Apollo 11 to Now

01Houston, we have a podcast.

02Welcome to the 100th episode of the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center.

03Today kicks off another special series, this time to celebrate 50 years of the historic Apollo 11 mission that put the first humans on the surface of the moon.

04I'm Gary Jordan.

05I'll be your host today.

06If you're familiar with us, this is where we bring in scientists, engineers, astronauts, and leaders, all to let you know the cool stuff about what's going on right here at NASA.

07And truly, we're in one of the best times.

08We're celebrating an exciting past and working hard towards an exciting future of human space exploration and landing on the moon.

09So here to talk about human landings on the moon, both past and future, is our very own NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine.

10Jim runs the show here at NASA.

11He's leading our ambitious goal of returning to the moon and establishing sustainable presence there, which will ultimately help us answer questions on getting humans to Mars.

12But what does sustainable presence mean, and how exactly will it help?

13Today we go over some of NASA's history, all the way back to Apollo to discuss NASA's mission, direction, and leadership, and what has changed for this exciting future in human spaceflight to make that sustainable presence possible.

14So let's get right into it.

15Episode 100 of Houston, We Have a Podcast, celebrating the Apollo 50th, and looking forward to the future with Jim Bridenstine.

16Enjoy.

17T-minus five seconds and counting.

18Mark.

19Let's commit light circle.

20There she goes.

21We have a podcast.

22Jim, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

23This is a very exciting day for you to be here at the Johnson Space Center.

24It is.

25The Mission Control Room, of course, is now open for business from a visitor's perspective.

26And what an amazing day to be here with Gene Krantz, of course, the legendary flight director, who was, of course, made famous with the movie Apollo 13.

27But even before that, he was made famous by, no kidding, being the flight director that helped us get to the moon.

28Right.

29What an amazing opportunity to be part of this historic day.

30Historic day and historic time, really.

31We're coming up on 50 years since the launch, the landing on the moon of Apollo 11.

32The entire mission, really.

33This is a great time.

34What did the Apollo program and the moon landing really mean for NASA?

35Thinking back on it now, 50 years later.

36So it wasn't just for NASA.

37Yeah.

38It was for the United States of America.

39And in fact, it was for the entire world.

40So I think it's transformative in the history of the world and, of course, my generation.

41I wasn't around when it happened, quite frankly.

42I'm the first NASA administrator who was not alive when we landed on the moon on the first or the sixth time.

43So I don't have a memory of where I was when that event occurred because I wasn't around.

44But here's the thing.

45We need to make sure that we don't let another 50 years go by.

46And that's what we're doing.

47We're moving forward to the moon, this time sustainably.

48But when we think about the history, because that's really what we're here to talk about, 50 years of Apollo.

49We have to think about where we were as a country at that time.

50We were in a contest of great proportions with another superpower, the Soviet Union.

51And this was a contest of political ideologies.

52It was a contest of economic ideologies.

53It was a contest of technological prowess.

54And in this great contest of great powers, the United States of America was determined to win.

55And the objective was to get to the moon.

56Interestingly, we were able to achieve that victory July 20th, 1969 with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and of course, 400,000 people that were working on the program at the time.

57And when we achieved it, we moved into a new era where we, in fact, now partner with Russia.

58You know, a lot of people say, well, the moon landing, that never occurred.

59Well, it's interesting.

60The people had the most to gain from, like, exposing the fact that it might have been faked were the Russians.

61And what did they do?

62They congratulated us.

63They commended us.

64They joined us.

65And then we partnered on the Apollo Soyuz program.

66So I find that very fascinating.

67But it's also true that it was about 12 years after the last person that walked on the moon.

68The Cold War did not end in 1969.

69And 12 years after that, Ronald Reagan announced what was called the Strategic Defense Initiative, which, of course, got belittled by a lot of people.

70They called it the Star Wars program in order to belittle it.

71They said it wasn't technologically achievable.

72It was too expensive.

73Think of a missile defense shield so that ICBMs would not ever come near the United States territory.

