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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast Charles

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Speaker 1: Fisherman with us. His latest work is called One Giant Leap,

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Speaker 1: The Impossible Mission that flew us to the Moon. It

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Speaker 1: was nineteen sixty one when then President John F. Kennedy's

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Speaker 1: very famous speech about us working towards going to the

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Speaker 1: Moon was given. There's a backstory to the speech, which

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Speaker 1: Charles will talk about right after this. But why some

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Speaker 1: say the moon by choose this as our goal? And

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Speaker 1: they may well ask by climb the highest mountain by

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Speaker 1: thirty five years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice

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Speaker 1: play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We

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Speaker 1: choose to go to the moon and dis decay and

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Speaker 1: do the other things, not because they are easy, but

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Speaker 1: because they are hard. Amazing, Charles, what's the backstory? Well,

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Speaker 1: the backstory is that Kennedy wasn't that interested in space,

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Speaker 1: and the decision to say on May twenty fifth, nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty one, let's go to the Moon was really a

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Speaker 1: pure Cold War calculation. The Russians beat us to everything.

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Speaker 1: The first spacecraft launched into space Spotnick Russian a month

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Speaker 1: later they were launched the second one that had the

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Speaker 1: dog like it in it. The first one way one

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Speaker 1: hundred and eighty five pounds. The second one weighed eleven

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Speaker 1: hundred pounds and was an actual space capsules. Our first

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Speaker 1: satellite was planned to be twenty three pounds. They sent

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Speaker 1: the first probe to the Moon. They photographed the dark

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Speaker 1: side of the Moon, developed those photos on board the spacecraft,

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Speaker 1: and radioed them back to Earth in nineteen fifty nine,

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Speaker 1: So they were the ones who who published photographs of

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Speaker 1: the part of the Moon that had never been seen before.

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Speaker 1: And of course famously the first astronaut, the first female astronaut,

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Speaker 1: the first spacewalk and so President Kennedy was tired of

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Speaker 1: being seconds. As he said at the time, in this race,

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Speaker 1: being second means you're you're losing. That's right, like being

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Speaker 1: second with anything else. And as it happened, Uri Gagarin

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Speaker 1: was launched to space on Wednesday. The following Saturday, the

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Speaker 1: Bay of Pigs invasion began, and by the following Wednesday,

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Speaker 1: American backed rebels had not only been defeated by Castro,

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Speaker 1: they had all been encircled and captured, and so literally

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Speaker 1: in the space of a week there were two global

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Speaker 1: humiliations for the United States and Kennedy was president, and

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Speaker 1: actual triumphs for communism. Right though, oh my god, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was a bad week for the United States and

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Speaker 1: a horrible week for President Kennedy. Right. Gagarin was a

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Speaker 1: It was a tremendous triumph of a sort of pure

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Speaker 1: human sort, and Castro defeating the Bay of Pigs rebels

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Speaker 1: backed by the United States with US destroyers standing offshore.

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Speaker 1: My god, that was a humiliating. So Kennedy wanted to

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Speaker 1: get back in the game, and what he was told

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Speaker 1: was they have a headstart, but if we say we'll

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Speaker 1: go to the moon, ay, we might be able to

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Speaker 1: pull it off and be their headstart doesn't matter on

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Speaker 1: something that's that hard. He was told that there's only

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Speaker 1: a fifty fifty chance we'll make it. And I think

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Speaker 1: part of Kennedy's sort of inspirational leadership at that moment was,

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Speaker 1: these guys think there's only a fifty fifty chance, But

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Speaker 1: if I stand up and give a speech, the chances

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Speaker 1: get better. He's going to increase the odds. But the

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Speaker 1: interesting thing was, the really fun back story that I

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Speaker 1: did not know about was Kennedy. He didn't want to

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Speaker 1: give the speech he was gonna The moon part was

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Speaker 1: part of a forty minute speech and most of the

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Speaker 1: speech was about the Cold War. The moon came in

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Speaker 1: the sort of the last ten minutes, last twelve minutes,

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Speaker 1: and that's what everybody remembers. You know what, on the

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Speaker 1: day it happened. Some things haven't changed. The press coverage

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Speaker 1: of that speech ignored that I counted them. There were

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Speaker 1: twenty one specific proposals prior to the moon, and the

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Speaker 1: moon was the headline everywhere you know, us to race

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Speaker 1: Russia to the moon. JFK says, must race Russia to

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Speaker 1: the moon. And actually he said in the speech that

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Speaker 1: the survival of democracy and capitalism was part of what

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Speaker 1: was at stake, and so but he didn't want to

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Speaker 1: deliver the speech. Who's going to send it up to

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Speaker 1: Congress as as a printed document for them to read.

