Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - NBC Space Correspondent Jay Barbree's MOON SHOT

Episode Date: July 4, 2011

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A Shot at the Moon, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Today we celebrate 50 years of humans in space with a man who has covered it every step of the way. Jay Barbary co-wrote the just reissued and enhanced bestseller, Moonshot, the inside story of America's Apollo moon landings. Bill Nye has been looking back at Earth from space, and Bruce Betts will help me find major appliances in space.

First up is the editor of the Planetary Society blog, Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, a new month promises to be an eventful month in space. We're going to talk about your what's up in the solar system for July, but first, a couple of interesting things in the blog about the space shuttle with that last launch coming up, we think, on July 8th as we speak. That's right. And you know, human space exploration is not something that I typically cover, which is why I'm so happy we have Jason Davis guest blogging at the Planetary Society blog. He has posted two reports that tell you exactly what's going to be happening at every moment during the launch, the very last launch of Atlantis. And there'll be one more of those

coming this week. And he will be covering the launch in detail currently scheduled for July 8. There's also a really cool feature, I just point to it on the Atlantic magazine's in focus feature, which the same guy from the Boston Globe who used to do the big picture and he jumped over to Atlantic late last year, and he just picked 61 amazing images. It's beautiful. I especially love one that has about half the crew of the Starship Enterprise watching the unveiling of the Starship or Space Shuttle Enterprise back quite a few years ago, more than I care to talk about. I think I was out there for that. Okay, what is coming up this month in space? Well, as with last month, the big news this month is going to be dawn. Dawn will be getting into orbit at Vesta in a couple of weeks. And so the pictures are going to slowly become clearer and clearer, and we're just opening our eyes on a brand new world. It's going to be very exciting.

of exploring strange new worlds across the solar system. So you've still got spacecraft active at Mercury and Venus and the Moon and Mars and Saturn doing all of their everyday work. Then I finally added three new spacecraft to my roundup because they are all at Kennedy Space Center getting ready for launch. That's Juno, which is launching in August, and GRAIL, which is launching in September, and Mars Science Laboratory or Curiosity Rover, which is launching in November. So Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity Rover, which is launching in November. So an exciting month and an exciting year yet to come.

Of course, we were talking about Juno just last week on this program. Let no one tell you that NASA or the space program in America are over with this last shuttle mission. Far from it. Amen to that. Emily, as always, thanks very much. Thank you, Matt. mission. Far from it. Amen to that. Emily, as always, thanks very much. Thank you, Matt. Emily Lakdawalla is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to not The Atlantic, not yet anyway, but Sky and Telescope magazine.

Back in a moment with Jay Barbary, here's Bill. Hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here. I'd like to report on my recent trip to Washington, D.C. to be part of the Alliance for Earth Observation Conference. So the Alliance for Earth Observation is a group, a consortium of people from industry, that is to say, satellite makers, space camera makers, and people from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, and especially United States Geologic Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, which, by the way, has a new deputy administrator, Kathy Sullivan, who, unlike many of us, has flown in space and was on the Planetary Society Board of Directors for a long time. Anyway, she has challenges. We have to understand the Earth's climate.

The climate is changing. Now, there are people that want to argue about the cause, but the climate is changing, and humans are doing it. So here's the thing. How is it changing? Where is it changing? Where is rainfall going to move to? Where is the salty part of the ocean going to get moved around by heat and sunlight

that tilted the Earth? Where's all this stuff going to go? Well, you have to understand it. And so we are going to observe the earth from space and agree on protocols, on ways to go about it, maybe specific software issues so that people can share data and merge. And one of the interesting things, there were people from the insurance industry there. Predicting risk and how much to invest in insurance with the climate change is quite a challenging thing. So we had the great opportunity and the honor to go to Senator Barbara Mikulski's office. Senator Mikulski represents the state of Maryland, which includes the Robert Goddard Space Flight Center and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, both places that make extraordinary spacecraft.

Now, she's been a long supporter of space exploration. We gave her the Leadership in Earth Observation Award, the first one. She was very gracious and honored, and we want her to keep up the good work. It was an honor and an opportunity and perhaps a chance to ever so slightly change the world. I got to fly. Bill Nye, the planetary observation guy. 50 years. That's how long it has been since Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, followed three weeks later by Alan Shepard. That's how long it has been since Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, followed three weeks later by Alan Shepard.

