and achievements as well. and we are looking forward to being able to amplify not only the voice, so to speak, of senator elizabeth dole, amplifying her legacy for the future, but also using it to inspire. i think there are a lot of good stories there. our staff recently traveled to lawrence, kansas, to learn about its rich history. learn more about lawrence and other stops. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. aeronautics and space administration was created in 1958. next on american history tv, to mark the 60th anniversary, nasa chief historian bill barry gives an illustrated talk about the agency's, history its efforts to understand the solar system and

universe, and the race to put a man on the moon. the harkin institute at drake university hosted this event. it is a little over 90 minutes. >> she is an integral part of our team for many reasons. when we knew that dr. barry was coming for sure, i knew hope would be the most excited person on the team. because i knew there would be a tigh level of geeking ou because one historian recognized another historian was coming to campus, and it would be a big deal. it was for her and no doubt the great surprise and excitement

from hope to have dr. barry come. previously, hope served as the project archivist in bloomington overseeing richard lugar's papers and mike pence's congressional papers. with that, please welcome our team member and fellow lady nerd hope bivens. [applause] hope: it is not every day they ask and archivist to get up and talk to a room full of people. preparing for our lecture tonight, naturally, i looked in the archives to see what we might have related to nasa and space. i found a lot of great photographs and a few files. but i wanted to share a few lines from a letter i found addressed to a nasa administrator from a young navy pilot in 1965.

i have no romantic and lofty dreams of fame and fortune. i am one who left's flying and has hoped for the opportunity of just getting the chance to try out for the astronaut program since the day sputnik first went into orbit." that letter was written by lieutenant tom harkin. [applause] hope: it is my privilege to introduce our speaker tonight. bill barry has served as the chief historian of nasa since 2010. he collects and researches material, answers questions from the public, and disseminates the history in a variety of ways. nasa after 22 years in the air force where he served

on the faculty of the air force academy. he received his doctorate from oxford in 1996 for his dissertation focused on soviet andile design bureaus manned space policy during the 1950's and 1960's. he recently served as a consultant for the films, "first man" and "hidden figures." dr. bill barry. [applause] dr. barry: thank you. thank you for the warm hospitality i have enjoyed. i have been stunned and happy about how much people of wanted to talk about space and space exploration. i have been the space nerd since i was four years old.

it is great to share my enthusiasm with you tonight. on october 1, 1958, nasa opened for business. 60 years ago a month ago. we have been celebrating our 60th birthday this fall. if i can find my cursor, i will be all set. that is not what i want to do. all right, anyway. we have been celebrating our 60th anniversary for the last month. we have also been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the apollo missions to the moon. we are doing sort of a double-dip. my office has been extremely busy dealing with all the interest in the origins of nasa and the start of the apollo program. i am really excited to be here. television,t nasa

the guys who do the videos you , helped me done my summary video. i'm going to hop out of this presentation for a second to go to that because i think this does a nice job summarizing 60 years of nasa. [video clip] >> one of the most challenging assignments ever given to modern man. expansion of human knowledge about space. >> we have been assigned the mission of launching. >> 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. >> developed with the operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments and man through space. >> one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. studies the benefits of using aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes. >> 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

and liftoff. and a new era of american space exploration. >> the role of the united states as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology. we have a mighty big job to do. dr. barry: 60 seconds. [laughter] dr. barry: i thought they did a good job. 60 seconds of nasa history in 60 seconds. i thought they did a good job. i will go back to my slide mount. -- slide now. humming here. let me see if i can turn this on. the nice thing about that video is it talks about the 60 years of space exploration done so far but also gives you a clue on where we are going in the future to continue our expiration of space and aeronautics technology.

does anyone know the identity of the person talking? he was the first administrator of nasa in 1958 under the eisenhower administration. , of was talking to the folks making the video and said this is cool video -- this is actually a film. in those days when he took over nasa, they did not have the internet to communicate so they made a film of him speaking to the employees of nasa about what the job was. the job 60 years ago is much -- was much the same as it is today. a goodds you hear are description of the mission then and now. i would love to talk about nasa 's past and future, but that does a good job of capturing both things. rather than reciting a lot of

, i thoughtnd events the 60th anniversary -- if you really want to know that stuff, .nasa.gov/60. there is a whole website of things you might want to see. inight, as chief historian, get to answer lots of questions people have about nasa history and i've had a chance to learn a lot of things about nasa history i did not know about or people do not have the luxury of learning about. it does give me interesting perspectives. rather than recapping nasa's 60th anniversary, i thought i would talk about things you probably do not know about nasa history that i found out as nasa chief historian. where do we start? in honor of six decades, i thought i would take a clue from

with sixght tv host from nasa history that you don't know and may be of interest to you because they said light on the past and our trajectory -- shed light on the past and our trajectory into the future. has already nasa saved the planet at least once? nasa was created in 1950 and is not done yet. whentory goes back to 1957 the british started making measurements of ozone and other things over antarctica. over the next 20 years, they discovered the ozone level over antarctica was decreasing every year. that was summarized in this report in 1972. base is the dark star right

in the middle. leveleasured the ozone over antarctica at the time. the concerns became big news in published aientists "aper in the magazine, "nature, that is sort of "b" thing to do. it was a big news story. in that article, they laid out their concerns about the change in the ozone levels over previous decades. the findings were troubling because ozone protects us from ultraviolet light that comes from the sun.

hadrtunately, they only data from that region of antarctica. it was concerned because -- it was all concerned because if it expanded, people could start getting skin cancer. they wanted to know more about the ozone hole. nasa happened to have a satellite in orbit and it happened to have an ozone measuring device on it. put it up to do something else but it could measure the whole over antarctica. in nasa, we do everything with an acronym. we sent it to start taking pictures of that. it discovered that the whole

worsentarctica was much than we thought. this is one of the pictures that came back in 1983. it got everyone's attention, particularly people who live in australia, as you might imagine. had been thinking about how this is happening. cfcs might beaybe causing the growth of the ozone hole. these chemicals that were widely used at the time in andconditioning systems also pushed the paint out of the paint can and hairspray out of the hairspray can. for those of you who do not know what that is, go ask your parents.

