again, a suite of cameras and weather station instruments on board. and this one is also a chemistry lab. there are several devices on here that can do analysis of the chemicals in the soil and in the rocks. it's really being a very exciting mission. and it has no end in sight. i think the public has become very fond of these rovers because they sense that they are surrogates for us and maybe pathfinders for us. they're doing the initial reconnaissance of the surface of mars so that if in the future humans actually go there, they'll know a lot more about the terrain and also know a lot more about sites that might still harbor moisture, if not actual water.

and this pattern replicates what we did when we went to the moon. we started with missions that first flew past the moon. but one of the next things we did is set a lander on the moon just to determine how strong is the soil. can something land there, or will it sink in? if humans are going to land, will they be able to walk on the moon? and i think we're quite confident about mars that humans will be able to move around on the surface of mars very well. the rovers have demonstrated how easy it is to do that. one other thing about the rovers is they don't operate alone and preprogrammed. there are whole teams here on earth that are charting out their itineraries and scheduling their activities. and when they are working on the

mission, in their heads, they are on mars with the rover. and they even wear watches where they set their watch to martian time. the martian day is 24 hours and 39 minutes. so their day is just enough longer than ours that for the people working on earth, each day they start work 39 minutes later. the days creep ahead for them. so when this museum opened in 1976, we were wrapping up a golden age of human exploration with the apollo missions to the moon, and we were launching into the first golden age of planetary exploration with the missions of the 1970s to mars and to the outer planets. we're now in another golden age of planetary exploration,

particularly on mars with curiosity rover so actively exploring there. so we're right in the present moment here when we're with the mars rovers. and i wonder what we might see here in ten years or 20 years as planetary exploration continues with great success, we hope. and there is much talk about having a human mission to mars by about 2030 or so. if that should happen, that will probably be the stellar attraction in the museum by the time the next major anniversary rolls around. we're back live now at the

smithsonian national air and space museum where the museum today is celebrating its 40th birthday. it was 40 years ago today that president gerald ford dedicated this museum. in about a half hour, we'll bring you live coverage of the events celebrating that anniversary. in the meantime, we want to hear from you. our phone lines are open. 202-748-8900 for those in the eastern or central time zones. if you live out west, 202-748-8901. send us a tweet at c-span history or join us on facebook at facebook.com/cspanhistory. as we move outside to inside, one of the displays, and there are so many inside this fabulous museum, is moving beyond earth. and an example of the evolution of america's space shuttle program. and joining us again is valerie neal. we saw you just a moment ago in the tape portion.

you are the curator, the chair of the space history here at the museum. and let's talk about the shuttle program. no other country had something like that. >> well, briefly, the soviet union did. they built a craft called buran that mimicked our space shuttle. but it was several years later. they flew one test flight and then retired it. they didn't really have a need for a shuttle craft. but they were very worried about what we might use ours for. and they thought they should have one too, just in case. but really, in the annals of space history, the u.s. space shuttle is unique. it's the only operational craft that's reusable. it's the only craft that was the size of a cargo freight hauling truck out on the highway or an air freight carrier. it was much more capable than any other spacecraft has been, and very likely any other spacecraft ever will be. >> not enough room here for one of the space shuttles. the enterprise, correct, is at

the dulles facility? >> well, we now have discovery at our center near dulles airport. we have the space shuttle enterprise for a number of years. the prototype test flight vehicle. but when the space shuttle came to an end, we requested a shuttle and we were fortunate to receive discovery, the oldest of the space shuttles. and we turned it back over to nasa. and nasa placed it at the intrepid sea, air & space museum in new york city. so it has a new home there on an aircraft carrier of all places. >> you study the space shuttle. so let's go back into history. how was it developed? why was it developed? and what's its impact on america's space exploration? >> well, the space shuttle signaled a turn in america's space program from destination-focused program, let's get to the moon and get there before the russians do.

let's put humans on the moon. and once that was done, nasa and the nation reoriented to trying to use space as a place to do useful work. to make space a normal part of what americans do in science and technology. so the philosophy turned from these throwaway vehicles that you use one time, very expensive way to going into space and tried to develop a spacecraft on the model of an airline, a craft that could be flown again and again and again, could carry more passengers and could carry more cargo into space. and so the space shuttle was a vehicle that would then enable the construction of a space station. and with a space station, people could really begin to live and work off the planet. >> in the display just down the hall, "moving beyond earth," what is your take away? what will people learn and see?

