Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Jay Barbree on “Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight”

Episode Date: July 29, 2014

In his 55 years as NBC’s space correspondent, Jay Barbree has won the respect and friendship of many astronauts. Neil Armstrong stands above them all. Now Jay has created this very personal chronicle about his friend, with help from Neil and many of the other pioneering spacefarers.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Neil Armstrong, A Life of Flight, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. NBC space correspondent Jay Barbary returns to talk about his new book about his friend, the man who is better qualified than anyone else to land us on the moon. You'll love Jay's stories. Bill Nye is on vacation this week, but Bruce Betts is here to tell us about the night sky and help me give away light sail swag.

We begin with senior editor Emily Lakdawalla and a conversation about her latest Mars Science Laboratory update. Emily, this week I pity anybody who doesn't have 3D glasses because when I saw some of the images that you showed off of Curiosity's path up there on Mars, I said, holy something. The topography is certainly getting much more interesting. It's a little hard to tell from where Curiosity is sitting just now because the rover is

on top of a plateau that actually has lots of very pointy rocks, and it's taking the rover quite a bit of time to pick her way around those. But once she gets off this plateau and down into some valleys, there's going to be some really lovely topography ridges with fairly steep drop-offs and all kinds of wonderful landscapes to look at. Is it doing some damage to additional damage to the wheels? Well, the reason that they've picked the particular path that they have is because Curiosity will mostly be spending her time on sand-filled valleys that should be pretty good to the wheels. It's just that every once in a while, in order to get from one set of valleys to the next one, she's going to have to climb up and over a little bit of a highland. That's what she's doing right now. It probably is doing some damage to the wheels,

but that's expected. As long as they keep the damage rate relatively low, they're going to be just fine. With all of this attention to just getting from one place to another, is there much science going on? Well, when they do driving, there isn't a lot of time for science. They can just zap a couple of targets before they drive, and then they have to spend most of the rover's wakeful time actually rolling the wheels. But they've gotten pretty creative at jamming science into the very small amount of time available. And so they're doing some pretty nice surveys of the different kinds of rocks and materials that the rover's encountering along the way. You do something pretty nice. You grab some blog entries from three colleagues

that really give us a day-by-day rundown of what's happened in recent days. Yeah, those come from the United States Geological Survey's Astrogeology website, which is just a cool name for a field of study. That's a blog that has recently restarted after a brief hiatus, and now there are three scientists maintaining it, so it's pretty great to read all of those daily accounts of the rover activities. And you insert it into here, one of a couple of great videos, having to do with ChemCam. Tell us about that.

Well, they've been wanting to catch this one for a really long time. ChemCam is the laser that's on top of the robot's head. Curiosity uses the laser to vaporize material, and from the wavelengths of the light that is emitted when it's vaporized, Curiosity can tell something about the elements that are there. Well, they've been trying to capture that actual light, the vaporization and the expanding cloud of plasma, and they successfully did that a couple of weeks ago and have a cool video to prove it. So lots to see and read on this entry, this update on the Curiosity mission. It's in Emily's blog at planetary.org.

It happens to be dated the 24th of July, 2014. Emily, thanks very much. I look forward to talking again next week. Thank you, Matt. She is our senior editor and the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Back in a moment with Jay Barbary to talk about his great new book about Neil Armstrong. Jay Barbary last visited with us a few years ago when a revised edition of his bestseller Moonshot came out.

His new work is about the man NASA picked to command the Apollo 11 mission. But that's not all it's about. I've written a review of Neil Armstrong, A Life in Flight, that has more to say about why I enjoyed this book so much. Yes, it's a superb chronicle of space triumphs and tragedies, but it's the personal observations, insights, and tales from Neil and his astronaut colleagues that make this book very special. The story begins in the skies over North Korea, where a young aviator began to demonstrate that he was the right man for the job,

and a great man in many other respects. Now in his 80s, Jay Barbary is still a correspondent for NBC News. I reached him by phone on the 18th of July. Jay Barbary, it is such a pleasure to talk to you once again. And it was only moments ago that I realized, 45 years ago today, as we speak, Apollo 11 was about halfway to the moon. That's correct. That's where they were as we were speaking today. But, you know, I tell you, Matt, the thing that kind of stuns you is to stop and think that people under 45 years of age on this planet today weren't here when Neil stepped onto the moon. And that's over half of the people. And, you know, if I may say right here, one of the reasons we wanted to go ahead and do this book, Neil and I just finished doing five stories for MSNBC.com on space in the 20 teens.