in the mid-20th century, a lot of cfcs were being pushed into the atmosphere. there was concern that was getting into the ozone layer and reacting with the ozone and making it go away. the evidence from space and ground became more convincing and troubling. proved thenes cfcs.t in this case was this airplane can get to very high altitude. 1987 as it was flying over , if found those interacting with the ozone and turning it into things we did not want it to.

the evidence was so powerful and losing theanger of ozone layer protection was so scary that countries around the love got together and signed the montreal protocol which restricted the production of cfcs and eventually led to them being banned. since that time, nasa and other organizations have continued to monitor the ozone hole over antarctica. measure over antarctica and the region. i'm happy to report in january of this year, scientists confirmed there is a consistent trend. the ozone is trending upward and the size of the hole has been trending downward over the years. we have avoided over two main cases of skin

that would've happened between 2010 and 2030 because of these improving numbers. you may not have noticed, but nasa helped to save the planet. that is only number six on my list. number five, apollo did not happen. i'm happy to be working for you at nasa thanks to your tax dollars. things did not have to turn out that way. things don't have to turn out the way they did. plans to buildes a satellite had been announced in 1955. they gave the job to the naval research laboratory. president eisenhower did not tell anybody this. was thehe other things air force was working on building spy satellites so we could find out if the soviet union had the missiles we

thought they might have. it was a covert program and very important. in the 1950's, the military and intelligence services had the money and expertise we needed when it came to the efforts to get into space. but after the world was surprised by the soviets innching two sputniks 1957, the second one having a live dog on board, the pressure was really on to do something. the naval research laboratory prepared to launch the satellite in november of 1957. it did not turn out so well. vanguard satellite survived the explosion. it rolled off into the bushes

and they found it. it actually survived. this kind of thing put a lot of pressure on the u.s. government to catch up in the space race. the u.s. army is the one that delivered the goods. they launched the satellite. there is an iowan in the picture. james van allen is in the middle holding up the model of the satellite. the army is successful. the navy is trying to launch things. the air force wants to be part of the game sending things into space. that create a problem for the secretary of defense because he had all these competing programs. they all wanted money.

he started out by saying none of you get to do the space thing, i'm going to create the advanced research projects agency, now called darpa. he assigned all responsibilities for ospreys projects to darpa. this happened in february of 1958. the eisenhower administration said that is how we will do it. scientific research would be focused by the military on that work. we wound up with a space program run by the department of defense except that folks in congress and other folks had other ideas about what was supposed to happen. one of those who had other ideas about how to study space was this guy. does anybody know who this is? you ought to know. dryden,dr. hugh latimer

the head of the organization that became the basis of nasa. he had been the head of the national advisory committee for aeronautics since after the war. 1957, he was leading the organization. in taking over in the 1940's, he had been bending the research agenda. he had been doing more research on high-speed flight and space research. this was in part a result of the fact that at the end of world war ii, he had been drafted to be the secretary of the army air force scientific advisory group. these are the guys that went thend europe and studied weapons technology of our enemies during world war ii and in the published a big report at the end. trident was one of the authors of multiple chapters, including

chapters on rocket research. he was familiar with all the material in the report. he was named to be the head of the naca. he said this report has good ideas and i'm going to make this happen. naca mandate did not include space. he was basically making it into a space agency. this was the first to go supersonic. we on the chuck eger was the first one -- we all know that yager wasr -- chuck the first. between a joint program the naca and nasa. naca was are you working on high-speed flight.

he push it toward high-speed research. was soft-spoken, the kind of person he did not take credit for anything. he had good relations with the military so he was able to pull off amazing things. he wound up being the deputy director of nasa after it became nasa. but theed on leaving administrator agreed to take the position under the condition hugh dryden stayed as deputy. jim webb comes in under kennedy says i will take the job under one condition, that this guy stays on as my deputy. he wound up coming down with throat cancer, continue to work, and basically died on the job in 1965.

he was not there when we actually succeeded. becameaders of nasa famous from the success of apollo. if you can believe this, i find it hard to imagine how he did this. one of the most successful research programs nasa and the u.s. have ever done, dryden convinced the air force and f-16's andy to build let naca and eventually nasa run the program. i don't know anybody who has ever done anything like that. sputnik, dryden puts a team together and they produce a report and released the report in january of 1958.

two days later, the committee that ran naca got together and thatthis is a good idea based on this report the u.s. should create a program that integrates the department of defense, naca, national academy of scientists, universities, and research institutions, and industries to create a cooperative program of civil space exploration. sound familiar? one of the things that helped push the idea through was the fact the chairman of the committee was the guy in the middle of the picture. general jimmy doolittle. as the head of naca two years before it happened. changeails on how the happened are not completely clear. both in about a month of the report coming out, the

eisenhower administration changed courses. at the start of april, the president sent a draft law to congress proposing we have a civilian agency built around the naca that would include parts of the department of defense in space research. the defense department would still be involved in some things involved in space that were primarily military, but the bulk of the program was to be run by the national aeronautics and space agency. later, congress changed it to administration. that is how it got started. it was not as easy as you would think in congress. sorting out who was in charge of what and the primary goals was interesting. i found this memo in the archives. it is a memo to president eisenhower from may of 1958. nasaresident had directed

be given responsibility for all programs except those peculiar to or primarily associated with military weapons systems or operations. this memo was from his staff saying the d.o.d. is not doing what you told them to do. they are trying to take over the whole thing. the lines between military intelligence and scientific them's are blurry at times. the president put his foot down and said he will not get away with it. he parts were handed over -- key parts were handed over to nasa. propulsion laboratory

part of the army at the time. and that got handed over to nasa as well. this key decision in the spring of 1958 had big impacts. nasa haslian agency, in some ways become a world space agency. it is one of the most positive aspects of u.s. international relations i have ever seen. the nasa meatball, what we call the logo -- [laughter] dr. barry: it is one of the most recognized brands in the world. i was walking through target in rhode island couple of weeks ago with family. my wife said, look at that. there was a pair of pajama pants with equations like a blackboard with a big meatball. it is the big thing these days. everybody loves nasa.

