Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On Legacy Of Apollo Missions 20240713

Much like many of our panelists today, i am an engineer. But i have never been to space, which gives you an idea of the impressiveness next to me. But i did grow up in florida around Cape Canaveral and have watched many of you launch to space, and it has been one of the reasons i chose to pursue engineering. Ive gone on to have an atypical career, i am a tv host nowadays, and we have a current challenge that was launched with nasa, where students can name the next mars rover. Right now, we have a contest until november 1st, so you have any kids or grand kids that want to be part of space history, i encourage them to go online and submit their names. We have a chronology here from apollo on to thinking about going to mars. So right here on my left we have general tom stafford. So nasa astronaut with the gemini and Apollo Programs. Next, we have captain bob crippen, shuttle astronaut. Next, we have dr. Sandy magnus, another former shuttle astronaut, and spent 4 1 2 months on the International Space station. After that, we have captain chris ferguson, former nasa astronaut and now a boeing commercial astronaut, which is quite exciting. After that, we have hans, he is the vp of flight and build reliability at spacex. He joined spacex in 2002, since its inception and was employee four, debatably three. So hans and i share the title of never having been to space. But i want to caveat that with yes, because im hoping with all the work going on on the commercial side that maybe all of us will have the opportunity to go to space one day. And at the end, we have Major General charlie boldin. Hes a former shuttle astronaut, and also former nasa administrator during the Obama Administration and oversaw the transition f the Space Shuttle program to a new era of exploration where low earth orbit is being turned over to commercial entitying. Entities. The way the panel is going to work is well separate it. The first segment, well give our speakers time to share about themselves, and then have about a 30minute qu and a and transition to the audience. So were going to start over here with general thomas stafford. Are you ready . So General Stafford received his bachelors degree with honors from the u. S. Naval academy and graduated first in his class at the United States air force testitest pilot school in 1959 and became an american legend. In 1965, he piloted the first rendezvous in space. And in 1966, he commanded gemini nine, demonstrating a rendezv s rendezvous. As commander of apollo 10 in 1969, he flew the first rendezvous around the moon and designated the first Lunar Landing site. He also holds the mach 36 world speed record. Hes globe foflown more than 10 of aircraft. As commanding general at Edwards Air Force base, he presided over the development of multiple aircraft and started the stealth aircraft program. At this point, i think you understand why it is my honor and plaeeasure to introduce General Stafford. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. It was a real pleasure to talk yesterday about the Apollo Program, and how the decision was made in only about three weeks, until we go to the moon when sheppard 15 minutes of flight. So it was a real dynamic time. I used the knowledge i gained from my good friends to talk about it. So really enjoyed it yesterday, for those of you that was there. But as i look at apollo and gemi gemini, we set the tools, because we cant know what we cant know. For example, on the first rendezvous, what would happen is we would lose a computer or a radar, and then later on the first space walk around the world, the astronaut nearly got killed. I could have been killed, too. Then we started training for it better. So from that, today you train under water before you go out and do a space walk. Also now they have virtual reality. You can see with goggles to look at. So you train that way. That came from gemini nine. Also from gemini six, when we had our engines shut down with the liftoff signal. We knew we had a dead mans curve. We learned that you have to have a system, it was a manual override and all this has to be a very complex thing you do and you do it right. We also learned lessons like from apollo 13. Im sure youve all seep tn the movie. You mix acid water, you always pour acid into water, you do not pour water into acid, because you have bad results. We learned from apollo 13, you dont mix liquid oxygen with compounds that have carbon in it, because apollo 13, we had about 5 1 2 pounds of carbon, and you have seen pictures that blew that steel double wall out and a quarter of the Service Module out. So that was a series of things. So then i was involved in the shuttle return to flight after the columbia accident. And then in a briefing with working with the admiral who chaired the accident board, there was a whole series of things. The admiral said he could have used the word challenger anywhere he had the word columbia. The same lessons. So theres a lot of rules that you do not violate. We set these tools in place, and theyre all there. And so the main thing is dont screw up. [ laughter ] it was a great time to be there, and also as she mentioned, all these stealth programs for the air force, i had not had the experience of being in the soviet union. And then later, having the first experimental airplane when i was commanding general there, i would have never started the f117 or the b2 bomber and start the road map there for the f22 raptor fighter. So its a whole series of things. Its a great time to be there. Ill cut short by a couple of seconds. In other words, theres rules out there, there are tools out there, and you do not violate them. Theres rules and tools, and do not screw up. All right. So our next panelist today, we have captain bob pippen, who was the pilot of the very first Space Shuttle flight in april 1981, and went on to command three other Space Shuttle missions. During his 30 years in the u. S. Navy, he was an attack pilot and served as a testify lot instructor at Edwards Air Force base. In 1969, he was selected as a nasa astronaut and on the sport crew for skylab two, three, and four mission s. Captain crippen became director at nasa headquarters, and director of Kennedy Space center. He served as president of the fiocal propulsion company. He earned his bachelors degree the apollo Soyuz Mission and took us over to star city soviet union. Yes, soviet union. And even out to their launch site. I think we were the first foreigners to ever visit that. Then i had the pleasure of tucking tom and the rest of his crew into the command module for apollo soyuz. We go back a look way, as he indicated. Its an honor to be up here with Sandra Magnus a. I was just telling sandy, john young, my commander and i got to do a photo op with them because we represented the book ends of the Space Shuttle program, if you will. I joined nasa right after apollo 11, 50 years ago. So im older than dirt, too. I had come off a program thafts highly classified department of defense m. O. L. D. , for short, manorbiting. It was finally declassified. Our job was to take highresolution photographs of the soviet union. But when that program was canceled, they took seven of us crew members off that and and transferred us to the nasa Astronaut Office. We didnt do any train, didnt go through a Selection Process with nasa. We just walked in the door and they put us to work. There were some similarities it between the Skylab Program and what was being developed by nasa and the m. O. L. So that was my first assignment to go follow bird dog what was going on with the development of skylab to make sure the crew interfaces were acceptable. I worked throughout the program and its fights, which started off kind of trauma but it ended up being a great program. When that was concluded, i was a assigned to go start the same thing with the spate shuttle that had just been announced. A lot of people think of astronaut mostly training, but most of my career with nasa was spent in doing Engineering Work following the development of the spacecraft. And i would imagine that the current Astronaut Office is doing the same thing with the vehicles that are being developed today by lockheed, boeing and spacex. So, there is a lot of Engineering Work that the astronauts are assigned to do. I was both surprised and honored when john young, our most experienced astronaut in the office at that time, selected me to be his crewmate for the first Space Shuttle flight, sts 1. Great training with john and flying that mission. Certainly one of the highlights of my life. As deanne indicated i went on to command three other flights. Turns out most of those flights were also engineering test flights to make sure the Space Shuttle would do what we had designed it to do. And when looking back, im very proud of the Space Shuttle program. Yes, we had two terrible accidents and i lost some very close friends. But when you look at the sum of the 30 years that it was flying, early on in the program we did some Important Department of Defense Missions that i think contributed significantly to us winning the cold war. The shuttle made it possible to fly payloads like the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories that gave us knowledge of the u. N. Sxrers also made possible of the building of the International Space station, which is an engineering marvel that is still up there today doing its job. So, in summary, i think the Space Shuttle program is something well look back on fontdl fondly. It will be a long time before we see a vehicle ever capable of that. I was sorely disappointed in 2011 the program was terminated. I was primarily disappointed because we didnt have another capability to put our crews in space and would be dependent on russia to do that. And we have been for the past eight years. So, ill conclude with that because im anxious to hear how the starliner and the dragon capsules are going to correct that problem very soon, so thank you. [ applause ] all right. For our next speaker we have dr. Sandy magnus. Dr. Magnus was selected to the nasa Astronaut Corps in 1996 and has flown on four shuttle missions, including the final shuttle flight in 2011. She flew to the internlational space station in 20 ol and stayed on board four months. Following her assignment on station she served as nasa headquarters and as deputy chief of the Astronaut Office. She worked extensively with the International Community including with europe, japan, brazil and in russia. Dr. Magnus is now the Deputy Director for engineering within the office of the secretary of