every weekend american history tv brings you 48 hours of unique programming exploring our nation's past. to review our schedule and archive, visit our website. nasa was created in 1958. next on american history tv to mark the 50th anniversary, nasa chief historian bilberry gives an illustrated talk about the agency's history. their effort to understand the solar system, universe and the race to put a man on the moon. including the market university that hosted this event. it is a little over 90 minute's. hope is the university and

papers archivist which means she manages the process with all of these processes. she is an integral part of our team for many reasons. when we knew doctor barry was coming for sure, i knew that hope would be the most excited person on the team. i knew that there would be a high level of being a geek because one historian would recognize that another historian is coming to campus and it would be a big deal. it was for her and it was no doubt the great surprise and excitement for hope. previously she served as the product archivist at the indiana university overseeing tutorial papers. with that, please welcome our team member hope

evans. >> it is not every day that they ask an archivist to get up and talk to a room full of people. in preparing for the 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 in a few files, but i wanted to share a few lines from a letter that i found a just to a nasa administrator. he writes i have no romantic dreams of fame and fortune, i am one who loves flying and has hope for the opportunity of getting the chance to try out for the astronaut program since the day that sputnik first went into orbit. that letter was written by

lieutenant. my privilege to introduce our speaker tonight, he has served as the chief historian of nasa since 2010. he organizes research materials, answers questions about nasa history from the public and from within nasa and disseminates nasa history in a variety of ways primarily through book's. he joined nasa in 2001 after 22 years in the us air force where he flew tankers and served on the faculty of the us air force academy. he received a doctorate from oxford in 1996 for his dissertation focusing on manned space policy during the 1950s and 60s. he recently served as a consultant for the first man and hidden figures, here is dr. bill barry.

>> let me figure out how to turn this thing on here. thank you hope and everyone, thank you for your warm hospitality that i have enjoyed in my visit here so far. i have been stunned at how friendly and happy people are to talk about space, because that is what i love to do. i have been a space nerd since i was four years old and it is a great pleasure to be able to share my enthusiasm about that with you tonight. on october 1, 1958 nasa open for business and we have been celebrating our 60th birthday this fall. let me find my cursory real quick.

hold on, that is not what i want to do. anyways, with the 60th anniversary for the last month, we have also been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the apollo mission to the moon. the first was launched on a number 1119 68. we have doubled it and my office has been extremely busy with all of the interest with the origins of nasa and the apollo program. i'm excited to be here. my friends at nasa television, the guys who do the videos and things that you can find online, they made a really nice summary video and i will hop out of this presentation really quickly to go to that. i think this actually does a really nice job at summarizing 60 years of nasa. >> we have one of the most

challenging things to do assigned by men. >> find this right here, we have an operation of vehicles to get men into space. >> one small step for man, this is following studies for the benefits of space and videos.

60 years of nasa history in 60 seconds. i thought they did a pretty good job. i'm very happy to have the chance to show that to you. let me just get back to my slides here. it is coming here, let me turn this thing on. the nice thing about the video is it talks about the 60 years of space exploration. it also gives you a clue of where we are going to the future, we could go back to the moon and our exploration is doing some work. some of you were reading the closed captions. you could see that latin is the identity of the person who is talking. do you know who that was? he was the first administrator of 1958 under the eisenhower administration. as a historian, thank you for

the folks who made that video. the really cool video and it was actually a film, because back in those days and he was speaking to the employee nasa employees and the words that you hear from doctor glenn nowadays is a good description of what was going on and then i would rather talk about nasa's past and their future. that video does a really nice job of capturing both of those things. i have been lecturing about that and i thought the 60th anniversary was a great

celebration. there are some things that they that you might want to see as well. tonight, as chief historian i get to answer a lot of questions about what they have about the history and they have the chance to learn about insights that i did not know about or, things that people do not have the same luxuries i did learn about. it brought things into perspective. as opposed to recapping nasa 60th anniversary, i thought we would talk about what we don't know about and things that i found out over the course of my time as chief historian. where do we start? in honor of six decades, thought i would take a clue from the late night tv host and do certain things lined up by decades. six things from nasa's history you probably do not know that might interest you because they not only show what was done in the past, but they also have a trajectory to the future.

without any further ado, number six is did you know that nasa has already is not done yet? the story goes back to 1967 when the british and guillory started making measurements and among other things over antarctica. these measurements are troubling because over the next 20 years, they discovered that the ozone level over that spot was decreasing every year. these measurements were summarized in this report in 1972. the base that we are is the spacer here and go into that bay right there. right in the middle up there. if you take measurements of the is only at that point, there may be a lot of things to look at.

the concern that we had about this issue was it became big news was that the scientist took that data and analysis and published a paper. if you are assigned just the way you want to get your news out is to publish in nature. that is a good thing to do. it was a big news story. in the article they laid out their concerns and the dip in the ozone levels. the findings were troubling because the ozone protects us from ultraviolet light from the sun, most of you know that. you've heard to put sunscreen on or something like that. the problem was they only have data from that region of antarctica. there was a bigger hole that covered more territory then they thought. it was of concern because if it expended over a populated area, people would get skin cancer more.

they were worried about that issue. they wanted to know more about the ozone hole and they put in ozone measuring device up there. the total ozone mass which is an acronym. it was the total ozone mapping, tom. we set that to take pictures, and they figured the whole over antarctica was much bigger than they thought. people who live in australia got a lot of attention because

of this. scientist studying the ozone layer thought houses working? it could be cfc. cfcs might be causing the growth and the ozone hole. these are the same things that cool your air conditioning systems and your a senior homes or cars. also, they come out of a spray paint can, if you do not know what that is, go ask your parents. there is a lot of that in the big 20th century, there are a lot of cc being pushed out of the atmosphere because people are using spray cans and the feces go into the atmosphere. that stuff was getting into the ozone layer and reacting it, making it go away and turns other chemicals.