74And here's what's interesting.

75We spent very little on the Strategic Defense Initiative.

76But the people who spent a lot of effort, both politically and financially, trying to work against the Strategic Defense Initiative was, of course, the Soviet Union.

77And why?

78Why were they so interested in spending money to mitigate the Strategic Defense Initiative?

79Well, it's because they knew that just a dozen years prior, we had humans walking on the moon.

80So SDI was built on the credibility of Apollo.

81And so when we think about what great powers do, like go to the moon, and we think about the impact that that has on generations that come after that, it was a piece.

82It was a small piece, but it was a piece of the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and a new generation of freedom for millions of people that previously were behind the Iron Curtain.

83Yeah.

84Is that truly the impact that Apollo 11 and the moon landing had on, like you said, generations afterwards?

85Absolutely.

86It really did change human history.

87Right.

88So right now, I mean, you have young kids growing up in elementary schools looking at the moon landing and thinking, wow, that's an amazing, it's a monumental achievement.

89It was science and discovery, exploration.

90But you think about the geopolitical impact and how it resonated not just in that day, but decades afterwards.

91And it set the foundation for really a new breath of freedom throughout the world.

92Yeah.

93Now, going back to, you know, you're saying we have new generations growing up, honestly, in a world where the moon landing has always been there.

94You know, I think it's the statistic I heard was I think two out of every three people now don't even, have never lived in a time before we landed on the moon.

95That's right.

96It's truly fascinating.

97And actually, you're one of them.

98I am.

99What are some of your memories of, you know, learning about the moon landing and even just getting interested in space?

100Yeah.

101So I remember in first grade, we had an assembly where we brought in, back then we had, you know, the tubes, television sets.

102Big television was rolled in and we watched the moon landing in first grade.

103And of course, at the time, the shuttle was brand new.

104And so we were all inspired by the shuttle program.

105The International Space Station wasn't even a thought in that era.

106We're talking about 1981.

107Maybe, actually, it might have been a thought, just not implemented.

108I mean, Ronald Reagan announced that the Space Station Freedom would become the International Space Station in 1984.

109So I guess it had probably been a thought of somebody.

110But anyway, we were inspired, of course, by those beautiful pictures of the space shuttle.

111And, but watching somebody walk on the moon was kind of a different level of enthusiasm.

112I will also say that one of my earliest memories of spaceflight in general was in fifth grade.

113I was in Miss Powers' fifth grade English class.

114And she came in the classroom crying.

115And I remember thinking, well, what's going on here?

116And then the teachers all huddled up and they were all just kind of like flustered.

117And then they brought in their own television.

118And we all watched the space shuttle Challenger incident.

119And, of course, that was a big deal because Krista McAuliffe was on board and she was a teacher.

120So this was something all teachers were involved in.

121This was an effort to inspire children all across the United States.

122And on this mission, it ultimately was a fail.

123I remember that like yesterday.

124It was, you know, there are certain things that happen in the course of your life where you remember right where you were.

125And that's one of those things.

126What we have to do now, though, the shuttle program was amazing.

127International Space Station is amazing.

128We need a new monumental achievement, a new stunning achievement where somebody remembers exactly where they were when that achievement occurred.

129And it's a positive achievement.

130And that's why going back to the moon with the next man and the first woman under the Artemis program is so important.

131And that's actually kind of leaving out the last time we talked, I think, was back in August on this podcast.

132And we were setting the scene based on when Mike Pence was here saying this is what we're going to do.

133This is the future of NASA.

134He talked about commercialization.

135He talked about going back to the moon.

136A lot of progress since then.

137Where are we now?

138So we have now amended the president's budget request to accelerate the moon program.

139There's two risks.

140One risk is technical.

141NASA can deal with the technical.

142The other risk that is more important, at least initially, is the political risk.

143The president adjusted his budget to include an additional $1.6 billion for the Artemis program to accelerate the moon landing.

144And the reason we accelerate is because it reduces the political risk.

145The longer these programs go, the more administrations change, congresses change, priorities change, budgets change, and they get canceled.

