WEBVTT - Brandon Fibbs talks 9 Days in July 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:04.760 My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:13.960 of I Heeart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.079 to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.600 My normal co host, Robert Lamb is out of town 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:23.040 this week, so I am bringing you an interview episode. 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:27.280 It's an interview with Brandon Fibbs, who is the host 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.320 of a new podcast on the I Heeart Radio network 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:34.880 called Nine Days in July, which is as a profile 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:38.120 of each of the nine days of the Apollo eleven 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:40.839 mission in nineteen sixty nine, the mission that landed on 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:44.040 the Moon. I've started listening to this podcast and a 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:46.760 few episodes in and I'm hooked. I think Brandon is 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.120 doing an excellent job with this and it goes into 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:52.400 some really incredible depth. So I had a conversation with 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:55.560 Brandon about the Apollo eleven mission and about this podcast 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.000 that he's put together. It was a really fun conversation 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:00.280 and I think you're really going to enjoy it. Before 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:02.800 we jump into the interview here, let's just play the 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:04.959 trailer for Nine Days in July to give you a 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:10.280 taste of things to come. Ignition sequenced. You think you 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:14.039 know the story of Apollo eleven. But you don't what 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:16.520 you know is only a small part of the most 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.559 profound human achievement in history. I believe that this nation 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:24.000 should commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.920 man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:31.200 Less than three weeks after launching the first American into space, 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:35.000 a trip that lasted only fifteen minutes, the President went 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.000 before Congress and charged the country with landing on the 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:41.520 Moon before the end of the decade. And why so 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:49.920 that we could wallop the Russians, he d look. This 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:52.720 was one of the most tumultuous eras in American history. 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:56.880 The profoundly unpopular Vietnam War was raging on without an 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:01.320 end in sight. Back home, at the Democratic Convention, thousands 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.600 of demonstrators clashed violently with police. They said they were 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:09.000 there to protest the war, poverty, racism, and other social aliens. 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:13.080 Some of them were also determined to provoke a confrontation. 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:15.520 The United States seemed to be coming apart at the 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:19.400 seems America needed a reason to reach for a greatness 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:27.760 beyond our misfortunes. We needed Apollo god Spade. Pulling off 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:32.080 Kennedy's audacious vision required hundreds of thousands of people, tens 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:36.400 of thousands of companies, and tens of billions of dollars 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:38.840 to go to the moon and discontay and do the 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.800 other things, not because they are easy, because they are 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.680 on Using never before heard mission audio, I'm going to 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.559 take you through the family lives that fueled the astronauts, 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.160 the political intrigue that cleared the way, and the collective 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.120 drive of the country that pushed us into the future. 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:02.120 This is Nine Days in July. New episodes arrive every 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.560 Thursday through February six. Listen to Nine Days in July 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.400 on the I Heart Radio app, on Apple podcasts, or 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.799 wherever you get your podcasts. Well, without any further delay, 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:14.040 I think we're going to jump right into my conversation 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:19.359 with Brandon Fibbs. Hey, Brandon, welcome to the show. Thank 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:21.959 you so very much. So I guess first of all, 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:24.320 would you like to talk a little bit about your 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:27.760 own background, maybe introduce yourself and talk about how you 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:32.400 got so interested in spaceflight. Yeah, my name is Brandon Phibbs. 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:37.200 I am uh. I've spent the last roughly ten fifteen 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:41.000 years in film and television. I actually began as a 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:45.160 film critic writing about other people's films and television shows, 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:47.440 and then realized, I want people to write about mine. 