>> we hope people learn a couple of things about the space shuttle era. one is that it's harder to get into space and to stay in space and do it economically than anybody everybody imagined. it turns out the airline wasn't really a good analogy for how to do space flight. and then the other is that people who work within the space flight industry, the space flight endeavour really keep encountering the same challenges over and over again, finding new solutions to them. the space entrepreneurs who are working today are all trying to find a less expensive way to go into space. and they're looking at reusable rockets where the rocket itself comes back down and lands so that it can be used again. there also are the same questions about what happens to the human body in space and how do you keep a crew healthy and

fit and productively employed in space, particularly as the durations get longer and longer. so same questions, new solutions, new challenges. >> the evolution in part behind you from the mercury and gemini program to the apollo program to the space shuttle program. looking back, all a natural evolution in our space exploration? >> well, it didn't actually have to happen that way. so it's definitely an evolution, but it could have happened in the reverse. and in fact, wernher von braun and some of the early space pioneers imagined the first step just to get into orbit and to build a space station and to establish a rhythm of life on a space station and then go to the moon. and then after the moon, then go to mars. and president kennedy kind of flipped the order of things. and so that's why we started

with that sequence of vehicles. but had it not been the cold war, had we not been in this competition with the soviet union, it might have been a much different evolution. >> everyone we have talked to here at this museum talks about their job with smiles and enthusiasm and excitement. what's going on here? >> well, it's just a fantastic place to work. it really is. mainly because this museum is beloved by millions of people. and so it's a real privilege to work here at a place that people always say is their favorite museum, or they always say they envy us. but tonight especially everybody is smiling because we've reached the culmination of a two-year effort to totally renovate our central hall and a make it much more visitor-friendly, make it much more high-tech, and really put the objects on display with some new shine, some new sparkle. and so everybody is excited about that.

it's like a debut party tonight. >> and for those of you watching live on c-span3 american history tv, it really is a night at the museum. because it's open all night. so if you're in washington, d.c. on this friday, july 1st, come on down and you'll be here for a few more hours. >> i will indeed. >> and fully staffed until tomorrow morning when it opens again for the public. but the public can come overnight. >> as always, it's free admission as well. so we're hoping to have the museum full all night long. >> and you'll hear more and more people behind me. let's go to mike joining us in virginia. thank you for waiting. go ahead with your question with valerie neal here at the museum. >> hi, ms. neal. thanks very much for taking my call. hey, i understand that the nro has donated a spy satellite to the museum. what satellite was that, and when do you expect that to go on display? thanks. >> well, i have to say you may have stumped the curator here because i don't know that

they've actually donated one yet of the newer versions of spy satellites. but we do have on display here the camera system from the corona, which was one of the earliest spy satellites in the late 1960s and early '70s. it went under a code name of discoverer. but we have that camera on display in the film return bucket as well. we have another satellite called grab and another one called solrad. and they also were used for secret purposes masquerading under names that led the public to believe that they were simply scientific satellites. so those are the ones that i know of that are small and early. we are hoping some day to have a more recent one and a much larger one. but to my knowledge, that agreement hasn't been reached

yet. sorry to disappoint you. >> john glenn, neil armstrong, mike collins the first director of this museum, and many who have died as well in search of space exploration. why were they such pioneers? >> well, the early astronauts were pioneers because space was this great unknown. and people referred to it as the new frontier or the next frontier. but in fact until you get to another planetary body, space is a vacuum. it's filled with harsh radiation. it's a very forbidding and unfriendly place. and no one knew quite what was going to happen out there. no one knew at the time if the technology would prove to be safe and reliable. they didn't know if the human body could withstand the

difference of being in a microgravity environment. they didn't even know such simple things would you be able to see clearly? would you be able to swallow normally. so everything was new. and the fact that these test pilots were already proved and proved to be brave and courageous and bold, they loved flying and they were accustomed to pushing aircraft to their outer limits i think made them heroes. and the fact that we were in this cold war environment, and they became symbolic of americans. they became the knights that were going to do this cold war battle with the other side, with the soviet union. coincidentally, they all looked like boy scouts, you know, with their crew cuts and their crisp clothing. they just sort of looked like they represented the best of america. and all of those things together

i think made them heroes in the eyes of the public. >> you have been here 25, 26 years. among the astronauts who have come through, who have you met? >> well, i've been fortunate to meet a number of the space shuttle astronauts. because that's the particular period of time i work in. but just two weeks ago we had michael collins here, the first time he has been here in a few years. our original director. and we've met buzz aldrin, neil armstrong, john glenn, scott carpenter, pete conrad used to come here. owen garriott back from the early period, john young and the first crew for the first space shuttle mission. eileen collins has been here and pam melbourne, the two commanders of the shuttle mission. and again in may, we had astronauts who had just returned from the international space station.