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Speaker 1: And LBJ said, if you want this to have oomph,

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Speaker 1: if you want this to get people's attention, you gotta

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Speaker 1: go and do it. And that decision was made Wednesday

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Speaker 1: at three o'clock, and the speech was delivered live to

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Speaker 1: Congress on Thursday at noon, and all the networks covered

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Speaker 1: it live so at twelve thirty. So that was an

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Speaker 1: amazing just a little tidbit. If he hadn't delivered the speech,

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Speaker 1: it's possible we wouldn't have gone to the moon, because

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Speaker 1: when you send an eighty page document to Congress, you

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Speaker 1: don't get three deck hundred point headlines. Now you also

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Speaker 1: talk about, had he not been assassinated, you're not quite

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Speaker 1: sure that Armstrong and alder And would have walked on

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Speaker 1: the moon. How come, you know what, I'm actually pretty

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Speaker 1: persuaded that they wouldn't. The whole world had changed by

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, and it had changed in part because

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Speaker 1: Kennedy stared down the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis

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Speaker 1: that was in October sixty two. In the summer of

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Speaker 1: sixty three, Key negotiated and signed the first nuclear weapons treaty,

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Speaker 1: limiting both sides testing, and Nassa was furiously catching up

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Speaker 1: to the Soviets, and in fact, Kennedy toured what was

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Speaker 1: then Cape Canaveral. He saw the early Saturn rocket that

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Speaker 1: would go on to launch the largest payload into orbit ever,

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Speaker 1: beating the Russians. And we have secret space tapes that

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Speaker 1: almost no one appears to know about Kennedy. Like Nixon,

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Speaker 1: had a taping system installed in the oval office and

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Speaker 1: installed in the cabinet room. He had three buttons in

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Speaker 1: the oval office, one in his desk, one in a

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Speaker 1: book end near where he sat, and one in the

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Speaker 1: coffee table, and one button in the cabinet office near

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Speaker 1: his chair. He would press the button and a light

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Speaker 1: would go on on the desk of Evelyn Lincoln, his secretary,

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Speaker 1: and she would start the taping system. So, unlike Nixon,

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Speaker 1: which was voice activated, Kennedy picked what he wanted to tape.

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Speaker 1: He had older technology. I guess well, he was picking

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Speaker 1: and choosing. And those meetings are incredibly revealing. You might

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Speaker 1: not believe them if you didn't listen to them. In

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Speaker 1: the first one, they're talking about in sixty two, they're

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Speaker 1: talking about the budget and Kennedy gets a little exasperated.

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Speaker 1: He wants Apollo to move along more quickly, and he

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Speaker 1: says in frustration. At one point there's nine NASA officials

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Speaker 1: in the cabinet room. He says, I'm not that interested

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Speaker 1: in space. Let me be clear, We're going to beat

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Speaker 1: the Russians. Does everybody understand that? And then he basically

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Speaker 1: got up and excused himself. In sixty three, just ten

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Speaker 1: weeks before he was killed, he met only with Jim Webb,

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Speaker 1: the head of NASSY, in the Oval Office. Again. They

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Speaker 1: were talking about progress, budgets, how to survive the next

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Speaker 1: presidential and congression elections, how do we protect space, and

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Speaker 1: Webb told him, we're not going to land on the

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Speaker 1: moon while you're president, mister president, even if you get

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Speaker 1: a second term, which he probably would have, we won't

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Speaker 1: make it in sixty eight. It'll be sixty nine after

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Speaker 1: the next president takes over. And you can hear the

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Speaker 1: disappointment in Kennedy's voice, and also the political calculation, like

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Speaker 1: why am I going to pay the cost for this?