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.280 I'm gonna go get into production myself. So moved to 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:54.680 l A and stumbled into science documentaries. I went to 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:56.280 l A like everyone wants to go you want to 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:59.760 make big movies, and my first production was Cosmos of 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:01.920 Space Time Odyssey with Neilo grass Tyson. And then I 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:04.080 realized working on that, I don't want to this is 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:05.520 the kind of stuff I want to do. I want 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:07.440 to I want to light people on fire for for 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:11.200 amazing science. And so I was able to buy and 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:14.680 large work mostly in science documentaries. Worked with Morgan Freeman 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:16.640 on Through the Wormhole for a couple of seasons, and 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:19.720 the Story of God with Morgan Freeman, and a number 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:22.919 of Science Channel specials and whatnot. And that's that's really 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:26.440 where um, that's really what you know. I found a 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:29.040 lot of tremendous satisfaction in that. And then recently I've 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:31.360 kind of been migrating to podcasts. There's just so many 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:37.160 ways to tell extraordinary science and history stories. So I'm 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:39.560 one of these people who if I could go back 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:43.200 in time and tell my young self Hey, Brandon, here 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:45.400 are the things. They're gonna light you on fire, and 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:48.280 you're gonna be passionate about. When you're an adult, you're 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:50.320 gonna probably want to change your life trajectory right now. 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:52.120 You're gonna want to change the stuff you studied, and 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:56.880 rather than study English literature and filmmaking, you're gonna want 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.520 to study science. Um, but I didn't. And so now 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:02.440 I'm at the place in my life where I'm like, Okay, 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:04.480 I if I could go back in time to be 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:06.920 a scientist, I would. But all of my all of 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:09.920 my work, experience and stuff is in in television documentaries 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:12.560 and whatnot and now podcasting. And so let's find the 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:16.600 Vinn diagram of life where science and entertainment overlap. And 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.880 let's drop right down in that little section there, and 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:24.039 let's make amazing things that popularize science and basically, you know, 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:26.920 let's find extraordinary stories that are gonna warp people's minds. 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:30.520 And uh so that's kind of my like life goal 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:33.120 these days. Wow, I can really identify with you there. 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:36.000 Actually I also am from a humanity's background, but like 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:38.640 later in life, got the science bug and in some 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:40.719 ways kind of wished I've done things different, but also 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:42.960 I don't know, it helps to be able to bring 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:45.920 that kind of storytelling sensibility to science as well well. 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:47.600 And the and the longer I've done it, the more 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.719 I've realized, and the more like actual scientists that I 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:54.200 speak with an interview or befriend, the more I realized 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:59.480 that this sort of advocacy is so critical for what 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:04.800 they do. The there's they're busy being scientists, and so 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.440 you know, it needs people like us to say, look 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:11.400 world at what the incredible things that they are doing. Yeah. Absolutely, 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.880 Now I know I've read that you also have experience 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:17.360 as a pilot though were you were piloting an S 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:20.520 three Viking? Is that right? Not a pilot? So to 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:23.640 use to use a film metaphor, um, I was a 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:27.040 combination of Goose from Top Gun, the guy who sat 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:30.359 behind the pilot in three, and I was a combination 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:32.840 with jones Uh with jones E, the guy from the 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.960 Hunt for October who was calling crazy ivans. My job 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.440 was to hunt submarines. So the S three Viking was 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.520 a patrol aircraft, a sub hunting aircraft, and we would 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:44.239 fly in the ocean and we would drop Sona buoys 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:47.839 and these SONA buoys would release hydrophones and we could 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:51.080 deploy them to various depths, and we would listen for submarines, 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:54.960 and based on the mathematical logarithmic transcripts that would come 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:57.760 up on my screen, I could tell you, if I 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.919 was very lucky, you know exactly what kind of submarine 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:05.440 we were flying over, whether it was turning left, turning right, diving, ascending, whatever, 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:10.480 and sometimes specifically specific submarine we were flying over, so 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:14.280 that I was I was the backseater. Okay, Now, uh, 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:16.480 how did you end up doing this? Like a lot 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:19.040 of these people who ended up in the Apollo program, 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:22.440 did you long have a passion for for flight? I 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:26.680 think that, you know, like any red blooded American kid, 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.480 you know, you grow up loving dinosaurs and space and 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:34.280 and flying and these sorts of things. I actually, when 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:36.960 I got out of I had started college and then realized, 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:38.720 you know, I'm gonna need some more money for college 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:41.360 and blah blah blah, and I had taken an internship. 