Forty-two years since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon. These stories and much more are chronicled in Moonshot, the inside story of America's Apollo moon landings. NBC correspondent Jay Barbary is the only one of four authors of that book who is still around. I called him up to talk about its recent republishing as an enhanced and updated e-book. Jay was at his home in Florida, not far from where he has covered every American launch of men and women into space. Jay, it is both a pleasure and an honor to talk to you on Planetary Radio. Thank you for joining us. It's my pleasure, Matt. My pleasure. Is it true that you were banging on the gates at Canaveral when they tried to send Explorer 1 up? You wanted to get in there?

That's true. I was down here banging on the gates, all of us reporters. I was outside at a phone booth, actually, right outside of the gate, Matt. But we got to see it go up. Now we're talking about actually the first attempt that we tried to get a satellite up. But when we actually launched Explorer 1 on the 31st of January, 1958, they let us on. That was the first one that we got on to watch go into space. That was just at the beginning of what came to be called the space race, which dominates a good piece of this terrific book,

Moonshot, the Inside Story of America's Apollo Moon Landings. You really have a great sense of how that competition drove what would happen leading right up to July 20, 1969. And I do want to point out, here we are. I mean, you reissued the book for the 50th anniversary of the first American in space, Alan Shepard, your co-writer on the book. And now we are just a few weeks ahead of the 42nd anniversary of that first moon landing. It has been quite a run. That's true, Matt. If this week's last shuttle launch gets off on time, it will be returning from space and

landing on the 42nd anniversary of Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon, which was, as you pointed out, July the 20th, 1969. Boy, I sure hope then they get it off on Friday the 8th, which is still ahead of us as we have this conversation. Some of our listeners may be hearing, some of them may already know if it happened. So you got to know not just your co-writers, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, pretty well judging from the book. I mean, there are what appear to be inside information on pretty intimate behind-the-scenes conversations throughout this book featuring these and other astronauts. That's true, Matt. And we have to remember that most of the people alive today on this planet weren't born then. And it was a situation where Sputnik had been launched, the space age had been open, and America was trying to catch up in a lot of ways. And these astronauts, the first seven

Mercury astronauts, were top test pilots, and they were brought in to get us into space, and nobody knew anything about space, but they were here to learn. And the difference between those astronauts who went out and rode these early rockets and kicked the tires and climbed on board and actually did it themselves, today astronauts are riding aboard this space shuttle and other spacecraft like Soyuz that are completely computerized and set in stone as far as countdowns and where they go and what they're doing.

It's altogether a different world, but it was a very heroic effort by these original seven astronauts, and Moonshot is the only book that Alan Shepard ever did, our first into space. He also took the longest spacewalk on the moon. He went for two miles with his partner, Edgar Mitchell. The book has all the details about them personally, and then what was happening on the space front. And these guys, these first seven, the Mercury Seven, talk about a band of brothers. There was a tremendous sense of camaraderie among them, right? There sure was. And today there's two of them surviving, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.

Of course, everyone knows John Glenn. He was a longtime senator from Ohio, but he was the first to orbit Earth. He also returned aboard a shuttle and flew. How did you pull the book together? How did it happen in the first place? I got the idea. I wanted to do it. I'd been playing with books, and I wanted to do it, and I figured the guy to do it with was Alan Shepard,

a guy I had my good friend Howard Benedict of the Associated Press that worked with me, who is now gone. I'm the only surviving author on the book. We had Deke Slayton, the chief astronaut. We pulled everything together, got it written. It was published originally by Ted Turner in Atlanta, Turner Publishing Company. It went to number three on the New York Times bestseller list. It's published in eight countries. So we thought this was the time to bring it back, update it with the known facts that we have today that we didn't know then, and also put a fresh new chapter on the front and a fresh closing chapter on the back to reflect what's going on in the space world today, what's happening with our space program.