from space and the ground, it became more convincing and troubling. from nasa airplanes they proved that the culprit in this case was cfc. this is a version of the spy plane that nasa uses that gets high-altitude. you see this down over antarctica and you could take it to very high altitude. in 1987, as it was flying over antarctica, they found cfc interacting with the ozone level and we did not want them to further eat our ozone. this was measured in evidence and it was so powerful because the danger of losing the ozone layer protection was scary and countries around the world got together that same year in montrial and signed a montrial protocol so that they could not further deplete the ozone layer which prevents the use of cfcs

and the production of the and then being banned. since that time, nasa and other organizations have flown over antarctica to measure how big the hole is on top and the average level of the minimum level of ozone over antarctica and i'm happy to report that in january of this year, the scientist is confirmed that the minimal level of ozone turning upward and the size of the hole is trending downward. studies of this data suggests that there were over 2 million cases of skin cancer that would've happened between 2010 and 2023 because of these numbers. you may not have known it, but this data helped save the planet. with number six down, number five is that nasa did not

almost happen. i'm happy to be working at nasa and thank you for your tax dollars. think, it did not have to turn out that way. as a historian, things do not always show the causality and things did not have to show up the weight that. the plans have been announced in 1955 in the eisenhower administration and they gave the job to the naval research laboratory. meanwhile, president eisenhower did not tell anyone that one of the other things that was happening was that the air force was working on building spy satellites. this was an important thing and the bottom line here is that in the 1950s, the military intelligence had much of the money and expertise of what they needed to get into space. after the world was surprised by the russians launching 2

sputnik's, the second one in november having a life -- having a live dog on board push them. they needed to get the satellite to prepare for launch in 1957. unfortunately, there is no audio with this film, it did not turn out so well. interestingly enough, that satellite survived the explosion, rolled off into the bushes and they found it. if you are in dc, you can find it. just google it. nonetheless, this kind of thing put a lot of pressure on the us government to act quickly to catch up in the space race. fortunately, the us army are the ones who delivered the

goods. they launched the explorer 1 satellite does anyone recognize this picture? james allen, he is the guy in the middle and he is holding up the satellite model. the army was successful, the navy is trying to launch in the air force wants to be part of the game as well. they actually did a launch, but they are seeing real problems with the secretary of defense, because he had all of these competing programs and everyone wanted the money. he figured out the solution because he said none of you will do it and i will create another entity. he had assigned all responsibility for all space projects into the department of defense to them.

this happened february 1958 and the eisenhower administration quickly said good idea and put the thumbprint on it. scientists will be focused on the military doing all that work. they had a space program that was run by the department of defense, except that folks in congress had other ideas about what was supposed to happen. one of the people that had other ideas of how we were supposed to study space with this guy. does anyone know who this is? you ought to know. this guy is doctor hugh and he was the head of the aeronautics is -- aeronautics organization. he hadn't had of the national advisory committee after the war and in 1957, he was leading

that organization. in taking over the naca in the late 40s, they vent their research. they were supposed to aeronautics research, but he had been doing more and more research on high-speed flight. this was in part, or result to the fact that the end of world war ii, he was to be the secretary of the army air force scientific advisory group. these are the guys that went around in europe and studied the weapons technology of our enemies during world war ii, then they created a big report called new horizons. they had multiple chapters including chapters on market research in that report. he also was the editor of those reports. shortly after the report was completed, he was named to be the head of the naca and he showed that this report has some good ideas with research, he felt he should make it happen. with the naca, he was basically

making it into a space agency. they're already working high- speed flight than most of you recognize this aircraft. we all know that chuck was the first person to exceed that speed. i will point out for your attention, the tell/on this airplane as the naca logo. the nec was already working on that and building on that push towards that. one of the reasons why none of you know who he is is because he was a soft-spoken guy who did not take credit for anything. he was also a true negotiator and he had good relations with folks in the military. he was able to pull off amazing things. he wound up being the deputy had of nasa after it became

nasa. he planned on leaving actually. he became the administrator, he said i will take the job only on one condition and that is if you get here with my deputy. the new administrator under kennedy, wed get -- he wound up coming down with her cancer and he continued to work and he died on the job in 1965, before they were able to get successfully to the moon. he became famous from the success of apollo. they were able to pull off some amazing things. if you can believe this, i've been working bureaucracy for a

long time, it is hard to imagine how to do this. this is one of the most successful research programs that nasa has ever done with high-speed flight. the air force and the navy had to pay to get to those expectations. they let nasa run the program. i don't know how to do anything like that. shortly after sputnik happened, he put a team together at the naca and they produced a report called the national research program for space technology and they released the report and 1968. two days later, the committee and it was a committee that ran the nac, the committee got together and said this is a good idea, this is based on a report and the us should create a program that integrates the department of defense, naca, national academy of science, national science foundation and

this industry to create a cooperative program of civil space exploration, sound familiar? one of the things that helped push the idea through was the fact that the chairman of that committee was the guy in the middle, here is doolittle, he is being sworn in as the chairman of the nec and you have a guy like that in your report and that did not hurt at all. the details on how this happened is not completely clear. we learned about this report coming out and then pushing this idea. the eisenhower administration changed course and said that having the dod in charge of our our space programs is a good idea. the president will draft to congress opposing that they have fought for the national agency. this will be built around naca and include parts of the

department of defense involved in space research. he would still be in charge of some things that were primarily military, but the bulk of the program was to be run by the national are not x space agency. -- it would be run by nasa. who is actually in charge of what was really interesting. i found this memo in the archives, it is a memo to president eisenhower and from may 1958, the president had directed that nasa would be given responsibility for all programs except those peculiar to those primarily associated with military operations. this memo showed, guess what, the dod is not doing what they said to do. the dod is insisting on being in charge of space life and also

being in charge of rocket engines. the line between military intelligence and the scientific space program is larry. in this case, the president put his foot down and said no, you will not get away with that. not only did arthur hand over all of this to nasa, key organizations that had been working on vanguard had to hand it over to nasa as well. parts of the army ballistics in alabama was handed over to nasa after that for about two years. we now think of this as this great place in pasadena, but those were present for the army at the time. this key decision in spring of 1958 had big impacts, both in terms of an agency, nasa has in