defense, research and engineering. Prior to working at nasa she was a stealth engineer at mcdonnell douglas. She earned her ph. D. From georgia tech. Help me in welcoming dr. Sandy magnus. [ applause ] i want to take a moment to talk about the space station. I think thats why im on the panel. Thank you, al, for the invitation. Let me start off by saying theres a big difference, as many of you in the audience know between intellectual knowledge and experience shall knowledge. Thats when you understand something when you have that experience with the knowledge. Thats the biggest change with astronauts when we fly in space, whether its short term or long term, is that we experience that environment and we experience the planet a different way. When you fly on space station, its really interesting. You adapt into the environment at a completely different level than when youre just up there sort of as a tourist for a 10 or 11 or 12day flight. I didnt even realize that was happening until the crew came to pick me up in march when i saw them float across the hatch and they looked so awkward and so unsure of their motions and just tippy not tippytowing but very gingerly moving their bodies as they moved through the spacecraft trying not to touch something. I said, let me take you back to the Service Module and show you how to run the treadmill. I just took off because i knew i would bounce off that handrail and hit the p. M. A. And hit that one bag. I knew how i was going to translate through. Newtons law drives your world, by the way, when you live in space. I just took off and he caught up with me and, wow, you really move fast. I was amazed. Wow, i didnt realize it. Thats when i realized i had adapted to a whole new level. Its interesting because when you realize it was normal for me to get up every morning and float through my day and talk to people around the world in Different Countries about all the amazing science and things we were doing, it was amazing to have the earth out the window to the extent that after maybe a month or so, i almost took it for i did, i took it for granted looking out the window that there was an earth floating by below me and the beauty and how amazing that really was. We have this ability to adapt that i think is really important. But when youre up there and experiencing it, it changes your perspective. Let me share one of the greatest perspective changes that i had. And that was the perspective about gravity. Everybody on the stage whos been in space has experienced this, but to me it was absolutely incredibly amazing as we were reentering and slowing down and falling back into earths gravity well to experience gravity for the first time as an external force. And it was weird. And it made no sense. And i was appalled at how horrible it was. And to have and to have sha shi that shift, right . Everyone in this room understands gravity intellectually because were scientists and engineers. You know the equation and we can quantify it but thats not the same thing as understanding it instinctively and internally because youve experienced it. And the fact that when you hold your arm out like this, and theres actually you think of all the diagrams youve done in physics where you get the physical forces and horizontal forces and all that crap. Theres a vector acting on your arm that you are using muscle the energy of your muscles to basically fight against. And its just weird to experience that. And it makes you look at the world in a whole different way. This is the power of sending humans into space because we have these new experiences, it shifts our view of the world and we start thinking about questions we should ask that we dont ask because we take for granted the environment we already live in. It opens up our minds to new ways of looking at the universe. And it makes us think a little differently. Its that little shift in perspective. Thats whats so powerful about spending people in space and having people in space for a long period of time and doing the kinds of experiments we do up there. Maybe not all those expermits are cutting edge but i guarantee as we continue to put people up there with different skill sets, as we continue to put different kinds of experiments up there, well learn more from the questions we learn to ask than from necessarily the answers were getting from those experiments because we are just at the beginning of wondering out of the earths gravity well, wondering out of the norms weve established here on the planet to open our minds to new ways of thinking and new questions to ask. Thats really the power of sending humans into space and the human Space Program. Im really excited about where we are now because were at the point where he can with get more people into space, to have these perception shifts based on their experience and well think up some amazing questions to ask in the next decade. Ill stop there and i look forward to your questions. [ applause ]. And on to our next speaker. Next we have captain chris ferguson, is boeings first commercial test pilot astronaut and he will be among the first to go to space aboard boeings cst starliner. He has led crew interfaces working hand in hand with nasa. He was also a leader in the development and testing for the spacecrafts launch and ground systems. Captain ferguson is a retired u. S. Navy captain and former nasa astronaut, having piloted Space Shuttle atlantis, endeavour and sts 145. He served as deputy chief of nasa office and spacecraft. He holds a bap lors in Mechanical Engineering from drexler university. Its my honor to introduce captain ferguson. [ applause ] i always love listening to sandy magnus stories. She makes space seem so compelling, even the audience, some of whom have been in space, looked and listened taenttively, myself included. What id like to do is maybe talk about the future. Crip had mentioned the Shuttle Program ended in 2011 without an immediate replacement to get us back to lower orbit. We had been working diligently over the course of the last eight years. 2014 specifically is when the big contract was let to return americans to lowerth orbit. Nasa will begin purchasing services. They will purchase to take them to International Space station and return them after six months. The benefit is allows nasa to focus on exploration beyond lowerearth orbit and trment cargo over to companies and it comes at a great value to the taxpayers. We are actually on the cusp of some delays of returning americans to space, and i think youll see that it came out in the news probably late this year, early next year, after an absence of about eight years. So, very excited to show you this. This next chart will look a little like the nfls red zone, if youre familiar with it but it was my way aavoiding the twochart limit. Oh, this one first. A real brief description of what our vehicle looks like on the lefthand side you see the spacecraft, which is the vehicle that will take astronauts up and down. It has a very apollolike appearance. It will carry up to five astronauts up to the station, stay there for six months and return them safely and remain on board as a life boat should we ever need it. The Service Module will be jets onned after the deorbit burn and the crew model will be recovered at one of our west coast landing sites. Its a land landing. Well launch on an atlas 5 rocket. Were looking forward to all of the modifications, by the way, have all been made out to Launch Complex 41, which was previously an uncrewed only launch facility. And the two vehicles, oft and cft launch vehicles are there, sitting there, waiting for the payload to show up, which will happen very shortly. I mentioned the nfl sunday ticket, you are the red zone. You have an opportunity left to right, top to bottom. Were in the process of training the very first crew. I will be the boeing representative. Well have two astronauts on board. Well provide or get all of our flight support in the form of Mission Operations from a team in houston comprised of a lot of the Mission Controllers that actually service the tail end of the Space Shuttle program. Well lef raj a lot of capability that nasa had as a function of safely operating the Space Shuttle for 30 years. Were going to launch, as i said, aboard an atlas 5 rocket from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral facility. We will land, again, at one of our five west coast landing spots. The object is to its to adopt to the space station within about 24 hours. The First Missions may be a little longer so we can complete all of our test objectives. And then well remain there docked for up to six up to six months. Once we get a go from the ground that the weather and conditions, the landing facility are clear, we will undock and in a short period of time well last an average of about six hours from undock to recovery. Well land in the western United States and recover at ideally our primary site will be the white sands Test Facility. Some of you are familiar with that. We have two landing areas there. One in the north, and one in the south. We have another in a town called wilcox, arizona, which is not too far from the Mexican Border and essentially in the middle of nowhere, which is what we really like. Dougway proving ground in utah and air force base in california. Next up is a big moment for us. Its what we call our pat aboard test conducted at the white sands Test Facility. This vehicle will roll out to the launch pad there in a very near few tour and you will see this test, if all goes well with our final preparations in november which is a very big stepping stone leading up to uncrewed test flight. Well fly an uncrewed test flight which will dock at the International Space station prior to putting a crew on board in the near future. Again, thats a little summary. I do look forward to your questions. This is what the future of space flight holds. Thank you. [ applause ] now, for our next speaker, Hans Koenigsmann is Vice President of the flies riblt team at spacex where he leads oversees launch readiness process and assesses and resolves launch risks. Hes built up the Avionics Software and guidance control navigation at space x and developed their launch process. He was chief avionics for falcon 1 and launch engineer for last three falcon missions. His experience includes the development of suborbital launchers and attitude control systems both at his previous work in germany and at microcosm in california. Dr. Koenigsmann has a ph. D. In Aerospace Engineering and production from the university of brenam and from the Technical University of berlin. Its my honor to introduce hans. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you, thank you. Its an honor to be on this panel and i realize my flight time is less than your space time, so obviously i have to work against that here with more slides, i guess. Im going to show you a quick video of the demorun mission, the dragon spacecraft going to the iss and docking there unmanned and completely autonomous and its in preparation to the manned flight later this year so im going to start. This is falcon 9 on what we call the transport director. Pad is clear. Go for flight. Launch 39. Where all the shuttles and apollo launch from. Mission control in hawthorne and at the cape. Two different rooms. Mission control in hawthorne. Inside of crew dragon. You see little earth and ripley. And thats the view from the spacecraft as the astronauts would see it. Second stage. First stage returns to launch ship and lands there. And dragon separation. And then the phasing begins and getting closer to the space station. Little earth is a gravity sensor for us. This is the actual thing this is one of my favorite phases. Little earth stayed up there to be brought back by demo 2 mission. The nose will close for the reentry. Will deploy. And main chutes. And this is the recovery boat. We have two of those. So, i threw everything on one slide, too, except this is pictures. And one thing after yesterday, i had to add the me on it. Spacex and nasa got an emmy for the webcast. We do a webcast for every launch. It became pretty popular and this is its exciting. Its just an event. The whole thing is very popular. So, obviously, apparently people thought we can own an emmy for that. The rest of the picture is dragon. You can see on the top there actually, there should be a laser here. These are dragon capsules and different stages from development to beginning integration. Down here this is the final integration. This side is mostly avionics and cabling going to different places. On this side you see a little more propulsion. This is where the power should go. These are propel ent talent tan these are thrusters that move it from the escape thruster and integrated. Thats one of the things that is different define dragon and the other spacecraft. The integrated system allows you to use those propellants. If you dont use them for escape, you can still use them for maneuvering and or b orbit. We are having into training. This is emergency training. I think this is a fire drill down there. Part of it, too. I wanted to add a picture that reminds me of other things we do. We had 76 launches of falcon 9 and falcon heavy. Spacex started business in 2002 so we did this relatively quickly. And the main thing is these launches, the majority of those were within the last three or four years. Its Pretty Amazing how fast we ramped up and how many launches we do currently. This one in particular is a landing of two boosters in parallel. We invented the parallel landing operation. Manning the boosters and reusing them is an incredible advantage if you want to fly over and over, if you want to do this quickly because it allows you to put another second stage on there. Were starting to reuse the farings, too, so were extending our reuse ability and it allows you to improve your spacecraft based on what you actually get back and what you see. You can analyze it and work on reliability with that. With that, i just want to point out we will sorry. We will perform the mission as soon as possible. We have hardware coming to the cape pretty soon. Are you done . Oh, im sorry. [ applause ] amazing. And the end of the line, last but definitely not least we have Major General Charles Bolden jr. , nasa administrator from 2009 to 2017, overseeing the transition from the Space Shuttle system to a new era of exploration. He is now president and ceo of the bolden consulting group. During his 30year career with the marine corps he worked in nasas office. He piloted columbia and discovery. As nasa administrator, Major General bolden saw the shift and created Space Technology directate. He saw the landing of the mars curiosity and increase of earth observation satellites. He earned his bachelor of science and electrical science from u. S. Naval academy and masters in system management from university of southern california. Join me in welcoming charlie bolden. Thank you very much. Thank you. [ applause ] thanks a lot. Im tail end charlie. Just as i did yesterday, i do want to call out a couple of people who really played a Critical Role in my development but also in the time i spent as nasa add mirn straministrator, but a guy who is the mastermind behind almost everything weve done in human space flight in the last 20 years. Thats a guy named bill gerstenmeier. I dont know if bill is still here or not. De leave . Okay. [ applause ] one of the things i learned a long, long, long time ago when i came to the Naval Academy and then again when i became a marine and went through basic school, they always said, listen to the gunny. Those that have served in the military will understand what im saying. Listen to the gunny or listen to the chief. Which means you have very smart people who happen not to be officers. Theyre staff ncos. If you listen to them, they will not steer you wrong. Im not trying to say bill was a beg Gunnery Sergeant or chief but as my time as nasa administrator, that was my gunny and my chief. So, i thank you for everything you did. Real quickly, let me talk about some things. Ive had an opportunity to work with everybody on the stage at one time or another. And hans reminded me this morning that we actually worked brim sat, which was one of his satellites he worked when he was still in brimman. It was one of the final experiments we had on my last Space Shuttle mission in 1984. We almost didnt get to launch it but it was incredible because we were able to get it off. Some of you crip reminded me of hamilton, the broadway show. How many of you have seen hamilton request t hamilton . If you havent, you ought to see it because its awesome. But theres a musical reprice in it that talks about what impact hamilton had on them and you get to aaron burr and everybody is singing and aaron burr says, im the damn fool that shot him. As crip says, im the damn fool that ended the Shuttle Program in 2011 when i was the nasa administrator. I was also at the cape when chris and his crew landed. I was in tears. Because i had spent my entire nasa career with i had spanned 30 years of shuttle so i knew what a tremendous thing it had done for the nation. But it was time to make the transition. I agree with crip. The crime is we didnt have a replacement immediately available so we could go fly again. Hopefully well not make that mistake as we transition to lunar orbit and then onto mars. Another thing, you know, crip mentioned what the shuttle brought us. I will continue to emphasize this. I think shuttle will go down in history. Its legacy will be introduction of exclusion to nasa. The ability of people to fly who could not fly before. That will be the legacy of shuttle. Things to look for that are happening now with these two guys, with spacex and boeing, we never tested the escape system on the launch pad at kennedy until after we had the challenger accident. We should have done that. They have now done that. You have people that work on the pad every single day. They depend on a way to get off. These are the workers, not the astronauts, but the workers that need a way to get off the pad every day if something really bad happens. We had an opportunity to use it once and we didnt because we didnt have confidence in the escape system. These guys have already taken care of getting rid of that. Those are some things that have happened. Selection and training of astronauts, because as sandy said, the big thing about where we are today is were going to allow people some of you sitting in this room, you may not think so, but you may have an opportunity to go to space if only for 20 minutes. That will change your perspective on this planet. And so if you get an opportun y opportunity, find a rich friend, get them to foot the bill for you but you need to do that. The last thing ill say because a lot of you are involved in academics, get your students to understand, they dont have to be astronaut naughts. They dont have to be scientists, they dont have to be engineering. We need people today who think about food and who think about drugs and medication. We cant we dont theres no supply ship coming every 30 days or every, you know, three we weeks. We have to have stuff sustained for years. I look forward to taking your questions and helping you understand how you help kids get interested in taking a part in this thing, no matter what they do. [ applause ] all right. Now is when it gets fun. Not that that wasnt incredibly fun already but well do q a. I really want to start our discussion today really by celebrating history. Were talking apollo 50 years on. When you think about the Apollo Program, at its time it was on the cutting edge from saturn 5 to command module to the lunar module but from a human perspective it showed us humans have the capacity to pioneer and explore. I would like each of you to share one aspect of apollo, a person, a moment, a feat of technology thats inspired you or influenced you in your work in space. Or in life. Im going to start why dont we start here. You started as a nasa astronaut in 1969, bob. You probably have countless inspirations to share. Well, i was inspired actually, the original mercury 7. People were part of my inspiration. And then tom here, but as i said, i joined the program while apollo was in progress, but it was the people in it that really inspired me to try to emulate them. Sandy, how about you . I was 5 when the apollo landed on apollo 11 landed on the moon so i dont remember much of it, sorry. Thats okay. But i will say that whats really inspiring about the Apollo Program is, again, you go back to perception shifts, right . Now all of a sudden we put people on the moon and it really, really inspired the whole world about, hey, if we can do that, maybe theres something i can do in space, too. For those who live in the d. C. Area on october 21st here in d. C. At the Convention Center is the International Astronautical congress which brings together the whole global space community. What well celebrating is the impact of apollo and 50 years on to see what has happened in the space industry in those last 50 years. Its going to be an incredible display of not only what the United States has accomplished and continuing to aim for, but what the rest of the world has engaged in, too. The theme of the conference is