The last one ran in July of 2012. He died in August of 2012. And we had talked off and on about doing this book for like, say, 20 years, because the first time we wrote a book together was Moonshot in 1992 that was released in 1994, the 25th anniversary. And we talked about doing this type of his life of flight book, not a biography, you know, but it is his life of flight. That's what we wanted to get in.

And then when he passed away, I'm talking to John Glenn, and John and I and Neil had been to a couple of things together and done a couple of things together in the last year or so before he passed away. And he said to me, he says, Jay, you know, if you don't write this book, who's going to do it? Because he says, as we speak today on the 18th, John Glenn is 93 years old, Matt. This is his birthday. Wow. And he said, I know you talked about that with Neil, and you need to go ahead and you need to do it.

And I talked to my agent, Martha Kaplan, no relative of yours, I don't think. Not that I know of. Anyway, she says, yeah, this is what we should do. And we talked to Thomas Stafford, who commanded Apollo 10 and pioneered two months flight before Neil flew in July of 69. And he pioneered the way to the moon. He said, yeah, we need to do this. We need to get it out there because we looked around among ourselves, we being Jim Lovell and all, and we looked around, and we're all over 80 years old. And as one quipped, we're all in God's waiting room.

I like that. So anyway, if we don't do it, who's going to do this book? So anyway, if we don't do it, who's going to do this book? And we wanted to do a reportage that is a written recreation of direct observation to an event. And that's what we got here. That's the first criteria reportage. Is that why you credit Neil Armstrong in the book, in your long list of acknowledgments, as the principal storyteller? Oh, sure, because he is. We gathered all of this over these years.

I knew the man for 50 years. I first met him in 1962. Didn't pay any more attention to him than I did any of the other nine or seven astronauts from Mercury that was already there. Neil and I got a little close in 1964 because we each lost a child, and we got to talking about that, and that's in the book. So we got a little closer, and I became, a lot of people say, well, were you a great friend of Neil Armstrong's? No, I wasn't a great friend of Neil Armstrong's. I think I was a pretty great friend of Neil Armstrong's. I think I was a pretty good friend of Neil Armstrong's. But more important, I became a trusted friend to Neil Armstrong,

because as a reporter, I would never use anything without his permission. That way, I had his confidence, and he gave me stuff, Matt, in confidence that I chose not to reveal in this book, even though he has passed away and I will not reveal it. I had one of his sons, for example, won't tell you which one. It was Rick and Mark, but asked me a question about something that Neil told me in confidence, and I wouldn't even repeat it to them. that Neil told me in confidence, and I wouldn't even repeat it to them. I said, Neil told me that in confidence.

What your father told you about it is between you and your father. You clearly earned the position of trust that you built up, not just with Neil, but with all of the astronauts that you cross paths with, and that's an awful lot of astronauts. cross paths with, and that's an awful lot of astronauts. Do you have any doubt in your mind that Neil Armstrong was the right choice to command that first mission to land on the moon? God, no. And I can tell you, Matt, why. He was probably the best pilot out of all of these great pilots to make that mission because he had the ability to get out of tight situations. He proved it. He ejected him from his jet over the mountains of Korea during a Korean conflict just three weeks after he was 21 years old.

In fact, we opened the book with that chapter, and Neil wanted it done. That chapter he got to read, because he told me about how the Navy never got the story right, the Stars and Stripes never got it right. So he told me in detail, and we went back and recreated the situation. And Neil read it, made a couple of little changes, and he was just happy as he could be, you know, with that first chapter. Now, he did not get to read anything else. Everything else was written after his death. This guy proved to be he was the best pilot. But more than that, when you go to character with Neil Armstrong, he never ingratiated himself or enriched himself from that experience when many people would have. They would, as Brian Williams said,

they would have been richer than Donald Trump with a thousand Moonburger joints. But money never seemed that important to Neal. Maybe it was, but it never seemed that important to him. He just wanted his family fed. He wanted them clothed. He wanted them comfortable. And beyond that, he didn't seem to be interested.

