Armstrong Hosts NASA 50th Anniversary Documentary

The increase in ignition in less than a century. The United States has progressed from the Sandy Hills of Kittyhawk along the Atlantic coast to the vast new ocean of space. The journey has been difficult and dangerous, but it has also been rewarding, giving us a better understanding of our home planet, our solar planet. system and the universe, although humans have dreamed of sailing from planet Earth for centuries, the realization of that Vision began just five decades ago. I had been working for NACA since 1945 as a young aeronautical engineer right out of college in aircraft flight testing and we were not interested in space at that time we were interested in high speed aerodynamics the X15 was being built there's a drop before it comes back to Earth again the that both sides had nuclear weapons.

You know, we grew up fearing the Russians. I can remember when I was in school doing drills where we got under our seats, so this idea of ​​Getting hit in space was an incredible idea, they claimed superiority and we didn't believe it, but they had been launching some rockets and the ours had too often exploded on the Launchpad R. Great balls of fire, this great is Great Balls. of Fire and that was the background of what happened in '57 when they sent Sputnick, here there is a Russian satellite that goes by every 90 minutes emitting a beep and it didn't take much imagination to know that that could have been a bomb.

I remember being very surprised that they had done this and that we hadn't been able to do it before them, that was my main concern. I think that was the main concern of most Americans at the time. I think we all internally worked that out. that wasn't going to last let's do something about it it was just a faint beep a radio beacon coming from a small glowing orb circling the earth in 1957 Sputnik ushered in the space age and the United States was behind it our first successful response to the Sputnik arrived with the launch of the Explorer One satellite, and within a year of the formation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, when I arrived here in May 1958, the Marshall Von Brown space flight center and his team did not exist. they were all part of what was called an army ballistic missile agency and it was that agency that actually built and launched the first explorer satellites panel checkic panel check two one Comm, we took enormous pride in that because although it followed the Sputnik Explorer , one had scientific instruments in This actually marks the first use of space for scientific exploration.

We got the idea that we were surrounded by radiation belts that we knew nothing about when I found you, so we set off, as a result of Sputnik. It resulted, of course, in the establishment of NASA by President Eisenhower in the summer of 1958. We have one of the most challenging tasks ever given to modern man. we will develop and launch into space the vehicles needed to obtain scientific data and explore the solar system we will be preparing for the day when man flies into space Keith Glennon was truly outstanding in that period in bringing together the thoughts of people in the organization and looking for outsiders, of course, I was a young punk at the time in Those Early Years and uh, I was a little hesitant about expressing myself, but the way he did it got to a point where it was very common for everyone really expressed how they felt on July 1, 1958 and, um, Dr.

Von Brown and around the year 2000. Of us who were members of the team, I guess we all transitioned from the Army to Marshall, we were blessed here because the Leaders of all our labs were original members of the Von Brown team and these guys were brilliant scientists, they had been there. They had done it, they made mistakes, they had flown more rockets than anyone could conceive and they were our mentors, I don't think so, but about once every hundred years a person like BR Brown comes along, he was a top engineer, he was a Scientist. top notch and he had something that most people don't have and he was a Visionary.

You know it was crazy to think about going to the moon. You know it was crazy. And Von Brown knew what he could do and after that. We've been around it for a while, we knew we could have produced more scientific knowledge with our smaller vehicles than the Russians with their much larger vehicles. We were trying to build satellites, trying to get things going, trying to catch up to the Russians. and overlook them, there were a lot of exciting things happening in those early days, an Air Force Thor space probe capable of under the direction of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration achieved a near-perfect liftoff, guys like Max F and the pus . aeronautical research division that had been designing these rockets in wops uh, everyone had been dreaming of man and space.

I remember walking into Max F's office and there, on the wall, was a photo of a guy in the fetal position in a little capsule. I told him, what are you going to do with that Max? He said, well, we're going to launch a guy into space and I said, well, you know the G's are very, very high, he said, oh yeah, it'll be black. but he's coming too, geez, we knew the Soviets were going to try to blow up a man after they launched their first satellite and, uh, the Soviets knew we were going to try to do the same thing the nation was preparing to do. putting a man in space, I mean, that was a compromise and that was the approach, we didn't know much about the space environment, you know, a young person like me, with no experience, was on the same level as everyone because no one had experience and They were exciting times and, uh, any information you found was valuable and people were interested in it and looked at it, you could be swinging on a star, but then when they opened this up for human spaceflight and announced that program and one . volunteers for this I thought I wasn't a natural with the experience I had from test flights and I met the criteria they were filming for I can't seem to stand up in my house who do you think you are when you have something like that? in love I was a test pilot and the job of a test pilot is to fly new airplanes here with the dawn of space flight it was an opportunity to fly a type A airplane that made a jump of the order of magnetuda in height, altitude, speed and distance . and they were trying to convince us how nice it was to get into a capsule on top of a rocket I said no way send that idiot that comes out of the cannon in the circus and let him land in a net and forget about us he said no No, don't worry, let's go to put some monkeys and chimpanzees first.

Now I know that I left here, so I really had a very negative opinion before the first flight that we will have developed our Mercury spacecraft for. the point at which it will be as reliable as man can devise today we present to you and the world these seven men who have been selected to begin training for orbital spaceflight. I feel like this is the future not only of this country but of the world, we have come as far as we can on this globe and we have to start looking around us a little and it is just the natural expansion of the Mercury flight project it is just a Part of the push towards space travel I got in this one because it would probably be the closest to heaven I'd ever get and I wanted to make the most of it.

