2016 presidential election. our live coverage starts it it 30 a.m. eastern on c-span3, online at c-span.org, or listen wherever you are with the free c-span radio app. before the hearing, listen to the complete mueller report at c-span.org on your laptop or mobile device. type mueller report audio in the search box at the top of the page. the audio is courtesy of timberline media. >> bilberry is where this, nasa chief historian, to talk about tomorrow. tomorrow, july 20, 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 landing. tell us what this 50th mark means to you. >> i was 11 years old when it happened. i was plunked down in front of our black and white tv set in massachusetts. i thought i was in the middle of enjoying the greatest adventure that ever happens.

and i was. 50 years later, i am enjoying but the greatest adventure ever , happened replayed, and doing it as nasa's chief historian. what a ride. host: how did you get to this position? what do you do u.s. chief historian? guest: the quick answers do not do what i did if you want to be chief historian. i did at 22 year career in the air force and did a lot of , graduate work on the history of the soviet space program. when i retired from the air force, the then chief historian said why not apply for a job here at nasa? i applied, got the job, and so, ended up being the chief historian. because i was the right guy right place at the right time. host: when you look at at the history of space explorer racing, what is this anniversary

mark? guest: i think it is a real watershed. there are several. the first human in space. but the first time that humans set foot on another planetary body, that is a big step. it is akin to the columbus setting foot in the new world. and 500 years from now, who will we remember from the 20th century? i bet everyone will remember neil armstrong. host: what was happening at the time that we, as americans, supported and nasa, the agency, was able to get americans to the moon? guest: the 1960's are an interesting time. a very turbulent time. by the time we were ready to land on the moon in early 1969, the war in vietnam is getting hot. civil rights are a big issue in america. gender rights are just beginning to creep into the conversation.

the economy is bad. lots of inner-city poverty. there are lots of things are distracting americans. a lot of people concerned about the amount of money being spent going to the moon. in fact, popular support for the moon landing program never exceeded 50% in public opinion polls throughout the 1960's except for one week, this week in 1969, when we landed on the moon. otherwise, popular support for the moon program was below 50%. largely, moon program was driven by a president who made it a priority and a congress willing to fund that. even then, by 1960 five, nasa peaked its funding. host: how did it happen? guest: a bunch of really great folks with a really great plan. and we were very lucky in 1969.

the expectation at nasa was apollo 8, apollo 9, or apollo 10 would go wrong. so when we named the crew of apollo 11, that is when we hoped there would be the moon landing. but we were not sure that they would not be re-peeling the mission of apollo 10. so was very contingent. we got extremely lucky in 1969 and were very good that everything went to plan. nasa actually built an extra lunar module. as a test for earth orbit. that is the one sitting at the air and space museum down the street here. host: explain more on the background. how did we get lucky? what was happening? guest: steps to get to the moon were extremely complex. there were things we had never

done before. we had never actually flown to the moon before with humans until december of 1968 with apollo 8. it was the first time we had launched people on the saturn v rocket. that rocket had over 3 million parts. and its full of explosive things. any number of things could have gone wrong. the saturn v performed beautifully. we never had a sale -- a failure with the saturn five. they were all recoverable small things. things. it even got hit by lightning, the launch of apollo 12, and the saturn v just kept chugging along. and heading into orbit. a great vehicle. the spacecrafts were very well-designed, robust. a lot of the strength of the program came from the disaster early on, in in the apollo 1 1967 fire. after that, nasa and all of the

people in the program about 400,000 people, redoubled their efforts to fix everything they could. we got lucky but also worked very hard at it. host: in the day that it launched and the days to get to the moon, then the actual moon landing, tell us what is happening at nasa. guest: of course, nasa is chewing on their nails, if they are so inclined, and watching the flight plan very closely. these steps and the procedures were well rehearsed. neil, mike, and buzz, flying in the apollo 11 spacecraft, that mission to the moon was probably easier than any simulation they did. because they had been in the simulator, and the supervisor was throwing them all sorts of curveballs -- if this broke, what would you do? they probably killed them 100,000 times in the simulator. so the actual mission itself, was somewhat anticlimactic. things did not go wrong for the most part. it went smoothly. people were watching the mission

carefully. everyone at nasa was focused on the mission and making sure it was happening. you have the three astronauts all watching, but behind them, several hundred people sitting at mission control. behind them, there were back rooms full of people backing them up. then all of the contractors around the country. had people sitting in new york at gruma and, and in california. there was a huge backup plan in case anything went wrong. and to keep track of what was going on, so that we could respond quickly. host: we want to have our viewers participate in the conversation as well. if you live in the eastern-central part of the country, (202) 748-8000. mountain-pacific, (202) 748-8001. we want to take your comments and your questions for nasa's for for nasa's chief historian.