He was more interested in continuing to build the stockpile of knowledge that we need. He was a scientist as well as a research aeronautical engineer, research test pilots. He got the life that he wanted from the time he was 10 years old to he passed away when he was 80. For 70 years, he lived the life he wanted. You know, I'm so glad that you brought up that story of what happened to him in the skies over Korea, because it comes up again later in the book. Neil, unlike I would think some of the other astronauts, because of ejecting over Korea, he had an idea of what freefall, of what zero-g felt like.

Oh, sure. Yeah, sure. We opened the first chapter of the book, is him taking off from the Essex on the morning of September the 3rd, 1951. He'd just turned 21 when he took off on that mission, and after losing half of his wing to an anti-aircraft cable, he could not come back. He had to eject. Just to keep his aircraft airborne, he had to fly at 170 to 180 knots. He couldn't land at that speed on the carrier.

There are so many other great anecdotes and stories in this book, and you tell them exceedingly well. Would you talk... Thank you, sir. You're very welcome. Talk about what happened on the Gemini mission. This is pretty well known, but you bring insights to it because of your really intimacy with Neil. What happened to him on that Gemini flight that could have ended his career but ended up proving to NASA that, yeah, this just might be the right guy to take us to the moon? You're absolutely correct with that. Neil was the fastest fingers and hands ever, as far as I'm concerned, at the controls of an aircraft or a spacecraft. Yet he was the slowest man on the ground to make up his mind. He was terrible.

You'd ask him a question, and he'd say, you know, that seems to be a pretty good idea. I'll think about it. Well, he may not get back to you for two or three weeks, but when he was in that aircraft, he was fast. Now, what he did, he performed step after step after step he and dave scott they had trained so well for it he performed our first rendezvous and docking in space by docking to the the agina stage atlas agina stage the top stage that it sent up as a target rocket and everything looked good they were they were with it, everything looked good,

and they went out of radio contact with mission control. We didn't have in those days 100% contact with mission control that they do today because of satellites. We had to go over stations, and they were going over China of all places out of range of any stations when it started spinning on them. And they first suspected the Agena. It kept getting faster and faster. And Neil knew, without question, that they would black out. If they blacked out, that was the end of it. And they were already doing about 400 RPM. Anyway, he knew that they were getting close and he knew he had to get

things under control so he had to fire a couple of uh rocket thruster rings that he normally used for coming back in they got it under control enough that he could get off of the uh gina well when he got off of the gina they fell they felt okay. Well, the only problem is the Gemini kept spinning. So it wasn't the fault of the Agena rocket. It was the fault of the control system, the rocket thrusters on Gemini. And they started firing one at a time till they got down. And I think if memory serves me correctly, it was thruster number eight, and it was stuck open. They couldn't shut it off, and it was just spinning them faster and faster and faster.

So he knew he had to use more power than that ring of thrusters to get down, so he used his reentry thrusters. He had two rings, A and B. He fired A, and he had some left of it when he brought it under control, and they went one thruster at a time. They found out it was this one, and they shut it off, and then they only used the rest of them, and they got it under control. But then the book says you have to come home at the next opportunity, so they wound up coming in and landing in the Pacific Ocean, 400 or so miles from Okinawa. They came in pretty much by themselves, and they made a landing to be spotted by an aircraft. And it was something that only the very skilled of pilots could have done

by themselves, out of range with talking to other people. So that was one of the things, as you said, Matt, that set him up to make the first landing on the moon. Jay, there are so many other insights that you put in this book, and some of them are stories that are pretty well known, but you put a different spin on them because of your communication, because of the trust that you had from Neil. I'm thinking in particular of a story that was an eye-opener for me. We'll go back to when Eagle was descending to the lunar surface, the lunar module with Buzz Aldrin and Neil inside.