and we do, too. i get notes as chief historian from people around the world. i have one in my inbox right now from a young girl from saudi arabia who appeared to believe nasa is not part of the u.s. government. she cannot understand why cannot hire her as an intern. [laughter] dr. barry: because you are paying for the interns. you guys should have the chance to be interns. another key aspect of having isa be a civilian agency that new technologies are almost immediately available to the public. that leads me to number four on my list. like the naca before it, nasa has done fundamental research to advance technology in the kind of work often too risky or expensive for normal companies.

nasa has a little bit less than half of 1% of the budget. money and weat break the trail on technology so things can be created. is requireds nasa to tell people about what we do and accomplish. industry can turn those things into new products and services. one of the first technologies developed by nasa was the weather satellite. this shows the marking on an early weather satellite. this was being developed by the army and handed over when nasa was created in 1958 and launched on april 1, 1960. we quickly figured out pictures from space of the weather were

really valuable. i think you can imagine if you did not have pictures of space the questions about tornadoes. the insight we get is incredible and has had a huge impact. i don't think i want to go back before we did not have that. now, weather satellites are under the control of the national oceanic administration. nasa works with noaa and have built and launched satellites for noaa. communication by satellite was an idea that came out of science fiction. nasa and the military ductwork on the in the early days of the space age. nasa's first communication satellite project was this giant, reflective balloon. to give you an idea of the size, those are people in a car.

this is a really big balloon. they launched into space and inflated it in space. the idea was you could bounce radio signals off the aluminized balloon. and it actually worked. not the most efficient way. you don't want these balloons floating around. there was much better to build satellites that sat in one place over earth. within a couple years, nasa was buildg two companies to can indications satellites for private industry that could fit over a spot on the equator and transmit tens of thousands of signals. the big satellite at the back of the picture is number three. there was another one built after that. we used that to test technologies that went into the satellite communication industry.

nowadays, instant worldwide communication at virtually no cost. i could pull out my phone and call someone in botswana if i wanted to. we don't think about that. it is a huge business. it is a $200 billion a year industry. it came from our exploration of space. in the 60's, nasa did all this great stuff. that was 50 years ago. what have you done for us lately? [laughter] dr. barry: well, think about the business of launching things into space. this is a picture of the first space shuttle launch. because it has a white tank. we figured out we did not need to paint it to save weight. nasa and the military got in the business of launching things into space and started it. we almost killed it off.

in the 1970's, we created the space shuttle. space shuttle missions were s, space with st transportation systems. after the challenger accident, the united states realized it was not a good decision. we were in a bad spot. the subtle and raised -- the shuttle had raised expectation s. the soviet union was coming apart and selling things on the cheap. founds. launch industry itself in a whole. everyone was buying them from someone else.

es where the u.s. military and intelligence services so they could charge high prices. it was expensive and costly for the united states. all of the commercial business was going overseas. in the early 2000's, the administrator started a program, cots. the idea was american companies were offered contracts to deliver cargo to the space station. we knew we would have to get cargo up to the space station. if you lose a cargo vehicle, that is not good but it is a risk we could take. we had also been building rockets to launch things into space since 1957. it is rocket science but not cutting-edge rocket science. [laughter] dr. barry: the cots program was

created. we set up these milestones, breadcrumbs to allow companies to reduce risks. whos hard to find investors say i like your rocket design and here is a bazillion dollars to figure how to make it work. milestones allowed them to get there. there were two companies in the beginning. them you have not heard of because they were not able to meet the milestone process. the other company have probably heard of. spacex. this is the falcon 9 lifting off from cape canaveral. up whencompany stepped the other fell out. that company was orbital sciences corporation. they built the rocket shown here

. this launched from the coast of virginia. when these go off, i can see them from my house which is kind of cool. the company is now owned by northrop grumman. they are about to launch their 10th mission to the space station this month. we are going to apply the same approach to getting humans to the international space station and back-and-forth to space. this is the spacex dragon capsule delivered to the kennedy center in july. this spaceship will be used for demonstration flight early next year. they are planning to fly it without a crew on board. sometime later next year, they plan to have a mission with a crew on board to go up to the space station. they will be using this to get

back and forth from space. but spacex is not alone in doing that. we decided it was a good idea to diversify and have two alternatives. another company is developing ways to get people up to the space station. that is the boeing corporation. building the boeing star liner. this is a picture of the guys in uits ining space s a mockup. they are planning to test next spring and letting the first flight to the space station -- planning the first flight to the space station in august of next year. we expect there will be two to do it.able these are some of the big

industries that have benefited that came from nasa research. this does not include all of the companies spawned unintentionally by nasa research. you may have heard of go-pro. that was invented by someone at the jet propulsion laboratory and licensed to go-pro. that is why your cellphone takes such good pictures these days. you are carrying nasa technology probably in your pocket. i don't think this is probably an unknown fact about nasa history. don't think a lot of people appreciate how much things have changed because the changes have been incremental. the total effect is mind-boggling. let's step back and be boggled. we know van allen discovered the

van allen radiation belts. explorer 1 discovered that. it was not a nasa discovery because it was before nasa was created. at the time, the idea the image of particles -- was not widelyes accepted. found out there was solar wind hitting the radiation belt. that is what causes the aurora. that is particles from the sun hitting the van allen belt and

causes light to be emitted. got his reward because we recently launched a probe to touch the sun. it is named the parker solar probe after mr. proctor -- is to parker -- mr. parker. field also protects us from the atmosphere being stripped away by the solar wind. late 1950's, there was a widely held theory that the planets formed from the outside in. that the gaseous planets outside had been formed first. this sort of theory meant that venus was younger than the

earth. we did not know much about venus because it is covered in clouds other than its size. it looked at it might be warmer than the earth. this theory led to a widespread belief venus might be like a swampy, primitive earth and might even have dinosaurs. i remember seeing pictures of stuff like this when i was a kid. provedst probe to venus it was warm. the surface temperature is about 900 degrees fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead and dinosaurs. we found in the early years of the space age that venus was suffering from a runaway greenhouse effect. that prompted discussions about climate change, nuclear winter, and other topics that became big in the 1980's. our understanding of mars 60 sophisticatedmore

than this article from 1906. 1960's therey the may not have been canals on mars. to believe mars was an old planet drying up and dying -- it echoed the belief that mars was an old planet drying up and dying. this is a screenshot from one of those disney films that came out in the 1950's about life in the universe. there was a series of them. this is what they thought mars might look like. they were pretty sure there may not be animal life on mars, but they were pretty sure in these films there was probably plant life on mars.