power of the past, promise of the future. And i think, you know, that Pivotal Moment when men stepped on the moon really inspired the whole planet to where we are today and the trajectory of where were going tomorrow. It continues to have an impact and i think that will be true for the next 50 years as well. So for those in d. C. , i invite you to come to the congress and see whats going on globally in space. Its pretty impressive. I was 8, and i do remember watching it on a black and White Television in my parents basement. Obviously stuck with me. I went on and i still my mother saved these little sketches i would make of the lunar module. I was a pretty creative 8yearold. But fast forward, i read a book called digital apollo. I dont know if anybody has read that book. It wasnt a story about astronauts or even a story about people. It was how we did it, on a technical level. How did we get to the moon . We invented Guidance Systems that didnt exist and docking systems that people didnt know they would work. How did people position themselves to land on the moon . It was an amazing tree tis in there about how does an astronaut stand . What does he want to look at . What does he see . When does he turn from going back towards to Going Forward . There were amazing discussions in there about how we really did it. And that actually served as a bit of a motivational force for how do we design our new spacecraft . Do we have to etch the glass to astz naughts can see the horizon . Why does it function the way it does . It helped us a little bit. We played on a lot of the apollo legacy just in designing our capsuled spacecraft. Yeah, i was 6, right between the two of you. I was nearsighted and in the wrong country. So, im incredibly thankful for having a chance, actually, to work on the next generation. I felt a little bit apollo is incredible inspiration for, i want to say, everybody working at spacex, but part of what we do is also to recreate that, to have this boldness or advice and filling it up with dangerous propel ents and putting fire and earth and going to the moon. Thats an incredible thought. Thats hard to explain to people that are not engineers or not scientists and have not seen that. To me that was one of the key drivers. I want to do that, too, yeah. And, you know, an opportunity to actually do that and hopeful well see mars moon and mars in the next decade basically again and have a chance to stay longer and stay maybe permanently. That would be great. Im not going to say i was 5 or 6, because i wasnt. I was in my last in the throes of my last few months as a student naval aviator. I was at meridian, mississippi, going through Flight Training in the t2, getting ready to go back to pensacola to go aboard the boat. I had no interest in space whatsoever. I had i admired the original seven. I you know, we were sitting at the in the boq watching buzz aldrin and Neil Armstrong descend to the surface of the moon. I was mesmerized but no interest whatsoever. And it took a person to really get me interested in the Space Program and that was the late great dr. Ron mcnear who personally inspired me and embarrassed me into submitting my application for the Astronaut Program because he reminded me of something my mom and dad told me all the time growing up in sblg south carolina, that you can do anything you want to do if youre willing to work and put your mind to it. Ron asked me when he asked me if i was going to apply for the program. He look add at me strangely. He said, why . Not because they would never pick me. He said, thats the dumbest thing ive ever heard. How do you know if you dont ask . I was challenged and i did. But i was inspired by apollo after becoming part of the program. I was inspired with my almost eight years at nasa administrator as people who have no clue about rocket ships and sometimes dont know which end is up play an importantly Critical Role in the future and whether or not we exist. The reason we werent ready to go into human space flight from the u. S. Right after we phased out of shuttle was because we could not convince the congress that a commercial Space Flight Program was the way to go for the u. S. The reason that we went to the moon was because we had a president surrounded by people like george lowe. Tom talked about some of them yesterday. But people who refused to say we cant do this. We dont know how, is what they said, but well find a way. And so apollo inspired me to work that way with people who make decisions to help them understand why. Social media has changed the game pro and con. Following the example of spacex and the way they utilize social media, nasa has really gotten into the game of informing people. When i talked yesterday about its not either or, its an and. Government and industry, government and entrepreneurs have to work together. That was my inspiration from apollo. Man, a lot of people dont have a clue what youre doing and could care less but theyre the ones that are going to help you do it. All right. Tom, you have inspiration even before apollo. Do you want to share well, of the four missions i flew, again, the most impressions and changes as far as your view is when you flew to the moon. There was only 24 of us that flew to the moon. 12 of us left around now. Thats unique because when youre out there, its about the size of an orange. And thats why i wanted to pioneer to share that with people and it worked out real well. Speaking about that and the experiences you go through, like gemini 9, it was a heck of a time getting inserted back in that spacecraft. We could have lost myself. From that we developed training under water. But theres a great movie out. I recommend it to you. And i saw it. It was made in russia about alexei liara, my good friend, the one i shook hands with on apollo soyuz. Kremlin, about 6,000 people were there. When i was over there with my group, on the iss Advisory Task force, they had a special showing for us in the museum of cosmos and they showed us that movie. I think apollo 13 is probably the most realistic of the space movies you see in the United States. But this movie called spacewalker, you can get it from amazon with english subtitles. Its probably one of the best movies and most realistic ive ever seen. It is unbelievable. And i recommend it to all. Its about a twohour movie. But getting back in was something youll never forget. I told crip at dinner last night, i didnt have time to go into it yesterday, but on that second stage burn on the s4b, the third stage when i was a translunar injection, picked up 11,000 feet per second, we got up around 32,000 feet and it started to vibrate it was like a pogo but it wasnt. The frequency was the same but the amplitude was building. I told john young, i said, john, this feels like flutter but theres no aerodynamic forcing function on this thing, and it kept getting more and more and more. It got so bad, i remember by 34, 35,000 feet, i could not read the instrument panel. And i thought the thing was going to blow apart. Here was the abort handle. Turn it 45 degrees to the left and that would have shut the engine down but i knew we would be gone a day and a half at least to abort. I guess thats why you have commanders as test pilots. If it blows, it blows. We picked up 11,000 feet per second. And we were sixtenths of a foot per second on our computer. I said, what the hell was that . We just i couldnt believe it. And so john turned around and said, hey, guys, look at this. Theres a stabilizing bar we had in apollo to stabilize the couches to the spacecraft. The last thing before they closed the hatches, disconnect that stabilizing bar and lock it down. Well, guess what. He didnt disconnect it. Furthermore, i told back to mission control, i said, check the gs we got on this vibration. I said, its really something. And they called the next day and said, well, looks like we had a problem with the tank pressurization and vent valve sequence. And about a week later i got a call from dr. Rod braun himself with his german accent and he said, tom, we owes you an apology. I said, whats that, doctor . He said, well, you remember a vibration you had at the end of the s4b burn . You remember that . I said, remember . Said, well, we pressurization valve too close to the vent valve and they got into a siwe were on a cantileve and so we were shaking to pieces. They fixed that real easy but we made double sure when they closed the hatch, the stabilizing bar, two people was down, and number two, they set a wide variance between tank pressurization and vent valve and no other apollo had the problem. Amazing. I am also so impressed your memoryle is like a trap. Hes like quoting speeds. Its so impressive. So, onto the next question. I really want to look towards the future of space travel or human space flight. On the horizon we have so much excitement. We have the commercial crew program, weve got space tourism, youve got artemis, were going to the moon. Were using that as a stepping stone to go to mars. Some people want to retire there. Theres so much excitement. So i would love for each of you to share what youre looking forward to most about the future of Space Exploration and are there things from apollo that still resonate today . Well start with charlie and come back this way. The Critical Technology right now is what we call, you know we just got to figure out how to land the kind of masses were talking about landing on mars. Thats something weve got to figure out again. If i go back to what spacex is doing and has done, we had talked to them about, you know, flying a dragon to mars and landing because it would give us data about a propulsive landing retro grade propulsive landing on mars. Again, working with the private sector and experiment that is theyre doing that keeps nasa from having to do that allows them to go on and develop the exploration part of the program. The other thing is the human body. We know quite a bit more than weve ever known before thanks to a lot of the experimentation thats going on on station today. But longterm survival on mars, i think well be okay, but its just its sort of like a commercial you see on television that says, well, i think well be okay. Okay is probably not good enough when were talking about that, so we probably need to figure out exactly how were going to keep the crew safe in the radiation environment of mars. Im a big fan of going underground and using the martian soil as a safeguard so humans live underground and thats enough for me. Hans . Spacex was built with the background of making the human species multiplanetary, which means earth and mars, for now. And obviously