Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations
Watch Live

KPBS Midday Edition Segments

Retired Astronaut Charles Bolden Jr. Talks About America's Space Exploration

 June 25, 2019 at 11:24 AM PDT

Speaker 1: 00:00 It's been nearly 50 years since American astronauts from NASA, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, a new film coming to KPBS television. The summer tells the story of the race to outer space and all of the research that has come from that exploration. It's called Jason the moon and it's part of the ongoing PBS series American experience Speaker 2: 00:20 that will be the greatest and most complex exploration in man history are you're going down the ladder now shop. They had a piece of it and they did Speaker 1: 00:34 a sneak preview along with a panel discussion with leaders in space exploration and technology is happening tonight in San Diego. One of those leaders on the panel is Major General Charles Bolden Jr who led the development of the space launch system and the Orion crew capsule. Bolden was also the first African American administrator of NASA. He's joining me in the studio to talk about the breakthroughs happening out of this world. Major General bolden. Welcome. How you doing? Good to be here and call me Charlie, please, Charlie, you've got it. Thank you so much. Hate. You know, it's been 50 years since the moon landing. What are some of the biggest myths surrounding that breakthrough? Oh, probably the, Speaker 3: 01:14 the biggest myth is the fact that the American public was in rave support of the, uh, of the moon landing and that nothing could be farther from the truth. I was, uh, I was a young flight student at the time and Meridian, Mississippi, and I can tell you the American public was everything but excited about, uh, about Apollo. Most people, especially people of color at the time, President Nixon was constantly besieged by Martin Luther King Jr about expenditures for the space program when there was so much left to be done here in [inaudible]. The questions have not changed over those 50 years, but we were literally, if people, most people listening to this probably weren't alive then, or if they were, they're not aware of the Chicago Democratic National Convention when there was fighting in the streets. And in the convention, uh, we were killing each other on the streets of, of the United States. We were deeply involved in the war, um, you know, in Vietnam. And, uh, it was not a happy time for the nation. And, and it, it causes me to tell people if they're worried about right now. Um, they should be, but it's not the worst we've ever seen in the nation. Uh, we've been in worse dams. Speaker 1: 02:24 Ella, it sounds like there was a lot of unrest, uh, during that time. Why do you think films like chasing the moon are so important for [inaudible] for people Speaker 3: 02:31 to see? I think it's critically important because it will help to educate the, the generation that doesn't have any clue. And, and actually, I hate to say this, but probably could care less about America landing on the moon. I have three granddaughters and, uh, my three granddaughters never saw me fly on the space shuttle. I, you know, I, I flew my last flight in 1994. The first of them was born in, um, 2000 and so I now try to tell them a little bit about what it was. They got an opportunity to see some of the last few flights of shuttle because I had become the NASA administrator and they were living in the DC area at the time. And so I would try to make sure that we got them down to the Cape to see shuttle launches and landings. So, so that they, it wouldn't be foreign to them, but, but seeing, chasing the moon is critically important. Speaker 3: 03:18 I've not seen the trailer yet, but I will see it. My guess is they'll talk a little bit about the geopolitical imperative of, of getting to the moon before the Soviets. And, and you know, you asked me what's really different or what, what some of the myths are. Um, another myth is the fact that there was some altruistic reason to go to the moon science and everything else that didn't have anything to do with it. It was actually we have to beat the Soviets. We cannot allow, they had already beat us with, with Sputnik. So they were the first orbit a spacecraft. And it scared the living crap out of everybody because we realize that this was a nation that was our adversary that had now orbited something. If they could do that with a, with a satellite, they could put a weapon up there and we were doomed. Speaker 3: 04:01 Then they had beat us, uh, with the first human to go to space and Eureka Guardian. And not only had he just gone to space, he had actually orbited, uh, and it took us a while to do that. Alan Shepard went on a suborbital space flight, so wow. That was a major accomplishment for the United States when President Kennedy went before the American people in the Congress, um, and announced that we were going