These ladies and gentlemen are the nation's Mercury astronauts. Come on. Echo was 100 feet in diameter and was one of the biggest challenges. We had it like this, President Eisenhower speaks, it is a great personal satisfaction to participate in this first communications experiment involving the use of the satellite balloon known as Echo, what really came out of it was that everyone saw it. They knew America was in the space business come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly convincing others that humans could do work in space, that's what we were doing on Project Mercury. 98% of the medical community in the United States did.

I don't think that man can survive in that environment, much less do a job, and that was very important for the future of space flight because it allowed us to take advantage of the human being's thinking capacity, his intelligence, and it simplified the design of the spacecraft frankly. and nothing. Of us had ever seen a missile launch, so 5 4 3 2 1 and the booster launches and it's the big flame and we're standing there watching it go up like this and here are these seven budding astronauts watching it go up and reach 27,000 feet and it flew and it looked like an atomic bomb exploded over our head up there and uh, I remember I was looking at each other and I said we had to talk to some engineers tomorrow morning, that was the initial launch that any Of us had ever seen in the Cape that P the division is actually the division that took us into space because I work for Max V and Max V, of course, is the one who invented the Mercury capsule, that completely I will tell you that it became immediately It became clear to me that the only practical approach was one that I had proposed simply because it provided the lightest way to do it.

Our best launch vehicle was the Atlas and the Mercury, the only one that had the possibility of becoming light enough to be able to do Orbit in Atlas we don't call it Mercury, we still call that capsule, the concept that we came up with, well, it was a primate for mercury, it wasn't quite there and then They started launching monkeys and then chimpanzees and then they launched Yuriar. We were totally shocked because Yuri and the Soviets got there first and that was a terrible disappointment for the nation and for us, of course, Yuri Gagaran was launched into Earth orbit in 1961 in the United States.

It wasn't there yet, but the '60s were a decade of change and NASA would forever change the course of human exploration. We are receiving telegrams like crazy from all over the country from animal cruelty associations. ASPCA, please stop launching these chimpanzees so we can launch Alan Shephard I always think that Allan Shephard's flight was a fantastic moment in the history of NASA and the history of man's space flight when I think about it and see him leave of that truck on the Redstone bed and look up. that rocket with that silver suit he had on and all those lights flashing and people looking at him and looking at him and wondering what the hell he was doing there climbing on top of this rocket, the whole time it started up, this is.2 I think the biggest surprise The one thing I had in the whole series of events in the space program was after Shepherd's flight, a few weeks later, President Kenned said I think this nation should commit to achieving the goal before the end of this decade of putting a man on Earth. moon. and return him safely to Earth, I thought it was the boldest thing I had ever heard in my entire life.

Are we serious about this? Remember now when he said we had yet to orbit the first man in this country. John Glenn was 10 months old. Far from flying, space exploration will continue whether we join it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, most of us thought he was really overreacting and, frankly, I thought he had gone crazy We actually didn't even have computers at the beginning of this, we were all still using our slide rules. We embark on this new sea because there is new knowledge to acquire and new rights to gain.

He was asking us to do what most people do. At the time I thought it couldn't be done, but he was doing it in an environment where the Soviet Union literally owned space and he laid down the gauntlet. The American people picked up the gauntlet and reached a point where they didn't know. It couldn't be done, we chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they're easy but because they're hard, all of that was heady stuff and we were all, you know, go, go, man, go, so go. At orbital speed you have to go at 17,300 M per hour, that is the speed you have to go to balance gravity, which is why the first human flight to orbit was John Glenn.

Divine speed. John Glenn's doctors were worried, for example, when you're on Zer G for a while. For several hours you are afraid that your eyes will change shape and you will not even be able to keep your vision on the instrument panel. Roger Z Ro G and I felt good, so we wanted to show that those things didn't make a difference. but uh, and that's what that first flight was about, oh, that view is tremendous, when John flew, he saw these glowing particles at sunset and they looked a little like fireflies, so he told the ground that they were fireflies and it was a great mystery, but I could create.

These fireflies, wrapping themselves around the side of the spacecraft, turned out to be small pieces of ice and passed by.flying out the window like a firefly. My mission ended up being a controversial stamp because I over-landed, I think 200 miles, so my flight did. We contributed a lot of new knowledge to the science of spaceflight and this took the form of a redesign, but all flights do that. You know, we support those who came before us, whether or not they make it through the interesting part of the Mercury mission. of Sigma 7 was that we flew over the South Atlantic and before that mission the Russians had detonated a nuclear bomb at high altitude, so they had radiation devices that would measure 10 ranges, five ranges, one and a half ranges or something like that.

I didn't get a reading on any of those things, so it turned out that we were fine, so we were able to go ahead and let Cooper cross the South Atlantic for many, many times of Aquarius, it really was the age of Aquarius in the six, the state of mood around. We were always electric, the press revered the astronauts and revered those of us who were running the program. They admired us and we felt the responsibility, so the feeling is mutual, the country supported what we did, we were pushing technology, some WIP the bird and of course communication satellites came about and many other interesting things happened as a result From that technological push, the country was trying to build a supersonic.