this is what they speculated it would look like. now know that mars long ago did have oceans and atmosphere. this is what we think it looked like billions of years when it had -- billions of years ago and had oceans and atmosphere. mars was a wet planet much like earth. if it was wet and had an atmosphere, conditions for life probably existed. the question is, did life ever develop on mars before he became a dead planet? questions thethe probes are trying to answer. what about the rest of the solar system? [no audio] textbooks about the outer solar system. we knew there were big planets. some have moons. moonspectation was those

were cold and frozen. we expected the big planets might be interesting but the moons around the must be dull and boring. until we sent the pioneer and voyager probes out to take a look. this is what we found. the moons of jupiter and saturn are really interesting. there are volcanoes on some of the moons. some are cold with methane. some of the moons have an icy crust of water. underneath that crust is liquid effectecause the gravity squeezes the moons enough and warms it up enough so the water is under the ice.

there are organic molecules in that stuff. it does not mean life. it means carbon-based molecules. those are things life is built on. could there be life in these things? we don't know. that is what we are hoping to find out. we have also proven our solar system is not unique. is our solar system unique? we've just found out in the last few years with the kepler space telescope lost every star it looked at had planets around it. it is not just billions of stars. but it is billions of stars with billions of planets around them. what does that mean for the possibility of other life in the universe? it certainly improves the odds dramatically. unfortunately, the kepler fuel and ran out of

was decommissioned. another satellite is already in orbit and working. skyill look at the entire looking for xo planets. we will have all kinds of information about that. will help to answer the questions we have been asking for years like, are we alone? i have not touched on the most mindbending thing yet. where did the universe come from. proof. the i am not sure who came up with the name.

the data from the probe created this picture. this picture effectively proves the universe originated in a big ago.13.7 billion years we have scientific proof that is the case. it is enough proof that the scientist working on this one the nobel prize for it in 2006. there are some people who do not believe we went to the moon. [laughter] dr. barry: i don't know what to tell those folks. to askstion i would like you is, why do we go to the moon in the first place? anybody know? why? because it is there. that is a good reason. president kennedy told people would get there within the

decade. >> [indiscernible] dr. barry: looking for? that is one of the reasons to go back to the moon. oxygen is handy stuff. what is that? competition with the soviet union. that is the usual answer. people think we went to the moon because this guy flew in space in 1961 and the u.s. was embarrassed by the soviets beating us into space. while it prompted kennedy to go to congress in 1961, the decision was made for other reasons. not because president kennedy was a believer we should find oxygen on the moon or because it was there or because he was a visionary who thought we ought to have a civilization that expands. not really. when canada began his term -- when kennedy began his term, he

tried to defuse the space race. he offered to the soviet union that we should cooperate in space. he basically offered a big space reset. let's be friends. let's cooperate in space. even after making this speech where he challenges us to get to the moon in a decade, he met with khrushchev and said, why don't we go to the moon together? he made that offer several other twos as president including months before he was assassinated. we really did not know for certain, and as a kid i was very wefused about this, aren't supposed to be trying to beat the russians into space?

it turns out president kennedy had a recording system in the white house. this is a transcript of one of the tapes of a meeting between president kennedy and nasa officials when they met in 1962. it makes his position on space exploration pretty clear. look at the last six lines on the bottom. this is kennedy speaking. "i am not that interested in space, but we are talking about these fantastic expenditures that will wreck our budget and domestic programs. the only justification for it in my opinion is because we hope to beat them, the russians, and demonstrate starting behind by a couple of years, by god, we passed them." that is from november of 1962. going was not just about advancing the economy.

it was about proving the united states system was better than communism. some of you in 2018 might look at it and go, what? seriously? is that what they thought? it was a critical issue in the early 1960's. why was it worth this fantastic set of expenditures? in a word, decolonization. dozens ofd war ii, new countries appeared that had been european colonies. they were not keen on the europeans and the west. they look at what happened with the soviet union. the soviet union was devastated by world war ii. war12 years later after the in 1957, they beat the united states in launching the first satellite. they must know something about how to get from zero to 60

really fast. this advantage was a huge threat to the west. kennedy realized we needed allies in the world. inhad traveled extensively the senate around the developing world, so he knew this was a big issue, that these countries were by sovietd by soviet propaganda. kennedy's political solution was brilliant. very clever guy. we were being one out by the soviets -- one upped by the soviets, so we moved the goalpost. you launched the first woman into space, so what? prove your system is better than ours by going to the moon. this is a memo president kennedy sent to vice president johnson.

note the part in bold in paragraph one. is there any other which promises dramatic results in which we could win? going to the moon was the answer to that question. we knew that they would have to build a new, big booster. we were both going to have to build a booster. kennedy and his advisors thought that is a fair fight. starting from zero, we think we can beat them to the moon. speaking of racing to the moon, the final item on my list is this. there really was a race to the moon, and it was a lot closer than you think. was people assume the race started -- most people assume the race to the moon started in

1961 and at some point the soviets dropped out of the race and were not contenders in the end. by the end of the 1960's, as we were landing on the moon, you would see these editorials that would say we are not proving anything. that is exactly what the soviets said in public, and that was a lie. let's go back to the may 1951 speech where president kennedy tells us we will go to the moon in a decade. 1961, we did of not have a competitor. the soviets had orbited the earth. we put allen shepherd in a small capsule and dropped them in the atlantic ocean. suborbital flight. no big deal for the soviets if you are recent summary around --

somebody around the earth orbit. is kennedy serious about this? they don't know. they were worried about pressing defense issues. they were spending more money defending against the u.s. missile gap. when does the moon race actually start? here. side, it starts on the soviet side, it starts in august of 1964. long after president kennedy was gone from the scene. this is part of the list of successful space launches. nasa reports to congress every year on what the u.s. government is doing. this is from this year's report. the soviet union, two flights in 1957.

