Apollo: Reflections & Lessons (Session 1) Aeroastro 2009
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MIT 150 | Giant Leaps Symposium at MIT - Apollo: Reflections & Lessons (session 1) AeroAstro 2009 [MUSIC PLAYING] JOHN F. I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on KENNEDY: the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. KAYONE They just had the courage to do what they had to do and get the job done. And that's how we should try and live CHITOLIE: our lives every day as a people. ASTRONAUT: 30 seconds and counting. KATHERINE Apollo 11-- when they went to the Moon, it was just a first for mankind. It takes a lot of people to make REILLY: something miraculous happen. ASTRONAUT: Three, two, one, zero. All engines running. Lift off. We have a lift off, 32 minutes past the hour. CORAL SABINO: It's taught us so much-- knowing that we can go farther, knowing that we can learn this much more about things that we know practically nothing about. ASTRONAUT: 60 seconds. I've gone 30 seconds [INAUDIBLE]. Okay, engine stop. There's been a quality day here. The eagle has landed. AL WORDEN: I have to say, I was not a little kid growing up on a farm in Michigan that looked at the sky and said, I'm going to go to the Moon someday. I never thought that was a possibility. BUZZ ALDRIN: When the option came to apply for the astronaut program, I knew that I didn't meet the test pilot trained requirement. But I thought, maybe it's a good idea to apply anyway to see what happens. AL WORDEN: Only 24 guys got to go, but those guys never would've made it if it hadn't been for the thousands of others behind them. DR. WILLIAM When people ask me what that experience was like, I reached back to Middle Ages times when the big project WIDNALL: that everybody could see might have been building, say, the cathedral at the chart. It was this enormous thing that the whole community was behind, and the thousands of people of various skills working on this huge project which was rising out of the fields that could be seen as far as the horizon. RICHARD We were called by the spacecraft contractor. And he said, understand there's going to be a computer in here. He BATTIN: says, how big is it? We looked around. We saw all of this electronics stuff. What should we tell him? I said, well, and somebody said, well, tell him a cubic foot. So that became the design principle, that you had to build a computer that would do the job but would fit inside the space of a cubic foot. DON EYLES: We didn't have computer monitors or anything of that sort whatsoever. We basically dealt with paper, and that's what we stared at when we were trying to think about the software and the mission. So you knew that the answer was in there if you had a riddle to solve, and you had to find it, but you knew it was in there. BUZZ ALDRIN: It taught us to approach a plan with continuity and flexibility. It inspired the world. I almost look back and seem a little naive at the time. We were pioneering, and it was exciting as hell to be a part of whatever it was. CHUCK VEST: Apollo hit me and most people very deeply emotionally. NEIL It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. ARMSTRONG: CHUCK VEST: But it also had a very pragmatic side, if we set a very precise, well understood goal that humans can achieve. DON EYLES: What goal could be more universal than saying, I see that thing up there. I'd like to grasp it. I'd like to get my boots dirty on it. AL WORDEN: To me, the legacy of Apollo has nothing do with going to the Moon. The legacy of Apollo is that we can do anything we want to if we put our minds to it. DANIELLE We face problems now that are harder, in a sense, than Apollo, because sometimes, there's a lot of uncertainty WOOD: about what the problem actually is. SPEAKER: You'd throw up your hands and you'd say, global warming, what can we do about it? It's too far gone. JEFFREY When we talk about ending hunger, what would that mean? I mean, what is the requirement? How do you know HOFFMAN: if you've done it? ERIKA WAGNER:I think to say that we need an Apollo-like program for solving the issues of, say, energy and the environment is to say that we need a coordinated effort that drives energies in a very particular direction. WILFRIED It will consist of many, many Apollo-like efforts in many different areas to finally solve this challenge. HOFSTETTER: CHUCK VEST: In that speech, President Kennedy also said, we choose to do these things not because they are easy-- JOHN F. --but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and KENNEDY: skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win. CHUCK VEST: We need that kind of thinking, that kind of inspiration again. ERIKA WAGNER:There's a real need worldwide to educate a generation that can come and meet these grand challenges. BRETT BETHKE: Developing a technology just for research sake is not enough. You really need to take that idea and allow it to improve people's lives. CHUCK VEST: This generation coming on now is going to have enormous opportunities. If we put our faith in them, I'm absolutely confident that it will be well placed. DANIELLE One of the interesting things about Apollo is the idea that we were able to do something really fantastic in the WOOD: '60s that we're not exactly able to do today. ASTRONAUT: Descending standby for [INAUDIBLE]. DANIELLE And people in my generation really feel that that should be corrected, that we shouldn't have gone backwards. WOOD: EMMI TRAN: I'd like to see people living on the Moon. That'd be so cool. KAYONE It's a whole new world out there, and to actually set up and live there and have a regular lifestyle like on Earth-- CHITOLIE: that would be incredible. KATHERINE Beyond our solar system, we don't really know what it's like out there. We don't know if there's another planet REILLY: like ours. We don't know if there's really life out there, whatever kind of life it might be. LARRY YOUNG: The giant leap that we should be making now is not do we send humans back to the Moon or onto Mars, but how do we send them there? WILLIAM We're going to move on to the next challenge, which is to go back to the Moon. And it's not to go there and GERSTENMAIER:touch the Moon like we did before, but this time we're going to go to the Moon with the intent of staying. ERIKA WAGNER:Going to the Moon is what my parents' generation did and what we should do again. But it's really saying, how do we go beyond that? BUZZ ALDRIN: Time's a-wasting. I think we've been marking time a little bit in low Earth orbit. The objective is to get to the surface of Mars in a stepping stone way. DR. WILLIAM One of the lasting contributions of Apollo, I think, was that picture that was sent back that Christmas Eve of WIDNALL: Earthrise over the Moon's horizon. ASTRONAUT: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void. DR. WILLIAM Here was this blue planet with white clouds looking very fragile, and indeed, it is. WIDNALL: ASTRONAUT: And God said, let there be light, and there was light. ERIKA WAGNER:By standing outside of the Earth and looking back, we learn new things. These first pictures coming back from Apollo really drove Earth Day and the environmental movement. CORAL SABINO: Knowledge is power. Knowing certain things can help you to go on to learn even more things, and it's just a never ending chain of learning and just collecting this information and intellect. And it's just amazing. WILLIAM So my challenge to all of us is, how do we take that spirit of Apollo, that excitement we felt during Apollo, and GERSTENMAIER:now have that same excitement, that same spirit to keep us moving forward to solve problems we don't even know about today? EUGENE Here man completed his first exploration of the Moon. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in CERNAN: the lives of all mankind. [APPLAUSE] PRESENTER: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ian Waitz [INAUDIBLE]. IAN WAITZ: It's my pleasure to welcome all of you and to open this symposium on behalf of MIT, the School of Engineering, the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, our faculty, staff, and students, and our sponsors, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Lockheed Martin, Orbital Sciences Corporation, and the Boeing Company. The video that we just saw captured many of the themes of this event, but I'd like to open by providing a little bit more context for the discussions that we've planned for today and more context for some of the events that have happened over the last several months this spring and events that will continue after these events end today.