Man, one giant leap for mankind. 45 years ago this year, and american walked on them and and inspired not just our nation, but the world. For me, it has been an inspiration in my life. I still have the ritual newspaper. Going into space is a big deal. The moon is literally walking on the moon. Congratulations to the entire apollo 11 crew for your daring, historic, spent 45 years ago. Accomplishment 45 years ago. Host buzz aldrin will be our guest on sundays washington journal. Did you have the opportunity to meet buzz aldrin . On many occasions. Every time he was in front of a camera, he was extreme the skittish. He is a generally shy and introverted person and generally felt that the limelight that shined upon him was not shared in a way he was like with the people who got him to the moon. He is a true believer in the team effort that got him there, which i understand. Honoren to be given the to give him an honor at the air and space museum a few years ago, right around the time of one of the anniversaries. I was the mc and was giving him the award. I had the chance to give to have dinner, my wife and i with he and his wife. It was delightful. We talked about everything but the moon. Kids, grandkids, everything you could think of in a conversation. I felt like Neil Armstrong was my friend after this. Not long after that, i went to the very same location with a in tow to intel get him to talk about one of the anniversaries. Him, heminute i saw literally ran away from him from me. It was a different experience. I finally got him when he was coming out of the white house later that same day. I buttonholed him and buzz and mike collins at the white house and was able to interview him. But the truth is, Neil Armstrong was an engineers engineer, and a test pilot test pilot. An engineers engineer, and a test pilots test pilot. He was never comfortable accepting accolades that came to him. Host why was he selected . Guest maybe because of that. Every says he was a civilian at the time with navy roots, which would appeal to the president , president kennedy. But the fact he was a civilian and not a member of the military at the time, maybe. But the truth is, when you look at how all of those missions stacked up, it was a crapshoot as to which one will be the first one to actually land on the moon. Some of that was just purely. You have a sequence of event was just her luck. You have a sequence of events and missions got shuffled around and apollo eight went around the room around the moon instead of testing the module. This is the crew that got to be the one. He was just shy about it. I think you could make the art event that it would have been nicer to have someone more comfortable sharing the story with the public. Because that person, like it or not, and in some cases i think he did not like it, had a public world to share it. Role to share it. I dont know that he was able, or comfortable, telling the story to future generations, as, lets say, jean stern and might have been if he had been the first. Host we are talking to miles obrien, formally with cnn. He is in air and space reporter. Our phone lines are open. From the state of georgia, thanks for waiting. Good morning. Thank you, cspan. Miles, i have watched you for years. Our rim has just been superb. Justr Space Program has been superb. But what im wondering, is there some slack in a . Are there any laws preventing them from going out and mining asteroids . No. T in a word, and there are businesses and enterprises thinking along those lines. Its still pretty tough to make a Business Case for launching a rocket to go to an asteroid and bring those resources back right now relative to the cost of finding a place to mine them here. We still have a problem with chemical rocketry and the cost of giving getting out of the gravity well of earth. Until we solve the problem, until we come up with new Propulsion Systems or elevator concept, whatever you may choose to get us off the surface and into low earth herbal low earth orbit at least, the expense of getting there, it makes it very difficult to ontify the resources present an asteroid. Having said that, as time goes on and you look at the commercial space sector and you look at what people like elon musk are doing to try to change the equation, i think this will change it. I think the cost of getting into space will dropped radically. It needs to drop by an order of magnitude at least. Resources on our planet will become more precious. Over time, this will happen. Is from laura. I would rather my Tax Dollars Fund missions to mars rather than missions to iraq. As we look back, the 21 hours we were on the moon, 45 years ago this month. Dave, good morning. Caller good morning. In july, 1969, my mom my father were to receive as an expatriate working for an american company. We were living in the philippines at the time. Thathings i remember about , first of all, the time zone difference meant that we were events takingthe place during the day, which i believe on the east coast it was in the middle of the night. I rememberer thing is that because the satellite feed was so