on the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing. tell us the back story on the phrase "one small step." who came up with it? guest: there has been a lot of speculation. neil armstrong said he got no particular guidance other than say something appropriate. i suspect he had conversations with people privately about that. he clearly thought about it. but really, it was not a , scripted thing. the nasa public affairs people did not say, this is what you're going to say. i think in part because they wanted it to be more natural. if he had to stop and read it, it would have been difficult to do so. he made up that line himself, i think and it was clear that he gave it some thought. then, when he got up there, that is what came out in the moment. host: what else was planned by nasa when they took those first steps? what were they to do and how were they to document? guest: they had a full two and a half hour plan for the extra

vehicular activity, the e.v.a. , the moonwalk. you have to have an acronym for everything. they set up a number of different experiments. there were some commemorative activities. what is surprising for me, when i look back at it, the commemorative activity plan did not really start until the spring of 1969, about march. a nasa administrator said, what are we doing to commemorate things on the moon? the engineers were so busy engineering the mission that they had not thought about it. so they got a plaque and came to an agreement about it. and it is the one that says, we came in peace for all of mankind. then there was discussion about should they put up a flag? it be for all mankind? should it be an international flag, a lot of flags? congress gave their opinion and said you should put up the american flag, if you put up

any flag. and nasa said, good idea. that had to figure how to put a up. yet to put a flag up. but there is no wind on the moon, so you would just see the pole. so the engineers in houston figured out how to build a flagpole with a bar for the flag to pop up and put in place so it would look like the flag is blowing in the wind. of course, there is no wind on the moon. then they had to figure out where you put this flag. its just a flag and a flagpole, , it will not fit through the door of the lunar module. they do not have any room outside of the lunar module, so they had scientific experiments with those spaces full. so they ended up mounting it on the leg of the lunar module, the the one with a ladder that came down from a where the plaque was as well. it was put in a special fireproof container, in case the engines lit the flag on fire, so when it came time to put the flag up, neil and buzz unwrapped

the flag and pulled it out. there were two pieces, the bottom and top pieces of the pole. they had a hard time putting the pole into the surface. it wasn't like they just if you stuck the flag in there. watch the film, it takes quite a while for it to stand up and not fall over and get the flag to stick out straight. but they eventually get a flag. up. the other thing that happened was a call from the president, which was not in the flight but the president thought it was appropriate. so why not? so they got to hear from president nixon while on the surface of the moon. those were their commemorative things that happened. there were also experiments. that were deployed. a seismic experiment that measured moon quakes. a solar wind experiment. the first experiment was the solar wind experiment, made in switzerland. it was a swiss scientist who

proposed that. they got put up first because they wanted to have as much collection time as it was. it was basically a big sheet of aluminum foil to collect the solarwinds coming from the sun. afterward they rolled it up and brought it back to earth. they also put out a thing called a lunar laser ranging retro reflector. that experiment is basically a series of mirrors in a container, and they said it out on the moon so they could , measure the distance between the earth and moon with great precision. that reflector is still used today. from that, we found the moon is slowly moving away from the earth. host: nancy is in franklin, north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for the call. mr. barry, thank you for the information. i am 70 years old. i remember the moon landing in 1969, preparing to get married, a big wedding.

everything came to a screeching halt to watch that. i remember, in elementary school, when alan shepard was the to go up in space and come first one down. he is actually the first man in space. here is something i wanted to but, add. very strange, as it is. 30 years, to the day, july 16, 1999, is when we lost our most favorite person, jfk junior, in a plane crash in the ocean. 30 years to the day. so both days should be celebrated or remembered. guest: that was a tragic loss. host: and do you support returning to the moon? because this administration says we need to go back by 2024. caller: no.