Transportation to at least do some research and build some prototypes, so in trying to study the flow fields over these vehicles, trying to compute the sonic booms and their propagation to Earth was a very interesting and challenging problem; There was a lot of interest in Mars. largely due to the publicity the planet received from PLEL in the early 1900s, he reported watching channels. It was a pretty good case that the planet must have intelligent life, so there was a lot of interest in Marin 4. Then, because it successfully flew by Mars, taking some pictures as it went by, the most important piece of information about Marin 4 was Photograph number 11 which very clearly showed a crater that looked like craters on the moon, although by today's standards the quality of these images are quite poor, they definitely showed that Mars looked much more like the Moon than the Earth.

Gemini was the program between Mercury, the only Cedar in Earth orbit, and Apollo, the three-seater to the Moon 2. 1 Z ignition lift many, of course, carried two people, but they were not the people they carried, they were the concepts. I feel like a million dollars, I'll pick it up. many were a great program because we learned how to operate in space, how to make Eva how to use computers, so what we did with gmany we did WR Vu, which I was very excited to do, we did the docking, we did the orbit change, we made a precise re-entry, it's very important to get into all those the Moon Back J 12 Houston Capcom new Eva record beautiful work Apollo 1 was going to be the first human test of the Apollo spacecraft, so it was a real surprise to discover that we lost a crew not in space but right there, on the platform where the fire was fired. the platform was a traumatic event that tore us apart to be completely honest with you it was a terrible day we weren't doing a good job we were running too fast it forced us to reconsider what we were doing and do the job properly without that happening I don't think we would have reached the moon in the 60s, 5 weeks later as a backup team.

We inherited the first Mollo Mission which turned out to be Apollo 7, but as I did with many things with NASA, it was a disaster with Apollo. It turned out to be a real Triumph with Apollo 7 because the spacecraft itself was a wonderful flying machine. It lasted 11 days. We have to go to orbit, here, go to orbit, so we were very proud of the fact that we took and had a Triumph. from a disaster that was what Apollo seven did for me showed that we could do all the things we set out to do and do them well this is the Apollo Saturn lunch controller we are still active right now T minus 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 we have ignition sequence start the engines are on 4 3 2 1 Z we have commitment we have we have LIF takeoff at 7:51 a.m.

EST incitement you go for tli about understand we go for T the first full one to Saturn, the launch of all the rockets went to the Moon with humans on it, they didn't even test the individual stages, they just stacked them all up, put a some people there and said: let's try it, send them to the moon, that's bold, give us a clue. As for what it looks like from up there, I can now see the entire Earth from the center window. I watch Tre of. I can see Florida, Cuba, Central America, the entire northern half of Central America, effect all the way through Argentina and I think.

For me, how wonderful is this transmission that reaches you approximately halfway between the Moon and the Earth. We have approximately less than 40 hours left to go to the Moon. The first time we flew with a crew on a big Saturn 5, we sent them to the moon for 10 orbits not just turn back very bold decision the Moon is essentially gray no color looks like the Paris Blaster here a kind of beach sand grayish on Apollo 8 when we turned the spacecraft around and first saw The Far Side of the Moon, just 60 miles below, we were like three school kids looking in the window of a candy store, and we forgot the plan to flight for a second as those ancient craters on the opposite side slowly slid toward and away from the crew of Apollo 8.

We close with good night, good luck, Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you at The Good Earth. I think to myself how wonderful, frankly, I wasn't too optimistic that Apollo 11 would actually land and return to anyone successfully. I U, I thought we could get away with it. I wasn't too worried about it, but I thought there were so many unknowns that it would have given us a 5050 chance of being the first flight to land and return someone safely. things don't look as funny but I don't know why Excuse me while I kiss the flight controllers we're going to go land retro we're going to control GC and surgeon Capcom where to go to land altitude 42 are you going to land above go For landing 300 there are certain events in life that you never forget and the moon landing and in particular the last seconds before the landing will never be forgotten.

We had struggled to reach the surface. We are halfway to our abort limit. By the time we resolved that, we started getting a series of computer program alarms 1 121 121 alarm 1 alarm, okay, let's go and when the crew took over about 2 minutes before landing, looking for a landing spot, we knew. They were going to use a lot more fuel than we expected 540 feet 15 they keep doing this around altitude speed light down they really didn't have a good feeling about how far they were from Ashley Landing, you know, they just kept going and going back and forth, Do you know what our chances of landing successfully were?

Getting outside, that was pretty easy to do, was landing so you could land and then do the rest of the stuff, but landing with 15 seconds of fuel left was the important thing, uh, the right ignition light, okay, engine stop. engine, we copied it Eagle BR, uh, tality base here, the eagle landed, it was like Groget Tranquility, we copied you on the ground, you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're. breathing again thank you very much okay, slow down the chatter in this room the unfortunate thing is that no controller had the opportunity to absorb the emotion of that landing because we had to work for the next two hours without stopping well T1 stay don't stay Stay Stay stay guide control tcom GNC Ecom surgeon stay Capcom or stay for T1 and we are getting a picture on the TV we got a good picture up to that point television has always been a goal but not a requirement the mutton leg insoles are just uh uh depressed on the surface about one or two, once we landed safely, the only thing that counted was that we saw the image that was going to come out of the L.