1968, the u.s. launched more things into space. we were building communication satellites and weather satellites. we had an aggressive and active program of all sorts. the soviet union continued to ,ne up us on some things usually just before we were planning to do something just like that. that is because they were watching what we were doing and figuring out what they could do with what they had that would be a good propaganda victory. i spent three years of my doctoral dissertation researching what was going on. was aviet space program bunch of one-off programs. the authorization to spend money came from chris jeff -- chris khrushchev that

they thought would pay off for propaganda reasons. engineers were brilliant. they had an incredible team and they did great work. they did amazing work with the limited resources they had. by 1964, that strategy was working -- starting not to work anymore. they got nervous. the other thing they realized was president johnson was not offering to cooperate on going to the moon. going to the moon for him was a tribute to dead president kennedy so we were going to do it. the soviets 1964, said we have got to do something so they created a program that would send two canno --

cosmonauts around the moon and come back. the idea is they would do this by the 50th anniversary of the bolshevik resolution in november 1967. the program was moving along well. this is a list of launches in that program. there are eight launches in 1968 . september and november flights appeared to be successful from our perspective. we did not know one of the heat shields burned through on one of them. one of them skipped off the atmosphere and plunged into the indian ocean. they had a ship waiting to pick

it up. they did not want to be fishing their cosmonauts out of the indian ocean. those were failures. they were not ready to fly anybody in the program. we were. we flew the apollo eight flight in 1968. we basically beat them in this program although nobody knew about it at the time. flights butfew more never put people on those missions. that was not all. they not only set up the circle lunar program but decided to build a rocket just like the saturn 5. in the soviet union at the time. these rockets are the same size as that rocket. of the statueize of liberty. imagine two statues of liberties. they are huge. technology, it was not as good as ours. only lift two

cosmonauts. one would drop down to the moon, and come back up again. and bring the sample back. this rocket was known as the and one -- as the n1. the lunar program made remarkable progress considering they started in 1965 and said this program is ago. ass than four years, they had rocket decides ready to test launch. the first launch did not come until february, 1969. the rocket exploded six he nine seconds after it loaded off. we had incredible success. largely because we could afford to have a huge testing program before we look -- lifted them off the ground. our tests went largely lickety-split and did not have any problems. they were testing their rockets as they were trying to build them which is hard to do because they were in a hurry. trysecond line -- time they

to do that was in 1969. the emergency escape system, there were not any people on at the touch -- the test launch. the bottom of the rocket is exploding, it blew up on the pad in the to launch pads were next to each other pretty close. it wiped out the entire launch complex. that was a pretty big blow on their program. the n1 continue to go along. they did to more launches. they were not successful. it was not until 1974 that they officially pulled the plug on the program and carved up what was left of the n1 rocket. if you get a chance to wander around, there are a lot of funny shaped buildings shaped like combs. they are halves of n1 rockets. the reason and with apollo eight

and they were not going to catch us with this program because it was far kind. right?, it ended, you know what the answer is. no, it did not. sovietutation of the union as a state power, and a lot of people do not it -- and do not appreciate how important it was. it was important domestically and internationally. the brilliance of the communist party leadership was hinged on their successes in space and beating the united states. it was critical to them in internal he and externally to prove the soviet communist power would bury capitalism. desperation, january 1969, the soviet leadership commissioned the interplanetary probes. they had success sending probes to the units. not so successful going to mars. probe to go toot the moon and do it before the americans could get there.

this is that spacecraft. it was called luna. started they, they program of january 1969. in june, 19 69, they launched the first one. the rocket they launched blew up before it could get into orbit. that failed. the next one they launched on july 13, 1969. three days before apollo 11 launched to go to the moon. it was named luna 15. this is the report that appeared on washington post on the day we landed on the moon. people knew the lunar program was happening. this is like page 27 of the washington post. not the front page. we were talking about neil armstrong unlimited we knew about this. in orbit whens the apollo 11 crew landed on the and neil get into the lunar module, they do their

walk on the moon, they get their rocks, get back in the module, they are supposed to have a nap before they launch the next morning. they didn't sleep well to i wouldn't have either. while they are theoretically sleeping, the soviets sent their rocket. it hit a mountain. and crashed. -- luna 15 have been successful, it would have gotten back to earth the same time the apollo 11 had gotten back to earth and they would have said, we went to the moon, brought back the sample, we didn't endanger anyone's life. we are a real space power. it was that close. the race to the moon ended july 21, 19 69, after we walked on the moon. now you know six things about nasa's that most people do not know. you can amaze your friends. thanks for your attention. i think we will take some questions here, right? thank you very much. [applause]

bewe are really excited to able to spend time with dr. barry for a wild. i know we have gotten longer than normal but we will do the same amount of questions hopefully. we recognize some of you may have reasons to leave sooner. please be courteous to everyone as you walk out during the next 20, 25 minutes as we go through questions. we are going to get ready for that. there are members of the heart institute staff who are in the audience who are accepting notecards from you to put your questions on the we will make sure they are read aloud and we get it all recorded well. i will have a few questions we will start with. bill: shall we? what to do you want? >> you sit there. bill: thank you.

joseph made the mistake of letting me have a microphone without having a timer. sorry for running late. i like this stuff. i hope you guys too. joseph: we have had a current -- a good couple of days talking about your career, talking about your interest in space and talking about policy. great to have you and be a part of this. one of the things we do is the students create a question of the week. sometimes they are serious, sometimes we are talking about our myers-briggs and the differences in the office. this week, in honor of dr. barry coming, what is your favorite space movie? there is a whole range of things from first man and apollo 13, there was some space jam in there. [laughter] bill: guardians of the galaxy? joseph: guardians of the galaxy was on there. that prompted several

discussions that we had with dr. barry in different venues. and that is, you have worked a lot with hollywood in terms of helping tell the story of an. you know there will be some sense of -- some solicitation there. there is also history. can you tell us briefly about your work on hidden figures and what this meant for nasa? bill: sure. -- a lot of people make documentary movies about nasa all the time. we share what they want. youof that film and video, paid for that. that is public information. we are happy to hand that out to people. arebudget feature films kind of a different story. what happens with those is someone in hollywood will have an idea to do a space movie and they may want to film at nasa. transformers three, they filmed at kennedy space center. we signed an agreement with them.