the big problem going to mars is money. There are some technical problems, too. Money plays into that, too. Space flight is super expensive. So, one obvious knob to turn this is reusability. Its not just reusability as rapid reusability. Currently we design for ten times. Were going to were going to start for the fourth time. Dragon has been used three times. And so all these things help because you dont have to build something again. You have to, you know, inspect it, refurbish it but you want to keep that really, really low. Like an airplane, basically, so you inspect it, its still fine and you have scheduled regular maintenance on boosters and, you know, others. We just recently recovered a faring coming from the second stage, basically, in a big net and saved it from the water, from falling in the water, which is super useful. And then were going to refurbish that. Obviously, were working part by part. Starship were working on that. Its going to allow us to use the second stage and it really becomes the cost of fuel and the cost of some maintenance and the operations, basically. Thats where we need to go. Thats the technical side. On the other side we need in terms we knee payload, users, people that actually use that service, and thats basically very everybody can pitch in here and help us because obviously if you have this capability, somebody needs to use it and thats super important, too. I think thats primarily it. Reusability, and not to mention of course reliability and safety. When you reuse stuff you can make it safer, you can see boosst booster coming back, you can see leaks, get more data. We use video cameras all over the place. We just pull them off and look at them. So, that helps you, too. Reliability, safety, reuse ability. Chris . I think the biggest asset we have right now that will enable us to get to mars in the not too distant future is about 240 kilometers that way. Its the International Space station. Its the place were learning to live and work for long durations. How do we purify water . How do we get to recycling 95 to 98 of our water . How do we remove co2 from the air . How do we create oxygen . How do we make this work in a system that must function for the duration of time it takes to get to mars and back. And were perfecting those systems on the International Space station today. I think we have to look beyond 2028 where the current iss life is and, to hans point, who are the users . Who will build the replacement for the place to test and develop longterm assurance these systems will, in fact, work on the day that we eventually do leave lowearth orbit for the martian surface. I look at this as two things, the biggest barrier is the cost of getting people and things up there which our entry partners are working on to try to you know, reusability is key, obviously, to lower launch costs but also frequently of launch. If you go to the cases of the users, if youre a user, you want to be sure that you can get access frequently based on whatever the pace of your Business Model requires. So those are two dynamics that are still playing out. Well see where we get to with the current plans. And then with respect to going further beyond lowearth orbit, radiation, the question, we have a lot of questions there. We need to understand the answers to those questions and manage that problem because radiation is not going to go away. That is sort of, i think, what we have to do there. To chris point, recycling is important but i would say its beyond just creating a 100 closed life support system. Its also everything else. Think about the logistics training that we might have to establish to support people on mars and its ridiculous to imagine how you manage that. So we have to figure out how to recycle everything that we take into space, how we can use the materials on the planetary bodies upon which we place humans and theres a lot of work that has to be done in that area. And, by the way, that kind of work will eventually come back and benefit earth. Because we have finite resources here on our planet and we have to figure out how to recycle a little bit more here, too theres some dualuse technologies that we can work on that will benefit lowearth orbit and our planet. Well, i do firmly believe that humans will visit mars some day. But before we do that, not only learning to live off the planet on the iss, but we need to learn to live on another planetary body. And were lucky enough to have the moon thats just a few days away as opposed to months going to mars. And it is a great test ground for learning how to live off this earth that were all looking to do. And there are many questions to be answered, radiation being a significant one, and we ought to take advantage of that, the trips that we did make to the moon were all little camping trips, somebody else said they were short duration kinds of things. And to live there is a total different problem. And we need to solve that. Well, bob really brought up some points that we outlined in this years study i shared for president bush sr. And Vice President quayle how to go back to the moon and onto mars. He hit it right there. But one thing, you are going to need a big booster. Theres no doubt about it. People have things to sell. They always want to sell you the small boosters and put them together. The math just doesnt work. Well, weve been through it many times. Radiation, absolutely, we have to have a way to protect for radiation. Thats one of the big risks. And assuming that your Systems Engineering is good and your systems have enough reliability to get you out there, perhaps a Nuclear Thermal Rocket for mars, you dont need it for the moon. As far as upper stage propulsion. And oh, again, the two things you have to recycle is water and oxygen. And, you know, for example, on apollo 10, i lifted off about 6. 4 Million Pounds of mass. I had 300,000 pounds to leo and 100,000 pounds how did you do that . How did you do that . All i had was 4. 8 there earth orbit and then on tli, it was 1. 6 . Now, the human being uses about 2. 2 pounds, depends on your weight, 2. 2 pounds of oxygen per day. So, that means youre going to have to have 50 to 75 pounds of mass for every day you breathe unless you recycle. Youre going to have to have 6. 5 pounds of water a day, and thats going to take that much more. So, you got to recycle that. So, theres a lot to be done. And one other thing, this kind of sticks in my craw, we hear the word commercial. Well, i was on the backup of the first gemini flight, i was backup commander on the first apollo flight so i was there from the start to finish and everything nasa bought and purchased was from commercial entities. It was all commercial. Except we had insight and requirements, but the contract was a good team. But the word commercial means nasa steps out of the way. I kind of disagree because nasa did everything on gemini, apollo and even the shuttle was all done by commercial people. None by nasa, zero. So i wanted to bring that up. [ applause ] so, prior to this i did a bunch of research and something that wasnt that i didnt include in your bio was at some point the Guidance System that you did hand calculations in space because the Guidance System failed, correct . Now you understand how he can do that. Hes a human calculator. I love it. We have a short period of time, but im going to do one more question and we might only have one person answer this before we go to the audience. You know, the space industry is highly competitive, as we know. It has a history of being competitive. But its also highly collaborative. The scope of what were trying to achieve requires us to really collaborate. Now, you know, in the commercial era, still highly competitive and highly collaborative. How does that balance i guess give me some insight on that delicate balance and why we need both. And id love to start with sandy because i know you did a lot of work with International Agencies during your time at nasa. Yeah, it is a delicate balance. And i think its its a good dynamic because theres a push pull amongst the different entities. The competition is good because it makes everybody keep innovating and the collaboration is good because we learn from each other, because it still is quite risky, quite dynamic. Its a harsh environment to try to operate in. Keeping that balance where the learning happens across the community, but theres enough competition and poking at each other to spur people to do better is really awesome. And i think it all works at the end of the day because in my experience, working with people around the world in the Space Program, what i have found is that everybody is really, really passionate about the mission of flying in space, whether thats machines or people or both. And because everybody buys into that and feels that and is passionate about that, we can conquer all kinds of issues that might otherwise create fracti fractionation and dysfunctionality. We still have some but in general the whole Community Pulls together because they believe in that passionate thing. Its one thing i talk about with respect to the International Space station program, it shows you, you know, going back to collaboration and cooperation, it shows you that program, what we can do as human beings if we really want to accomplish something difficult. Its the most complex, highly Technological Program ever conceived and executed by people. And it involved numerous Different Countries with different agendas, different languages, the english system and the metric system and thats a mess, too, but political situations, but this project, this multidecade project worked because everybody who was engaged in it at the end of the day really believed in it and had their passion towards it and theres no reason why we cant solve any problem that is pacing us as a deployable population, if we take the same attitude but thats why the competition and the collaboration worked so powerfully in the Space Program because of this passion and total commitment to achieving the end goal. We dont have a ton of time but what wants to take this one . Charlie . Ditto. Ditto . So how do you guys take that one . I dont know. I feel like when you actually, there is a level of competition and thats good and a level of cooperation on the launch pad that everybody works for the mission and it doesnt really matter which company they work for, in many cases and the same applies to when things go wrong, that everybody feels terrible when things go wrong and i found this at the end of the day, people that work in space are passionate about space, and you know, they want their company to succeed