Now what I felt at that moment was that the TV better work or else You will really know who I am because I will be the man who didn't bring you television from the Moon, that's one small step for man. One. Le, come on, come on, come on, come on, now, touch me, bab, can't you see that I? I'm not afraid it looks beautiful, it has a beginning Beauty of its own, it's like much of the high desert in the United States, it's different, but it's very pretty here, beautiful view, something magnificent, view here, magnificent desolation, now the world simply marveled. in this together with us and we more or less made the whole world our partners in this by inviting people to be there.

I think it's one of the best things we've done in the space program, one of the best decisions ever. What was done with respect to the space program was to share it with the world for an invaluable moment in the entire history of man. All people on this Earth are truly one. Come on, come on, now, touch me. I think it was the biggest event in history. From an aviation point of view and probably from a scientific point of view it happened in the 20th century and perhaps in the history of man here the man from planet Earth first set foot on the moon July 1969 we came in peace For all humanity 11 Apollo 11 This is Hornet Hornet.

Well, we had a good time on Apollo 12 and we were happy to go and looking forward to the Big Adventure, so we left and got into a storm right after launch and were struck by lightning. A lot of caution and warning lights come on and we didn't know what to do. I don't know what happened here. We had everything in the world abandoned. I'm not sure we can be hit by lightning. Thank God for the mission. control because they came and gave us some advice and then we turned it back on with his help and everything went well, we went into orbit and then we headed to the moon, there it is, it's a son of a gun right down there. in the middle of the road they landed us perfectly if we hadn't touched the controls we would have landed right in the middle of the crater we were filming for the kids underground to do well so they wouldn't have missed it by 10 feet and When you figure we traveled 240,000 miles, that It's pretty amazing, it shows you the kind of capability NASA has.

He did it. Turn on the 24 foot contact light. I came out around that time and we did some experiments and then we collected a lot of rocks and made some observations. I had the desired impression that I don't want to move too fast but I can walk pretty well and then our main job had been to land near the surveyor, which was an unmanned spacecraft that had landed on the moon in the ocean of storms about 33 months earlier. , you'll never believe it, that's what I see sitting on the side of the crater, the old surveyor, the old surveyor, yes, sir.

That looks good, so we were going to land there and pick up some parts like the TV camera and the scoop and things like that, bring them back to Earth for evaluation. Apollo 13 was a team effort from start to finish. Well we had a problem here we go we had a hardware reset I don't know what it was oh here I had a problem when the crew flipped the switches to start the crow movement a spark jump between the fan and the heater assembly and the Pressure in that tank rose very quickly because the insulation of the system had been damaged and now we had a fire inside the tank that blew the dome off the tank.

That series of events started the Apollo 13 saga and we had a pretty big explosion associated with the cy warning that the exact words I used in Mission Control are: we have never lost an American in space and we are sure we will not lose one now that this crew is coming home, you have to believe it, your team has to believe it and we I have to make it happen to me looking that we are offending something when we suddenly realized the TR meaning of the explosion as we saw the oxygen escaping from the rear of my spacecraft and consequently lose all the electrical power and propulsion system that we knew we were on. serious problems, have you called your backup EC communications?

Now let's see if we can get more brainpower into this. We have one here. Roger, throughout the Apollo 13 mission, the teams in Mission Control changed shifts almost regularly at 8 hour intervals and the teams held up. The mission continued to solve the problem while my teams tried to find the answers. Go ahead, I want some guys to figure out the minimum limb power to sustain life. Fortunately, the lunar module was connected to us and when that happened with oxygen. We are almost not in the command module, we transfer command to the lunar module and try to somehow use it as a lifeboat to get home.

Let's solve the problem, but don't make it worse by guessing. I got a lot of recognition for the work. We did that, but the real heroes of Apollo 13 were the people in the back rooms andin the engineering facilities that provided the answers we needed. We never talked to each other about not coming home. It was like playing a game of Solitaire, as long as we had a card and could put it somewhere, the game continued and every crisis that arose we found a solution as we circled the moon and my two companions looked at the spot where we were supposed to land. and there is a lot of disappointment.

I said we're on our way home. Let's get home successfully and forget about the landing. And there's a whole side to that, which is that, on the right, the entire panel is smashed almost from the base to the entrance. really a disaster, that's incredible, okay, copy that, well, Aquarius and we thank you that Apollo 13 has to qualify with anything we do because it required a huge amount of ingenuity, a huge amount of preparation, years of preparation, a lot of guts on the part of the astronauts themselves to achieve it in Odyssey Houston waiting on Apollo 13 recy on Apollo 13 isingo 13 this is recovery and their shots look good, so you have to say that Apollo 13 was a fantastic moment in the history of human spaceflight.

You say we had one of the most Bodacious splash parties I can remember when those guys came back looking great. 20 feet 3 per second contact on St Auto Auto, we're on the surface, okay, we did a Gooding Roger, you might recognize it. I have this in my hand, the handle for the return of the contingency sample. Turns out it still has a genuine IR six on the bottom. Try some sand shooting here miles and miles and miles, get outta here, give me a shout out. big salute from the Navy ah Charlie Su from the pass how about I go out for the ballet when I get back you learn another line of work up here John you are just beautiful that is the most beautiful view what is that? standing there on the r of that crater G.