not serious three, science stuff. but it reaches an audience we might not otherwise reach. gets a young audience, which is good for someone who -- or maybe someone else. i don't know. i was surprised. get tot realize that we do cool things like hanging around hollywood stars. hollywood leads on things and that's the scripts came to me in 2011 with this great "the hidden figures." he said, they want to make sure to get this could you review the script? i reviewed the script and that set up a relationship where i spent a lot of time with the got to do -- i got to go on location where they were filming in georgia and talked with kevin costner. that was embarrassing. and got to do other fun stuff. thosee do is we recognize

movies are not documentaries and we do not hold them to a standard. we do want to make sure that when they deal with nasa issues, they deal with them with some degree of respect, particularly with the reputation of people who are still alive. and also as possible, get the facts right. movies becomee the history because they see them. it is a double-edged sword. hidden figures, for the purposes of the movie, they compress the story into 1961-1962. civil rights changes in virginia, actually started in 1943 during world war ii. for those women who were working there. to some extent, they are still working on the issue today. that is a long story that you can't tell that story in a movie.

that was the big thing they did in that movie. but that was ok. that is anhe truth important set of truths about what happened. that was good. first man was fun. the cool thing about doing these movie things are -- is there a stuff that i would not get to do. if i went up to the folks in our lunar receiving laboratory where the rocks are that we brought back from the moon that are not being studied, if i went up and said, i would like to look at the rocks, they would go, no way. we have better things to do. go away. but if ryan gosling says, can i see those rocks? [laughter] bill: they will let him in there and i can go, it you need a historian to advise you. [laughter] bill: so i got to go in with him. but it ispersonally, also like, we are weighing these

much truth is truth, and when -- and ultimately they will make the movie they want to make anyway. it is a question of whether we cooperate with them a lot or a little. joseph: one of the things we have done in the last couple of weeks is read books that remind us about space and reading is a directions because that is what we do. you tell us about space force and what that means for reorganization at the pentagon and if nasa has any involvement in that? bill: yeah, when i went to a wedding in rhode island, that was a question i got most. are you going to be in space for snap? -- space force now? ,ur current nasa administrator formerly a congressman from oklahoma, when he was in congress, he thought creating a space force would be a good idea. that led some people to believe that nasa is going to be merged

into the space force. when we are talking about a space force, they are talking about creating a branch of the military service. much like when the air force was created in 1947, they took things from the army and created an air force. what they are talking about now taking space stuff from the army, navy, air force, and whoever else, and creating an organization within the pentagon. from my perspective, i think nasa will still be where we are to we will relate with people on the pentagon on things we have to coordinate on. which we do from time to time. that really does not have a lot of bearing on nasa. topic. confusing you have to understand how the u.s. military is structured. which most people do not know and note -- and don't really need to know. it is not likely going to have a big impact on nasa. joseph: that because of a secret but because it is not useful

information for everyone? bill: what they are creating is a new version of the air force but for space. and that is not nasa. they will do military space probes. nasa will continue with its civil space mission. joseph: are there other, nor every day use products that were the result of nasa's work, for example with [indiscernible] [laughter] bill: we have a litany at nasa that-- of products everyone thinks were created by the program. and teflon. everyone goes, is in a great that nasa was around to create teflon and velcro? none of those things were created at. they were created by other people who were doing interesting stuff and the them used to them. they were not created by the program. we have done all kind of interesting things. one of the chipset become the camera in your phone, how many of you guys -- i see a camera

over there. but in most everyone is taking pictures with their phone. they do not carry a camera around anymore. what a cool thing. the guy was trying to create a better camera for space probes. it turns out that the chipset is in our cell phone is not very good for space. but it makes a great cell phone camera. that is pretty cool. they invented a type of ultraviolet laser to measure ozone. atmosphere of other planets. most lasers are hot. but the ultraviolet laser is less warm. they found medical doctors looked at that and said, we love using lasers to do medical procedures by we cannot do it around people's hearts because they are too pots and cause too much damage. ultraviolet laser that was originally used to

measure ozone in the atmosphere of venus, you put one of those tiny things, you can drill who have a better functioning hearts thanks to lasers that were designed to measure ozone. there are all kinds of -- if you want to have an eye-opening experience, nasa puts out a publication every year. it is called a spinoff. if you type in spinoff, you will find it. that summarizes the key inventions we have that spun off from the space program. that is not all of them from every year but every year we publish them. if we printed it, it would be logistic of things. all kinds of stuff. joseph: you mentioned spacex earlier. a lot of conversation about private investment and commercial flight going to

space. looking back, there has been private investments with the observatory in california. theyou talk about partnership, if there is one, between the government and private sector and what those investments have been and what that has meant for space exploration? bill: even in the 1960's when nasa was big, it was not that big. or 50,000 people at the height in the 1960's and we are about it in thousand civil services -- civil servants who work for nasa now. we can do all of that stuff ourselves. a lot of tax cut -- tax dollars that come to caps on -- that come to nasa, we spend the money here on earth and we pay other companies that are doing interesting work to help us. there has been a long relationship. the first rocket that got us to the moon was built by the chrysler corporation. car company. parts of of different

the space program have come from industries. that is a long-standing situation. 1960's, with the focus on getting to the moon within a decade, a lot of the effort was focused on government work we are going back to where we were before in space and aeronautics before that. believe it or not, there is an economist who works at nasa headquarters, such as historians but there are -- joseph: is he the person who keeps talking about the [indiscernible] bill: yeah, he went to oxford. something about space explorer issue. his dissertation, i will probably do damage here, but his thesis is space exploration has largely been funded by wealthy people who have decided they want to leave a legacy behind, so they fund these . including giant telescopes built in the 19th and early 20th century.