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.680 I've done an internship in Washington, d C. Congressional internship 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:47.720 working for my congressman on Capitol Hill. And I was 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:51.360 just surrounded by military guys and just all kinds of 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:54.240 different things, and I thought, hey, this, this looks fantastic. 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:56.120 This would be a way to kind of give back 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:58.400 to my country but also get what I kind of 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:00.600 need to further my life and my me for school 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.440 and whatnot. And so it was actually there that I 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:06.080 kind of came up with the idea joined the military, 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:09.640 and then spent most of my uh, most of my 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:12.160 time in the military was actually overseas. It was in Sicily. 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:17.400 Spent three three years in Sicily and three extraordinary years, 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:19.680 I should say, and just spent all of that time 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:23.600 in Europe and traveling all over Europe and even West Africa, 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.960 and it was an extraordinary thing. But yeah, I thought 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:31.000 at the time actually that I might be pursuing um 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.120 flight and then perhaps even hey, lot, what if I should, 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:36.160 you know, should I try to become an astronaut? And 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.280 then I just realized, and this kind of goes back 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:39.880 to what I was saying earlier in terms of like 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:42.280 I should have been a scientist. There are also certain 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:45.200 things that I realized I can't do that my mind's 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.520 not exactly made for. And a lot of that is 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:52.120 complex math and and some really complex you know, physics 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:53.840 and stuff like that, the kind of things I would 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.000 actually need to become an astronaut. And uh so I 0:08:57.040 --> 0:08:59.480 was like, Okay, let's just stick with the let's stick 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:02.320 with the story telling, and uh tell the stories of 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:05.000 these people who can do those complex math and stuff 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:07.560 like that you can't do, Brandon. That's interesting. Well, so 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:10.000 to turn to that story, I guess can can you 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:12.600 start off just by giving us the top line on 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:15.240 nine days in July? Tell us you know, you know what, 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:17.000 what do you want people to know if they remember 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:20.440 one sentence about this podcast? Yeah, my my friend and 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:23.880 our executive producer, one of our executive producers, Andrew Jacobs, 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:26.400 came up with the idea and he basically said, we 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:29.520 are so familiar with the sort of sound bites of 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:32.240 Apollo eleven. We know like some sound bites from launch, 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:35.160 we know a lot of sound bites from the landing, 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:37.319 but that's about it, Like nobody knows the story of 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:41.000 Apollo eleven. And so our idea was, it's a nine 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:44.400 day mission. Let's have nine episodes, and each episode is 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:47.559 going to focus as real time as possible on each 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.400 day of the mission, and let's tell that story. Now. 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.559 Of course, most of what goes on in a spacecraft 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:57.600 traveling to and from the Moon is incomprehensible techno babble, 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:00.199 and so once you strip that out, the is a 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.760 lot less story going on, particularly on those transit days. 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:04.920 And so we knew that we needed to tell more 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:08.000 than just that story. And so the idea was that 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:10.200 we came up with, Okay, let's tell the story that 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:12.720 is going to contextualize everything that we're going to be 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:16.920 hearing on that spacecraft. Let's tell the biographies of all 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:19.240 of these astronauts. Let's learn who the people in mission 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:22.200 control are. Let's talk to scientists about what the moon 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:25.040 is made of and how it was formed. Let's learn 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:28.240 about the political dynamics of the space race and and 0:10:28.240 --> 0:10:31.600 and communism and fighting against Russia to to beat everyone 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:33.920 to the moon. Let's let's take all of these stories 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:36.320 and tell these stories and bounce back and forth between 0:10:36.360 --> 0:10:38.960 them and the spacecraft, so that when you walk away 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:44.200 after nine episodes, you not only understand intimately what happened 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:46.760 on this mission, and you know these guys who worked 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:50.800 on this in a really profoundly human way, but you 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:53.480 also come away with a much greater understanding of how 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:55.839 we got to where where we were when we went 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:58.880 to the moon, who everyone was and and and what 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:01.360 the political sort of impetus was to to do it 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:04.240 in the first place. Yeah, it's a really engrossing approach. 