Neil had to find a good place to land, and he was flying sideways for a while. Talk a little bit about that story, because Neil apparently wasn't as worried as some people back here on Earth. No, because Matt, he always prepared for the expected. He would train for what they thought would take place. But what concerned him more was the unexpected. And he always trained so that if the unexpected was suddenly before him, he would have to handle it. In his training, I think this is where he took it a step farther.

Well, when they're coming down on the moon, all of a sudden he realized, looking at the sites that they were going over that had been computerized for them already and also had been shot by Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan when they went down in the lunar module Snoopy to 8.4 miles. All of a sudden he realized that the computer was landing him about four miles from its original target. And he saw a football-sized crater they were headed for. So he knew he had to take over and fly Eagle. He did, and he had practiced this 61 times in his lunar training aircraft,

which one of them he had to eject from with less than three seconds before hitting the ground, another tight spot he got out of instantly and did the right thing. another tight spot he got out of instantly and did the right thing. So he started going across the surface of the moon, and Buzz has given him his height, and they're looking for a smooth place to land. And when they got down below 50 feet, Neil felt pretty good, even though he was running out of fuel.

People at Mission Control did not realize what Neil had come to realize. And Neil had come to realize that above the moon, at one-sixth of Earth's gravity, if he ran out of fuel, the limb would settle easily onto the moon, probably without tearing anything up. So he looked for the smooth place to land, he picked it up, Buzz agreed with him, they settled it on the moon with 16 seconds of fuel left. That's Jay Barbary, author of Neil Armstrong, A Life in Flight. He'll tell us more when Planetary Radio returns in a minute.

Hi, this is Casey Dreyer, Director of Advocacy at the Planetary Society. We're busy building something new, something unprecedented, a real grassroots constituency for space. We want to empower and engage the public like never before. If you're interested, you can go to planetary.org slash SOS to learn how you can become a space advocate. That's planetary.org slash SOS. learn how you can become a space advocate. That's planetary.org slash SOS. Save our science.

Thank you. Your name carried to an asteroid. How cool is that? You, your family, your friends, your cat, we're inviting everyone to travel along on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. All the details are at planetary.org slash b-e-n-n-u. You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash Bennu. Planetary Society members, your name is already on the list. The Planetary Society, we're your place in space.

Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We are talking with NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbary. St. Martin's Press has just published Jay's Neil Armstrong, A Life in Flight. It captures the quiet, intelligent passion of this pilot among pilots, along with the events that shaped him and those he helped to shape, climaxing 45 years ago when he and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon. My review of the book can be found on this week's show page at planetary.org slash radio. They're not all happy stories, of course.

And you really couldn't tell the story of Neil Armstrong without involving all those other astronauts, and for that matter, his family. I mean, his wife, Janet. Say something about the terrible day when Janet had to go next door to the home of Ed White, the day that we lost the Apollo 1 astronauts. Well, I was not privy to that. My best source on that was our man being an NBC man in Houston, Harold Williams. He was there, and he relayed to me. And that's the reason I have so many people in the front of the book

that are contributors. I wanted to acknowledge all of them. Yeah, credit where credit is due. Yeah, credit where credit is due. So anyway, it was a terrible burden on her because Neil and her had been through a fire where their home burned a couple years earlier. Well, Ed and his wife had been perfect helping them, you know, get out of the fire, make sure the boys were out of the house and everything of that nature. And they were very close to Ed White and his wife. In fact, when they came there as Gemini 9 astronauts, Neil and Ed bought three lots in that place to build on, and they split one lot in half, and so they had a lot and a half to build their houses on.

This was the kind of relationship it was. And Neil was in Washington rubbing elbows, which he hated to do, at a couple of official events where he signed a treaty that nobody would lay claim to any part of anybody in the solar system, like the moon, for example. And they went back to their hotel, and this is when they found out about it. And he tried to call Janet. He couldn't, but she was over with Mrs. White when they came, and the astronaut came and told her exactly what had happened with the Apollo 1 fire. So it was a terrible place to be in.