I never heard John describe it as beautiful, no, it's not very good, it's actually on this, I'll tell you it's a big roof tail with all four wheels and when it turns, SCS the rear partIt is released like in Lincoln, a ride in snow skin. Now I tell you, I can't see the bottom and I'm as close to the edge as possible, all the different steps and all the different pieces of hardware. and everything had to work and it's just inconceivable that we could do something like that, the motivation was good. It won't be my part that screws up, you know, I want to do it right and apparently everyone else felt the same way. way and we did it and we did it and we did it and we did it.

I bring you love. The real Apollo 17 was probably one of the most interesting missions because we had a real geologist there and they landed in a wonderful place. Interesting place, the tourist liter valley was chosen as a landing spot for a couple of different reasons. Number one, it was in an area of ​​the Moon that we had never been close to and it was a valley about 20 miles long and 5 miles wide. It was literally surrounded by mountains higher than a Grand Canyon. These 1.2 km depth are very far from the lamp. Look at the Challenger down there and it gives you an idea of ​​how big this valley really is.

I would prefer not to do it. Why are we on a slope, oh hey, could you go and help clle please? We stopped, obviously, in many different places on the plan and did everything from drilling core samples to experiments, drilling trenches, etc., there is orange soil, well, don't move. until I saw it and thought, well, this scientist has been on the moon too long, he's been breathing too much oxygen, there won't be any orange soil, hey, I can see it from here, it's orange, not only did we do a lot of work on the moon but We had a good time and you know that you will only get there once in your life.

One day I was shooting on the moon. Maybe, I just looked around and uh no, as we were leaving. we would not return and I said that now we leave as we once came and God willing, we will return to this Valley of History that has seen humanity complete its first evolutionary steps towards the universe, leaving planet Earth and moving towards the universe there is no a more significant contribution like the one Apollo made to history Way Houston, good ol' boys drinking whiskey and R singing this will be the day I die when you look back and see how long it's been since we flew to the moon you realize not only about how difficult it was but about how wonderful it was, frankly, sometimes I find it hard to believe that we did it, the political achievement, not to mention the engineering achievement, of putting humans on the moon and bringing them back safely. back to Earth. and then proving that it was a fluke to do it six times in everything was fantastic.

Today we take for granted that the technology comes from Apollo. Today we live in a different world because of Apollo Min. Although Jean Cernon was the twelfth and last. American stepped on the moon in 1972, space exploration did not end there but simply turned the page. In the 1970s, NASA's unmanned explorers undertook journeys that would travel millions of kilometers and would show us worlds that until now had only existed as small ones. points of light in the night sky, you know, I arrived right at the beginning of NASA. He really did something unique in that program, but people don't really recognize that we started all the digital camera color analysis, but it turned out it has this amazing feature that it can cover large areas at the same time, it generates small deviations in the characteristics of the earth and you can use the color to interpret it and thus calculate what was in the different areas of light time z 9 a.m. and I'm By then I was in the Kenyan desert on an eclipse expedition and we saw the fragments around Skylab pass over us and I thought, "Oh brother, there's been an accident on Skylab." Throw my hopes and wishes for science. that was going to come out of the SC Sky laab.

I thought I was prepared on a Time flight in 1973. I was commander of the second Sky lab mission and Jack LMA was the best Eva I've ever met and I said if I'll send Jack up there and let him work on that thing, he'll find a way. and lo and behold he goes out and plays with it for a while trying to undo these connectors and finally he undoes them and puts it all together and it worked very well Rock and it went on to a brilliant scientific discovery that had to do with chronic mass ejections and for the first time we were able See these places where large chunks of the crown explode.

It's day after day of hard work and even though you have a nice view out the window, that doesn't make up for the constant effort you have to put in to be productive in space, it's hard work and only dedicated humans can do this kind of thing. We operated for about 9 months which was much longer than had been anticipated and at that time we understood some things we had never understood before and it gave us a push forward in science that continues now to this day contact capture for Let me call you to express my great admiration for your hard work, your total dedication in preparing this first joint flight.

Today is not far off when the space missions made possible by this first joint effort will be more or less Common Place, one of the Big Surprises of the mid-20th century came with one of the Mariner spacecraft and the Mariner spacecraft headed towards Venus and discovered that the sun's magnetic field away from the Earth was almost as strong as the Earth's magnetic field now that I had been taught and everyone else had thought that the sun's magnetic field would be negligible and so he presented us with a tremendous confrontation of how could that be so okay tonight the planet that was most intriguing to humans human scientists uh was Mars Mercury was closest but it was very inhospitable Venus was the closest to us but it was very inhospitable because the atmosphere was toxic and hot Mars showed seasonal variations that suggested something was alive and I think that was the basis for creating Viking to see if there was life on Mars when We went down and discovered how dry and barren the place was it was actually a surprise.

We hoped to find microscopic life. What happened and left us in a dilemma were the three experiments that were directly life. detecting, breathed, ate, photosynthesized, everyone said there is something here and when you tried to find the corpses you couldn't so that left us in the position of why the jury is still out in the end we ended up with two successful Landers in the service and two very successful aers that exceeded their useful life by many, many months, so obviously we were all elated and everything that could be said we did it, we did it when we flew near Neptune, people were queuing at night in planetariums to be able to see the images coming from Voyager because they were not on the network in those days there was no network, you had to go somewhere in the middle of the night to see it it became a world event when Voyager was flying through these worlds and I had no idea it would have that kind of impact and of course in the long run the most important thing V has done is show how much the New Frontiers of space exist.