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:06.600 I'm a couple of episodes in and I've been really 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:10.400 enjoying the show so far. So maybe we should uh 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.640 turn to these these figures like Neil Armstrong, buzz Aldrin 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:17.839 and Michael Collins. Can you give a brief sketch of 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:22.400 of who these three astronauts were? Yeah, So Neil Armstrong 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:24.439 and a lot of people who didn't kind of know 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:26.960 more of his story were kind of introduced to him 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.600 recently in the film First Man last year, and that 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:33.640 was a really good kind of examination. You know. I 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.559 had a lot of friends who who said they they 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:40.880 found Neil Armstrong really inaccessible because Ryan Gosling's portrayal was 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:43.559 such that he kind of kept the audience at a distance, 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:47.120 at an arm's length, and didn't really he didn't feel human. 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:50.720 And what I told them is that's who Neil Armstrong was. 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:54.360 Neil Armstrong and buzz Aldren were kind of what we 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:57.200 what we would have described at the time as squares. 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:00.200 They were sort of very straight laced and uptie eight 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:03.439 and and it's one of the things that ruined, frankly, 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.760 both of their marriages in the long run. Um. They 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:10.840 were just so singularly focused on what they did and 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:15.600 their jobs, um that they to the exclusion of everything else. 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:20.440 And then you have Mike Collins, who was jovial and 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:23.320 and quick witted, and he was the jokester, he was 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:25.559 the prankster, he was always he was the one that 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.000 you'd want to go have a beer with. And and 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:30.800 none of these guys actually even really got along. I mean, 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.160 they got along just fine, but they weren't friends. They 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:35.640 didn't have some sort of like you know, off campus 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:39.920 sort of relationship in which they hung out. Um. Any 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:41.720 of the pictures that we have in Life magazine and 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.120 stuff like that showing them all hanging out was completely created, 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:46.600 fabricated for you know, the magazine. It was just like 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:50.680 to sell copy. But what we needed were three men 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:52.760 who are at the top of their intellectual game, who 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:56.079 worked together, who are professionals, who are the best people 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:58.480 suited for this particular job. And that's what these three 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:01.720 guys were. They all came, they were all aviators, they 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:04.080 all came from flight experience. Neil was in the Navy, 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:06.200 the other two guys were in the Air Force, and 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:09.200 they all came out of the Korean War, and some 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:12.040 of them from test flight experience, and just basically pushing 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:15.600 the boundaries to do the most extraordinary things possible until 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.240 the most extraordinary thing human beings have ever done was 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:21.840 presented to them and dropped in their laps. Now we 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:24.680 know that it wasn't just the three astronauts, of course, 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:27.720 could you talk a little bit about the cathedral, about 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.320 the flight controllers and the mission planners and all of 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:33.920 the you know, the thousands of of support figures who 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:37.360 made the mission possible. You bet you know. And I'll 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:39.440 just keep doing what I'm about to do just because 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:41.880 I think it's a really a really accessible way for 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:44.040 people to identify what's going on. But you know, if 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:46.199 you've ever seen the movie Apollo thirteen, you know that 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:48.840 did a wonderful job of kind of setting up. As 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.240 much time as you spent in the spacecraft, you also 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:55.520 spent in mission control and mission control what had four 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:58.680 rotating teams of two dozen people at all of these consoles, 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:02.320 and every console oversaw a different aspect of the flight 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:05.160 at different aspect of the spacecraft, or you know, you'd 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:07.720 even have doctors who are monitoring the health of the 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:11.160 astronauts themselves, and these shifts would just these guys would 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:13.720 