some ways become the world space agency. it is one of the most positive affects that i've ever seen. the nasa meatball, which is what we call the logo, which i will be happy to explain during q and a, it is one of the most recognized brands of the world. i was walking to a target in rhode island a few weekends ago for a family wedding and my wife said, oh would you look at that. there was a peer of pajama pants with all of these equations on it with a big meatball. it is a big thing, everyone likes nasa. in fact, i actually get notes all the time as the chief historian from people around the world and i have one in my inbox right now from a young girl in saudi arabia who appeared to believe that the nasa is not a part of the national government. she can't understand why i

cannot hire her as an intern. you guys need to be the chance interns. another key thing is having nasa and try to the space information, all this technology could be immediately available. this means that this will lead to number four. nasa has done the fundamental research to advance technology and this may be too excessive for most companies to do, but nasa uses a small amount of your tax dollars, there is a little less than one percent of the national budget. we take our responsibility using that money wisely and seriously. not to take that money and we break the trail of technology

and we make that information immediately available. the sales nasa that we are required to tell people about what we do and what we accomplished. those things go to the industry and one of the first things was the weather satellite developed by nasa. this is an early weather satellite. this is being developed by the army and was handed over when nasa was created in 1958. we quickly figured out that pictures of space during the weather was very valuable. taking a look at the satellites helped do this quickly. could you imagine if you did not have these pictures in space, is that tornadoes sell coming this way? we could do

space exploration and get weather for the planet. nowadays, the us weather satellite under the operational control of the national oceanic administration. we still work with them and they build onto those satellites. we communicate by satellite. this is an idea that came out of science fiction. nasa and the military got to work on the early and nasa's first communication satellite project was actually the giant reflective balloon. get an idea of the scale per se. these are people in a car. this is a really big balloon. in this, you could bounce radio signals also this aluminized balloon. it actually works. it is not the most efficient, you do not want all these

balloons floating around and then you have to figure out where they are and then you cannot get the place that you want. you could transmit to do and that is what we did. within a few years nasa was helping at&t and the owners of those two satellites in the front. we could transmit tens and thousands of signals through the satellites. the big satellite at the back of this picture in this application check analogy satellite was used to test out technology. it went into the satellite communication industry. nowadays, you can get these signals virtually at no cost. i can pull out my cell phone and do that. we do not speak about that, but it is a huge did -- it is a huge business. they came from space.

you are probably thinking to yourself, back in the 60s nasa did all of this. we have communication satellites, that was 50 years ago. what we done lately? think about the business of launching things from space. this is a picture of the first space shuttle launch. you can tell because it has a white tank. they had a white external tank. we figured out that we needed to paint it. nasa and the military got the business of launching things into space. in the early 1970s we created the space shuttle to the point of replacing all of these. space transportation system, it was the space transportation

system and we need to get rid of all of these rockets. we will launch everything from the space shuttles. it did not quite work out that way. after the challenge, the united states realize that this is not a good decision. we were kind of in a bad spot because we had all these expectations and by the time we went back to expendable vehicles, others relaunched and the soviet union was coming up as well. the us launch industry found themselves in a hole. everyone was buying from someone else. the only customers that the us satellite launch providers had were the us military and of course they could charge very high prices. the market they had was very small and so they had to charge for all of that stuff. with this commercial business is all going overseas.

in the early 2000, nests communicator started a program called the commercial orbital transportation system. nasa used the acronym cots and this was to deliver cargo to the space station. if we had to get cargo out there, this is something that we could use like a cargo vehicle. it was something that we knew it was a risk we could take. it was not rocket science, why guess made it was, but it was not cutting edge. this was created and we set up as milestones and we allowed them to reduce the risk and it is hard to find investors that say yes, i like this rocket design, here is an insane amount of money to figure out how it works. nasa's funding had very bit --

had very small bits of money. at the beginning, one was a company that no one had heard of. they were not able to meet the milestones. the other companies you have probably heard of, space acts. -- space x and that company was also orbital science company. they built the rocket shown here and this one launched off the coast of virginia. when these go off we could see them from our house. it was pretty cool. the company has been so successful and they are about to launch into space again this

month. this was a picture of their first one. nasa has decided that since this worked pretty well, we could use this to get humans back and forth. this is the human capital that was delivered in july. this spaceship would be used for demonstration flight early next year, in january or february without a crew on board. they want to check it out and sometime later in the spring, they will have a plan to have a crew on board to go to the space station. will be using this to get back and forth and we will launch people from florida. we will have two alternatives here, another company is developing a way to get people to the space station. this is for the traditional aerospace contracting company.

they are building something called the csc 100. this is a picture of the guys in the boeing spacesuits. they are planning to do their test flight early this spring in their current plan is in august of next year. bottom line, we expect in the next year there will be two companies with two new spacecrafts to get people to and from the space orbit. weather satellites, communication satellites, launch videos, orbital spacecrafts, these are some of the big industries that benefit and they got a jumpstart because of nasa research. this is not even include all the companies that have been spun off unintentionally. maybe you have heard of go pro?

they make cameras, this is invented by a guy in the jet propulsion laboratory. guess what, that is why your cell phones take such good pictures. you are carrying nasa technology in your pocket probably. now, i do not think that this is probably a known fact, you probably understood that, i do not think that a lot of people appreciate just how much things have changed in the last 60 years. it is been incremental and the total effect as you think about it is mind-boggling. let's step back a little bit and be boggled. we all know about this first major scientific discovery with our space probe. we discovered the radiation belt around the earth and that was not nasa discovery because that happened before nasa was created. at the time, the idea that the

son that other things then create light was not heard of. people did not agree that the sun did more. this is something called the solar wind and one of these guys , eugene parker as it turns out, there was a solar wind that was heading that. if you look up in the evening, you can see particles from the sun hitting that and that can cause these and accelerate it through the atmosphere. anyways, parker had his reward because we just watched a probe to go touch the sun, maybe you've heard about it, it is called the parker solar probe.