To say nothing of an introduction by Neil Armstrong himself. Sure. Neil is just the greatest guy in the world. We could not have picked a better person, a person of character, than Neil Armstrong to be the first to step on the moon for Earth. And we were very fortunate to have Neil to introduce the book and to participate in it. You know, we wanted to bring it back as an enhanced electronic book, but we also wanted to put the print version out, and most of the guys of those days today, most of them are in wheelchairs, but anyway, they are buying the printed version of the book. They're not into e-books, but people who are,

when you're reading about Alan Shepard's first launch into space, up comes a little television screen, and you click on it, and you get to see it, and you get to hear the man talk. And you do this, you get to hear Neil Armstrong on the moon. That's NBC correspondent Jay Barbary. He'll be back with us in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Sally Ride. After becoming the first American woman in space, I dedicated myself to supporting space exploration and the education and inspiration of our youth. That's why I formed

Sally Ride Science, and that's why I support the Planetary Society. The Society works with space agencies around the world and gets people directly involved with real space missions. It takes a lot to create exciting projects like the first solar sail, informative publications like an award-winning magazine,

and many other outreach efforts like this radio show. Help make space exploration and inspiration happen. Here's how you can join us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Jay Barbary wrote Moonshot, the inside

story of America's Apollo moon landings, with Mercury 7 astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, along with Associated Press reporter Howard Benedict. The bestseller has been reissued as an e-book with video segments and updated sections. Jay continues to cover human spaceflight, working as an NBC correspondent for more than five decades. You cover so many of the key events that took place, particularly between Alan Shepard's 1961 flight and, well, you know, beyond the moon landings. It goes right up through Apollo-Soyuz. That's sort of the coda on the book. Could you pick your thought of what NASA's finest hour might have been during that period? Well, you know, there were several finest hours.

You cannot get away from the fact that Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon was their finest hour. But again, you have to remember when Alan Shepard climbed into Freedom 7, that little capsule on top of Redstone, one person had been up there, Yuri Gagarin. Had they not been so cautious, Alan would have been the first up there. But that doesn't matter. There was like, you know, three weeks difference. He was going up there. We knew nothing about space. There was a lot of scientists that didn't think there was any way that people could survive.

That's why the Americans put the chimpanzee up there first instead of putting Alan Shepard, Ham, the chimpanzee, rode and survived the same flight that he went in. But there was so much that thought was going on. The eyes would pop out. The blood would boil. Five pounds per square inch pressure wasn't enough. Couldn't survive on weightless. It was ridiculous by today's standards. But again, this was the type of atmosphere that was happening.

And Alan Shepard, he climbed in there and he had one big worry. The whole big worry was that he didn't screw this thing up. And that's the last thing he said before they launched. In fact, they kept delaying and kept delaying. And they didn't make thing he said before they launched. In fact, they kept delaying, kept delaying, and they didn't make any provisions for the man to urinate because this was a 15-minute flight. Well, he'd had all his coffee and all of this, and by the time he got off, he'd been sitting in that capsule about three hours. So he had to urinate. These are the kind of things that weren't thought of. But Alan Shepard did it. He went on up and he did it beautifully. And what it took for this man to do this is fantastic. And that's why

I think I covered every mission by American astronauts. There's been 165. I'm hopefully about to cover a number, 166, and been with NBC now for 53 years covering the space program. And I've got to tell you, Matt, the highest point in my life in covering space, the highest moment has still got to be Alan Shepard lifting off. And more so, and more so, let me say this emphatically, knowing the type of person he was, an admiral in the Navy, knowing the type of person he was, an admiral in the Navy, I feel so fortunate to have been able to write a book with Alan Shepard, the only book that the man did.

That's got to be the highlight of the 53 years that I've been here. Now, I almost hesitate to bring it up, but your telling of the tale of Apollo 1, that horrific tragedy, is so vivid and disturbing. It really was, boy, talk about a low point that was also a high point just in your documentation of that event. Was that hard to write about? Oh, very much so. But what was going on was the pressure to get a spacecraft into space. It wasn't ready to go. I talked to Gus Grissom about this.

