led to the laptop computers and cellphone technology and just a marriott of hundreds of things that we take for granted now. in doing so, obviously, it led to employment for thousands and thousands of people for growing the economy for doing things like what neil and heimlich did.

i think if we did that again, we would have a similar result. i think it would be a positive thing. >> do you have any idea why the public is not more cognitive of the fact that the space program gave them so much in scientific research? >> i guess nasa hasn't done a good of a job as it might in getting that point across and convincing people that the good results that come back from spending that money. i hope that people will read my book and learn about some of those things that have happened. >> i know there is sputnik. >> no, no, no. the russians have been active you know, in space since then.

>> i understood it was a proposal to select the pilot because he was a skilled pilot and he was the only one who could land the craft. do you know anything about that? >> he told me he felt the same way. he didn't lobby himself, his father did. his father who is aned a aned a mirrorral and his feeling was that the reason that armstrong was chosen over buzz because armstrong was a civilian. because of the ten in your of the tenure at the time and vietnam and what have

you the government thought sending a military man with a flag to plant on the moon would send a message they didn't want to send. then later it was said that it would be difficult for buzz to to maneuver himself around neil to get out basis where they were standing in the eagle and with all of the heavy things on. i don't know anybody who believed that. i believe that is the answer. i think, buzz to his credit certainly shut up about it and got on with his program. those three michael collins and neil and buzz did not remain friends or become closely bonded, which most of us are not surprised you think if they have

an adventure like they shared there would be something that you have but they don't. buzz said to me he thought that, that they would be close to each other for their lives but they saw them at reunions. >> maybe this is an urban myth but i understand that armstrong somehow along the way lost a finger. is that true? >> he did lose a finger. shortly after he resigned from nasa, he moved back to a farm outside of cincinnati ohio where he raised cattle and it is one of the great ironies of life how he went flu the war and 79

missions and gemini and and apollo and to the moon without getting a scratch on his body. he was riding a tractor and he reached up and caught his wedding band on a nail and it ripped the finger right off. he got off the tractor and picked it up and carried it in the house and put it on ice and drove himself to the hospital. he was flown to louisville, kentucky where they were at a pioneer program on reattaching fingers and what have you. it was successfully reattached. i believe he has full use of it. that was back at the family farm yeah. >> the farm is getting more dangerous than the moon. >> apparently, it was.

yeah? >> with the launch of a chinese astronaut now, do you see the possibility by the announcement of president bush, do you see a spebter of a new space race taking place? >> i think it is interesting. i doubt it though because i don't think there is that, you know military rivalry that we had with the soviet union. it is cheaper if everybody cooperates. i would think that the chinese would just join with the russians and the americans and do it all together. i would think, i mean, nobody has the money anymore that you cannot try to get every efficiency possible out of it. yeah? >> these blockbuster goals for instance something that seems so outlandish and possibly doable

to land on the moon. i suppose now talking about the president has talked about landing someone on mars but given the state of the economy and the prior organization and other priorities that there would be, what prospects is there for such an undertaking down the road? >> well, it could be done. it could be done. it is a big task. >> a national goal or an international goal? >> i think it would have to be an international goal. i think that is the proper way to go about it. maybe under the united nations even. something like that. i think it is something that even smaller nations might be involved -- might be interested in getting involved.

if you did it that way, you could -- every nation in the world could have their five cents in and take pride as the world rather than a nation. it is a dr. spock type thing. he lives in cincinnati suburb. he was divorced about 10 years ago and remarried. he travels extensively, lectures on engineering and still doesn't give interviews to anybody. when i first undertook this, the first thing i did was write him a letter and asked him if he would give me an interview or cooperate in a book. he said he wouldn't but he wish me luck with it.

now, he is doing a book. he is working on a book now. all the research i did, there were people that said i would only talk to you if neil says it is all right. of those people, they all got back to me and he hadn't objected so he could have prevented -- he could have thrown things our way but he didn't which i'm grateful. >> you conducted how many interviews was it, well, over 100 interviews for it? >> yeah. >> you said that really the only one that came back with a negative opinion of neil armstrong was chuck yager. can you speak about that a bit? >> chuck didn't like neil at all.

i don't know if it is a chemical thing but he didn't like the idea that the astronauts would become astronauts. he did not like the idea they were going to houston. part of the reason for that is because he did not have a college education and you needed that. by that time, he was too old so something else really mattered. he interestingly, was involved in a mission to fly a training plane at edwards air force base with neil. they were supposed to decide whether the runway they were using was too wet, too muddy to land on. so neil flew and he touched down on it a couple of times to see how it felt and got mired in the

mud. chuck never let him forget it. actually, never let him forget it and anybody who asks he will regale you with that story. yeah? >> well, i read the book as well and one of the things that i like about the book is that you really brought so much life to the person and beginning with his childhood i thought it really would have appeal for younger readers appeal as someone who could enjoy a career in sciences and engineering and following into the kinds of field. for younger people, i wonder if there is any possibility of expanding it into other media or anything loo like that. we need to interest younger people in the areas, is there a possibility of that at all?

>> i'm in negotiation one of the major television networks to do a miniseries. i think we're there and we're going to make announcement to do a six-eight hour mini series. it is good for me but it is a good thing to get the information out about who these guys were, what they did and what they accomplished to a wider audience. >> on history bookshelf hear from the country's best known history writers from the past decades every saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern. to watch these programs any time, visit our website. you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span 3. >> all weekend long american history tv is joining with our

cable partners to showcase the history of iowa's capital city, des moines. to learn more visit c-span.org/localcontent. this is american history tv on c-span 3. >> we are at the henry a. wallace country life center which is 50 miles south and west of des moines. while it centers iowa consists of two historic locations, both honoring this regeneration of wallaces. there is the house and there is this 40-acre farm. henry a. and henry c. and uncle henry were always involved in food. so our work does