i mean, space exploration -- my son was very involved with it as a kid. i remember the challenger and later the columbia. it is all fine and dandy, i think nonhumans going up there, and doing whatever science you want to, but i think this potus knows how to waste our money when we have homeless, immigration systems, and other -- immigration situations, and other issues here. this planet, mother earth, right now should be number one. they can study in space forever, as far as i am concerned. it is fascinating. but that kind of money should be spent here at home, on planet earth. host: all right. she brings up -- looking back at her memory at the time of apollo 11. it is her wedding day and everything stops.

and then talks about the tragedies of the challenger. and then ends by saying we should not go back. do you think the impact of the challenger and those other tragedies -- what is the impact of the challenger and those other tragedies on people's going back into space, to the view of going back into space, to the moon? guest: people are sensitive of the loss of people we consider heroes. astronauts on the apollo one challenger. who we lost. those have a big effect. if you were to ask people that fly those missions -- in fact, i was one of the escort people for the launch of columbia, back in 2003, before the accident. i got to talk to the crews and the families. they were all of a mind that they knew what the risks were, and they were willing to take those risks, because they thought space exploration was an important thing for humans to do and well worth taking the risk.

nancy's correct that these arguments were the same arguments in the 1960's. is it really worth the while? from my perspective, the investment we made, the apollo program -- $25 billion that we spent at the time, which is a lot of money, but compared to all the other money we spent on everything else, it was a small percentage of the u.s. budget. and the payback we get, not only from what we learned about the universe and what we understand about it now, but also the inspiration. how many times have you heard people say, if you can put a man on the moon, why can't we fill in the blank? that mindset has been really important. and one of the things -- in 1961, when president kennedy

challenged us to go to the moon, the reason he did that was lots geopolitical struggle between the united states and the soviet union about which local system was better. lots of countries were newly independent after world war ii, and they were looking at which approach do we take toward development? the soviet system appeared to be good, because they had gone from being clobbered in world war ii to being able to beat the united states to space in 1957. this is an important struggle so and something we look back on , -- you can tell when you bring it up, they say wasn't it obvious that we would beat them? the fact that we won that race to the moon in 1969. it really put an end to this discussion over whether or not the soviet system was better and it undermined the soviet government in a lot of ways, and 30 years later, it collapsed --

there is not a direct line, but there is an effect. host: on al jazeera's website, the new race to the moon is not about bragging rights. like the 20th century moon race the 21st century one is , projecting geopolitics beyond the limits of our atmosphere with india, russia, china, and others saying they want to go to the moon. guest: i would hope we all go to the moon together. it would make more sense. but most countries do not spend a lot on space programs. like nancy pointed it is a lot out it is a lot of money and a , lot of risk that goes into it. countries do not do that just for scientific purposes, generally speaking. they want to see some return on that. generally, it has been bragging rights or prestige or some geopolitical advantage that countries have been willing to spend that kind of money on. i think we have gotten to the but, point where we have developed our capabilities

enough that it is a relatively small investment. and human space exploration will have huge benefits for the future. host: and that article says when there is water, there is competition. corporations are competing for a space -- there competing for a piece of a commercial space industry that commerce estimates will be worth it is not just the moon's $1.5 trillion. proximity to earth that makes it an attractive foothold but what is on its surface. the u.s. was the first country to land humans on the moon. the astronauts did not see what india unveiled -- evidence of water on the surface. guest: yeah, we -- nasa was collaborating with india space agency on that. we put instruments on that and work with them. that was a great proof we had . indications that there may be deposits of water, particularly on the poles of the moon, from

earlier missions, but that one did finally nail down where the water was, and how much was there. it is a great example of countries you may not think much of being partners in space working together and achieving a great objective. host: we go to west virginia. sharon, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i been looking at the historic photos of the moon landing -- and i am not educated. not a very smart person. i am a housewife, and my specialty is dust. i noticed, on the feet of the lander, that they were spotless in the photos. and the other thing was the crator holes that i think should have been under the lander -- can you give me a scientific reason why there would not be dust visible in the photographs?