expensive, there were stories that several of the tv stations locally had to band together to pay for the feed that was coming from the united for the transmission of what we saw on the tv. Host thank you. Guest that brings out an important point of what i was saying in the beginning, that this was truly a global thing. Everybody in the world who could get to a tv was watching it, not just americans. Lesson, whichs a in the current time with the International Space station we are learning what again. The space station, taking aside any of the scientific or extortion endeavor, the space station. He is an opportunity for 16 plus theons to Work Together space station is an opportunity for 16 plus nations to Work Together on a giant operation and a court made a task. That is unprecedented. Space offers us an opportunity to bring us together as human beings. The space issue has proven that. The mission to mars will prove that. And the moon landing, despite the fact that it was about cold war rivalries, showed us in that time that it could be done. Veteranknow you are a of the air and space museum. As we look at some of these iconic catchers from 45 years ago, it is so amazing. You look at that and say, they were in their . Guest i know. That lunar module, of course, if you ever get to one of the displays in houston or huntsville that shows the way those rockets were assembled is amazing. But that tiny little bug, that course,dule, which of is not designed to fly full gravity, or for that matter in the atmosphere we live in, looked so frail. Frankly, if they had pushed too hard with their feet, they could have kicked a hole right through the skin. And that frail little craft, that ugly little bug, if you will, which really is a beautiful thing, was an amazing interesting an amazing instrument. That it got think the crew back and fired up every time, it is really wonderful that we had six missions and not a hitch. Host bill in alabama, good morning to you, sir. Caller i would like to make a imment before i mention who am, or was. I agree with mr. Obrien that mr. Boland is probably a little mr. Bolden is probably a little too optimistic about going to mars by the 20 30s. We have i have is that our priorities on social issues, as opposed to things of adventure. Am bill would i was in houston. Assigned to the lunar surface operations of the time of apollo 11. As a matter of fact, i prepared the first apollo 11 lunar surface operations plans. To developpportunity the equipment and train the crew , train apollo 11, armstrong and aldrin, for what they did when they got on the moon. Host im glad you called in. We would love to have your firsthand account. Let me ask you a question first. Is there a sense of urgency like that today to explore the universe . Caller no, there is not. I know there are a few dedicated people to it, but i do not believe that today. Thank you. Host stay on the line. Dont hang up. We will go to miles obrien, first. Guest i do agree with bill. Heres the thing. The sequence of events that gave , they are not going to happen again, and frankly we do not want that to happen again. Of thet want the middle cold war and mutually assured instructions. Mutually assured distraction. We do not want that. The idea that we would base a cold war rivalry that would get us to mars, date certain, i dont think we should wish for that. The way we did the mood landing in that context, which was a sprint to beat the russians and we did, there was never a good articulation of what is next. Americans were like, why are we continuing to go . Why do we need to spend this money . Vietnamt the end of the war, and inflation. Have is a different approach to it now. Which is what nasa is trying to talk about, a more incremental and sustainable approach. The problem with incremental and sustainable is you are less likely to get those huge point headlines in the new york times. How do you keep people interested in something that is incremental . It is like keeping people on the edge of their seats for the construction of a highway system. We have to make people understand that we are not going to reinvent apollo. That is not going to happen again. We need a Space Program that matches the desire to be spacefaring on a permanent basis. It is hard to come up with a bold type programs to match that kind of approach, and frankly the bold programs are kind of just the opposite of that. Back towant to come you, bill. Thank you very much. It is exciting to hear from people who were involved firsthand. I assume you are in houston at mission when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. What was your reaction . In an adjoining room off the main command area. I was stored of i was sort of standing by the government constructions. They were well trained. Said inially just modicum what they were doing. Host your thoughts . What was going through your head . But it it was my job, was only after that when i realized when the mission was completed that i was more or less elated in what had been a comp was. Host thank you very much caller caller for phoning in. My pleasure host thank you very