Gus and Grissom and I had a drink together in a local bar, and he was really concerned about it. He thought it was a lemon, and they were pushing like mad. And what most people don't know, and I can tell you today, Matt, they were being pushed by the White House, by the Lyndon Johnson White House. He was debating whether or not he wanted to run again for president, but he had the Vietnam War. That was his war, and people were against him, and he thought, well, if I can get these astronauts on the moon, I can run on this. He was pushing them to get there, and that's what caused, I found out just the other day from a man

that had the job there as security inspector and everything, that actually below them was a twisted wire that was exposed. And this is what Gus Grissom stepped on and sparked and started the fire. Just sloppy work like this and all to rush, rush, rush. But the outcome of it, and let me say this, the outcome was because this happened, then we made flights with the exception of Apollo 13, we made flights to the moon and back safely. And we even got Apollo 13 back safely, which was one of the greatest hours of NASA. This probably would have never happened had not Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White died in that Apollo 1 fire. And certainly it's nice to know that they did not die in vain. Jay, we are almost out of time. As you said, you are coming up on the next in your long string of launches.

You finish the book, this new material that you've added at the end, talking about how politics still has a lot of influence over our exploration of space, particularly finish the book, this new material that you've added at the end, talking about how politics still has a lot of influence over our exploration of space, particularly our manned or human exploration of space. Tell me about it. Tell me about it. There's everybody all over trying to get into the act right now, but in recent weeks, I can tell you this. General Charles Bolden, who is a four-time shuttle astronaut himself, who is now NASA administrator, the head man there. He is a two-star Marine Corps general. He's put his foot down.

He stepped forward. He reached into his bag of things that's worked. And he's trying to put our space program back together so that we don't lose the first place that we're in. And let's hope he's successful. He's making the decisions, and I think that possibly with commercial contracts that they're putting out, we could have American astronauts back in space as early as 2015. And 2016, we could have a heavy lift vehicle going that would take them out of Earth orbit and to destinations like the asteroids and the Lagrange points

and other deep space trips and eventually on to Mars. Jay, from your mouth to NASA's ears, which is pretty much how it's been for, what, 53 years? Is your anniversary covering all this stuff this month? I started to work for NBC News July 21, 1958, So we're almost there for 53 years. And congratulations on the new edition of this book. Particularly, I do recommend the audiovisual version. It's available from all the usual e-book places, including, of course, Amazon. I've been reading it on my iPad, the Kindle for iPad. It is great fun, and it is a triumphant telling of one of the greatest periods of maybe not just American history, but human history. So, Jay, again, thanks very much for joining us on Planetary Radio.

You are so welcome, Matt. Thank you, buddy, and good luck to everybody. Jay Barbary is NBC's veteran, and we do mean veteran space correspondent, 53 years covering the exploration of space, particularly the human exploration of space. He is the co-author of Moonshot, the inside story of America's Apollo moon landings, written with Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, two of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. We're going to pick up that topic a little bit anyway as we talk with Bruce Betts, our regular visit, and we'll talk about what's up in the night sky. That's just a few moments away. to tell us what's up in the night sky.

But we've got a bunch of other big stuff going on, big stuff to tell you about, and even an interesting prize that you might be able to win that has everything to do with the conversation we just had with Jay Barbary. Welcome back. It's good to be back. It's exciting this week. We've got Saturn over in the west looking yellowish, fairly high up in the west after sunset.

Bigger challenge trying to see Mercury, which is low down shortly after sunset, but you might be able to pick it out. Pre-dawn, Jupiter much easier than that. Super bright, high in the east, actually rising around 2 a.m. these nights. Also in the pre-dawn, low down in the east, you can see Mars looking reddish.

We move on to this week in space history. A big week going all the way back to 1054. The Crab Nebula supernova was observed. Oh, when those Chinese astronomers looked up and saw that big bang. They did, which is why we know that it was this week in 1054 as opposed to next week. We also had a lot of other good stuff this week. 1997, Mars Pathfinder landed on Mars. 2005, Deep Impact slammed its impactor into a comet.

And we also had in 2003, Mars Rover Opportunity was launched. Okay, yeah, indeed, a very big week. All right, we move on to... Random Space Fract. Which, for those who may not be aware of it and maybe you're not aware of it that sounds just like a character fred allen used to talk to in allen's alley and no i was not there to hear this when it was first broadcast you have to be a radio nut like me. No one's ever recognized my impersonation before. It's so exciting. So more than 96% of the space shuttle external tank's weight at liftoff is fuel.