guest: sure. in fact, neil armstrong, when he was getting ready to step out the ladder, he made observations, because scientists were not sure what would happen when the lunar module first touched down on the moon. we had landed other robotic probes before, so we had some idea, but they were not fully sure, particularly with the size of the engine. the surface of the moon, actually, has been battered by all kinds of debris that has hit the moon. what we call shooting stars, they do not burn up in the atmosphere of the moon, because there is no atmosphere. so they hit the moon and they grind up the rocks. there is no water or wind. so the surface of the moon is sharp bits and pieces of rocks that are very tiny. and they sit on the surface. but just below that layer, the surface is pretty stiff, because it has been beaten by time and is compacted really tight.

so when the lunar module lands on the moon, they blow away the surface dust. you can see in the video, when they look out the window -- you see this cloud of dust get blown away. so the dust gets blown away before the surface, so it is sort of clean underneath. it was not really a crator, because the surface underneath is hardpacked. host: what she is getting at is some conspiracy theories out that this really did not happen. why does the flag look like it is blowing, there is no wind, et cetera. c-span, with ipsos, did a recent poll about the apollo 11 mission. and when we asked people do you , believe the apollo 11 moon landing was fake -- look at the age breakdown. 9% said yes from 18 to 34. 35 to 49, 11%.

and then 50 to 64, 3% it gets , less as they get older. guest: the conspiracy theory thing -- it is hard to argue with it because there's a conspiracy theory any way, so we normally do not engage in that sort of thing. but most of the people i've , talked to that ask those sort of questions, they say i saw this picture on the net, and it had to have been faked. and i say well, did you look at the other 70,000 pictures we , brought back that could have been faked? and the 80,000 pounds of rocks we brought back thousands of that thousands of scientists that have investigated and agreed that moon rocks do not come from earth. there is plenty of evidence, if you bother to take a look at it all. but people love a conspiracy theory. that is an interesting one, one that gained traction, particularly in the days of the internet. my perspective is, if we tried

to fake the moon landing -- the soviet union was still trying to beat us to the moon. they had a robotic probe that crashed on the moon when neil and buzz were on the moon. they were trying to bring a sample back from the moon to at least chiesa or beat us with a sample back from the moon. if we had fake the moon landing, the soviet union would have outed us in a heartbeat. so it is ludicrous, but i understand why people who have not had the luxury of sitting around looking at nasa history records and documents and materials -- i am immersed in that stuff, so it seems silly to me. but i could see where, if you did not know a lot about it, you may think maybe it is true. host: how are you marking tomorrow's anniversary? guest: it will be a work day for me, because it is the 50th anniversary. we have been waiting for this. i will be at nasa headquarters, working with our social media team, answering people's questions. i will be out at the national mall, the display we have at the national mall.

i will speak at it and watch the saturn v launch off the washington monument. host: the "washington journal" will be at the air and space starting at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow starting at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow museum tomorrow to mark the , anniversary of it, a special production with american history tv. we will take more of your comments and questions tomorrow morning on the "washington journal," 7:00 to 10:00 a.m. eastern time on the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing. let's go to robert, in florida. caller: good morning. how are you? host: doing fine. question or comment?

caller: i have two comments. the first is, i read in the local paper, 50 years ago, somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 billion to $90 billion was spent on that moon landing. talking about trying to do that again, which would certainly be more money in today's dollars -- just a few minutes ago, i watched your program on c-span, the gentleman was talking about the federal debt. i found some of that alarming, and i would certainly rather put that money towards the federal debt and not try to do this again. but the primary reason for my call -- i am 75. i fall in that 2% of people 65 and older who think the thing was kind of faked. i would love to get your reason why. i think it was fake so that taxes could be raised and the federal government could accumulate more money. earlier that summer of 1969, i had been sent to visit my aunt in new york -- at the time, i

lived in north carolina. i became involved in watching -- new york yankee games i think it , was channel 7 at the time -- and the mets. anyway, i got back to north carolina, got a tv, something that had not been around much before, turned it to channel seven, and guess what? no channel 7. so i am thinking it is about 700 miles to 800 miles from new york to north carolina, and i cannot get a -- host: what is your point? caller: now they are trying to tell me that they sent back pictures from the moon -- somehow it did not compute in my head. host: alright, anything you want to respond to that? guest: the technical question, the reason we are able to get pictures back from the moon is we had very powerful transmitters and antennas on both ends. it is different from i am not an -- engineer, but i understand it is different from your tv signal.