It was one of these times that test pilots always pull together, It was one of these times that test pilots always pull together, and she did her duty as any wife of a test pilot would have done. Did Neil, and for that matter, the other American astronauts, did they feel some kinship with the Soviet astronauts who, for a while there, were doing well? Of course they did. And the Soviet astronauts, cosmonauts felt kinship with them. When the N1 blew up and Alexei Leonov was standing there, Alexei Leonov was to ride that to the moon. They still had a shot at beating Americans to the moon.

But it blew up and tore to pieces, and Alexei knew. He knew then, I'm not going to be able to go. Of course, what they were going to do, he was going to have to go outside and go into a landing bug by himself. It was quite an awkward thing they were trying to do to get there. Their technology, it proved what John Kennedy suspected from the beginning. Even though the Russians beat us into orbit with a satellite, they only beat us because Eisenhower was dragging his feet. We just didn't do it. They weren't

interested in it. He and Wilson, the Secretary of Defense, considered it a stunt more than they did exploration. That's how we got beaten, because von Braun had the Redstone No. 9 with a satellite on it on the launch pad in 1956, a year before the Russians, and they made him take it down. They wouldn't even let him launch it. Anyway, Neil and them knew this, and they knew they were brothers in a sense with the cosmonauts. And when that N-1 was lost, at that point, Alexei Leonov, in his own mind, and Alexei told me this himself, wished luck to Neil and the guys. Wow. And so he just wished he was going with them. Let's take it to after Apollo 11's tremendous success,

something that should be part of human history for the rest of time. We are hoping this book is. This is why, really, Matt, not to brag, but this is why we tried to write this book, because there's no other book on Neil out there that tells this. So this is for, hopefully, history, and it's had a huge library sale, and we hope in all the libraries for people to come, because we're not going to be around that much longer. Go ahead. I'm sorry I interrupted. No, it's Carter Wright, and you told me you were already on the bestseller list after only a week.

A lot of people think that Neil, after Apollo 11, became something of a recluse. And you've got it. But you've got a lot of evidence in the book that even though he certainly liked his privacy, when he felt there was a call, a call to duty, he was there. I mean, talk about some of the things that he did for NASA and the committees that he served on. Yes, he served as the vice chairman of the Challenger Commission that investigated the Challenger accident, the shuttle Challenger. And actually, he did that and he did the investigation because Bill Rogers, the former secretary of state that was a chairman, he was, you know,

rubbing elbows and glad-handing people. He was handling the politics of it while Neil and the other investigators were out there finding out what happened. And they did. They figured it out. Yes, they did. Yes, they did. How did Neil feel toward the end of his life? I think he talked to you about this kind of stuff, about where we should be in space, what the United States should be doing. He was so disappointed that we hadn't been back to the moon.

And, Matt, we haven't been out of low Earth orbit for 42 years. Crazy, ain't it? That's Apollo 17. Neil was so happy we went to the moon. What he could never understand was why did we leave. He never understood that but he understood politics and he knew what was going on and we did a lot together wrote a lot about this and he wanted us to continue space exploration in increments going farther and farther out as we

learn what we're doing now today most of the people think that space exploration is some commercial company being able to fly something to the space station. No. We've been doing that for 40 years, for crying out loud. There's nothing to be learned there. We know we can rendezvous in Earth orbit. We know we can dock with the International Space Station. And we know as long as we're not any higher than that, we're protected

by the Earth's magnetosphere from radiation. See, NASA has a budget of about $16 billion a year. That's enough money. We don't need to spend anything more on NASA, but we are spending so much of NASA's budget on pet projects for the politicians and their constituents back home. We need to be spending at least half of that on manned spaceflight going farther and farther into space, and eventually we would get to Mars, and we could colonize Mars. This is where we've got to go. We've got to go beyond the moon.

This is what Neil thought. He liked the threes, no farther away than three seconds from communicating with mission control or three days to returning to Earth. After we know exactly what we're doing, exactly, then we can go on out for five days or back past the Lagrangian points. These are the things that we wrote about. And this is what we should be doing. We should be settling the problem of the irradiation.