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Speaker 1: Why am I going to push and push and push

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Speaker 1: for someone else to be president when it happened. I

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Speaker 1: don't think you would have stood up and said we're

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Speaker 1: not going to the moon. I think you would have

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Speaker 1: simply let Congress set the pace. And with Congress setting

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Speaker 1: to pace, the funding would have dropped. And one thing

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Speaker 1: Apolo needed rocket fuel, Apollo needed a good computer, and

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Speaker 1: Apollo needed money. Indeed, and of course, did Nixon take

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Speaker 1: the credit for Apollo, Did he take the credit. People

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Speaker 1: who don't like people who don't like Nixon sort of

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Speaker 1: are snarky about it. Nixon's signature is on the moon,

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Speaker 1: the only signature on the moon. But Nixon signed the

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Speaker 1: plaque that said, you know, we came in peace for

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Speaker 1: all man kind. Nixon called the astronauts when they were

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Speaker 1: He called the Armstrong and Aldrin. And while the astronauts

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Speaker 1: were flying to the Moon, the New York Times got

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Speaker 1: wind that there was going to be a phone call

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Speaker 1: to the astronauts from the Oval Office, and they wrote

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Speaker 1: an editorial headlined nixoning the Moon, NI x O, n

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Speaker 1: I n G. Nixoning the Moon, And it was just like,

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Speaker 1: how dare the president called the astronauts. They're gonna be

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Speaker 1: busy on the moon. This was John Kennedy's, you know idea.

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Speaker 1: This is sort of horning in on something any president

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Speaker 1: of the United States would have and should have called

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Speaker 1: the astronauts. And there's video you could watch of him.

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Speaker 1: He used one of those at and T green push

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Speaker 1: button phones with the line of lights at the bottom.

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Speaker 1: He's sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, coat

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Speaker 1: and tie, eleven fifteen at night, and he picks up

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Speaker 1: the phone and they patched him all the way through

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Speaker 1: to the helmets of Armstrong and Aldren who were out

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Speaker 1: walking around. And so to me, it was a it

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Speaker 1: was a great moment, totally appropriate. The New York Times

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Speaker 1: is sort of, you know, a moment of sort of

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Speaker 1: losing their mind in politics. If Kennedy had been president,

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Speaker 1: they wouldn't have said he shouldn't call the after exactly,

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Speaker 1: they would have insisted on it. And it was it

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Speaker 1: was a sweet It's it's totally appropriate. That's what being

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Speaker 1: president is about, of course. And the phone call lasted

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Speaker 1: one minute in fifty four seconds, so I think the

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Speaker 1: astronaut's had time for it. When you were writing and

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Speaker 1: researching one giant leap, what did you come across that

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Speaker 1: just really shot you that you didn't even know about

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Speaker 1: until then? Oh? There were, there were, there were There

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Speaker 1: was a surprise a day you picked your story. NASA

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Speaker 1: almost forgot to take a flag to the moon. How

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Speaker 1: do you almost forget to take a flag to the moon.

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Speaker 1: The original plan from getting from the hatch of the

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Speaker 1: lunar module to the lunar surface was a rope, a

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Speaker 1: knotted marine rope, no ladder, a rope. When the astronauts

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Speaker 1: took off their helmets inside the lunar module first time.

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Speaker 1: Armstrong and Aldrin the entire inside of the spacecraft has

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Speaker 1: a funny smell. It was the smell of the moon.

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Speaker 1: It turns out that moon dirt, moon dust has an

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Speaker 1: odor towel, and no one would have predicted that it

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Speaker 1: was the smell. Armstrong said it was the smell of

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Speaker 1: charcoal after you'd cooked a you know, after you'd barbecued outside,

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Speaker 1: or the smell of fireplace ashes. Aldron described it as

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Speaker 1: the smell of the air after a fireworks show. Is

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Speaker 1: that amazing? How wonderful? Like you can send all the

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Speaker 1: robots you want. They're never going to tell you what

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Speaker 1: the moon smells like, No, not at all. That's an

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Speaker 1: incredible story. The flag NASA created. NASA created the Committee

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Speaker 1: on Symbolic Observances for the first lunar landing. Is that

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Speaker 1: a NASA committee? But they didn't do it until April first.