host: from california, ron. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my phone call. oddly enough, i happen to have been a working space vehicle test mechanic at cape kennedy on this month in 1967. then i got drafted and missed the actual launch of the 11. but i worked on it, from building apollo heat shields in downey, california, laying up those to heat treat, then to seal beach, california working on the second stage of , the apollo second stage, then to mississippi's test facility, to take off the top because we had a leak in the hydrogen tank, and then onto the cape. anyway, long story short, i was there when virgil grissom and the boys burn up on the pad.

it was a moment when we could have lost the space industry. i happened to be working for a guy by the name of harrison storms. he was president of the space division of north american aviation. and also joe shea the project , manager -- they said we could lose this thing. that meant they would beindustry. well,se people who say, this was all faked, let me tell you, when you see the photos from space, and when you see the loss of transmission from the dark side of the moon, it gives you pause. i worked with those guys. every one of those guys -- people watch apollo 13 and think it was amazing. it was not. the guys who were there were amazing. i was so honored to have the opportunity to work with them. as far as i am concerned, we

should be going onward to the moon again to double check, make sure that flag is still there. thanks so much mr. barry. , guest: thank you for your contributions to the space program. you were one of the giants that the people at nasa and people around the world flying into space -- we stand on the shoulders of people like you, who got us into space in the first place. so thank you. host: we will go to wisconsin. bill? caller: i worked at cape canaveral years ago. it was between the apollo and the shuttle space mission. it was kind of like a dead time, so when i worked there. , my comment or question was, going back to the moon, is it strictly scientific or military or a combination of both? guest: i think the return to the

moon is designed to be scientific, to help us learn more, but it is also a strategic move for the united states. some countries or people will go out into space, and we think it is an area where the united states should lead. the president and congress have agreed that the united states should exercise leadership in space. we will not break the budget in trying to do that, but i think we can do it for a reasonably small investment of taxpayer dollars. the goal is to establish a foothold in space. so that we can explore the moon and do other things but also send humans to mars. and watch the human adventure expand beyond planet earth into our solar system. host: the "washington post" this morning's featuring the iconic spacesuits. this of course is the spacesuit for the apollo mission.

can you talk about the gold visor that they are wearing and some other features? guest: sure. the gold visor was designed to reflect as much heat as possible from the sun and radiation. gold is really good at that, apparently. kind of expensive for your average sunglasses. like me, you would be afraid to drop them all the time. but they were not afraid of dropping those helmets. they put a coating of gold on that. that visor, they could lifted up or down. if you look closely at the pictures of neil coming down the ladder, you can see his face, because he has the reflective visor up because he is in the shadow of the lunar module. but when they walked into the bright sunlight -- it is really bright on the moon. so they had the face shield. looks kind of eerie, but it was designed to be a super effective sunglass for them.

host: a space industry reporter quoted in the washington post, said they also had that visor so they could see their feet because it was important. why? guest: when you're walking on the moon or floating in space, it is a little spaceship built just for you. so you need to be able to maneuver around. you need to be aware of where you are. on the moon, with lower gravity, it is harder to feel where you were. you are inside a space to suit that is pressurized. so being able to have a good view of your feet and where you are placing them and whether you are stepping on something hazardous -- when they put experiments on the moon, particularly on later missions with more complicated experiments -- a lot of them had wires that connected them to the power source and things, so they wanted to be able to see so they would not trip over the wires.

one of the cruise ended up tearing a cable out. and it was not like you could just plug it back in again. so it was important to have , maximum visibility of their feet. and what was around them. host: talk about the recent unveiling of neil armstrong's spacesuit. guest: that was great. the smithsonian has had all of the important spacesuits in special climate controlled conditions to protect them. they had neil's spacesuit on display for a number of years after the mission. when they built the spacesuits, in they were not thinking about the they were not thinking about 1960's, 50 years from now, have a look for display at this missoni and. they were focused on we want to keep you guys alive. they built it the best they could, but many of the materials they used were not designed to last for a long time.

