author and historian craig nelson tells the story in his new book called rocketmen. the epic story of the first men on the moon. let's talk a little bit about the event itself. we are a society bathed in technology. it permeates what we do. look back 40 years and signify what a mass achievement this was. >> what isism possible to imagine is the men that went to the moon had computers that are less powerful than the cell phone in your pocket and not even a blackberry or iphone, an ordinary cell phone and the space suits were put together by women using glue pods and nasa decided it was going to use pigs to test the capsule in space and the pig was put in the cradle and it immediately died and a woman said i worked on a farm and you can't put a pig on its back it will suffocate it. >> unbelievable. >> we have seen interviews of the astronauts and see it in the right stuff. >> we think they are daredevil cowboys but they are military test pilots. they have an incredible cool. their job as test pilots was to fly state of the art planes that had a lot of 0 trouble in the

craig nelson talks about the first moon landing and the people who accomplished it. it's 50 minutes. >> not only is it a dream for going to the library of congress and working with documents but it's a dream with the warm welcome you get when you come back -- when you come out of the caves of research and your book is actually on the shelves. so it's fantastic to be here. four years ago i realized the apollo 11 anniversary was coming up and i grew up in houston around the corner from the astronauts, and i was an eagle scout at the national jamboree when neil armstrong said hi to us. i said i want to read the book of the big history book that tells you everything about it that explains the science and takes you behind the scenes and shows what happens. and i went out and although there are an incredible number of wonderful books and fantastic archives and great magazine articles and things like that, no one had really pulled all of this material together into one coherent book and i decided that's what i would do and about a couple of years into doing this i went to k

author craig nelson uses declassified files, "rocket man," which is out now. i'm honored to be with you. >> eric: it's amazing, you don't know how many shuttle missions, we don't know the names of most of the astronauts, yet apollo is burned into our memory. everyone remembers that moment when armstrong landed on the moon? >> i certainly do because i was an eagle scout in idaho. saying hello to us on the way to the moon. >> him and buzz and michael he is the only astronaut of three that spoke to you. why do you think that armstrong, had who is such an icon, talk about a hero, how come he doesn't speak out more? >> it's his personality. he is terribly shy, reserved man. he spends a lot of time living inside his head. his real career was as a military test pilot. that is the time he was happiest in his life. i think he literally dreamed of flying all the time when he is sitting on the ground. >> eric: you talk about the secrets, if he didn't get that down there, lunar module, something could have happened? >> there so much that went off. they were thrown four mi

craig nelson was among thousands at the boy scout jamboree. they got a special shoutout from the astronaut himself but nelson wanted to do more than commemorate it. in his book "rocket men" nelson goes behind the scenes to reveal never before told stories from the apollo missions and those that made it possible. when this happened 40 years ago, was there any doubt that this was going to work? >> oh, there was constant doubt from everybody as they sat on the bad. the astronauts said they were pretty sure they were going to come home alive but they were only 50% sure they would touch down on the moon. >> collins, armstrong, buzz aldrin. i know you interviewed hundreds of people, what most surprised you? what did you find out about the mission that you didn't mow before? -- didn't know before? >> what astounded me is how incredibly dangerous it was not just the missions but training. neil armstrong was almost killed three times. the last time when he was practicing landing on the moon in the lunar lander research vehicle which was like a giant ir