much for calling in. Caller my pleasure. Host joseph is joining us from california. Good morning. Caller thank you for letting me talk. If we dont go to the moon and start developing bases on the moon, china will beat us in the race to mars. Bet i thought we would living and working on mars by now for resources. Caller we all did. Docking atclippers this base station, supersonic transport, all the things we thought in this technological era of hubris that was the 60s came to a crashing halt in the 1970s. It has been a disappointment to those of us who saw that vision and saw what it meant to those of us on the planet. That is this expression all of the billions that were spent on apollo and gemini and mercury before it, the money was not stacked into bags and shipped into space, it was shipped here. An infrastructure of technology and acadre of engineers prowess in aerospace that we still hold in this country today. It is difficult. It is a subtle sell. They think why dont we just spend the x here . We do. Organizesmething that our efforts and crystallizes our thoughts and inspires young people. That is a very important point. We do not make a lot of engineers in this country before, and space has proven time and again to capture the imaginations of young people and bring people into the fold, into these technical fields that are difficult and important. Host strong and Michael Collins laced a few things on the moon, including an american flag, a 1 mission,the apollo messages from 71 world leaders, and a small gold pin shaped like an olive branch. Caller thank you for having me on here. I was just married whenever we television, and we were happy to see our Space Program progressing so well. My wife and i had moved into our home that we had saved up to get. We were pleased that our technology had developed this far. But today we live in a different time period, and i see us spending our money in another direction. Inneed to keep it here democracy countries and not spend it out in space. Host frank, thanks for the call. That is the point you made a moment ago. Guest there is no place to spend money in space. We are spending it on technology, on development, on sustaining and engineering and scientific enterprise. That is a worthy goal for any nation. Host one of our tweets this morning nasa tot is time for step out of the way and let private business developed a business there. Muskis why you see elon suborbital to get people interested in the notion. There are businesses that can develop it, but it is something that you can get money and investors for. Coming up with a Business Plan to go to mars, that is not quite there yet. That is the promise of government. That is exactly where nasa should be right now, and that is the longterm goal of any space agency, to think about doing things that the private sector cannot. The answer is both. It depends on what goal you are talking about. Host hopefully this will be a fun question because you have been passionate about space exploration. If you could go back in time and be part of any mission, which one would you want to be on . Guest that is a really good question. The first moon landing would have been wonderful. But for my money, the most audacious of the Apollo Missions was apollo 8. At that time, that was a late decision to go to the moon. The lunar module was too heavy, not ready to be tested. That was supposed to be a test mission for the lunar module, and instead that became apollo 9. Late in the game they said why cant we just try going to the moon . No one had ever done that before, hit that translator button. Nslunar that was a really gutsy mission, and i dont know that in todays context it would have happened. This was a different time, a different place, with the imperative of getting it done in a certain time periods that mission in many respects is what laid the groundwork for apollo 11. It was a pivotal mission. Talking about nasas 40th anniversary. And the 40th anniversary, president obama paying tribute to the crewmembers of apollo 11. Very rarely do i have such an extraordinary privilege as i have today, to welcome three iconic figures, genuine american eroes strong, Michael Collins, and me. Aldrin here with it is just wonderful. I think that all of us recall the moment in which mankind finally was untethered from this planet and was able to explore the stars, the moment in which we had one of our own step on the moon and leave that imprint, that is there to this day. Heroism,ause of the pressure,nder the grace with which these three gentlemen operated, also the entire nasa family that was able to, at great risk oftentimes and danger, was somehow not justift our sights around United States but around the world. Host that was the president five years ago at the 40th anniversary. Do you think Neil Armstrong was happy to be there . Guest Neil Armstrong was always uncomfortable in those settings. Always. He was not a public person. I was telling you that story about the night i gave him the award. Most of the apollo astronauts when they are in the public context, they give a boilerplate speech, 21 b kind of