So only about 4% structure. Wow. So this is that beer can analogy that Bill Nye likes to make. It is indeed. Thin outside, big juicy inside. All right. On to trivia. All right. In the trivia question, we asked you about how far away is the Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as M51, where right now there is a visible supernova in large amateur telescopes. How do we do, Matt? Very well. Quite a range of answers, probably due to the fact that there has been recently released data and a lot of websites still have sort of the older

numbers, but we would have accepted a range. It happens that our winner is Daryl Gardner, first time winner in Lake Stevens, Washington, who kind of covered his bases. He said both 23 million light years, plus or minus 4 million, and 31 million his bases. He said both 23 million light years, plus or minus 4 million, and 31 million light years. He got that from NASA. The first number from Wikipedia seems to be the most recent, more accurate answer. So Daryl, we're going to send you a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Yeah, it depends on how far your tape measure will actually reach. It's tough, actually. Once you run out of tape measure, it's hard to figure these things out.

But yes, they have been refining over time. You are so lucky to live near that great hardware store. The stores around here, the longest tape measures are like a light year. Really? Wow. Well, no, I am lucky. It does fill most of the back of the warehouse store, though. I think your dogs are playing with it right now.

They are. Careful, careful. Don't let it go. Really, don't release that thing once it's pulled out all the way. It takes about 5,000 years for it to reel in, which would mean it would be going faster than light. Never mind. I do have some other funny answers. You know, we love these answers with strange units. Here's one from Ilya Schwartz. He says, with a diameter of 76,000 light years, that puts M51 about 302.6 M51s away from us. Wow, that's an internally consistent measurement, I suppose. He says end over end, of course. How else would you stack galaxies? From Stephen Hunt, we got 2.8382191 times 10 to the 20th millimeters. Wow, that's a lot of millimeters.

And this one, not a measurement, but I thought very instructive. Some useful facts from David Kaplan. He said that, yes, M51, 23 million light years or so, but it's the nearby Kenmore and Frigidaire galaxies are somewhat closer to us. Yeah, yeah, they're part of their own special group, I think. Yeah, that's the appliance cluster, the major appliance cluster, not the minor appliance cluster. Not to be confused with the blender galaxy, the Cuisinart galaxy. Well, you get the idea. And the George Foreman grill galaxy.

Mmm, those are some tasty stars. God, it only hurts when I laugh. All right, we better move on. We move on. So recently at the last shuttle launch that I tried to see, well, Barack Obama tried to see it also and missed it, as I did, because it was delayed. What was the first NASA rocket launch attended by a sitting U.S. president? A president who was actually in office, watched a NASA rocket launch. What was the first one of those launches?

Go to planetary.org slash radio. And you've got until July 11, Monday, July 11, at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer. I bet that president, whoever it was, wasn't sitting for long. I bet he was standing up and cheering when that thing happened. Yeah. By the way, the prize, the prize, it's Moonshot, the inside story of America's Apollo moon landings.

We've got several copies of the book, this enhanced e-book given to us by Open Road Integrated Media, the publisher. This is the book we were talking about with Jay Barbary that, of course, he wrote with Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. We're going to make it available to the winner of this contest,

so get those entries in. Very cool. Have we got anything else to talk about, Matt? Oh, you mentioned Shuttle Launch, and we're going to celebrate it, and people who are in the area can do it with us. That would be great. Where should they go? Well, if they're going to be in the Pasadena area on Friday, July 8th, the doors are going to open at 7.30 a.m. Now, of course, this is all predicated

on the launch not being scrubbed. But at 7.30, Friday the 8th, we're going to gather in the Crawford Family Forum at Southern California Public Radio. It's the same room where we've done Planetary Radio Live. Bruce and I will both be there, sort of co-hosting, and we'll be watching the launch. And you can come down and party with us.

We'll have a great time. You're going to need to make a reservation, though. We've got the link to the reservation page on our show page. Easiest way to get there, go to planetary.org. Look up in the top left corner for the show link. And once you follow that, you'll be able to get to the SCPR RSVP page quickly enough. Is that enough letters? No, I think you could have thrown in more.

We're done. Okay, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about this space shuttle. Thank you, and good night. The last one, the last one up there in orbit. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and made possible in part by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.

Clear skies and Godspeed, Atlantis. Thank you.