we cannot -- you could explore space from earth. that was thethat standard mode that most money spent on space exploration was money that came from people who had money they wanted to leave the legacy behind. we had this period in the 1960's and 1970's where the government was a big spend in space. the says is weis are returning to people spending money on space exploration and now wealthy people were not leave a -- most folks at nasa, i get this question a lot, what do you think about spacex? the implied thing that we do not like spacex at nasa. everyone at nasa loves spacex.

time at nasa is when there is a spacex launch. [laughter] bill: going, go, go, go. toy have to think about how present their launches. our guys who do that are like, we have to copy this. [laughter] bill: we have to up our game. we think -- it is a healthy thing that it is not just the government leading the charge but there is a broad space economy. that is the only way we will make great progress in space. if it is not just the government. nasa is very happy to be a part of that. but we have part of that at play. joseph: one of the projects nasa is working on is the space launch. bill: one of the best name to rockets ever. [laughter] bill: maybe not. joseph: tell me about the timeline comparing to the -- compared to apollo?

in space, things are expensive. you need a lot of money. the reason why we were able to develop multiple space craft and rockets in the 1960's is because of the national budget. we are now at .5%. budget in the 1960's when we could move on a timeline that was much faster. developing a rocket or space equipment these days still takes a lot of time and it has become more complex because as we learn things, we find things we should not do, and take more time to do a better job. it has become more complicated and more complex to do things. but, the big issue is the money. if we had a huge budget and they said, here is a gazillion dollars, we could do it for a couple years. you apply more manpower and forced to it.

but the project is one that has been stretching for a long time. i sure hope we come up with a better name. [laughter] bill: it is basically, you take engines that were used to power the space shuttle and putting more on the bottom on this big rocket. we are taking technology from then and the apollo program and merging it together. it will allow us to go not just to earth orbit but out to the moon, mars. the idea is with the space , that thosem systems will be around for 30, 40 years from now. they will be using those to get back and forth to mars. the moon first, then out to mars. joseph: you mentioned the reduction in budget. that sparked a question. let's say this is from iowa. [laughter] bill: ok, tom. joseph: what are you not doing

because of that reduction in your budget that you should or could be doing? bill: that is a hard question. there are so many things we could or should do. the nasa budget has been at 1% or less of the federal budget since 1970. if you look at the nasa -- there is a big spike. that is the level the american public is willing to support. nasa has learned that is what we have to work with. are lots ofthere people who say, we could get mars -- get to mars faster. finduld send a probe to out what is underneath the icy crust and is there any life underneath the water? there are lots of things we could do. a lot of it is driven by what the american public is willing to support. as leaders in and

washington who give nasa orders and so you can do this and can't do this. those decisions are made at a high level and they are often not made by one person who says, this is what we ought to do in space. it is congressman and senators who have their opinion. and the president and other people and nasa administrators. and technologies is, no, you can't really do that. joseph: this is something that came up earlier that we do not get to. not from tom. what is nasa's perspective on the paper clip program and origins of germany? bill: that is an interesting question. that the key to the rocket program, he was not the only guy who built rockets in the united states. five u.s. companies

building rockets in the 1950's. he was not the only game in town. but they were good at what they did. space very driven by exploration. that was an important factor. he came to the united states, courtesy of the u.s. government, and his record was white. it was not until after -- he was the center director. decorated. it came out that he was a member of the ss. he clearly could not have failed jews,ice that prisoners, and gays, all those that were working in labor camps, were dying by the droves where the people building the v2 rockets he launched to land in other places. there is lots of, should things have happened, not happened? he is an interesting character.

there is really good historical research about him. what conflicted character he was pier 1 of the interesting things was head of that he the martial state -- marshall space center in huntsville, alabama. the u.s. government was keen on all of this money being spent on space. particularly in the kennedy administration. that nasa would set an example in terms of civil rights policy in hiring african-americans. he had a hard time getting african-american engineers to come to huntsville, alabama. nobody wanted to live there because you could not eat at a restaurant, buy a house, there were lots of problems with that. he was the guy who went to george wallace, the governor of alabama, and told him, governor dolace, if you don't something to desegregation huntsville, i can't get african-american engineers in

here. nasa will close this thing down and they will move us to texas. or to california. or some other place. that was the kind of pressure that changed the environment there. huntsville still had a lot of problems but the mayor of huntsville went out and found someone, and purposely desegregated restaurants and housing in the huntsville area. for all of the other black records on his mark -- record, he was a big advocate for civil rights in the united states paid you would never have imagined for a guy who was part of the ss. interesting character. i wish i had an easy answer for that one. joseph: how much is nasa involved with projects with a military? there is clearly a lot of overlap of what we do in space. programs are mostly separate

to a great extent. ande is a lot of overlap, there are meetings between the nasa administrator and leaders in the department of defense where they talk about issues and programs on what they will collaborate on. its relationship has had ups and downs. in the early 1960's, nasa depended on the air force. the air force has been the organization that perfected and nasaanagement, desperately needed program management experience in the 1960's for the apollo program. the air force loaned air force officers to nasa in the 1960's. it was a tight relationship. of thethe building shuttle program, nasa was leaning on the department of defense to help them fund it. the air force was not interested in the shuttle program. the relationship was not good at that point. it ebbs and flows overtime.

there are a lot of people who work at nasa who have worked at the department of defense, me included. there is a fair amount of understanding on those things. there are a lot of people at the department of defense that wish they had a job at nasa. we generally have a reasonably good relationship. the specific cd -- the specificity of the programs i do not really know, and i did, probably wouldn't tell you. [laughter] joseph: how accurate was tom hanks apollo 13? bill: apollo 13 is the best. joseph: this was his answer to the question before. i am not supposed to endorse movies, so i'm not telling you to go out and buy apollo 13. [laughter] everybody at nasa will wasmovie thato 13

most accurately depicted what happened. the only person i've heard complain about apollo 13 was jean koran. was theree complaint is a scene where things are going bad and he kicks a trashcan. goes, i would never have kicked a trashcan. [laughter] bill: i believe him. [laughter] that, it is aan game at nasa because things are trying to find out what is wrong with apollo 13. it is a hard game. there are scenes where they scan across mission control and this is happening in 1972. there are a couple things like that where you have to be quick to see those sorts of things. that is the most accurate movie. the series tom hanks did from the earth to the moon is also really great. in terms of historical content. there are a lot of great space movies out there. some of which are good on

history and some of which are bad on history. the one3 is probably that i think you would get an easy consensus of opinion that that is the most well done in terms of historical accuracy. joseph: there are scores of people who are watching, including 15 in the library. one of the questions -- bill: sorry you couldn't get a seat. joseph: 20 think the future of nasa will be in terms of missions to mars on what preparations for human survival in that environment? bill: i will answer the mars question first. years, nasa was pushing the idea that we should go to mars. as the apollo program was putting people on the moon, president nixon came in and said, i want this studied about what we will do next. all the answers that came from , we go to mars in 10 years committed to years, and 20 years. that was the idea.

