>> So, we're going to go
ahead and start the video.
[ Background Conversation ]
[ Music ]
>> In 1955, Neil Armstrong
became a research pilot
at NASA's Flight Research
Center in Edwards, California.
[ Music ]
Here, he flew almost all of the
century series of jet fighters,
the F-100, the F-101, the
F-102, the F-104 and the F-105.
He also piloted the F-5D,
the KC-135, the B-47,
and his first flight
was in the P-51.
During this time, he
served as a launch pilot
on the extensively
modified B-29 that was used
to air launch the X-1E.
He also flew the X-5, the
first aircraft capable
of sweeping its wings in flight.
The technique in use on
the F-14 and B-1 today.
While at the flight
research center,
Neil made several flights in the
X-1B, a rocket-powered airplane
that eventually reached speeds
of up to 1600 miles per hour.
And in 1958, he was named as
one of the original seven pilots
for the X-15 program,
which was later acclaimed
as the most successful
rocket-powered
research aircraft.
Specializing in stability and
control, Neil worked closely
with engineers in developing an
adaptive flight control system,
that would eventually
allow the X-15
to fly near orbital altitudes.
He piloted the first four
flights on this system
in the number three X-15,
and later received the AIAA's
prestigious Octave Chanute Award
for this effort.
Although originally
developed in the 1950s
to increase man's knowledge
of hypersonic aeronautics,
manned spaceflight was
the immediate beneficiary
of the X-15 research program.
The program dramatically
demonstrated the capability
of the human pilot for
employing a fantastic variety
of acquired skills,
sensing, judging,
and coping with the unexpected.
The X-15 was air
launched from as far
as 300 miles from
its destination.
The rocket engine would
only burn for 90 seconds
until its fuel was exhausted,
and the aircraft would continue
to cLEM, ballistically,
to altitudes in excess
of 300,000 feet and speeds
of over six times
the speed of sound.
Yet barring any unforeseen
mechanical problems,
the pilots were almost
always able
to maneuver their
hypersonic glider to a landing
within 1,000 feet of
their intended mark.
[ Music ]
In the early 1960s, Neil became
involved with the development
and testing of a new concept
that was being considered
for use as a possible method
of recovering both manned
and unmanned spacecraft.
Although the concept
showed promise,
subsequent testing revealed
operational problems
that made the paraglider
more suitable to hang gliders
than spacecraft recovery.
It was during this
same time that Neil,
flying a prototype jetfighter,
developed a technique
for the abort rescue of
a new manned spacecraft
under consideration.
It was called the X-20
Dinosaur, and it was built
for the U.S. Air Force.
It would have been launched into
space using a Titan III booster.
Once in space, the X-20
would orbit the Earth using a
principle called
dynamic soaring.
Once the speed decreased,
the spacecraft would re-enter
the Earth's atmosphere
and land like a simple glider.
In all, Neil logged 2,600
flight hours in over 900 flights
at Edwards, and all before
becoming the most famous
astronaut of all time.
>> This was one of the
most exciting places
in the world at that time.
The flight-test world was
filled with excitement.
Dozens and dozens
of new concepts
and configurations and tests.
Something new to talk about
every day, and I believe
that whenever I have the
privilege of visiting here again
and years ahead and
ask someone what's new?
There will always be something.
[ Applause ]
>> Good afternoon and welcome
to the Neil Armstrong
Flight Research Center.
Before I get started,
a safety message
for our guests here today.
Should there be an alarm, just
exit to your left or right
and gather in front
of the building.
Thank you for that.
So, today's speaker is Dr. James
R. Hansen who recently retired
as a professor of history from
Auburn University in Alabama.
Our own Dr. Christiansen
was one of his students.
I don't if your wife
was as well.
Okay. He has written books and
articles covering a wide variety
of topics, ranging from
the early days of aviation,
first nuclear fusion
reactors, the moon landings
to the environmental
impact of golf courses.
Dr. Hansen is an expert
in history of science
and technology, especially
the early history of NACA.
He's the author of
Engineer in Charge.
This is a must-read
for NASA engineers.
A seminal history of NACA from
its founding to what, 1958.
Followed up by the
space-flight revolution,
which was probably called
Headquarters in Charge.
[ Laughter ]
Engineer in Charge for the title
of the center director back
in the old Langley days.