plastic has dried up . pieces of metal that rub together have rusted. so the smithsonian had quite a challenge. neil's suit, it was exposed for a long time, because everyone wanted to see it. it suffered a lot of damage. they took it off display about 13 years ago. and put it in cold storage to figure out how to better treat it and keep it going. a couple years ago, they said it will cost a lot of money to fix this, we will see if we can kickstart it. they did a campaign, raised a lot of money, and were able to renovate the suit. they just unveiled it earlier this week. and you can see it. interestingly, at the air it is and space museum it is not in , the flight gallery, because that is in a bright spot. sunlight would be bad for the suit. they tried to put a better place to put it. to me, it is dramatic that they put it right opposite the first plane that ever flew. the right flyer. flyer. you can see

how far we went in those 60 odd years. host: we go to roger in pittsburgh. caller: hello. good morning. thank you for taking my call. i appreciate c-span a lot. i really do. i am 68-year-old. i've been around long enough to follow nasa's adventures. i really applaud them. i truly do. but i am also one of those millions of people on this planet who have already seen something in the night sky. so please bear with me. i am recalling, over time -- i am even hearing that there were retired astronauts, retired cosmonauts, retired commercial airliner pilots, retired cosmonauts, that they have seen who have said they have seen things in the night sky that they would say are not ours. i am bringing this up because efforts at nasa are very courageous. i am all for it. but because i've seen things and

i am hearing that there are people who have worked in the field, who even werner von braun, being interviewed by somebody -- about how host: what is the question? caller: my question is the whole spectrum of space travel itself and what it does to the human body. someone made the comment that it has deleterious effects on the human body. that any kind of travel to the nearest star is something humans couldn't do. so, what is nasa's plan on moving towards those kind of things? because getting to the next star is something a human being would not be able to do. maybe a robot? guest: well, you are right. getting to another star is a long way away. we do not have the propulsion technology to get us there fast enough, hundreds of years of travel.

those are some things that people at nasa would look at the long range plans and do studies from time to time on long-range plans. primarily, we are focused on closer term things that we can actually do something about. those things are things that nasa is a government agency, and we do what congress and the president tell us to do, and primarily we are focused on studying our solar system with robotic probes, studying the earth, improving flight conditions for airplanes on earth -- that is still nasa's mandate. sending humans into space. in also for our initial step the next five years, we are hoping to put people back on the moon and use that as a jumping point to learn how to operate on the planet, and then go to mars. getting to mars is a big challenge. we have our work cut out for us. we think that would keep us busy for more than a decade or so.

host: woodbridge, virginia. edgar is watching. caller: good morning. i am a big fan of the space program. i think the more, the better. i grew up back in the 1960's watching science fiction television. i was a big fan of "star trek," "lost in space," "the outer limits." and buck rogers in the 25th century. my question is what did the employees, all of the employees who were affiliated with and connected with the space program, what did they think of programs like that back then? i always wanted to get their guest: you would be in good company. almost everybody that i know who works at nasa is a big science fiction fan. oftentimes, while waiting for a meeting to start, they will say

did you see x show on tv or make some humorous reference to something that happened in "star trek" or "lost in space." very arcane references to like the kobayashi maru incident that happened in "star trek." clearly, there are a lot of science fiction fans at nasa. we love it. you would fit right in. we love . you would fit right in. -- alignedabout mickey from oklahoma. caller: good morning. the "apollo 11: what we saw" series. it was talking about the fact that buzz aldrin did communion on the moon. i was surprised about that, because i've never heard about

it. he said that was one of the first things they did, and it was controversial at the time, because he had to have the elements up there, and weight was precious. the other thing i wanted to ask thet was i heard that lender had a thick aluminum foil kind of skin, because weight was so important again, and i was surprised how small that was an how buzz aldrin, who has had a checkered career after the moon landing, especially compared to that i guess this elder of the presbyterian church did communion on the moon, which i thought was cool. guest: yeah, there was some sensitivity about religious issues, particularly after the apollo eight crew read from genesis around christmas eve.