it was named after him. we know that i also got the magnetic field around the earth , but also protects us from the atmosphere being stripped away from the solar wind. this is part of why they're there. we never knew they existed. in late 1950s, there was a widely held theory that the planets had formed from the outside and and so the outer planets were older than the inner planets because the sun shrank down. this sort of thing meant that the venus was younger than the earth. we do not know much about venus because it was covered in clouds. they looked like it might be warmer and venus was probably warmer than the earth. it is widespread that venus may be a primitive earth.

they might even have dinosaurs. i remember seeing pictures of things like this and i was a kid. in our first probe to venus, it proved that venus was in fact warm and the surface temperature is about 900 degrees fahrenheit. hot enough to melt lead and dinosaurs. we found out in the valley -- in the very early years that they were suffering from the greenhouse effect. this is interesting because they were big topics that became issues in the 1980s. on to mars. 60 years ago, this is probably more sophisticated than this article for the new york times in december 1906 which discussed the canals from mars. our views of mars in the early 1960s echoed that belief that

mars is an earth planet and it led to other things and a more scientifically informed view was reflected by other things that came out and this is a screenshot that came out from one of those disney films that came out in the 1950s about life in the universe and man on space. this is what they thought mars might look like. they were sure that there may not be animal life, but they figured that there was plant life and they speculated what it could look like. we now know that this was a depiction of what mars looks like now and what it looks like aliens of years ago when i had oceans and atmosphere. we now know that from our

satellite and studies that in fact mars did look like a wet planet, much like earth. if it was wet, they had conditions for life and did life ever develop on mars before it became a dry, dead on it. -- dead planet. what about the rest of the solar system? when i read textbooks about the solar system, we knew that they were big planets out there, some of them had moons and the expectation was that they were kind of cold and frozen because they are far away from the sun. it is boring and all and there is not much to look at out there. they figured those planets might be interesting, that the moon around them must be very dull and boring. this was until we sent those pioneer voyager probes to take

a look. this is what we found, with jupiter and saturn, there are volcanoes on some of those moons. liquid water and warm chemicals, you can see some of the material that comes out of the ice cracks or organic molecules in that stuff. that doesn't mean there is life, but carbon-based molecules, but thinks that life can build upon. we don't know, and that is what we are hoping to find out.

looking outside of our solar system in the last couple of decades, we approve that our solar system is unique. there is thousands of stars up there in space and are there any other planets up there? is our solar system unique? we found out in the last few years that in fact, almost every star that the telescope looked at had planets around it. it is not just billions of stars, but these of stars with planets around it. what does that mean about the possibility there might be other life in the universe? it certainly improves the odds dramatically. the telescope ran out of fuel and it lasted long beyond the design life and we decommission it back on tuesday, but guess what, the survey satellite test , it was already in orbit and working for the telescope would look at one smalls bot in the sky, but this one will look at the entire sky over the course

of the next two years looking for planets. we have all kinds of information about that and we will help answer those questions you have been asking, like are we alone? i haven't even touched on the other big and most my mini question yet. where did the universe come from? this picture tells us. we have the proof that it comes from this picture, and does anyone know which satellite came up with this picture? it is probably one you have never heard of. i am not sure who came up with this name or why they do not come up with a good acronym for, but we flew it in early 2000 and it confirmed based on the data that was created in this picture, a picture of the universe in microwave radiation, which is way back in time, but this picture effectively proves and i don't know this for a fact, that it was originated in a big bang 13.7 billion years ago.

we have scientific proof that is the case. it was enough proof that the scientists who worked on this one a nobel prize working on this. moving on to number two back. there are some people out there who do not believe in life on the moon. [ laughter ] >> i don't know what to tell those folks. the question that i would like to ask you is why do we go to the moon in the first place. does anyone know. why?[ laughter ]because it is there. that is a good reason for do you guys render that speech and we will talk about that in the bit. actually it is one of the reasons that we go back to. what is that? competition with the soviet union. that is the usual answer and a think that people think we went to the moon because this guy

flew in space in april 1961. the u.s. was embarrassed once again by the soviets beating us into space. while the flight prompted president kenny to go to congress, and it was clear that was one of the big props for him, but the decision was made for other reasons. not because president kennedy was a believer that we should go find oxygen on the moon or because it is there or he thought we had to have a civilization that spanned the solar system, not really. when kennedy began his term, both of his speeches at his inauguration and it is first state of the union address a few days later, yackley tried to defuse the space freeze. he said that we should cooperate in space rather than compete with each other and basically offered a reset and said let's be friends and cooperate in space.

in fact even after making the speech were he said we could get to the service of the moon within a decade, the next month, he went to vienna, and in private conversation with the russian president, he said why don't we go to the moon together? he actually made that offer several other times during his time in president when the last time it happened at the un general assembly two months before he was assassinated. we really didn't know for certain and in fact as a kid i was very confused about this, and why did, i mean, are we supposed to be tried to beat the russians to the moon? it turned out that president kenny had -- kennedy had a recording system throughout the white house and that was drenched garrett -- transcripts of some meetings, when they met in 1962, and it made depositional space expiration

pretty clear. if you look at the paragraph, and i will let you read the important part", this is kennedy speaking, and he said i am not that interested in space. but we are talk about these fantastic expenditures that will wreck our budget and the only justification for it in my opinion is that we hope to beat them, the russians, and demonstrate that starting behind by a couple of years, we pass them. that is the line of president kennedy in november 1962. it was not about advancing science and technology, but proving that the u.s. economic and political system was better than the soviets communist system. some of you here will go what? seriously. it is hard to imagine now and we know it turned out, but between communism and the west

was a critical issue in the 1960s, and why was it worth this fantastic set of expenditures? in a word, decolonization. vague about this for minute. after world war ii and especially in the 1950s and 1960s, dozens of new countries appear that a once been european colonies. they was not really keen on the europeans in the west. look at what happened with the soviet union. it was devastated by world war ii and the country have been demolished by war going back and forth, and 12 years later after the war in 1957, they beat the united states for launching the first satellite. they must know something about how to get from 0 to 60 really fast. that was of -- appealing to many of these leaders in the new country. kennedy realize that we need allies and friends in the world, and he had traveled extensively in his time in congress and the senate