His last visit here to the
center was in 2005, when he came
to share his new book First Man,
which remains the only
authorized biography
of Neil Armstrong.
You know, a lot has
happened since 2005.
Our center's had the honor of
being named for Neil Armstrong.
The book had a lot
to do with that.
First Man told the
story of Neil's years
as a test pilot here
in the High Desert.
In the title section,
you saw it a lot of that
in the video was the
real right stuff.
Meanwhile, Dr. Hansen's been
busy writing other books
about astronauts, space
shuttle, golf course architects
and keeps himself
extremely busy.
As we speak, a film adaptation
of First Man is in the works
with Universal Studios
and Amblin Entertainment.
The script is being written by
Academy Award winner Josh Singer
of Spotlight fame,
and it'll be directed
by Academy Award
winner Damien Chazelle,
who directed La La Land.
Today, Dr. Hansen will
explore the question,
why was Neil Armstrong
chosen to command Apollo 11,
and why did he become the
first astronaut to step
out onto the lunar surface?
Please join me in welcoming
Dr. James R. Hansen.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you David.
Thank You.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thanks. Thanks very
much for coming.
It's a very special
place as you guys know.
I really enjoyed my visit here
when I was researching
First Man,
and getting to talk
to a lot of people.
Some of them, I think,
have passed on,
some of the colleagues
that worked with Neil back
in the 50s and early 60s.
How many of you, I
always have to you know,
as a 31-year veteran of the
classroom, I always have to find
out where the troublemakers
are to begin with.
So, how many of you, yeah,
I see a show of hands,
how many of you were
alive on July 20th,
1969 and remember what you were
doing and what you saw that day?
Yeah. So, that's maybe about
a little less than half.
And of course, time marches on,
and I haven't done the
calculation recently,
but I think it's somewhere
between 80 and 85 percent
of the human population
living today weren't alive
in July 1969.
So it's, you know, it's
really history for those
that are the young people,
and I'm so glad to see
so many young people today.
I've taught a lot of college
students, college-age freshmen
in college all the
way to grad students.
Christian was one of our
star graduate students,
and Dr. Stephanie Smith
DeVito was a colleague of mine
at Auburn teaching
history of technology.
So I love to see them again.
But, you know, teaching
about the space program
and about the Apollo moon
landings, it's for them,
students today, it's like
talking about, you know,
The War of the Roses or
something, medieval history.
It's so far back, and
they didn't experience it.
They might have heard
about it from their parents
or their grandparents.
You know, only 12 human
beings have ever set foot
on another heavenly body.
Those were Apollo
astronauts, and of those 12,
only six of them
are still living.
And let's hope they stay
living for a while longer.
They range in age from I
think 82, Charlie Duke,
I think is 82, to Buzz Aldrin.
Buzz is the oldest
surviving moonwalker.
He's 87. Turned 87 in
January of this year.
And of the commanders,
of the six commanders
of successful landings,
there's only three
of them are still alive.
And so, you know, when we were
unfortunately going to come
to a point in time in
history, it's just inevitable,
that they'll be gone, and
we won't have replaced them.
It doesn't look like, and
at least not for a while.
The next moonwalkers may, in
fact, be Chinese astronauts.
It's yet to be seen.
But it's, I think we just
celebrated, I was in Wapakoneta,
Ohio, Neil's hometown
a couple weeks ago,
to celebrate the 48th
anniversary of Apollo 11,
and there was a big event there.
And Buzz came to talk.
And it's sort of been,
my world sort of goes
from one Armstrong
world to the next.
Here I am at NASA Armstrong.
You know, I was at
the Armstrong Museum
in Wapakoneta giving a talk,
you know, two weeks ago.
I was invited to the
Armstrong family reunion
out on the farm outside
Wapakoneta.
Both of his sons were there,
his sister was there, Jan.
His first wife was there.
A big cookout at the
farm where Neil was born.
So, I was there.
I spent a large part of my
summer at Purdue University
in the archives where the Neil
Armstrong papers are located.
So you know, Neil Armstrong
is still very much a part
of my life and this movie.
I should, perhaps, be
answering the question instead
of why Neil Armstrong?
Why in the world, why in
the heck would you turn
over your book to Hollywood?
You worked so hard to
get the facts straight.
You know, and now
what do you do.
You know, you turn
it over to Hollywood.