thing. He put together what amounted to a scholarly engineering white paper which he shared with the crowd. Brilliant, insightful. He had spent a great deal of time about it. It was clear he did not want to be there talking about the moon. He wanted to talk about the future. I think he was always uncomfortable in public talking about what happened on the moon. He always wanted to talk about what is next for space. Host i want to share this one tweet miles obrien, you were right, it was a daring thing. A good morning. Caller good morning. What a blast from the past. I was living on the naval station in iceland. My dad was in the air force. Host so it had to be the middle of the night when we landed, correct . Tv. Er well, we got asrts we got to watch it during the day. It was a long time ago. Host i did not mean to interrupt. Go ahead with your point. Caller i have heard rumors, but some people say, they question whether we actually made it to the moon. The only thing that ever gets me thinking about this is 45 years later, how come we dont have colonies and there are no starbucks on the moon . [laughter] host that would be a good reason, just because of starbucks. The reason we dont have starbucks is because there are not enough bucks for the stars. I dont want to spend a lot of time on this except to say, if it was done in a back lot of hollywood, i cannot imagine that secret being held this long. Number two, why would we have gone back . We went back six more times. One was an aborted effort. But we landed five more times. Why would we have done that . Tore are a million reasons rebuke all this strange skepticism that has cropped up. If you do your homework and look at the claims point i point, it is sown from whole cloth. Horseace shuttle was a designed by committee. What happened was nasa wanted to go to mars. At that time, the thinking was an idea of aes of space station where you would assemble mars craft and a truck to go back and forth to the space station, a3tiered approach. The nixonlo, administration went to nasa and said we are not going to mars. Space station or Space Shuttle you pick it. Ultimately, the Space Shuttle prevailed. Part of why the Space Shuttle did not succeed as it should have is it was a partnership with the pentagon on the Space Shuttle to design a craft that could deliver spy satellites to , payloads. It was bigger than he needed to be, had a certain cross range capability that was required for the military. On it went. They piled on a lot of specifications which were irrelevant to nasas goal of exploration, so in the end it created a craft that had some fundamental flaws, including no escape system. It was a very dangerous craft that was limited in capability for nasas goals, try to do a number of things for the pentagon and ultimately failed in that regard. I think we learned about technology, how you define a program, especially the specifications. It kept us in lower orbit much longer than nasa would have liked. Host lets go to ed joining us in greenbelt, maryland. Caller cspan, how are you doing . Bowman i know he is not there right now. It was about five years ago. I am an independent research , a phd in physical sciences and i have training in germany and i speak german also and spanish. What do you guys do with people like me, independent researchers . I also give lectures on traveling across the country, and you can look at my last name on youtube and see what i have done. Host how do we use outside experts . Guest we use them more. Washave to remember, nasa doing contractors to do the work. On a militaryuilt procurement style contract, but the fact is the outside has always been a part of nasa. The Civil Servants preside over a contract. What is changing is the way that context is arranged . Shifting some of the responsibility to the contractors themselves. ,hat is what we are seeing moving into this realm of commercialization of space. Nasa has always relied heavily on people outside the agency. They have to because of the way the agency has been structured. Joining us from jacksonville, florida. Caller how are you doing today . I have a couple of different points about the mars exploration. One of the things that is a great idea would be to implement more realistic living environments for the astronauts. Maybe a kind of dreamweaver them a that might give comfortable flight. We also have to remember to try to implement our military. We use a device on the earth that we used to dictate a solar lens to the ionosphere. We could try to not only really control the planet but to make it safer for astronauts before researchers go down there. Host thanks for the call. Guest there are people who say the longrange goal for humanity terraform mars, to make it habitable for human beings. Are running out of time here, billions of years from now. If humanity is to last beyond that, we have to think about getting off this planet. That is longterm, weighty stuff. The first place to go on that long endeavor would in fact be mars, and a lot of people say we could make mars a place where we breathe the air someday. It sounds like Science Fiction, but