so whenever they come to washington, they like to come here too. many of them spent hours here when they were children. and they say that this museum was partly responsible for their love of aviation and their passion to become astronauts. >> let me just make the point, for those of you listening on c-span radio, of course watching on c-span3's american history tv, we are live at the national air and space museum in washington, d.c. our next caller is john joining us from new hampshire with valerie neal. go ahead, please. >> good evening. i just want to ask if you're going to show -- during the program. i know other people involved in the restoration. and i've been looking forward to seeing it. also, i want to thank the national air and space museum for preserving human history for future generations. i see lots of planes i used to work on there. so again, thank you very much. >> thank you. the star ship enterprise which actually never flew.

>> right. though it appeared to fly. and you asked whether we'll be showing it here at the museum, certainly, and i assume c-span will be showing it also. it is on display here tonight, and will be on display here for the foreseeable future. i mean possibly forever. i don't think we will renovate this hall again for another 20 years or so. so you have a good chance to see it. it has been very carefully restored to look exactly as it looked in 1969, i think. at the time of the episode of "the trouble with tribbles," which was a key turning point in the history of that show and the history of that model. and it has been very carefully wired up with l.e.d. lights.

and three times on the day on the hours of 11:00, 1:00, and 3:00, the lights are activated and you can enjoy seeing enterprise as it appeared on screen with flashing lights in red and green and white. see all the windows. it's quite a striking sight. i hope you'll come down and see it. >> what did gene roddenberry have in mind when we developed "star trek"? and 40, 45 years later, we're still talk about it. initially it wasn't that popular. >> exactly. it wasn't that popular to begin with. but it had a very devoted fan club early on, a very devoted audience. but he really wanted to do a kind of mythical show set in space, but he wanted to deal with contemporary issues. and that's what made it so interesting that almost every story was a kind of veiled reference to something that was going on in the world around us, whether it was cold war,

antagonisms, the conflict in vietnam, women's rights, racial tensions in the united states, conflicts between science and the humanities, conflicts between liberal and conservative points of view. and so he was drawing all his subject matter from the present, but then projecting it out into the future. and that gave people a new lens to look at current affairs. >> we are about 15 minutes away from the ceremony that will take place not far from where we're at outside at 8:30 eastern time. let's go to tim joining us in iowa. thanks for your call. go ahead with your question. >> caller: hello. hello? >> good evening. >> hello, good evening. >> caller: good evening. i know that the museum only has so much space. how many artifacts are kept in storage?

and how do you store them? >> oh, that's a great question. all together the museum has about 50,000 artifacts that range in size from full aircraft and spacecraft to small things that you can hold in the palm of your hand, things like mission patches or lapel pins or medals and medallions that people in the military services wear. we have -- i believe we have about 20% of our collection on display in the museum here on the mall. another 20% of our collection on display near dulles airport in our second facility, which is called the udvar-hazy center. and another 20% that is out on loans in museums around the country and even abroad. and the objects that are in storage are in two locations right now.

one in maryland and one out at the udvar-hazy center near dulles airport that is state-of-the-art storage. it's beautiful, air conditioned, brand-new storage facility where things are packed in boxes and on shelves and in very good climate controlled conditions. the place in maryland has been our storage site since oh, the 1940s. and it's in need of being vacated. and that's what we are doing quite gradually is moving things from maryland to the new facility in virginia. just recently, we completed the move of all of our aircraft engines. before that we moved some of the most fragile objects, our leather and fur collection. and you might think the air and space museum would have much fur, but a lot of those early aviation jackets and caps were fur-lined. so we're taking categories of objects from the old facility to

the new facility. and before long, we're afraid the new facility will be full again. and we'll have to build more storage space. >> born in arkansas. where did you study all of this? >> i studied space history by doing it, really. not by studying it in college or in graduate school. but i had the good fortune to work with nasa throughout the 1980s. and that was the dawn of the space shuttle era. and i was working with scientists and engineers who were involved in those early shuttle missions up to the challenger tragedy. so there were six years there of space flight, preparing for missions, executing missions. so i really learned space history on the job. other than the fact that i was a child in the 1960s and i was