so there was some sensitivity about being overtly religious. weause the constitution says will make no law about the establishment of religion. but buzz wanted to do that. are of the crew members, allowed to carry a personal preference kit, given some weight and size, so he brought a little chalice and a vial of communion wine and the host wafer and had it blessed before he left earth. and when there was timing the schedule for him to have a moment of his own, he did soft communion on the moon -- self communion on the moon. in the lunar module, weight was critical. and the lunar module did not have to fly in the atmosphere. it just had to hold the

atmosphere. so they made it as light as possible. it is really flimsy. if you were an airplane pilot looking at it, you would say i do not know if i want to fly in it. host: you can learn more about nasa's history if you to history.nasa.gov. also follow them on twitter, @ announcer 1: looking at the week ahead, the senate resumes nominations of the next defense secretary. a confirmation vote is expected tuesday. tuesday's vote on the house

approved 9/11 victims compensation fund. members will consider a bill to secure retirement savings for workers and retirees. also legislation to address border security and accountability at the department of homeland security. watch the house live on c-span and the senate live on c-span two. see both on c-span.org, or listen to congressional debate on c-span's free radio app. this weekend, american history tv features the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 mission in moon landing, starting saturday at 7:00 a.m. eastern, we are live from the smithsonian air and space museum , directorel collins of george washington policyity's space institute and air and space

museum space history curator. a.m., president kennedy's moon speech recorded september 12, 1962 in houston. the moonose to go to in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. at 4:00, thethan smithsonian area and space museum host a discussion with testers and designers, and a university professor. provideall the systems, pressure, give you oxygen to breathe, worry about thermal temperature control, shrink them around a person and you want the person to stay alive, be safe, and get work done. announcer 2: at 10:00 p.m. on showingica, a 1970 film pre-lift off preparations for apollo 11 and parades for the astronauts after their safe

return to earth. >> two minutes 10 seconds and counting. tanks pressurized. seconds,ne minute 35 third stage completely pressurized. 55 seconds and counting, neil armstrong reported back, thank you very much, we know it will be a good flight. sunday on oral histories, jean krantz talks about training for the mission, spacecraft problems and the july 20 moon landing. weirdyou get this feeling, it is chilling, but it soaks in through the room. i say my god, we are actually on the moon. announcer 2: explore our nation's passed on american history tv, all weekend every

weekend, only on the c-span3. this weekend on book tv saturday at 8:55 eastern, and author talks about the global backlash against immigrants in his book this land is >> our land. >>for most migrants, etymology is destiny. when asked what are you, the difference between refugee or migrant or economic migrant can mean literally the difference between life and death. announcer 2: sunday at 9:00, in their new book justice on trial, the federalist molly hemingway and judicial crisis networks carrie severino examine the confirmation of supreme court justice brett kavanaugh in the future of the court. they are interviewed by los angeles time supreme court correspondent david savage. ,> we were trying to figure out

it is a very different judge kavanaugh than earlier that week. and then thursday, when he really came out strong, it is fascinating to learn that that was the person he really had has early on, as the court become more political in its decision-making, when it makes -- interpreting the law as written, that is a political situation and it is not at all surprising that the process becomes more political. announcer 2: at 11:00, a legal analyst offers her guide to reading and understanding the u.s. constitution in her new book how to read the constitution and wife. a lot ontion i get television and in conversation is, can the president do that? my answer is, that is the wrong question. the question is, if he does that

and we have had up until now presidents who don't cross certain boundaries, what are the processes for holding a president accountable? announcer 2: watch book tv every weekend on c-span two. announcer 1: robert mueller testified to congress on wednesday about possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power by president and russian interference in the 2016 election. live coverage starts at 8:30 eastern on c-span3, online at c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. before the hearing, listen to the complete mueller report on c-span.org on your laptop or mobile device. into ther report audio search box. the audio is courtesy of timber lane media. president mike pence remarks at the unveiling

of the apollo 11 space suit at the smithsonian's national air and space museum in washington, d.c.. the spacesuit will go on display in the firtash for the first time in -- to mark the anniversary of the mission to the moon. the vice president was joined by astronauts and their families and the director of the national air and space museum. this is just over 20 minutes. [applause] good morning. week you as we kick off a of amazing celebrations of humanity's highest achievement, the apollo 11 moon landing. we are honored to have vice president pence with us as we neill near on strong's -- armstrong's spacesuit. also with us, jim bridenstine, who leads nasa.