Do we do that by coming up with the small magnetospheres that we carry with us, devices that will create a magnetosphere around our spacecraft that will repel all the radiation. How do we do this? We come up with better propulsion systems. We're working on it so we can get to Mars in half the time. But if we sent astronauts to Mars today, Matt, at the speed that we'd have to send them without the protection they need from radiation,

they'd be babbling idiots by the time they got there. It should already be as it is being studied by robots today. The equipment should be in place where the best livable place would be, and it should be a one-way trip. We send the people there, we land there, and we colonize it. Same thing as the wagon trains going west a couple of centuries ago. They should be ready to step to other planets. And also the possibility of a huge space city. There are so many solutions that we could learn because the Earth is nothing more than our cradle. And, you know, we've got to get the diapers off and quit living in our cradle for crying out loud. That's how Neil felt.

Jay, a few weeks ago, I finally got to meet and spend a few minutes with Gene Cernan. And it was terrific. But you know what it reminded me of? What? How much I envy you because you have met and talked with all these guys, and especially Neil Armstrong. He is a wonderful person. He is. He's a wonderful person.

I had a terrific time talking to him, but I could only envy you in particular for the relationship that you built with Neil Armstrong. You have, I think, really led a blessed life. Oh, well, I've got no complaints. Oh, well, I've got no complaints. I'm 80 years old today, been married to the same woman for 54 years, and she beats me less than twice a month now. So I couldn't be happier, Matt. I feel real good about getting this book done. Our team, not just me, but our space team won the Emmy

for reporting Neil Armstrong's landing on the moon. And as you know, in television, that's the highest award you can get. So I broke the story of the Challenger accident two days after it happened. The first man, when I broke it on Tom Brokaw's show, the first man on the phone with me afterwards was Neil Armstrong, and he wanted to know what did I know that I didn't tell Brokaw. So you cannot have relationships with people like this if you go out and break their trust. But I hope, as Gene Cernan, you mentioned a while ago, says on the back of the jacket,

you'll find the Neil Armstrong I knew in these pages. And the fact that you've got an introduction by John Glenn, I think that probably speaks for itself. It sure does. It is a wonderful combination of excellent journalism and personal stories that I suspect only you could tell and that only you were trusted to tell by Neil Armstrong and many of his colleagues, these pioneers in space. Jay, I want to thank you for coming back on Planetary Radio.

And I also want to mention that people might want to look for my review of the book. It's Neil Armstrong, A Life of Flight by Jay Barbary. And it's from St. Martin's Press. We'll have that review up just about the time this show becomes available at planetary.org. We'll have a link to it from the show page at planetary.org slash radio. Jay, it has just been a delight. Thank you for capturing this important piece of history for us. Matt, you're most welcome, and thank you, and God bless.

You're a good guy. Hang in there and keep going, okay? Talk to you later, buddy. We'll keep trying to fight the good fight. That's Jay Barbary. He's still with NBC News, a 55-year career. He's the only person on Earth to have covered all 166 American astronaut flights and moon landing. And as you heard, he was part of the team for NBC News that won the Emmy for his coverage of his friend Neil Armstrong's first walk on the moon. Bruce Betts is on the Skype line. We are ready to bring you once again the What's Up segment that finishes each episode of Planetary Radio.

Welcome back. Hey, thanks. Good to be back. Can I tell a funny story? Yes. It's kind of a cosmic weird story, actually. A couple of weekends ago, before I talked to Jay Barbary, but I was reading his great book, I was down at a birthday party that my 103-year-old Aunt Dora was at.

I happened to mention that I was reading this book about Neil Armstrong. And she said, well, Matthew, did I ever tell you about the time I sat next to him on an airplane? Apparently, she had not. She didn't know who he was. He was a very nice young man, she said. This was March of 1969. They had a lovely talk. He insisted that she share his taxi when they got to, I think they were headed to St. Louis.

Then he said when he was dropping her off, and she got out of the taxi, he said, wish me luck. I'm going on a big mission. And she said, really? Where are you going? He said, I'm going to the moon. And she laughed.