around the developing world, so he knew this was a really big issue that this country was being duped by soviet propaganda because of their successes in space. so the political solution by kennedy was brilliant. with a very clever guy. he moved the goalpost. he said we are not going to fight about what happens next week with the first person to do x, y, or z. let's go to the moon. prove that your system is better than ours by going to the moon. this is the text that president kennedy sent to vice president johnson between his announcement in may that we was going to go to the moon and note the part in bold here in paragraph one, and says is there any other space program that promises dramatic results in which we could win? going to the moon was answered that question because both the united states and the soviet union, we knew, we knew they

would have to build a big booster because of booster they would use was not big enough to get to the moon and back. so kennedy and his advisors thought that was a fair price, starting from zero, we think we are going to beat them to the moon. so the next mission was the narrative to get to the moon first. speaking of racing to the moon, the file on my list that you probably don't know about is this. the race to the moon was a lot closer than what you think. most people assume that the race to the moon started in may 1961 when kennedy threw down the gauntlet at congress and said we would get to the moon by the decade and the soviets at some point dropped out of the race. they was not contenders in the end right? in fact, by the end of the 1960s as we was landing on the moon in 1969, we are not

proving anything. that is exactly what the soviets said in public too. and that was a lie. let's go back to may 1961, in the speech, working he says we will go to the moon in a decade. he is a competitor and in the summer of 1961, we did not have one. from the soviet perspective, the challenge by kennedy was laughable. we took alan shepard from the coast of florida and dropped them in the atlantic ocean. no begin for the soviets they was getting mixed messages from the president and like i said, the couple talk in space cooperation, and so is he serious about this? i don't know. the soviets was really worried about some pressing defense issues and try to spend more money on the u.s. missile gap.

so when do the moon race actually start? on our side, it started here. on the soviet side, it actually started in august 1964, long after president kennedy was gone from the scene. this is part of the list of successful space launches and the historical record as they report to congress every year on behalf of the president what the u.s. government is doing, and this is one of the appendices at the back, and if you look here, the soviet union flew flights and 1957 and beat the united states very clearly. every other year after that for the next few years from 1958 until 1968, the united states lots more things into space than the soviet union. we had a very aggressive and active program and the soviet union continue to one up us on

all kinds of things by saying we was the first person to launch three people in space and we are the first people to do a space walk, and usable we were just planning on doing something like that. is because they was watching what we was doing and pick out what they could do with what they had and could be this, that would be a good propaganda victory. the wasn't really and i spent three years researching what was going on, there really wasn't a program in the soviet space program. the authorization to spend money on them things came from the russian leaders to do berries things that was politically astute and would pay off for propaganda reasons, which is why they never had better weather satellites until much later. i don't want to dismiss the soviet engineers because they was brilliant. they had an incredible team and they did great work. they did amazing stuff with the

limited resources they had on hand, but it really was not the program like what we have. by 9064, the strategy was not working anymore because the united states had been built up so much material and technology and the first test of the saturn rocket, and they get nervous, and now president kennedy is out of the way and present johnson was not cooperating are going to the moon and going to met with the tribute to the late president, said we are going to do. so the soviets said we had to do something. so they do this. they created a program that was sent two cosmonauts in the spacecraft around the moon and circle and come back. the idea is that they would do it by the 50th anniversary of the revolution three years later in november 1967, this

program was known publicly as the zion program and actually moved along pretty well. this is a list of watches in that area and you will notice there was eight watches -- launches in 1968, the september and november flights in 1968 appeared to be successful, but from one of our perspectives, is that one of the heat shields burned and depressurized, and it kicked off the atmosphere when it came back at luna velocity and plunged into the atmosphere over the indian ocean. they had a ship there to pick it up, but they do not want to be fishing the cosmonauts out of the indian ocean. they was both failures and they were not ready to fly. we flew the apollo 8 mission, and sent a guy to the moon and orbited the moon on christmas eve of 1968.

we basically beat them for change this program, but nobody knew about it at the time. we had a few more flights and ninety six died in 1970, but they did not have people that mission. but that was not all. they decided to build a rocket just like the saturn five. these are pictures in the soviet union at the time, and these rockets are the same rocket as the saturn five rocket. they are the size of the statue of liberty. they are huge. unfortunately that rocket and technology wasn't as good as ours, so they can only send two cosmonauts to the moon and will drop down to the moon on lunar lander and come back again. this rocket was known as the in 1, and the little program actually made pretty remarkable progress consider -- considering they started in

1965 and they approved the design in 1965 and in less than four years, had a rocket the size. the first laws do not come into february 1969, and the rocket exploded 60 seconds after it lifted off. incredible success with the saturn five is all of the lots we did was successful largely because we can afford have huge testing program that tested the saturn five before they even went off of the ground. they went largely lickety-split and not have any big problems. they was testing the rockets as they were trying to build them which is hard to do because they was in a big hurry. the second launch was one they tried to launch in 1969, and you can see there was not any people on it for the launch. the bottom of the rocket is exploding and actually blew up on the pad and fell back down on the launchpad.

two launchpad's was next to each other pretty close and it actually wiped out the entire launch site. they did two more launch test anyone until 1974 that they actually officially plugged the site pull the plug on the program and if you ever get a chance to go wander around at some of the funny shaped buildings there are those that are shaped like cones because they are rockets that was repurposed for a storage facility. the race was in with us beating them to the moon, and clearly they was not going to catch us with this program because i was pretty far behind. so and ninety six nine, the race must've ended right? no it didn't. the reputation of the soviet

union as a was really important to the soviet leadership a lot of people don't appreciate how important it was both domestically and internationally. the calmest party leadership was hinged on all of the successes in space of being the united states. it was critical for them both internally and externally so in desperation in january 1969, the soviet leadership commission the probe and had some good success with them. those guys commissioned a robot probe that will go to the moon, grab a sample from the moon, and bring it back to earth. astonishingly, they started the program in january 1969 and in june of 96:, they lost the first one. the rocket blew up before the got into orbit. the next one, they lost on july 13 of 1969.