The 1970s really saw the beginning and great activity in the aircraft area of ​​the project, which initially focused on STL aircraft and then moved to the VTO Arena, so helicopter work began very intensively and has continued until today until it's the rest. In the flight research activity, there were about five of us who joined the U Space Systems division that had been formed to support the development of the shuttle without coming to work, it was fun to do those kinds of things that were a little unique. Something like having something very expensive. toys to play with shuttle development I think it was a great development program.

You know, there were a lot of people, including some people in Langley, who were very doubtful that the shuttle would be successful with all those thousands of thermal tiles underneath. protecting it if it would burn turned out to be a tremendous opportunity 6 5 4 we have gone to start the main engine we are the first shuttle B in the United States and the shuttle has cleared the tower a vehicle that could be launched into space like a rocket put 25 tons put cargo on orbit and land on a runway like a plane not just once but over and over again in the 1980s.

NASA would rip this concept from the pages of science fiction and place it directly on the cutting edge of space travel by climbing the platform launch. You know, looking up and seeing, you know, this huge rocket, that kind of sound that sounds like an animal, you can hear the gurgle and the hiss and you know it sounds like it's alive a few seconds before takeoff, every time I've done this. I've been a little scared about whether I really want to do this or not. With 10 seconds left in English, I'm really concentrating on the tasks at hand and trying not to think about U, you know the fact. that tons and tons and tons of rocket fuel were about to explode around us liftoff of the shuttle Discovery Roger rotate discovery into proper line alignment 8 and a half minutes to orbit 36 ​​seconds into the flight forces and sensations are simply powerful Beyond imagination they shake you so much that you can barely see the screens in front of you right after the solid rocket boosters are jettisoned after 2 minutes it's a very smooth ride the acceleration is very powerful um and uh and you're on On the way to orbit with a very different feeling, as soon as you reach orbit the engine shuts down instantly.

You go from being pressed into the seat to hanging on to your straps and kind of floating in the cockpit, the fact that I was going to be the first American woman. Going to space came with high expectations and of course it was very important for me to understand my role very well and to be very well prepared for the mission because the last thing I wanted to do was go to space and I made a mistake, so I wanted to be very, very sure that I could meet expectations, yes, but it was not for me the desire to be the first African-American space.

My desire was to make a contribution just to make. a contribution and I think I probably told people that I would probably rather not be in that role than be in that role because I thought being number two would be a lot more fun, as you can see we're having a lot of It's fun here trying to discover what happens to the human body in zero gravity. We are the World. It feels like you weigh twice what you normally do during the intro part once you get to the end, all the emotions and and focus. they're right on that last little landing and it's a nice way to end a flight when you can actually put your hands on the stick and fight yourself down the gear and lock the landing engines revving three engines now at 104% Challenger.

Speed ​​up, we gather today to mourn the loss of seven brave Americans, to share the pain we all feel, and perhaps in that sharing find the strength to endure our pain and the courage to seek the seeds of hope. The risk is something. We really have to consider it as part of our life, especially in Exploration. I know we've had some tragedies and probably will in the future, but the ones we lost will probably be the first. fortell you keep pushing, don't stop because of us, my role as a mechanical engineer was to find out what fell apart or what happened and we finally found out that the o-ring was supposed to be designed so that the pressure on one side pushes them more safely to Instead, the housing of that big O ring was just the opposite of the pressure actually pushed it out finally, of course, when the thing burned up and it actually burned the nozzle, it's pretty obvious to see what the problem is, so we have the job of redesigning a Z and take off, take off, the Americans return to space while Discovery clears the tower Roger roll Discovery, yes, I'm free, good morning, Discovery and you have to go deploy HST Ops NASA Opened the decade of the 90 by launching the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit, it would look further into space and further back in time than any other telescope, and in the last decade of the 20th century, Hubble and a host of other robotic explorers would provide astonishing new views and perspectives everyone was awake we were going to discover the secrets of the universe it was great and then things started scratching their heads why is it taking so long why can't we focus the telescope what is happening what was wrong with Hubble is the same kind of thing that's wrong with your eyes when you need glasses basically the shape of the lens was wrong so essentially the telescope was nearsighted and needed some glasses.

I was taking a shower at the hotel in Germany and they have these really fun shower heads where the shower head moves up and down and back and forth and that's when I realized we can make this instrument Robotically lift the corrective lens open, if desired. The shower head is another corrective optics to correct the aberration of all instruments. All the work leading up to the first service mission is probably the most exciting moment of my career. I have the power. NASA's program changed the nature of astronomy. We did some. Extravagant promises about Hubble, we underestimated the program, everything we said, Hubble did better.

I think it really changed the nature of what we know. Hubble is one of the most phenomenal things we've done in space. The data we get from Hubble will continue. change the way we think about ourselves about the universe and our place in it. You know Hubble images are iconic. You see them everywhere. The fingers of God. These are gas pillars that are actually many, many light years in diameter, so the scale of these things is enormous and you're actually seeing star birth. This is a Star Nursery, it starts to give you an idea of ​​how small we are and how vast we are.