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Speaker 1: NASA was focused on getting to the Moon, and no

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Speaker 1: one inside NASA had thought about, well, this is gonna

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Speaker 1: be a moment of pure human accomplishment, a moment it's

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Speaker 1: really not to put too fine appoints a moment of poetry.

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Speaker 1: Right when you get to the top of Mount Everest,

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Speaker 1: when you get to the north pole, you hoist the flag,

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Speaker 1: you pause, you take some victures, you say, whooa, we

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Speaker 1: made it. NASA wasn't doing that, and so it wasn't

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Speaker 1: until April that someone said, let's take a flag, let's

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Speaker 1: take a plaque, let's pause for just one minute. And

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Speaker 1: at that point the mission was not only planned and done,

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Speaker 1: the equipment was loaded, everything had been practiced. A guy

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Speaker 1: named Jackler, who was head of technical services in Houston,

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Speaker 1: developed this wonderful flag contraption basically two tent poles. Essentially

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Speaker 1: two tent poles hinged at the top, the flagpole that

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Speaker 1: you plant, and then one that the astronauts could swing

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Speaker 1: up so that it was horizontal like a curtain rod

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Speaker 1: and slide the flag out. That's what made it look

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Speaker 1: like it was waving in the wind. And all these

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Speaker 1: people who said we never went claimed that we were

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Speaker 1: on some stage with a fan in the basket. You

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Speaker 1: can see the pole, you can see the little curtain r.

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Speaker 1: You can see that. Kinsler said he was inspired by

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Speaker 1: his mom, and they used a four dollar off the

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Speaker 1: shelf American flag and this was done so late that

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Speaker 1: the checklists that the astronauts had sewed onto their spaceop gloves,

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Speaker 1: that first mission plant the flag isn't on the checklist.

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Speaker 1: It was too late to add it. And Kinsler actually

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Speaker 1: got an engulf Stream jet with the flag and flew

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Speaker 1: the flag to the launchpad because they were were working

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Speaker 1: on it right to the last minute. So and that,

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Speaker 1: of course one of the great iconic images of Apollo

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Speaker 1: eleven and of all the missions, is the astronauts. But

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Speaker 1: half the newspapers in the world used Armstrong and Aldron

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Speaker 1: in the flag the next day, you forget. And of course,

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Speaker 1: so they never would have gotten off the face of

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Speaker 1: the Moon had it not been for Aldron in his

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Speaker 1: big pen. Right. Yeah, that's a that's a that's a

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Speaker 1: kind of people. People sometimes make fun of NASA for

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Speaker 1: being so picky about every little thing. But but at

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Speaker 1: some point either Armstrong or Aldren had their spacesuit backpack on.

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Speaker 1: People don't have any sense how small the inside of

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Speaker 1: the lunar module was really the size of two phone booths, right,

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Speaker 1: There was no maneuverability at all, and those space suits

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Speaker 1: were big and bulky, and it was not star trek.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't even the space shuttle of the space station.

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Speaker 1: There was no airlock. When you wanted to go outside,

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Speaker 1: you you put on your space suit, then you sucked

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Speaker 1: all the air out and opened the hatch. When you

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Speaker 1: came back in, you kept your space suit on until

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Speaker 1: you sealed the hatch and repressure. And so at some

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Speaker 1: point one of them sort of moving around knocked knocked

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Speaker 1: a little clapp circuit breaker switch. These were sort of

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Speaker 1: broke them off. It broke off right right circuit breakers,

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Speaker 1: which is broke off a circuit breakers, which so you

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Speaker 1: couldn't trigger the circuit breaker, and that was the circuit

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Speaker 1: breaker to arm the engine to leave the Moon. You

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Speaker 1: could have broken literally almost any other of not that one,

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Speaker 1: but not that one. And you know, there was a

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Speaker 1: lot of astronaut cool. There were a lot of moments

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Speaker 1: where they just kept their heads together. He actually jammed

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Speaker 1: a felt tip pen in there to trigger to trigger

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Speaker 1: the circuit breaker, and that was his own idea. He

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Speaker 1: did not excuse me. He did not have to get

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Speaker 1: guidance from mission control about about how to do it.

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Speaker 1: He looked around and thought that felt tip pen will

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Speaker 1: make it happen. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM

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