146So we retire the political risk by accelerating.

147So we have now got some new money in the budget request for an accelerated lunar program with keeping our eyes on Mars.

148The reason we go to the moon, that is not the destination.

149It is a waypoint on the way to Mars.

150We're going to learn how to live and work on another world so that we can eventually go to Mars.

151But it's important to note that this new budget did not take any money from the Science Mission Directorate.

152It didn't take any money from the space station.

153This is new money.

154It doesn't come from anywhere inside of NASA.

155That's not been the historical precedent when we try to go to the moon.

156So this is, I think, a very positive development.

157It should receive strong bipartisan support.

158I've talked to a number of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle that are very strong supporters of this effort.

159And now we just need to work hard to make it materialize from a budgetary perspective.

160And I think that right now that's the biggest challenge is the political risk, and we're working through it.

161All right.

162So schedule-wise, what are we looking at?

163What does the program sort of look like?

164What are some of the elements that we're focusing on?

165Right.

166So, you know, for years now we've had under development the Space Launch System, SLS, which is the biggest rocket ever built, the Orion crew capsule, and the European service module.

167We are at the five-yard line about to punch those programs into the end zone.

168All right.

169And we'll be ready to fly astronauts all the way to the moon at that point.

170Now here's the important thing to remember.

171There's enough energy in that system to get to low lunar orbit.

172But there's not enough energy in that system to get out of low lunar orbit.

173In other words, to get to the position where you can land on the moon, we need to have not just enough energy to get there, but enough energy to get out.

174We want to bring our astronauts home.

175Right.

176So we need to find more energy.

177Where do we get that?

178We are now building.

179We're under contract for the first element of what we call Gateway, which is a small space station in orbit around the moon, where our astronauts can use SLS, Orion, the European service module, go to the gateway, that small space station in orbit around the moon.

180Think of it as a reusable command module that will be there for 15 years.

181It's maneuverable.

182Solar electric propulsion, it can go to, it can orbit, it can change orbits at the moon.

183So we'll have more access to more parts of the moon than ever before.

184And we want to aggregate at that gateway a lander by the year 2024.

185So when we send the first Artemis crew to the moon, they're going to first go to the gateway where they're going to get into a lander and then go down to the surface of the moon and then back to the gateway.

186So given the new direction from the administration to accelerate the program, the key elements that we need to quickly develop are the gateway, which we now are under contract for.

187And then, of course, the landing capability.

188And the reality is we're not going to procure any of these elements in the traditional way.

189The way we, you know, you mentioned commercial earlier.

190Yeah.

191The way we normally procure is we create thousands and thousands of requirements.

192We, in essence, design everything in the requirements process.

193And then we get requests for information.

194We evaluate all the information.

195Then we put out requests for proposal.

196We give people months and months to respond to the requests for proposals.

197And then they respond.

198And then we take months and months to evaluate.

199And then we do a source selection.

200And then we let the, you know, everybody wants to contest the decision.

201That takes another year with a bunch of lawsuits.

202That is not going to accelerate the program to the moon.

203So what we're doing is we're saying, okay, who out there can get us to the surface of the moon by providing a service?

204We're not going to purchase, own, and operate the lander.

205We want to buy the service.

206Who can take our astronauts from the gateway to the surface of the moon and back to the gateway?

207And when we procure in that way, we can go much faster.

208The other thing is when we procure in that way, industry makes their own investments.

209So we're looking to be a partner, public-private partnership.

210We want them to make massive investments, and we will invest as well.

211And then the goal being that they would have customers that are not us.

212Could be foreign nations.

213Could be tourists.

214Could be industry looking.

215Could be universities wanting to do research.

216So the idea is long-term we want to be one customer of many customers, and we want to have numerous providers that are competing on cost and innovation.

217So if we can put all that together in this architecture, I think it will be sustainable for the long term.

218And I think that's the key word right there, right?

219Sustainable.

220That's exactly right.

221Is building that robust economy.