that was three days before apollo lost to go to the moon. that mission was named lunar 15, and this is the report that appeared on the washington post on the day that we landed on the moon july 20 of 1969. people knew that the little program was happening and this was like page 27, it was not a front page with armstrong and aldrin on the moon. but we knew about this and that pro was in orbit around the moon when the apollo crew arrived at the moon, and the lunar module eagle landed on the moon and they did their walk on the moon and they get back in the real module and they're supposed to have a nap before they launched the next morning, but they do not sleep very well. i would not have either. but while they are theoretically sleeping, the soviets fired the retro rockets and it hit a mountain and crash.

if luna 15 had been successful, it would have gone back to earth about the same time the apollo 11 crew got back to the earth, and say we went to the moon and we did not even endanger anybody's life. it was that close. is basically ended on july 21 after he walked on the moon. so, now you know at least six things the probably most people don't know and you can amaze your friends. thank you for your attention and i think joe is going to come up and take some questions. thank you very much.[ applause ] >> thank you.

we are really excited to spend some time to talk to barry here for a little while i know we have gone a little longer than normal, but we will ask the same amount of questions that we recognize some of you may have a reason to leave a little sooner, so be courteous to everyone as you walk out there the next 20 or 25 minutes is to go to some questions and if we are going to get ready for that, there are members of the staff who are in the audience who are accepting no cards from you to take your questions, that way we can make sure they are read aloud we get the vault recorded well and i'll have a few questions that we will start with. >> joseph made the mistake of letting me have a microphone. [ laughter ]sorry for running late. but i like to stuff and hope you guys like it too. [ laughter ] >> a couple of days with a lot of different venues talk about

your career and your interest in space and talking about policy and some fun things, so it has been great to have you be a part of this. one of the things that we do every week is the students create a question of the week. sometimes they are really serious and sometimes not so much. this week and honoring doctor barry coming, what is your favorite space movie? there's a whole range of things. there was some space jam in there,[ laughter ] >> and some other things. that prompted several discussions that we had with doctor barry over the last couple of days and that is you went to launch with hollywood to tell the story of nasa and there is some history there that you want to preserve. can you talk to us briefly about some of your work on his

figures and what that is meant for nasa. >> lots of people who make documentary movies coming out, and we share with them what they want, all that film and video and scientific results, you pay for that. that is public information and we are happy to and that two people. big-budget feature films are kind of a different story and what happens with those is that somebody in hollywood will have an idea to do a space movie, and they may want to film at nasa. for example, transformer three they feel the kennedy space center. it reaches an audience that we might not have otherwise reached. he gets a really young audience which is good. i was kind of surprised and did not realize that the knossos

story attracted hollywood people. but our guys that does the hollywood liaison thing, came to me in 2011 with the script hidden that's making the hidden figures and they really want to make sure they get this right and can you read through the script? that set up a relationship where i spent a lot of time on the phone with the director, got to do some real good things on location where they are filming in georgia and tripping over kevin costner. [ laughter ] . that was embarrassing. maybe what we do and we recognize that they are not documentaries and we don't hold them to a standard, but we do want to make sure that they have some degree of respect, particularly for people who are still alive, and also as much

as possible, help them get the facts right. normally those movies for a lot of people they become history because they see them and it is a double edge sword for me because in the figures, for the purpose of the movie, basically compress the story, and the civil rights changes in that part of virginia, it actually started in like 1943 during world war ii, and to some extent they was still working at this today. that is a long story and you cannot tell that story in a movie. that is a big thing they did in that movie. but that was okay, and they told the truth, an important set of truths that what happened there, so that was good. the cool thing about doing the sort of movie things is the

stuff i would never get to do, and if i wanted to see the folks were, then they are going to be studied by somebody else around the world, and i said i want to go look at the rocks, they will say no way. we have better things to do. away. but if ryan says can i go see those rocks,[ laughter ] >> they will let him in there. i get to go in with the. and that is pretty cool. it is fun personally, but is -- it is also like a said, we are waiting these things about how much truth is truth, and only, they are going to make the move they want to make anyway, is just a question whether we cooperate with them a lot or a little. >> one of the things that we have done over the last couple of weeks is that we read some

books that reminds us, and that is what we do,. can you tell us about they force and what that means for reorganization at the pentagon? >> i mentioned and that was a question i got most from people . are you going to be on the space force now? the former congressman from oklahoma when he was in congress, he thought creating a space force would be a really great idea. he has been talking about it a lot and that led some people to believe that nafta is going to be merged into the space force or something. but what they are talking about doing is creating a branch of the military service, much like with the air force is created in 1947 and they took things from the army and created in the air force.

they are going to take it from an organization in the pentagon and from my perspective, and i think that is largely what will happen and we will still relate with people at the pentagon that we have to coordinate on which we do from time to time, but that really doesn't have a lot of bearing, and it is a confusing topic because you have to understand how the u.s. military is structured and all of that. what must people don't know and don't really need to know frankly is that it is not likely to have a big impact immediately on that. >> not because of the secret but not because it is useful information for everyone? >> what they are creating is a new version of the air force for space. nasa will continue with the civil space mission. >> other other commoner everyday use products that was a result of nasa's works like

tame? >> we have a litany at nasa that everything thinks it was created by the space program. tang, velcro, and teflon. and everybody said it was great that nasa was around. they was created by other people is doing interesting stuff and they was not created by the space program. we have had all kinds of missing things and one of the things is that your camera cell phone camera is so good that you don't need to carry around a separate camera anymore. i see a camera with their. most everybody is taking pictures today, and they are using their cell phone and don't carry a camera around anymore. what a cool thing, and he was trying to create a better camera for space probes, and

our cell phone is not good for being used to space, but it makes a great cell phone camera. most plans are pretty hot, but ultraviolet direction is warm, and they found that medical doctors looked at that and say wait a minute, they was using lasers to do medical procedure, but we cannot do that around people's are because they are too hot and will cause too much damage. but you put one of those little tiny things in there, and you can actually drill out the plaque in some of the heart without damaging the heart. so we have a better functioning heart takes to lasers that was designed to measure what we doing in space.