Yeah, sure you are. So July 20, 1969, a few months later, she's screaming, watching the television. Wow. Okay. I'm sorry. I hope that was an entertaining story. I thought it was. Tell us about the night sky. It was indeed. The moon that he went to will be between Saturn and Mars in the evening sky on August 3rd. So it'll kind of wash out Saturn and Mars. But if you have any trouble finding them, check it out on August 3rd. And every night for every evening in the south for about the next month, you can check out Mars and Saturn getting closer and closer. So it's going to be kind of fun in the sky, reddish Mars, yellow Saturn in the south and hanging with the moon on August 3rd.

Venus still super low in the pre-dawn in the east. On to this week in space history. Appropriately Apollo. Different Apollo. Apollo 15. First time they have the announcement. And on the moon, we've got a vehicle designed specifically to drive across the moon. Be there.

Yes, the first human-driven vehicle on the moon with Apollo 15 this week, 1971. Zoom, zoom. Zoom. On to random space fact. Should have saved that for Halloween. Oh, I've got better for Halloween. Random Space Fact. Should have saved that for Halloween. Oh, I've got better for Halloween. Oh, good. I'm looking forward. So speaking of things slamming and other things at high speeds,

so when you've got an international space station in orbit for long, long periods of time, you kind of want to protect it from little space debris and micrometeoroids. protect it from little space debris and micrometeoroids. The U.S. portions are protected by reinforced shells consisting of an outer aluminum shell, a layer of insulation, six layers of Nexdel, and six layers of Kevlar materials to absorb the maximum amount of energy from impacting particles, followed by the aluminum shell. And this is known, of course, as a stuffed Whipple's shield.

That's great. I think they sell those at TGIF as well. You can get them in packs of six at Costco. The Russian ESA and Jackson modules, of course, have things similar, but slightly different. I like them stuffed with cheese even more, but okay. That's what they do for the moon. On to the trivia contest to get us out of this. We asked you in our fabulous Blanter Radio Live approximately how much total area do the light sail solar sails have how do we do man wow we got more than double

the normal number the usual number of entries i had barely enough time to get through all of them thank you everyone who there were so many people who said lovely things about the radio show how much they enjoyed how they listened to it we got entries entries from Brazil, from Greece, from Atlanta, from Honolulu, from Mercer Island, from New Zealand and Australia, from the UK, from Germany, from Ontario, California, Sweden, the Czech Republic, India, even New Jersey. Wow. Here's our winner. She's from Deltona, Florida. It's Monica Gibbs, who's going to get not just a

light sail polo shirt but a light sail fleece vest she said that the approximate area of light sail unfurled deployed is 32 square meters that is indeed correct you know what else she said she said you guys rock yeah totally which is not why she won it was random.org i promise but we don't mind hearing that kind of stuff we also heard from robert lee in brewster new york he calculated i don't know you know where he started what assumptions he made but he calculated that that 32 square meters will be hit by about 10 to the 23rd photons per second. I like this one as well. From Gareth Allen in the United Kingdom, who said that 32 square meters, that's roughly half the base area of Leonardo da Vinci's parachute. That was actually, yeah, that drove the design.

Little known fact. All right, here's my favorite of all the silly ones that we got. Matt Lathrop, 32 square meters or nearly. He said, that's approximately the same area as one of my college apartments. Does LightSail have a kitchenette? No, it comes with a microwave, though. We're working on it, though. We're working on it.

Maybe a hot plate. All right. What do you got for next time? Approximately how long, longest to mention, how long was the Apollo lunar roving vehicle that astronauts drove on the moon? How long was it? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to get us your entry. And you'll need to get it to us this time by Tuesday, August 5th at 8 a.m. Pacific time. And one of you out there is going to win a Planetary Radio t-shirt. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about footprints. Thank you, and good night. On the moon, no doubt. Thank you, Neil. Thank you, Bruce. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us each week here on What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California,

and is made possible by the members of the Society who know what happened on July 20, 1969. Clear skies.