The universe is and that is my favorite photo. NASA, especially GED, was the place where I was able to carry out the dreams that I had, which were to push forward an experiment that would measure the radiation from the Big Bang better than anyone had tried before and took on the job of working in Kobe, uh, during For many decades people did not agree with the Big Bang theory, they thought something else must be true. Generations of astronomers thought it must have been the steady-state theory. Einstein didn't like the idea, so when we came up with measurements that exactly fit the theoretical prediction of the Big Bang, this tremendous side of relief swept across the world, as well as our measurement of the hot and cold spots in the Big Bang's radiation.

Bang, which shows us that it is not just the Big Bang theory. true, but it also gives us the map of the seeds of structure, uh, the things that will eventually become galaxies. The Galileo probe that sent its spacecraft into Jupiter's atmosphere was the most demanding entry probe ever flown by anyone and it worked perfectly. and some of the other satellites where there appears to be accumulated evidence of water are becoming very, very interesting places to explore. I mean, who knows what's beneath the surface of the ice on Europa. Do you have water. There seems to be salt water.

You wouldn't have water if you didn't have a source of energy. The strange coloration gives some indication of the presence of organic matter when those conditions were maintained on the early Earth. Life developed in a couple of hundred million years. Well, maybe there is something interesting in Europe. There's nothing as beautiful as Tandra is browsing on her way to work nowadays we're discovering what the universe is really like and it's totally magnificent and you can only be inspired and fuck with what we find so I think. an appropriate response is complete awe and awe at the universe we're in, uh and uh, how it works is much more complicated than humans will ever properly understand. govern Houston Atlanta, we have captured Mir was a successor to the first Sal uh. space stations that the Russians built in the 70s.

I was extremely fortunate to be able to be part of the shuttle mirror program. Obviously, there were a lot of challenges when you try to work with a different culture. I mean, it was a challenge. for the Russians it was a challenge for the Americans, but everyone wanted to work together to make this a reality. I definitely think it started to teach us the lessons that we needed to learn and was key to such technical things that you know. It sounds simple but it gets very complicated just because of the language and with cultural definitions of things that, you know, I think our guys did a phenomenal job putting all those pieces together, the booster firing and Discovery taking off with a crew of six heroes. astronauts and an American legend.

On the flight I was on on Discovery in '98, we had 83 different research projects on that flight. You go up for a couple of weeks, let's say, and you find that some of the things that happen in the human body are very similar to how as you age here on Earth, changes in the body's immune system become less resistant to disease and illness. Infections, the body's ability to replace proteins in the muscles becomes less, so the question was whether we could find it by comparing my reaction to the action reaction of younger people. This up there could perhaps give you an idea of ​​what inside the body activates and deactivates the human system with respect to immunity.

Hopefully we can find ways to make it possible for younger astronauts to go on longer missions without having some of the problems they have and at the same time eliminate some of the weaknesses of old age for people here on Earth. On Endeavor, we have Unity firmly trapped on Endeavor and we're off to a great start on building the International Space Station. Effort we have capture of zarya physical separation executing burning SE we have power on we have power on and we take off Li stop of the soy rocket we have initial contact initial contact of the soy capsule with the Expedition a crew to the International Space Station the hatch opened at 10214 hour universal, the first expedition to the Space Station requests permission to take the radio call sign Alpha, we are on a real spacecraft that now makes its way above any terrestrial boundary so that our crews can work together as equals and our countries As partners, all the other vehicles we have built could be fully assembled, assembled and tested on the ground before launching into space.

The space station is so big that you know it's 360 feet wide, 280 feet long, 12 feet thick or something like that. a million pounds and it takes 46 or 47 assembly flights just to collect all the parts, so every time you put out a new part you had a different spaceship that had a different set of requirements and basically a new spaceship and in Each stage has to operate with complete success for an extended period of time, even as the international space station was being assembled in orbit, spirit and opportunity would soon sweep the Martian landscape, but at the beginning of this new millennium we would endure a tragic reminder of the dangers of space travel in Columbia Houston, we see your messages about tire pressure and did not copy the latest one at 9:00 this morning.

Mission control in Houston lost contact with our space shuttle Columbia, shortly after debris was seen falling from the sky over Texas, the Colombians were lost there. there are no survivors NASA has been charged with advancing the technology and understanding of spaceflight for this country, which means we are at the forefront of what can be done, so we are going to take risks and spaceflight is a of the areas. where we face risks daily and in the process of doing so we develop new technologies, new techniques, new inventions that we make. Discovery, this is what will keep us powerful and safe and ensure the economic vitality of our nation 1 two three, in fact, we put our many years of hypersonics research here at Langley into a vehicle that actually flew with the hyperx program, which in fact it was an exciting and exciting program, it was put on a Pegasus booster, taken to the test point and then launched 3 2 a launch launch SE restart at that point the 43 would fire up we had two Mach 7 vehicles and then we had a Mach 10 vehicle we broke our own record Mach 7 was the first record and then we broke our own record with Mach 10 As for speed, I had a great time working on airplanes, fighters and so on at the agency, not only did I build and fly some things very interesting, we also did a lot of research that then went on to other aircraft, we did a lot of work that, as you know, ultimately led to things that are in the F22 and the F-117 and then maybe in the Joint Strike Fighter.