but theres an overarching level people want things to go well and to be safe and reliable, so that in many cases is more important. I found this pretty refreshing in many cases. Ill just talk dollars quickly at a high level. If you look at what it costs to develop the shuttle, it was between 30 billion and 40 billion, in 2010 dollars, give or take, depends what source you look at and the Shuttle Program was about 3 billion per year, and that got you about four to five flights per year depending upon the year, but if you just look at sort of the way the commercial crew program is evolving, for the cost of operating the Space Shuttle program for two years, a little bit over that, youre getting two different providers that are contracted to do a full development, two test flights and six Service Flights back and forth to the International Space station, so now just looking at it dollar value, it will turn out to be a very good value for the american taxpayer when we execute. So where does that reinvestment dollar get paid and i think the intent is to reinvest that in Exploration Technology to get us to the moon and get us back to mars. The idea being like i said earlier, lets invest in low earth orbit, provide a commercial capability to get cargo back and forth from there and soon to be humans back and forth from there and allow nasa to go beyond low earth orbit with the taxpayer investment. Now were going to transition out to the audience for questions, and while we do have mics set up, we actually have someone thats going to walk around so if you have a question, you dont need to scooch your way out to the aisle, just raise your hand and someone will come meet you with the microphone. My name j. D. Horen, with the materials engineering of nae. My question is about space force. A new Military Branch was created last year, so we are going to have Additional Branch for the armed services. With your experience in space, your perspectives are very valuable to make sure the new branch would operate to its maximum efficiency and it delivered the best value. So i just like to see the panel to share some of your views and also maybe specific suggestions so the space force we operated accordingly. The question is your views of space force . Yes. Okay. Or suggestions as well. Ill take that. Would you like to take that, tom . Yeah, ill take it. Okay, well the way that force has been involved over the years, with the armies and maybe the navy, that went on for years, but who invented the wheel but then the air, and i think the first shot ever fired was an italian a twoplace flyer, across the English Channel in 1910 and some fighting the balkans, somebody fired a rifle out of the back seat, i dont know if he hit anybody but anyway, so you know, air became and then a domain of force projection. All youre doing in this case is going higher and faster and to think that its not going to be is naive and we know what the chinese are doing with hypersonic glide vehicles. And thats out in space. Anyone else want to take that . No . We have internal views on space for us up here. Next question . My name is dan baker from the university of colorado. Im a practitioner of space weather, and many of you on the panel have mentioned space radiation as a concern, i guess my question is how important is it to you and your mind for the future to have forecasts of what the space environment is going to be, and to have adequate warning to help lets say prepare for the more transient kind of space radiation effects . I think its important for astronauts but not nearly as important as it is for us on the planet. You know, space weather today and im speaking to the choir here, it is how we have, we anticipate communications, you know, weve been very fortunate and we have not had a major space where theres occurrence thats knocked out Satellite Communications and the like, but that is a possibility. Long before we need to worry about whats the risk to a crew member flying in space, weve got to continually have an ongoing improving technologically developing space weather capability just to protect us here on the planet. I think some of the ideas floated on the astronauts from space radiation, there are some advancements being made in polymers but one of the most Practical Applications essentially create built around a spacecraft, which of course is extremely power intensive, so this is a problem that were going to have to solve and while i would strongly advocate the prediction of such events, i dont know how good were going to get to say hey, youre good for three years, for your threeyear trip to mars, youre going to be fine. Ultimately we have to beat the problem back. He asked about space weather forecasts. I mean, from my perspective, i watched the space weather every time when we launch as much as i look at the other weath weather. It has a different effect in that sense you care about life on board and the electronics rather than wind in the upper atmosphere, but its just a factor as it goes into the whole picture and whole environment. Well take the next question. Right here. From a commercial perspective, what is the end goal . Where do you see this program in say 25 years or 50 years . Whats your vision . And this could be hans or chris or sandy, anyone on the panel. Its a good question, actually. We work currently on fixed contracts, and frankly, one of the discussions of commercial, i found that one of the biggest whether you tell somebody build that for me and dont, this is the amount of money you get and you are on your own mostly. Its not quite like that, we have some support obviously and we work as a team but the end of the day the money is finite that you get for something and thats a model i can see helping the cost keeping controlled because we are very cost conscious. Its not billable hours like you have in other, you know, professions. So because thats what cost is a billable hour and just goes up and theres the incentive is not there to keep it low cost, so i see this as a currently we keep these contracts in that way and becomes more and more of a service and i forgot who said it, i think it was you, it could be like a service like you book your ticket, basically, a certain amount of money to bring stuff from the ground to the moon and some amount of money that depose to mars but fundamentally costs must come down dramatically in the next 2425 years in order to make this work and make the whole economics of it close, otherwise it might be too expensive. If a may, closer to 50 than 25, to hans point the cost of launch will have come down so people like you guys who are very creative and have a very good expertise and certain areas have an opportunity to have the perception shifts that i mentioned earlier, and then the creative juices flow and you think of things that you can do, and low earth orbit, things you can take advantage of with microgravity or business ideas. What were missing now is that piece. We have a lot of capabilities that are going to be coming online but we havent quite figured out yet how to develop the markets or how to develop the use cases for the broader private enterprise, and so getting the access for people to get up there and have good ideas figuring out the platforms beyond the space station and what other kinds of ventures we can create in space, so 25 to 50 years from now, im hoping weve started to solve those problems and you see some of that wedge of activity becoming sort of normal. Im the essential optimist, however, comma, this is one thing that bothers me because we all talk about 25, 50 years from now. We dont have that long. The International Space station is a machine. Most of you in this room are scientists, engineer, im neither. Ive been around long enough to know machines break. We have probably four to eight years i think of life left on the International Space station. Money is not going to help that. Question dont have a way to get enough pieces and parts there to refurbish it and make it new, so weve got, somethings got to step into its place or well be exactly where cryp and i was, with Space Shuttle were going to shoot the space station with nowhere to go, so somebodys got to come up with a Business Case that helps people understand that there is value in going in to low earth orbit and having a pharmaceutical laboratory. There is value going to low earth orbit and having a Materials Processing Laboratory because weve demonstrated all that on the International Space station, now for 19 years. Thats what the space stations purpose was. To demonstrate this is a potential moneymaking venture. Nobodys bought that case yet and until somebody buys that case and makes the investment and says im going to put a platform up there, i thought bob bigelow was going to do it, the beam on the International Space station for four, five years and it has not stepped off yet. Am i being critical . You bet i am because nasa spent a lot of money, the government spent a lot of money allowing the private sector to go and use this Test Facility so they could step off and go make money. You dont make money if youre not willing to take a risk and hanging around the International Space station is risky in one respect but not a business risk. You have room, board and transportation frequently provided by the government. The government doesnt have enough money for all of you conservatives here who believe in the free market, you got an opportunity, jump off the International Space station and build the low earth orbit inf infrastructure we have to have if were going to successfully send humans back to the moon and mars. Enough from me. [ applause ] just to finish, bring the point home. Boeing and spacex are developing two new capabilities to get back and forth to low earth orbit. We have one customer, the International Space station. Its taken nine years to get this far. This is difficult. This is the first time weve done this as a country in 40 years since we developed the space smhuttle. Without a destination in 2028 or a commercial market that builds, will we be ready to retire the capability to get back and forth with humans . I sure hope not. You wanted to say . I mentioned how fast the Apollo Program was turned on. It was done in about three years and also the same way the Space Exploration president bush sr. Started was turned off just as fast by William Jefferson clintons. That was bushs program, its off, boom, and the same thing happened in the Obama Administration, it wasnt within three weeks you it bfs turned off, constellation program. I dont know who is going to win the election next november a year from now and that can be