just rotate through the ships. But even within mission control, 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:17.960 you had whole offices, whole squadrons of people who are 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:23.400 supporting each one of those consoles so large, you had hundreds, 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:26.440 if not thousands of people. Technically, especially thousands when you 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:29.520 consider that all of the companies that built the spacecraft 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:31.880 and did all these things were we're only a phone 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:35.440 call away. You have thousands of people supporting the mission 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:39.920 every single day, UM, and it was an extraordinary Basically, 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:42.720 in many ways, some of the people in mission control 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:45.800 will call were referred to as the co pilots of 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.880 Apollo eleven, and that's in many ways very true. They 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:52.360 were monitoring every aspect of the flight. They were there 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:54.480 for every aspect of the flight. And yet the only 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.480 voice you ever hear, however, UM on any of these 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:02.400 tapes is Capcom. Because none of these mission controllers talked 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:04.960 to the spacecraft. That would just get too confusing, So 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:08.520 everyone went through CAPCOM, the capsule communicator, who was also 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:11.560 an astronaut so that he understood everything that was going 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:14.120 on in mission control, and he intimately understood what it 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:16.040 was like to be on the inside of that spacecraft. 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:18.160 And so he was the funnel through which all the 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.520 communications ran. Uh. Yeah, you can imagine how chaotic it 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:25.520 would have gotten otherwise. Um. Now, among the flight controllers, 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:28.360 one of the strange facts mentioned in one of your 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.920 early episodes is that, uh in that room, the average 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:36.360 age was about twenty six. Why so young? What's going 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:40.880 on there? So you have space flights and new science 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.080 right like we we we've have these visions of like 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:46.520 the Mercury program and the Gemini program and then the 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:49.200 Apollo program. There was not a whole lot of years 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:52.360 between all of those programs. Um, you know, you're talking 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:54.680 less than ten years of human space fight. By the 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.080 time we landed on the Moon, we'd only been going 0:15:57.160 --> 0:15:59.880 into space for a couple of years. And more than that. 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.600 At the things that got us there, the things that 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:06.000 enabled us to do it were computers, and computers were 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:09.680 brand spanking new. And so it's just like today if 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:12.640 you um, you know, when we were growing up, our 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:14.760 parents who were always telling us, hey, how do you 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:19.240 stop the flashing twelve, you know, twelve o'clock on the VCR, kids, 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:20.800 and need you to fix that for me. And the 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:22.560 reason they were calling on the kids is because it 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:26.120 was effortless for young people to integrate with technology. And 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:28.240 these days, of course, it's you know, how do I 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:31.200 fix Facebook or Instagram's acting up or you know, TikTok 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:33.840 or whatever. You ask your kids, or you ask your grandkids, 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:37.560 because they just get it intuitively. Um. And that's exactly 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.760 what it was like here. Younger people were the ones 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:44.440 who understood computers. Computers were brand spanking new, and so basically, 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.200 if you want to go to space with new technology, 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:49.600 you need people who understand that new technology, and so 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:53.280 mission control had was made up. Like you said, twenty 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:56.240 six years old was the average age, and for some 0:16:56.320 --> 0:16:58.440 of these guys, for a great many of these guys, 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:00.800 it was their very first job, read out of college, 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:04.280 and they're thrust with, like you know, into this being 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:08.400 responsible for the most extraordinary thing humans have ever done. Yeah, 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:12.320 it's kind of hard to imagine, actually. Um. Now, another 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:14.960 thing that you talked about in the podcast is the 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:17.520 fact that, of course uh NASA was a very male 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:20.639 dominated work culture at the time, but You also mentioned 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:24.359 the story of these like math experts who would check 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.080 the work of the engineers, many of them female mathematicians, 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:30.840 sometimes called the time computer rests like Poppy north Cut, 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:34.119 can can you talk about that experience? Poppy north Cut 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:36.800 was one of my favorite interviews on this show. And 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:40.560 