president nixon said, no. we will not do that. too expensive. and for good reason. there are lots of other issues the united states had to deal with p of the budget goes down. nasa is trying to sell its idea that we should eventually, for humans to populate the solar system come if we want to travel and other places other than planet earth, mars is the logical destination. phoenix is too hot -- venus is too hot. mars is the closest destination you can get people to. until 2004, there have been several attempts to change the policy, but it was not until president bush got up in january, two thousand four, a year after the columbia disaster, and said, the policy of the united states government is that we will send people to mars. that has never been said in that

definitive terms by a president and then accepted -- his father tried to say something like that a decade before and it flopped in congress. congress in 2004 said yes, we are there. they passed a law that said that is nasa's goal. they did not say when. mars has always seemed like 20 or 30 years away. policy ofs the stated the u.s. government, that we will send a human expedition to mars. i believe we will get there. the other part of the question was preparation for survival? bill: that is a complicated thing. mars is a harsh environment. no atmosphere that you can breathe. a lot of radiation on the surface of mars. if we live on mars, we would probably wind up holding things underground. -- building things underground. the movie, the martian, is a good space movie. i didn't recommend you to see it. [laughter] bill: the movie is good.

it actually is a good representation scientifically. the author of the book spent a lot of time talking to guys from the laboratory you are author -- operating rovers on mars. it is pretty accurate. theink it downplays challenges of living on the surface of mars. it will not be easy. nasa is spending a lot of time and energy on finding out, how do we get people to adapt to space? a lot of the work we are doing on the space station is studying the herb -- of the human body and how it adapts to space and easier formake it the human body to adapt so we can land again and do things. it used to be we had problems with people coming back to the space station and they had a hard time standing up. their muscle mass was much lower. their bone density was a problem. it took them 6-9 months for their bone density to come back. basically have osteoporosis

in space. your body says, i don't need these bones. over the last few years, the regimen they have had with exercise, largely lifting weights. cords.uld be like bungee but that and the diet and some hadhe other things, we have astronauts come back and do better on physical fitness tests after six months. we are getting there. it will take a wild. we will get there. joseph: another question is about the repurposing of buildings, particularly the vab at the kennedy space senator. actually -- wes will build a space launch system there. center be just like the five. that building is still in use. we used it for getting to the moon, and we repurposed it to use for the shuttle program and the plan all along was we would

be doing a big system and logic there. that particular building, i expect that will be used for many years to come. if you ever get a chance to go to the kennedy space center and you get the opportunity, take the tour of the place, and they let you into the vab. the vab is being used all the time. vehicle assembly building to its. nasa talk. it is amazing. it is like walking into a cathedral of space exploration. i have had people say it is a religious experience. it is amazing. it is really a testament to the things. and, interestingly enough, if you go on the roof of the vab which you probably will never have a chance to do, i only got a chance to do it because someone from hidden figures wanted to go up there -- [laughter] roof,if you go on the

there are these beams sticking through the roof. i was on the roof with one of the engineers there, trying to make sure he does not fall off the edge, and i said, what is with -- wise the building looking unfinished? braun designedon the building, they were expecting they would build a bigger rocket to get to the moon. they built the building so they could raise the roof. would be event bigger. it already has weather. if you are not careful, clouds will form inside and it can rain inside the vab. it's huge. been a great -- you have been a great sport to we have had a lot of good serious conversation, fun conversation. i will end on a serious note which is, we all recognize that iowa is the future birthplace of james d kirk. [laughter]

joseph: what intrigues you more, the discovery of ewoks or vulcans? bill: ohh. when i was a kid, watching star trek, the original series, i thought mr. spock was the coolest thing. i was a space geek. but, he walks are really cute. [laughter] and i love star wars too. i will have to ce walks because i have a tibetan terrier at home. a small dog. he looks exactly like an ewoks. so ewoks it is. joseph: thank you, dr. barry. [applause]

it has been very enlightening. bill: you are surprised with that answer. surprise me.id thank you for being here and thank you for the support of the harkin institute. check out our website for future events. let me let you know that on november 29 is our evening with charlie cook. that will be in the auto. you can register for that online starting tonight. thank you all and have a good evening. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: 1968, america in turmoil. this weekend, american history tv will re-air our nine week series looking back 50 years, starting sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. revisit the vietnam war, race relations, women's rights, and

the presidential election. only on american history tv. one of george's 14 congressional districts will spent -- send new representation to the u.s. of house of representatives. a delta airlines employee for more than 30 years was elected to represent georgia's sixth district in the next congress. she defeated republican incumbent karen handel. during one of their debates, miss mcbeth talked about how the shooting death of her son in 2012's bird her to run for office. mcbath.lucy in 2012, my son was killed in what people have considered the national case. i started questioning our leaders. why were these kinds of tragedies continuing to happen? as i continue to ask more and more questions, why were our legislators not willing to keep our families safe, there was silence. there was complicity. understand is no

one was going to be willing to do anything. that's the reason why i stood up and the reason i am taking action. what i have noticed over and karen handel and other republican legislators refused to do anything about this unnecessary gun violence. they will not take action. in the end, the only things i am beholden to in this district are the people that i talk to every single day and my son's legacy. i am running because i am a mother on a mission. here in marietta, to represent everyone. announcer: new congress, new leaders, watch it all on c-span. our c-span cities tour takes american history tv on the road to feature the history of cities across america. here is a recent program. don: we are at desert view, the