turned off real fast what we have there. I cant forecast who is going to be the chief executive the next say two or three cycles. But that could go on, it could go off. Thats the big risk. Next question . [ inaudible ] ill try to limit it to hans. Im glad you can see well now. What about the competition, Jeff Bezos Company versus spacex, where is he . Hes got also their company also have their rockets land, they took off from, which is quite amazing. Is that serious competition to spacex . I would definitely say bezos he can pay for it also. Right, i mean, they are competition. Theyre building great vehicles, and however we are ahead of the game right now, theres one big step the rocket needs to do, go to orbit and that is in some cases has been proven to be harder than people thought, and ive learned that myself, its hard to get to orbit, so we have that advantage right now, but at the end of the day, this competition and we welcome competition. We feel like it gives us an edge because we now push to work harder. We push to work on lowering the cost and becoming the best competitor among other competitors. Next question. Hello, my name it tom johns, university of wisconsin madison. I thank the academy and panelists for an exciting, inspirational session. Since we have a lot of engineers in the room id like to ask a question about the future commercialization of space and striking the right balance between speed and safety. Weve seen during this session and the incredible advances that are being made driven by competition in terms of advances very rapidly in terms of the technology arguably not fast enough but on the other hand this last year also brought us some insight into what can happen when speed can lead to screwups with regard to basic laws of Aerospace Engineering and in terms of redundancy and so finding the right balance between those two is always a challenge. Im curious what the panelists might comment about whats going on, what the future holds, the role of nasa, on one hand of advocacy but on the other hand potentially involved in terms of dare i use the term regulation or providing that safeguard against a kind of disaster that would be incredible blow for the industry if it hams at a critical moment. I think about that question, how do you balance speed and safety. Okay, ill start. You need to have both and speed does not mean you dont operate safely. Safety is a mindset as much as it is anything and hans and i were talking about this at breakfast this morning. The safety mindset says we may be two seconds from launch and i dont feel well and i say stop. The critical part is having people who have the ethical background to say this is not right the shortcuts were taking are not right and you look at the program you have in space place. The government and nasa doing it because we yen rally take longer doesnt mean were any more safe than the private sector. Going slow doesnt guarantee youll be safer either. It gives you more time to do stupid stuff. Its a delicate balance and mindset. One of the pleas from undergraduates we need to be taught an ethics course for engineer engineers because one of these days i have to make a life and death decision and that needs to be ethically grounded. A lot of things dont have anything to do with math and science and engineering we have to make sure the young people of today understand. There is right and wrong. There is ethical and not ethical. There is a good book for people to read, how the challenger occurred you know, the underlying title is i forget, thats what happens at my age. We infuse that attitude and culture as young people. We as engineers and scientists have to teach them how to think ethically and make the right decision even if it means the program is slowed for a while. Nothing ends like rushing it and having it blow up. Thats it. People get over being years late and dollars over. We have never recovered from losing two success shuttles. All of us will say that. You dont recover from that. Its always a scar that you carry with you. Get it right. Chris . Sorry, go ahead. If i may, the other thing to think about is as opposed to speed is complacency. You get into normal operations and forget to question things because things are normalized so its not really i think a speed thing. Its staying alert and questioning and listening to the system and making sure that you can have an environment where people can bring up questions, because thats really where youre going to create the right safety environment, whether youre moving fast or slow so its all about avoiding that complacency and thats are hard. We talked about how we normally to situations if you look at the accidents it was about complacency and werent questioning as carefully as we should have been doing. Youre going to be on board one of the first test flights, what is your thoughts about speed versus safety . I didnt hear your last line. So i dont think speed and safety are synonymous. Ive had the unique opportunity to watch every phase of our vehicles design from the engineering to the piece parts that come together. Does that me a foremost expert, no, but an interested watcher. We work to a pretty spask and hans i think you agree set of requirements that come from nasa that are sort of bathed in the experiences and the mistakes that nasa has made in a way it runs space Flight Operations in the past and we have a lot of help from nasa. Any amount of help in the right area is a good thing. I think this is a very appropriate transition between a government run and managed program over to a commercially run and managed program with just enough of the past steeped in and boeing Legacy Companies has been involved in every human Space Flight Program since the beginning and work with an enormous amount of people for shutting. A lot of the mentality and mindset is still there. If it means stopping the launch and explaining to your customer why you stopped that for like three days, its more important to get things right than to get them done on time. Definitely. Question . Ive heard so much about the cost and complexity of getting things from the earth to low earth orbit as being one of the barriers, a concept both in Science Fiction and in some of the serious aeronautical journals is the space elevators. Anybody thinking about the concept of the space elevator . When i was executive director we have a Passionate Community inside its row space industry that is very enthusiastic about the space elevator. Its still out there as a concept. Technically the road blocks and people looking at narrow particles and can you weave together some cables of these materials that are superstrong and can handle the tension but i dont know the details. I know there is a Passionate Community out there. Material science, very serious material science problem but we solve things like that. Yep. Next question over here. Am i live . Andy jackson section ten. I dont want to be a downer on this, obviously talking about human space flight but humans are very fragile. When i hear colonel stafford tell me how many pounds of this, oxygen, we need water, we need food, is there a interim step that could be less expensive . The convergence of Artificial Intelligence and robotic design would it be better to construct a community on mars which is based on robots, not on people, but the people themselves can control those robots, so you have that experience. Seems like a huge amount of the cost in getting us to mars is protecting these fragile beings. We talk about radiation getting there. Any thoughts on an alternative way to create a community on mars without necessarily sending people there first, they could go there later . Youve got koor yosity, soon mars 2020 with an experiment called moxie. Its not people but they are Automated Systems doing the things that people we hope will do later like extract oxygen from the carbon die oxide atmosphere and make breathing oxygen and oxygen as a part of a fuel so were doing that for auto years. Im not a geologist but i have geology friends told me if we put one geologist on the surface of mars for as long as curiosity was there wed probably have explored the planet by now. I dont say that as a trivial, not a joke but there is this innate curiosity that humans have that we are not able yet to teach a robot. Artificial intelligence will be here one of these days we think and an example, Hubble Space Telescope, we found out hubble had a spheric collaboration and we decided we were not going to send the shuttle up to get hubble, the National Academy put together at the insistence of senator barbara mikulskey we put how we could save hubble, that was the title of the group, saving hubble. We went into t all of it did, even the human space flight weve got to find a robotic capability to do this. The technology wasnt there at the time. If we had that happen to hubble today we could probably put together a Robotic Mission to do the repairs on hubble that have been done to date because we have the experience of humans messing around with it and finding out things that we can do that we can automate. Thats essentially the story of the International Space station. You have r2, robots roaming around, spheres. How do you offload the human from doing mundane things and now time to send humans to mars to try to pull together some of these things that the robots have been doing for 50 years now, i think. Look at it as a toolbox, right . Humans have certain skills and they come with certain pros and cons and machines have certain skills and come with pros and cons, so just like your toolbox in your garage, you cant do anything with screwdrivers or all hammers. You need a mix so how you design a mix of robots and humans on a mission depends on what is the mission and what youre trying to accomplish. They both come with expensive infrastructure in space on the ground come with fragility and limitations. You picked the tools for the mission and based on what your goals and objectives are. Im a big fan of mars and using robots. Before we put a single foot on mars we should have an army of robots put there to burrough into the surface, build out the infrastructure the same way we do for any american soldier, marine, airman, who goes to any of the strange places in the world today. When they get there, they walk into their hootch. Kellogg, brown and root a whole bunch of robots taken prefabbed stuff over there and air conditioned space where they can do stuff. You still to to dig a fox hole in the remote parts but that is a business that we could be working on right now. Tom has some thoughts, too. It might be slightly apples and oranges but