a lot of what we are talking about today was Science Fiction a few generations ago. Eightweek john, good morning. i was a Second Lieutenant infantry officer when we landed on the moon. It was a full moon night. Advisor on antry combat mission, and i got my counterpart over, who was a in the army and i said would you believe it if i told you there is a man walking on the moon right now. Us lookedhow many of up at the moon right then to do that very thing . Said there was no way. They would die. And i had to explain spacesuits print he said, how did they get there . They had no plane. I explained the rocket system and stages and so forth. I could not convince him that we had done that. One other thing i have always heard i dont know if it is that when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, he said, one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. I always heard it was supposed to be one small step for humankind. Guest what he was supposed to say was, one small step for a giant leap for mankind. He claims he spoke it and it did then get and he did not get transmitted. There is no way to know. One small came out, step for man, one giant leap for mankind. John from louisiana, good morning. Caller i remember quite well i was a First Lieutenant in the United States air force, a pilot in vietnam. Mark clark air place air force base in the philippines. I got to watch it on grainy, blackandwhite tv. , on thehe day before other side of the International Date line. Host you saw it before all of us, really. Guest it is so interesting hearing from a First Lieutenant in the jungles of vietnam. Happeningt, what was with the strife on this planet versus what was happening with exploration. It is hard to overstate the tensions in our society over that. Host richard, good morning. Caller i have always wondered it is interesting the soyuz craft supplies the International Space station. That was a rocket that was designed in the 1950s. It is reliable, dependable. I always wondered, why in the world did we ever get rid of the saturn . To my way of thinking, that design we had the basic design i put all the money into it. Over the years the thing could have been refined. You would not have had to spend all the money for the shuttle to design that. Now that turns out it was not a good design to begin with. I got depressed when we went to the shuttle design. I did not think it was an engineeringly acceptable design from an efficiency stand point. Saturnhave developed a rocket again . Guest we almost literally went in circles with the shuttle. Many people would say that in some respects the Space Shuttle was a technological dead end. Where did it get us technologically . That willwe learned inform our mission to mars . It gave us a lot of experience in space and taught us about spacewalks. It also taught us a little bit about how we should not design, frankly, a craft that will go deep into space. There is a reasonably good argument that the Space Shuttle to greatead us technological findings that will get us to mars. We learned a lot more by building the saturns. If you had taken a more iterative approach and kept focused on exploration and not necessarily gone the route of a shuttle and utilitarian space truck, if you will, there is a good chance we would already have a starbucks on the moon by now. If you look at the federal budget, how big is the nasa budget . A penny. Fraction of there are single programs at the pentagon that exceed that. It is much less than we spend collectively on coffee every year. We dont spend a lot of money on nasa, and the fact that we talk so much about it is a sign of the success of the expenditure of the money that we spend. We spend a little, we know a lot about it. We talk about it as if we cannot afford it, but we cannot afford not to do it. All, an inspiration to us and frankly, we have underfunded it for way too long. It is about time we got serious about having a true space agency that can explore any meaningful way and it does not cost that much money in the grand scheme of things. Even cost is not the right word. It truly is an investment in our economy the cousin of what it does for engineering science and technology here and all around the globe. Host why is this your passion . Person, i spent time covering collectively set events. What i like about the Space Program is there are great events that ring is together that are uplifting that bring us together that are uplifting. I enjoy the idea of setting challenges, meeting those challenges, and those of us collectively experiencing something that is not necessarily about a war or a plane crash. Your i want to go back to conversations with walter cronkite. His excitement when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Sitting here are right now, he would not like the cheerleader term necessarily. Reporter whorters did his homework and believe like i believe that this is a worthy endeavor. He was it is kind of like the home team announcer for the Baseball Team i suppose in some respects. Having said that, he was not afraid to ask the tough questions. He was always