We didn't build 747s or F-22s, but we certainly did things that helped the companies that build those types of flights The vehicles improve their planes it was a good maneuver three two achieve and start from scratch and take off the Delta rocket with the opportunity to explore and discover the secrets of our neighboring planet the reason we send unmanned spacecraft is to pave the way for humans the reason we have spirit and opportunity on Mars is to tell us a little about what the things we will find will be like when we get there because it is the intellect of man, the intelligence of man that you will never be able to recreate this computer we made them so human intentionally we gave them 2020 vision we gave them the ability to move in an environment we gave them an arm so they could reach out and touch things and then we use them to do exactly what we would do if we were there, one thing that NASA gives us is a very different perspective on the entire universe, including our own world, our own world's place in it, um, when we look at others worlds and we look through the eyes of a robot. a frozen wasteland we appreciate our own world so much more because we see what it could be like when they die, it will be sad, but they will have led such long and productive lives and they will have had honorable deaths that I will be at peace with.

It's because of what they've done, after all, they are machines, but you feel an emotional attachment. We have put so much of ourselves into these things that when we lose them we will lose a part of ourselves, it will be difficult. I will really miss it less than 10 seconds from engine start M 7 6 5 three engines on and on 3 2 1 and the liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery beginning America's new journey to the Moon Mars and beyond as you approach the space station really feels like it was enveloping you as you got closer because its size was so immense that you could barely take it in and all the windows or your peripheral vision and it seemed like you were flying into a canyon like in Star Wars almost and it totally surrounded you. . but it's a wonderful feeling to see the space station approaching and be framed by the earth below.

Very beautiful views that try to distract you from your task of flying the space shuttle when you arrive at the International Space Station. um you know, there's a little bit of a shock factor, it was very strange when they closed the hatch and we weren't on that ferry, we saw them fly and it was like, wow, we're really here, man, this is going to be a long visit. , we are scheduled about 2 hours of exercise a day and that is to try to counteract some of the negative effects of being in zero gravity on the musculoskeletal system and our cardiovascular system, so that was an important aspect of each day.

Since we're aboard the station, the crew members themselves are lab rats, so to speak, because we have a human research program that's trying to understand what happens to people when they're in space for long periods of time. , so we participated in Those experiments, obviously, I also think that the space station offers an incredible laboratory. We've added additional lab modules during Expedition 16 and with the most recent addition on the last shuttle flight, so I think it will be a spectacular lab as well. and I'm excited about what the future holds there. This is the positionof command. We have an American laptop and a Russian laptop.

Probably the greatest legacy of the International Space Station. I think the international aspect will be the fact that we're doing this internationally, it's a great technical achievement, but I think the fact that we're overcoming these cultural obstacles and bringing these people together with this common goal, I think that's one of the most important aspects of the International Space Station. I think humans should expand into space by doing so, we can learn about ourselves and improve society and the world by working together in a cooperative way, we can bring the world closer together. This is a great opportunity. so that Japan and other countries can participate in the space program such as the ISS.

NASA laboratories are the pride of the world for the things we can do. Where do science and engineers come together and say: let's do the impossible? I will, our space projects are very demanding, a person has to work, maybe nights and days and weekends, so when the schedule requires finishing something in time to be together, I will be there, that's what we feel. I feel like the whole world. He is watching us and waiting for us to do our thing and do it well and it is a tremendous opportunity, it is also a tremendous responsibility and it has always been quite clear that we do this together as teams and that is the only way we can do these incredible projects, so that I think we can be very proud of what we've accomplished, we look back in history and believe that this country was founded in part by a scientist Ben Franklin and a future president, Thomas Jefferson, who really liked him. of Science and so they would be very proud and excited to see what our country has achieved with science and the engineering miracles that have happened as a result.

I don't think they would have ever guessed it, but they would still be excited to see what has been done. NASA enters its sixth decade it is time to return to the moon this time we will return not just for a few hours or a few days but forever for the sake of exploration Innovation and inspiration for the good of humanity we will give New approach and vision of NASA for the future expiration to gain a new foothold on the moon and prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own, we as a civilization must explore, that is who we are intrinsically, that is what race is human, we are explorers and unless we continue to explore, we are going to falter as a civilization 3 2 1 when we stop exploring Nation when we stop seeking knowledge and asking questions that is the time we will wither and submerge on this planet I think it is significant It very important that we look to the future Mars, of course, will be the next outpost.

I think we will have people living on Mars in 50 years, but what will they be waiting for. I have no idea, but I'm sure. It will be fascinating. I would like to see the mission to Mars accomplished. It was something I worked on when making the proposal we made. I think there is a consensus that going to Mars is a worthy goal and I would like to see that perhaps at some point in the distant past at least some basic life forms existed on Mars and perhaps in the future they could mean a lot to me again.

I think space is important and I think the United States should continue to be at the forefront of space exploration, no matter where you go in the world, people know what the letters n AA mean, they say NASA and they say it with recognition, which in itself tells you that NASA represents something in the world, not just in the United States but around the world. Throughout all of human history, we've always had people look up and think they know the blue sky, what's up there? I wonder what it would be like if we could go up there in our time, in our lives, we have gone up there.

You know, here we are and we develop that kind of capability in our time, what a great time to be alive, the future of humanity depends on space travel, if we stay on Earth we will fight intense wars, but if we go to the moon. and Mars we will unite into one race of one color and go into space and live forever remember then then remember then in St that was a beautiful summer night remember remember remember sh sh