to the moon, we had had one flight of less than, oh, about 15 minutes. So it shows you the, the guts and a, and the strong belief of President Kennedy and something greater than himself and greater than the nation in announcing that we were going to do this and hopefully chasing the moon. We'll talk about that. Getting back to you though, uh, you know, saying you're well traveled is an understatement, right? Since you've, as you mentioned, you've actually flown on for space shuttle missions as an astronaut. Speaker 3: 04:50 What are you most proud of? Are there are a lot of things. Um, if you can, I break it down into what am I most proud of as a person. It's, um, it's the birth of my two children in and Kelly, uh, it's, it there the pride of my wife and me. So I guess I'm next to being most proud that my wife said yes when I asked her to marry me when we were at, when I was at the Naval Academy and she was at Spelman, but, but the birth of our kids, uh, and then that's led to the three wonderful, beautiful granddaughters that we have who spent most of their life out here in San Diego. Um, when you talk about the space program, if you talk about my second time there, uh, I think I'm most proud of the fact that, that our employees were recognized for their excellence by being named the best place to work in the federal government six times now. Speaker 3: 05:34 And, uh, so we're waiting to see what happens this year, um, to see if they can hold that title. That's a big deal. And it, and it puts a target on their back and it makes them the target of every other federal agency that wants to be like NASA. And if you go back to my time as the marine in the, in the active Marine Corps, um, that's, that's really kind of hard. But I think again, it would be my, my time out here as the commander, the third marine aircraft wing, when we put together a campaign plan that really focused on our marines and was called putting marines first and it was, um, a planet Speaker 1: 06:08 take care of them and their families prior to prior to going into war. Yep. Yeah, that's probably it. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. You piloted space shuttle Columbia. Yeah. In 1986 and space shuttle Discovery in 1990, which was huge. And that, that was the mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. You're enough with so many missions in space exploration, breakthroughs under your belt. What's been the biggest challenge to accomplishing those milestones? Speaker 3: 06:36 You know, I guess, um, that's a, that's a really hard question because the time of the shuttle, uh, I got there in 1980 so I was in the second group of people selected specifically to fly the space shuttle. We were supposed to have flown in 1978. I got there in 1980 and we weren't even close to flying. Uh, we were still working on the issue of, uh, keeping tiles on the vehicle and then worrying about damage to tile on orbit. So the first year for me was almost like being at the very beginning of a program where we were just trying to get flown. So it was an exciting time, a frustrating time and everything. Speaker 1: 07:12 Uh, what do you hope to see happen in your lifetime in terms of space exploration? Speaker 3: 07:16 Oh, at this point in the immediate future, like sometime before the end of this year, Eh, nothing would make me happier than to see Boeing and space x fly with cruise. The next thing would be the flight of Orion on the heavy lift launch vehicle that NASA has to get us back to the moon. And then eventually onto Mars. But that's what I hope will happen in my lifetime also. And then an aeronautics. Since you can't forget that I really do want to see us, NASA right now. Here's four explains that they're hoping to continue work on. My favorite is the what's called quest. It's a quiet supersonic airplane that if successful and I'm confident we'll be because Boeing, Lockheed, a lot of the major companies are working on now, but it'll go faster than the speed of sound you'll go from, from San Diego to London in a matter of a couple of hours, go around the world in a couple of hours. Um, and that's in development under a NASA's leadership and uh, and I'm excited about that. Speaker 1: 08:13 The possibilities are fascinating and yeah, and so are all the advancements that I've been speaking with Major General Charles Bolden, former NASA astronaut. He will be speaking with a panel tonight after the excerpt screening of chasing the moon, six 30 at the fleet science center. For more information, go to k, pbs.org. Charlie, thank you so much for joining me. Speaker 3: 08:35 Thank you so very much. It was awesome. Thanks a lot. Good to be back out of KPBS has been a long time.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing a new film series called "Summer of Space" is coming to KPBS television to tell the story of the race to outer space and all of the research that has come from that exploration.
KPBS Midday Edition Segments