there for that. Shareo was not afraid to in the collective joy over that moment. There is nothing wrong with that. I think we have a culture in reporting that whatever story you come to, you have to be a hermit skeptic. But the fact is people who cover politics a permanent skeptic. But the fact is people who cover politics love politics. People who cover space, they can ask hard questions as well. Host heather from jacksonville, good morning. Caller good morning. Launch abouten the three years ago now. I just want to point out that. 8 sinceget is fiscal year 2010. I would love to see us go to the moon. But, mr. Obriant, what do you , what domr. Obrien you think about sos . Does it seem outlandish . Outlandish, but when you look at an incremental approach to expiration, it makes as much sense as anything. There is another goal that we should not overlook. One of these days an asteroid is going to have a bullseye painted on our planet, headed in our direction. If you dont believe me, just ask a dinosaur. It is something that is going to happen. To the extent that we can learn how to redirect asteroids and manage them and deal with them, how to work in proximity with them, that Technology May save the pregnant may save the planet one day. I am not overstating that. I know it sounds outlandish to blast through an asteroid, but if that asteroid were headed to washington, d. C. , and was going to wipe out north america, we would want to deal with it. The mentioned, i do see agency is funded 3 billion per year short. Congress and the American People need to express their interest in this. Is it worth the next 3 billion per year to have the Space Program we can be proud of . I think it is. I dont think in the grand scheme of costs in the government that is a huge number when you consider the payback. But these are tough fiscal times. Ned is joining us from baltimore, maryland. Part of the Apollo Program . Caller i was. I was with the Martin Company at the time, both with the proposal and as a simulator. The main reason i called was to enll i am sure mr. Obri knows a true unsung hero was johnny hope alls johnny ho balt. Rendezvousoorbit was a failure, which is why the russians did not get there. John passed away a while ago. He and i were in la jolla when it landed on a president ial commission. They sent air force one to bring him back. Just wanted to mention that i thought the people ought to know that some people that dont get named all the time are also responsible for our success. Privilege you had to know him, and he was a pivotal character. One other name that does not come up, steve bales, a satomethingyearold wh in the trenches. The the coaching with lunar module touchdown, he was coaching the touchdown. It indicated the computer was saturated, and the crew was wondering whether to abort the landing at the very last minute. Steve was 22 years old at the time and insisted that they were go for landing. Part of the reason they were is that prior to launch of apollo 11, they had run a simulation where the same alarm came up and the computer was saturated with information from the radar to ynce it sink to make it s and they abort of the landing. It turned out to be the wrong call. The entire landing hung on the decision of a 22yearold engineer in the trenches who had learned everything about that alarm and understood the consequences and the fact that it was safe to land. The landing would not have occurred had they not done that simulation. It says a lot about how they trained and tested. That one individual could make that call think about the responsibility on his shoulders that evening. Host failure is not an option. Iles obrien thank you very much for being with us. I want to ask you quickly before we let you go, the downing of the Malaysian Airlines, 290 eight people died on board. By all accounts, and missile struck the plane. Does this tell you about the safety of International Flight . Yourselfu have to ask why an airline would choose to fly into that region, especially when earlier this week two aircraft had been shot down by surface to air missiles. Clear, andwas quite there were all kinds of notices to airmen, and the faa had completely prohibited u. S. Flights in the area a little south of there. The airlines will tell you safety is the number one priority, but truthfully, savings is a big deal. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. They happened to take that flight right over a war zone. Other airlines were flying in, frankly, a lackadaisical manner that was dangerous. The families who lost loved ones in this need to get some answers because this is not safe. Host what is next for Malaysian Airlines . Guest i dont see how they survive, steve. It is a flag carrier supported by the government. There will be another that flies out of malaysia, but the unbelievable what are the odds of this kind of a coincidence . Whatia airlines 777 are the odds . I could not do the numbers on that. It is such a horrible tragedy for the loved ones, such an unfortunate situation for the airline. Is, civilian air the airlines are not flying there now. These airlines