to follow on charlie, took curiosity on mars 3 1 2 years to cover the same that gene and jack did on apollo 17 in three days and brought back 245 pounds of rocks and material. So again it puts you need both but it costs more, too. Next question . A short question, but likely a bit controversial. You talk about competition and collaboration and it seems to me one of the big elephants in space might be china. Im interested in your response in addressing the relationship in terms of space and china. Why does everybody look at me . Im the guy that shot him, again. Most recently say what you will about president obama and the Obama Administration, in 2010, we thought we were on the verge of having another apollo soyuz but a shinjo shuttle or whatever you call it and it got shut down by the congress, so you know, all of you recognize, because a lot of your intellectual and academic partners are chinese. Everybody, we got problems with everybody. You know, what makes us able to work on the International Space station so incredibly well, its mission focused. Its deciding what well do to make the world a better place. When i was named to command my last Space Shuttle commission at nasa Head Quarters and george abby said i want to you go back to houston and fly another shuttle mission. I said what is it . I hope it was to repair hubble. He said no, not on your life. I want to you command the First Mission thats going to carry a russian cosmonaut and i told him, george, forget it. Im a marine. I have trained all my life to kill them and them kill me, and i dont want to fly with any n damned russian. He said okay, now that youve said all that, just calm down, two guys are in town, go have din we are them and let me know what you think in the morning and i met sergei krikolov and flood mere tetov my dear friends to this day some 20 om odd years later. Because what we talked about didnt have anything to do with technology. Talked about our kids what, we wanted to do for the future and we became mission focused on figuring out how we could get our two teams together and successfully work on that mission and it became shuttle mir and now the International Space station. I think tom will tell you the same thing about lexi. Exact same thing. I graduated the Naval Academy, went to the air force because the korean war was going on and the air force had the first swift wing airplane and i was a cold warrior. I wanted to shoot down migs and kill commies and thats what i was dedicated to. Boom. I ended on an apollo soyuz and realized all the russians werent communists and went from there, lexy leonov was one of my dearest friends, just like a brother to me. His granddaughter is named after my granddaughter and my two grandsons are named off different sons named after alexei. The whole thing, were really working good together. I told him, we have to work with the russians because we need a crew escape vehicle and the soyuz was there. I didnt know 28 years later id be adopting two russian orphan boys. Next question. Hi, meghan smith from shift seven, proud member of section ten. Two quick things. Charlie, i loved what you said about ethics, and i wondered whether we the nae might think about a hippocratic oath like that ring all the canadian engineers get from the bridge that fell down when they graduate. My question is with this Incredible Group, maybe to lift some hidden figure stories. Theres so many people of course apollo and the Space Mission was born at the same time as massive civil rights work was going on for race equality, gender equality, lgbtq, so many people and at the time, there was a lot of discrimination in choosing who got to go, and do different things, but still people snuck in and found their way to participate in these teams, and i thought maybe the panel could lift some of those stories today for us, one or two ideas, and the one i would share is betty skelton, the first of first known as landspeed records, flight records, who the mercury 7 used to call 7 1 2, and she embedded with them for a look magazine like Time Magazine story and did every single test, met with the russians, did all these things. Theres beautiful pictures from the 1961 article, should a woman be first in space or should a girl, sorry, back then, a girl be first in space. The space suits didnt fit her either, still dont, but just sharing those stories as there are women, women of all races, men of color, lgbt folks you might reflect on during the space race or recently that may be less people know that you would share and things we as an academy to do to make sure those stories are more wellknown . Thank you. I cant share a figures kind of story but id like to share a story that perhaps addresses sort of the root of what youre asking about. I was in middle school when i first dreamed of being an astronaut and i had no idea how i was going to do it. I had no idea if it was even possible but something that i decided it was just who i was, and in 1978, when i entered high school, there was an article on the front page of my hometown newspaper in southern small town illinois, and across the front page was splashed women accepted into the nasa Astronaut Corps and a picture of all of women in that 1978 class, and when i saw that newspaper article, and that picture, that was a huge i started crying, quite frankly, because at that moment, i realized that the dream that i had was possible, but there was a path, that there are people like me that i could totally idea with doing the thing i always dreamed of doing. Over the years i have synthesized that moment into the power of role models, and how important it is, everyone in this room is a role model for some constituency, and im not talking about gender or necessarily race but your hometown, the high school that you went to, the community that you live in, your nieces and nephews, because kids never listen to their parents, but nieces and nephews, there is somebody somewhere that you are a role model for, and to your point, what could the nea do . This group of people in the nea is an Incredible Group of people who are very talented and successful and i would encourage to you get out there and be role models and encourage people and excite people about your passion in s. T. E. M. Thats really what it will take to create more and more people engaging in our fields but do not underestimate the power of role models. Ill stop there. Another hid figures story . Ill bring up one point. I have three daughters and i became convinced early in my career women could do whatever they wanted to and i had the pleasure of having sally ride on my crew, stx7. 35 years ago today kathy sufficiently itch and sally ride were on my crew 41g and going to prove kathy was quite capable of doing a space walk because a lot of men doubted that a woman could. She went out and did the job superbly and proved them, and subsequently weve had all kinds of women do spacewalk and somebody brought it up yesterday, we may have two women go out together on the International Space station very soon. Im sure tom and bob and charlie could not imagine in the 60s and 70s flying tactical airplanes with a woman on their wing, right in a tactical aircraft. Yes. And women in combat aviation and Tactical Aviation came about when i was a fleet aviator, and it was a rocky start but before too long we didnt think twice about it. My crew we have nicole mann a duke colonel in the marine corps, a boeing af18 hornet pilot and absolutely awesome and its just amazing how quickly things have come about in opportunities in aviation and engineering. We had lead flight directors two of them who were women, lead space walkers who were women and its just like i said, in the metamorphosis the last 30 years has been incredible. I know no one is here speaking directly about artemis but we cant neglect that. For a woman, a mother of a 4yearold daughter and 1yearold son, were going to have a woman step foot on the moon. Its phenomenal. It is time for us to begin wrapping up and less someone gives me admission to go further. It is time for us to begin wrapping up. Id actually, were going to be quick but im going to give each of you your one sentence just to give a close. There you go, tom, you go first. Work hard. Be a role model for those around you. The next 12 months is going to be pivotal for human space flight. Im going to repeat you, dont screw up. Thats a nice version. What you have and the time that you have and the place that you are. Really great, thank you. Ill close saying i had the opportunity many years ago to have dinner with gene, the last person to walk on the moon. He told about his moon experience and thanks to american ingenuity. Its not just the people in space, its the scientist, the engineers, everyone, the entire community. The Space Program has inspired our nation. Its inspired our world. Its competitive. Its collaborative, its inspired adults, its inspired kids, and i cannot wait to see what the next generation and the current generation of scientists and engineers and astronauts and next in space over the next 50 years. Thank you so much for all of you being here and all of your wonderful questions. Thank you so much to our panelists. It has been an extreme honor. Featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, historian park ranger and author Philip Greenwald gives an illustrated presentation on bostons role in the origins of the revolutionary war. The remarks focus on three pivotal events, the bostoton massacre, tee party and lexington and concord. This was cohosted by the emerging revolutionary war blog, Tavern Museum and lyceum of alexandria, virginia. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend. The media marketplace has shifted dramatically in the last dozen years or so, the sec failed to keep pace. We have rules in place that assume the media marketplace is three broadcast television stagzs at night and a daily newspaper that clunking on your front doorstep in the morning. It is a vastly different market. Fcc commissioner brendan carr tonight at 8 00 eastern on the communicators on cspan2. For 40 years cspan has provided unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. , and around the country. So you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. The National Security commission on Artificial Intelligence held a conference in washington, d. C. On the intersection between Artificial Intelligence and National Security. In this portion of the event, Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer calls on the u. S. To invest more resources in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and other emerging technologies