if you want have a real eye- opening spirits, nasa puts out a public issue every year called spin off, and if you type into google spin off, you will find it. that some us -- summarizes some of the key events we have spun off in the space program. every year we publish it and if we printed it, it would be about this bid, and it is all kinds of stuff. >> you mentioned space x earlier, and throughout our conversation about private investment and commercial flight going to space, and looking back, there is even been some private investments out in california, and can you talk to us a little bit about the partnership if there is one between the government and the private sector and what those investments have been and what that means for space exploration? >> even in the 1960s when nasa was pretty big, they was not

that big. 40 of 50,000 people at the height in 1960. a lot of what we do, and we cannot do all of that stuff ourselves, and we don't load the people of the come to nasa and lots them into space. we spend that money here on earth and we pay other companies for doing work to help us. there is been a long-term relationship and for example, the first days of the saturn five rocket the goddess of the moon was built by the across the corporation car company. all kinds of different parts of the space program have come from industry. that is a long-standing situation there. in the 1960s, with a focus on getting to the moon within the decade, a lot of the effort was focused on government work, but we are, and will backed were was before in space and

aeronautics before that and actually believe it or not,. >> i found that he, and his space expiration, his thesis, and i will probably do lots of damage to, but his thesis has been that space expiration is largely been funded by wealthy people who decided they want to leave a legacy behind, so the fun they speak space projects including giant telescopes that was built in the 20th century. >> that was kind of the standard that most money that was spent on space expiration was money that came from people who wanted to leave that legacy behind.

and the purest are in the 60s and 70s, and the thesis is that we are kind of returning back to a normal period where a lot of people are spending money on space expiration, and some people are not going to leave a legacy behind the building boxes they can take us to mars or launch a car into space or whatever. but the folks at nasa feel and i actually get this question a lot with most every audience i talk about today, they say what you think about space x? is kind of the supply thing that we don't like space x at nasa. the quietest time at nasa headquarters is when there is a twin 12 launch. everybody is sitting at the computer watching and and say go, go, go. they are going to be slick about how to present their launch in our guys will do that for all lodges is a man, we have to copy this.

we think that it is really a healthy thing and not just the government, but building a broad space economy, and that is one waxing intimate great progress is that it is not just a government adventure, and nasa is happy to be a part of that,. said one of the products that nasa is working on is a space launch. >> one the best rock is made ever. maybe not. >> there is a timeline in developing that compared to the apollo? >> in space, things are expensive. you need a lot of money and the reason why we was able to develop multiple spacecrafts in the 1960s is that the nasa budget at one point was 4% of the national budget and now it

is like one half of 1%? that is a huge budget that we had to move on a timeline much faster, and developing a rocket or space equipment still takes a lot of time and it has become more complex because we have found there's things that we should not do, and you take more time to want to do a better job at these things, so it is become more complicated and complex to do things. if we had a huge budget, then we could probably do it in a couple of years. but supply more manpower and forced to it. >> hopefully, with a better name than this. but it is basically the heritage shuttle, and we use the part of the space shuttle, and we are putting more of those in the bottom of this

rocket, and the solid rocket boosters that we use for the shuttle, we are making those bigger and taking technology from that and we are making this really big rocket that will allow not to go just to the earth orbit, but out to the moon, and the ideas that the space launch system in the reliant capsule, those systems will be around for 30-40 years from now, and they will take us back-and-forth from arson to the moon first. >> you mentioned the reduction in budget and that sparked her question, so let's say this is from tom. let mack >> okay tom. >> what are you not doing because of that reduction in your budget that you should or could be doing at nasa? that is a hard question to answer because there is so many questions that we should or could do. i think the nasa budget has been at 1% or less of the federal budget since about 1970,

and there was this big spike, and then the state for the mets the same. that is what the american public is willing to support, and that is kind of what we have to work with. a lot of people say we can get to mars a lot faster or build the sos a lot faster if we had more money. 's or any life underneath the planet or is there lots of things that we could do. a lot of it is driven about what the american public is willing to support both as voters and also as elected leaders and they give the marching orders and sometimes that you can do this and you can't do that. so those decisions are largely made a very high level and they are often not made by one person saying this what we

gotta do in space. congressmen and senators have their opinion about it and the president and the nafta administrator and no, you really cannot do that. this one came up earlier, and what is the perspective on nasa on the paperclip program? >> that is really interesting question. we all know now that one of the keys to the saturn five rocket program, and he was not the only guy who built rockets in the united states. that was actually five u.s. companies building rockets in the 1950s. he was not the only game in town, but they was really good at what they did and he was very driven by space exploration. he came to the united states courtesy of the u.s. government, and his record was

wiped, and he was a's synod director, and it came up that he had been a member of the ss and he clearly cannot have failed to notice prisoners and that people was dying by the droves of people with the rocket to latch -- launch and land. should think cannot happen or happen? there is a very good historical research about this character, and what a conflicted character he was. with incident things about him is that he was head of the marshall space flight center in huntsville, alabama. the u.s. government was keying

on all this money being spent on , and nasa was set an example in terms of civil rights policy and hiring african-americans. they had a really hard time getting after american engineers to come to huntsville alabama because nobody wanted to live there crews you cannot eat out at a restaurant and cannot buy a house and there was lots of problems with that. he was the guy that went to george wallace, and told him, governor wallace, if you don't do something to desegregate huntsville, i cannot get african-american engineers in here, and nasa is going to close this thing down and move us to texas or california or some other place. that was the kind of pressure that actually change the environment there and also still have a lot of problems, but the mayor of huntsville actually went out and found

somebody in a purposely desegregated restaurant and housing in the huntsville area. and for all the other black marks on his record before, he was actually a big advocate for civil rights. you would ever imagine that to be the case. >> he was a very interesting character. i wish i had an easy answer to that one. as much as nasa involved in joint development progress with the military and other systems of that? the military is interested in similar sorts of things, and our programs, they are both separate to a great extent, but there is a lot in the our regular meetings between the nasa administrators and the department of defense to talk about issues with the program and what things they are going to collaborate on and what