fascinated with alan shepard and john glenn. i remember like everybody who was alive then remembers exactly where i was the night we landed on the moon. >> july 1969. >> exactly. so it was part of my cultural background, but it wasn't at all what i thought i would make my career in. and that really became a matter of serendipity, of kind of being in the right place at the right time. i'm not an engineer. i'm not a scientist. i'm a historian and a writer. >> you mention maryland. our next appropriately from andrews air force base not too far away. patrick, you are on the air. are you in the air force? what do you do at andrews air force base? >> caller: i'm in the security forces. >> thank you. go ahead with your question.

>> caller: all right. my question is was the landing of the reusable spacex, does the smithsonian plan on getting any and displaying at any of the museums? >> you know, i couldn't hear the question, patrick. if you could repeat it one more time there. >> there is a lot of noise behind us. >> caller: with the landing of the spacex rocket, does the smithsonian plan on getting any of those rockets and displaying them at the museum? >> thank you. the spacex rocket. >> yes, yes. as a matter of fact, we have been watching spacex with a great deal of interest, and also blue origin. and we have opened a conversation with spacex not yet to acquire an entire rocket, but we're very much interested in acquiring one of the engines that has been used. and then as we watch their history, as they move into a more frequent pace of operations and evolve their technology, we're going to be watching that. and i think we'll eventually bring something larger into the

museum. but right now we think an engine would be a perfect acquisition. >> why mars? and will we see that? >> well, mars has been on the horizon for as long as people have been dreaming of space flight. i think it's the planet that is most familiar to people, the one that seems most like earth, even though it's very much different from earth. and it's just far enough away to be this beckoning challenge. nasa is gearing up for a mission to mars in terms of the technology they're developing and the astronauts they're recruiting. but they don't yet have an approved mandate to go to mars. that's political will on the part of the congress, the president, and the american people. i would say for the last decade there has been interest in going

to mars, but there has not yet been a successful program that has caught on and gained the political commitment that will be required. it's going to be an expensive endeavor. it probably will need to be done internationally so that the costs can be borne by various economies, various countries. and also just to involve other people, other nations who want to be part of space faring. the international space station is kind of the proof test of whether a major endeavor like that can be carried out internationally. >> well, from your vantage point, you're a historian, you're a researcher. your focus is the space shuttle program. but why space in general? why should we spend the billions of dollars to continue these type of programs? >> well, the arguments for going into space and staying in space and spending that money in space are varied.

and they have to do with intangible reasons as well as very practical reasons. had we not ventured out into space, we would not be living the modern life we're living. we are so dependent now on satellites for almost everything we do in the world of communications, navigation, weather forecasting. from the research that scientists are doing in space, we've had a number of breakthroughs and benefits that have accrued to our knowledge of the practice of medicine or the understanding of how the body malfunctions. more esthetically and intangibly, it's one of those questions of, well, it's there, and we want to go wherever we think we can go. but i think the big misunderstanding is that we're spending fortunes going into space or doing things in space. if you look at absolute dollars,

that seems like a lot of money. but if you look at the pie chart of how the united states spends its money, its public money, that's not even a sliver on that pie chart. it's such a small amount out of everything that we spend for -- human health and welfare, education, national security, and all of the social benefits, social programs we have like social security, medicare, medicaid. so in absolute dollars, it sounds like a lot. but out of the whole menu of things that a government can do, it's one of the smallest things that the u.s. does. >> and donald is next. he is joining us from florida. go ahead, donald. >> caller: a weapons instructor in the early '60s. and i taught nuclear weapons and reentry vehicles mark ii which

is solid copper, mark iii, iv, v, vi. i was wondering if they have any mark numbers or nuclear weapons with it. mark vi had a mega ton nuclear weapon. >> we have a very early reentry vehicle. it's on display right behind me. we have a minuteman three intercontinental ballistic missile on display, and we also have a pershing intermediate range nuclear missile. >> right over there? is that over there? >> the green, yes. the green one with the conical top is our minuteman iii. we have a soviet ss-20 intermediate range nuclear missile as well. the reentry canisters, the reentry vehicles are still on those. but they're empty, of course. any weapons and the electronics inde