222And I think the International Space Station right now is a big part of that just based on this policy change that recently.

223Absolutely.

224We're able to do what we do based on what we learned from the International Space Station.

225For example, commercial resupply of the ISS.

226We're buying a service.

227Who can resupply the ISS?

228Commercial crew.

229We're buying a service.

230We're not purchasing, owning, and operating the rockets.

231Now we're going to have a commercial habitation module on the ISS.

232We're going to have commercial industry going to the ISS.

233So we're learning how to do these activities so that we can apply it ultimately to the moon.

234But you're absolutely right.

235We love Apollo.

236The problem with Apollo is that it ended.

237We want a sustainable program.

238This time when we go to the moon, we're going to stay.

239That's what we're looking to do.

240And that's huge.

241And, you know, reflecting 50 years after Apollo, we have this exciting time thinking about sustainability.

242Actually talking about it and making it happen.

243I think really it brings up the question, and I want to kind of end with this, is why is human spaceflight important?

244Why are we putting so much effort into all of this?

245We can do more with science, with humans, than we could ever do with robots.

246I mean, it's not even close.

247And so human spaceflight, if we want to get as much science as fast as possible, human spaceflight is the investment we need to make.

248It is also true, you know, the robotic missions are amazing.

249Because of spirit and opportunity and curiosity and Phoenix and insight, all these different robots that we have had and currently even operate today on Mars, these robots have changed how we see Mars.

250We now know that Mars had an ocean in its northern hemisphere that constituted two-thirds of the northern hemisphere.

251We know that Mars currently has liquid water, even today, even though the ocean has been gone.

252Under 12 kilometers under the surface of Mars, we know there's water.

253We know that in its history, Mars had a magnetosphere that protected it from the radiation of deep space.

254And it had a thick atmosphere.

255In other words, Mars was habitable.

256We know just this year we've made discoveries that include complex organic compounds on the surface of Mars.

257The building blocks for life exist on Mars.

258They don't exist on the moon at all.

259Zero.

260Nothing.

261But on Mars, complex organic compounds are prevalent.

262And, of course, also on Mars, we have the methane cycles that we now know are commensurate with the seasons of Mars.

263All of these things collude to say that the probability of finding life on a world that's not our own is going up.

264And it's going up rapidly.

265If we really want to delve into it, if we want to get the information as quickly as possible and as much science as we can get, sending humans is the way to do it.

266So we go to the moon with the purpose of learning how to live and work on another world using the resources of that world.

267And we take all of what we learn and we go on to Mars with humans so that we can ultimately do more discovery than ever before.

268A fantastic and exciting time.

269Jim Bridenstine, thanks for coming on.

270Thank you so much for having me.

271Thank you.

272Hey, thanks for sticking around.

273This episode was released just four days shy of the historic launch of Apollo 11, which took off from the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969.

274If you want to know all things Apollo, as we're right in the middle of our 50th celebrations, NASA.gov slash Apollo 50th is the place to go for all of that.

275Check out the Houston We Have a Podcast Apollo page for all of our episodes about the 50th anniversaries as we're going through all of them.

276Or you can learn about our mission to the moon and Mars and beyond at our moon to Mars page on NASA.gov.

277Just go to the topic sections at the top of the page and you can see some goals for our Artemis program, which Jim was going over a little bit today.

278Otherwise, if you love podcasts and want to see more about what we're doing, especially in terms of the 50th, go to NASA.gov slash podcasts.

279They're all being released and promoted on our social media pages, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, those NASA pages.

280Go check them out.

281Use the hashtag Ask NASA on your favorite platform.

282Submit an idea for the show.

283Make sure to mention it's for Houston.

284We have a podcast.

285We might bring it on.

286This episode was recorded on June 28, 2019.

287Thanks to Alex Perryman, Norm Moran, Pat Ryan, Stephanie Castillo, Catherine Brown, Matt Ryden, and Megan Winrich.

288Thanks again to NASA Administrator Jim Brinstein for taking time out of his very busy schedule to speak with us.