unfortunately time constraints and different things have have trimmed what 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:44.600 you're going to hear from her. But Poppy was Poppy 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:48.480 needs her own podcast. She was someone who yeah, she 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:51.119 she got degrees in mathematics, and she was brought in 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:53.000 to check the men's work. And of course, you can 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:56.119 imagine in this time frame in the mid sixties and 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:59.720 in late sixties, there were a lot of guys who 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:01.920 did exactly think they needed their work checked and if 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:03.760 it did that, it certainly didn't need to be checked 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:05.720 by this young twenty seven year old blonde in a 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.159 miniskirt sort of situation. And the amount of sexism that 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:12.280 she faced. There's a moment that I mentioned the podcast 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.520 of I believe it was in the ABC anchor was 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:18.879 interviewing her and he specifically said that, like, what's it 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:21.160 like being a beautiful young woman in a mini skirt 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:25.120 around here among all these men, and it's she persevered 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:29.199 like she she had this mindset of I recognize that 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:31.680 if I'm going to make a difference, I have to 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:33.520 push through this. I have to be stronger than this. 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:36.760 I have to tolerate some of this. The stuff I 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:39.400 don't have to tolerate, I'm gonna call out. But she 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:45.080 was extraordinarily important, and not only Apollo levin getting them 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:48.359 to and from the Moon. Her calculations helped them with 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:50.119 all of their orbits and getting out of orbit and 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:53.040 returning back to Earth. She also played a key component 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:56.560 in Apollo thirteen when they had so many problems going 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:58.600 on their spacecraft. She was there for many of the 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:03.040 Apollo missions. Now now she is a advocate. She became 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:05.240 a lawyer. She got out of doing science, then became 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.680 a lawyer, and she advocates for women's rights and feminism. 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:13.040 And she took on the Houston UH Police and the 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:15.800 Houston Fire Department and made sure that women could integrate 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:19.520 into those uh those institutions. And even today she is 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:22.800 just on the front lines of women's rights issues um 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.399 as a lawyer and advocate. And she has, like I said, 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:27.960 she needs her own podcast. She's extraordinary, all right, we 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:29.600 need to take a quick break, but we will be 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:35.520 right back with more than and we're back all right. 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:38.679 Maybe we should talk a bit about the hardware and 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:41.879 the technology that made the mission possible. One of the 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:44.760 first things I think that would deserve attention here is 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:47.639 the Saturn five rocket, which I remember I don't recall 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:50.240 which astronaut it was, but it was somebody who had 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:52.919 been lifted up on it describing it as a living, 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:58.680 breathing organism Underneathan, Uh, what what's um? What? What makes 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:02.640 the Saturn five so special in the history of space exploration? 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.760 The Saturn five is the largest, heaviest, most powerful rocket 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:11.720 human beings have ever created. NASA is currently building the SLS, 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:14.239 the Space Launch System. This is the rocket that's going 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:16.000 to be returning us to the Moon in a couple 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:18.800 of years and eventually setting us on a path for Mars. 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:22.400 But until that is built and tested and first run, 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:26.920 the Saturn five remains, fifty years later, the largest, most powerful, 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:30.840 heaviest launch vehicle humans have ever built. We we've nothing 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.280 comes close to touching it yet. UM, And it was 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:38.280 something that was designed and built UM was the brainchild 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:41.919 UM of Werner von Braun An ex Nazi. He was 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:44.760 one of the Nazis that, uh, the Americans kind of 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:48.040 grabbed out of Nazi Germany when when Germany was falling 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:50.960 after World War Two, we brought our thousands of Nazis 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:54.320 as part of an Operation paper Clip. So Operation paper 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.679 Clip was this was this government program in which we 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:03.440 seized thousands of of ex Nazi scientists and engineers, brought 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:05.560 them back to the United States and basically said, hey, 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:09.720 you were making some pretty devastating technology like the V 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:11.880 two rockets and stuff like that that was raining down 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:14.399