things they're not going to collaborate on. that is up to them, and in the early 1960s, nasa depended on the air force, and the air force has been under effective program management, and nasa definitely needed some program management experience. the air force low do much of air force officers to nasa and it was a very tight relationship and during the building of the circle that smacked shuttle program, they help them from the shuttle program and the basement was not very good at that point. there are a lot of people who work at nasa who have worked with the department of -- department of defense be included. they also have people who wish they had a job at nasa. we generally have a really good

relationship, and the specifics of the program, i don't really know about and if i did, probably cannot tell you. said that one of the members of the audience asked how accurate was the tom hanks apollo 13? >> it was the best. as a government employee i'm not supposed to endorse movies and i am not telling you to go out my copy of apollo 13, left back but everybody at nasa will take that apollo 13 was a space movie that most accurately depicted what happened. the only person ever heard complaint about apollo 13 the movie was jean, and is one complaint was there was a scene in there were things was going bad and he kicked a trashcan, and jean said i would've never at the trashcan.

and i believe them. other than that, there is a game at nasa as people trying to find things, and it is a hard game, and there are some scenes, and this was happening in 1972, and left back. >> there are couple of things like that, but just to be really quick to see those. that is probably the most accurate movie, and in terms of historical context, there's a lot of really great space movies out there. summer pretty good on history and some were pretty bad on history. but apollo 13 is probably the one that i think you get easy consensus opinion that was the most well done. >> there are scores of people who are watching on facebook live included about 50 in the

library, and one of the questions, is what you think the future of nasa will be with respect to future missions to mars and what preparation for human survival? >> i will answer the mars question first, and for many years, nasa was pushing the idea that we should go to mars, and putting people on the moon, president nixon came in and said i want to about what we're going to do next, and all the answers that came from nasa and vice president agnew was that we can go to to mars in 10 or 15 years, we can go in 20 years. that was the idea and present nixon said no, we are not going to do that because it is too expensive. and for good reasons. so the budget goes down. so nasa still trying to sell this idea, and eventually for

humans if we are going to travel and other places, mars is the logical destination. is too hot, and mars as problems too, but it is the closest destination that we can get people to. wasn't until 2004 that the change of policy and it wasn't until president bush got up, year after the columbia disaster, and said the policy is that we are going to send them to mars. that has never been said and they'll have that kind of defended terms by the president, but his father tried to say something that a decade before, and it flopped in congress. congress in 2004 said yep, we are in there. we are going to send humans to mars. they didn't say when, as always

like 20 or 30 years away. that is the stated policy of the u.s. government that we like to send a human expedition to mars. i believe we will get there. >> the other part of the question is the preparation for survival. >> that is really complicated thing because mars is really harsh environment and and if we are going to level mars, we will probably wind up building things on the ground. the movie that marstons, and i do not recommend that you see it, let mack the movie about the marstons is really good, and it is a pretty good representation scientifically as a lot of the guys was talking about the people mars and stuff like that. so it is pretty accurate, but i think it downplays of the

challenges of living on the surface of mars and it will not be really easy. nasa spending a lot of time and energy out how to we get people to adapt in space. of all the work that i do on the international space station, we are studying about how we can make it easier for the human body to adapt so that you can land and do things. after six months on the space station, had a hard time standing up, and their muscle mass was much lower in the bone density and it usually took them 6-9 months for the boldest you to come back again. you get osteoporosis in space because your body says i don't need these bones anymore so why my making? actually, the ones that was lifting weights, and actually have big bungee cords, and they put that in the diet, and we

actually have had astronauts come back and do better on the physical fitness test than when they left. we are getting there, but it will take a lot of work. >> this question is about the repurchasing of buildings, and other repurchasing of things. >> the idea was that they was going to build a space launch of their, and that will be something just like the saturn five, and we used it for the entire saturn five to get to the moon, and we repurpose it to use in the shuttle program, 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 and they don't do this very often, if you get an opportunity to

take a tour of the place, it is amazing. it is like walking into a cathedral is space expiration. that is i've had people describe it as a really good experience. it is amazing, and it is really a testament, if you go up on the roof, which you probably will not ever have a chance to do, the cast from hidden figures wanted to go up there. and as you go up on the roof, there are these i-beams sticking up through the roof. i was up on the roof and one of the engineers got off the edge and i said, why is the building look unfinished? he said when they designed the building, they was expecting

they was going to build a bigger rocket than the saturn five make to get to the moon. they built the building so they could raise the roof. so the plan was for it to be even bigger. the clouds, if you are not careful, clouds will form and rate inside. it is huge. >> he has been such a great sport all day and we have had a lot of fun conversations which i will end on a serious note, which is we all recognize that iowa is the future birthplace of james t kirk.[ laughter ] >> i salute you. >> what intrigues you more? that discovery of,[ laughter ] >> when i was a kid watching star trek the original series, i thought mister scott was the

coolest right? i was a space geek, but they are really cute, but i am going to have to say ewoks because i have a terrier at home and it is a small dog and looks exactly like an ewok. >> thank you doctor. [ applause ] >> i have to say it has been a very enlightening lecture. >> i surprised you with that answer. and thank you all for being here, and please check out our website, for future events, and on november 29, that is our evening with charlie cook.

you can register for that online starting tonight. so thank you all and have a good evening. >> you are watching american history tv, only on c-span 3. >> you are watching american history tv wherever we can, we explore the past of our nation. all the programs we air on television are archived on our website. this holiday we can, we are featuring our website most watched programs of 2018. one of those is coming up next. >> next on american history tv,

three former white house photographers talk about their work with president george w. bush, bill clinton, and brock obama. they share photographs showing these presidents in their public and private moments. we also see first families and white house staff and hear the stories behind each scene. the event is about one hour and 40 minutes. >> good evening everyone and how is everyone doing tonight? excellent. led to here. i am the educator and public programs manager here and welcome to the evening's event photographing the president which is part of our public programming roster in support of our newest exhibition from other american libraries. this exhibition tells story