But, I think this has the
chance of being a really,
really great film, and
they have involved me
from the start with the script.
I worked with Josh Singer,
who David mentioned,
the screenwriter.
Dave Scott, the Gemini
8 and Apollo astronaut,
one of the Apollo commanders
is a technical consultant.
Mike Collins, the
command module pilot
for Apollo 11 is reading the
script, as is Jim Lovell.
Both the Armstrong boys have.
Janet Armstrong has done so.
They've tried really hard.
They've dug deep.
They've been out here.
I think there's going
to be a shoot out here.
At least a one-day shoot,
location shoot sometime
in the next couple of months.
I don't know exactly.
They actually went
up into Juniper Hills
and they were looking for
the cabin that Neil and Janet
and his small family,
young family lived
in when he was here.
And they didn't have the
exact address or anything.
I didn't plan to
tell this story,
but they were driving around.
They just wanted to
sort of get an idea
of what the vantage point of the
desert was from up in the hills,
and so this guy was
walking down the street.
And so they stopped and they
thought well we'll just ask
if he happens to know, you know,
where did Neil Armstrong live.
Well, it turned out that the
guy owned, it was the guy
that owned the Armstrong cabin.
I mean, like what
are the chances?
You know? And so he
said yeah, come on.
So he brought them in the
house, and they took all kinds
of pictures in the house.
And down in the, kind
of not quite a basement,
but kind of on a lower floor in
the concrete was the footprint,
you know how people put
footprints in wet cement.
There was a footprint and it
was either of Rick Armstrong,
who was the first son of Neil,
or it possibly could
have been little Karen.
The little baby girl who
died of a brain cancer
when she was two-years-old.
And anyway, let's everybody
keep your fingers crossed,
I think we could have
a really special movie.
It's just going to cover
the years, it starts really
with his last months working
here as a research pilot,
and then takes it
to the immediate
aftermath of Apollo 11.
So, it's not a full bio-pic
as the Hollywood people say.
It's just going to look
at those particular years.
Why Neil Armstrong?
I almost feel like I could
stop and just take questions
at this point, because the film,
you know, in a way you can say
in a nutshell, no one had
done, none of the astronauts,
as accomplished as
they were, and it's not
that the other commanders
couldn't have done the
landing mission.
I think they could have,
and I think the approach
of NASA leadership at the time
was if you have good commanders
and you train them up right,
get good crews together,
that any of them
could have done it.
And that was kind of the
mindset that I think, you know,
that I have to try to
explain to you a bit.
But the video itself, I
mean, when Neil applied
for the second group of
astronauts in the spring
of 1962, while he was here,
his application actually
got in late.
They sort of, a guy that knew
him there was a guy named Dick
Day, and he shoved
it into the pile
because he knew Neil
was special.
But in my book, I interpret
this late application from Neil
as showing a little bit
ambivalence on Neil's part.
You know, that he wasn't
really sure, you know,
he had been selected
as an X-20 pilot,
so he had that possibility.
He was flying the
X-15, you know.
He might someday have been
chief test pilot here.
So, he wasn't sure,
really, about this,
but he made the decision.
And I think the fact
he was the only one
with any rocket-power flying
experience that had applied,
and from the astronauts that
I've talked to that were part
of his group, and some that
tried to get in the second group
and didn't make it until the
third group of astronauts.
What they told me in
interviews was that Neil,
they kind of figured
Neil was a cinch.
That he was, there's no question
that he was going to get picked,
because he had this
background that you just saw
in four minutes, that
none of them had anything
that really approached that.
But, nonetheless, I'm
going to try to address,
it's a fairly complicated
historical question,
why he was first.
And I think it's a
significant question,
because there's a lot of myth.
There's a lot of myth
surrounding Armstrong generally,
but there's a lot of
myth and misunderstanding
about why he was first.
When I put up slides, I'm not
going to read the slides to you.
You guys, hopefully you
can see it well enough.
But here are five things that
are still said about Neil
and explanations you can find
in different books
or on the internet.
People believe that one of these
reasons was the real reason.
And I'm going to say something
about number one
and number five.
And that was, I was at
a meeting at Ohio State
where in the spring, when
there was a new Neil Armstrong
professorship created in
the school of engineering.
And Senator Rob Portman from
Ohio did the introduction,
and he made the point, he said
from the very beginning
it was clear to NASA
that Neil Armstrong was
going to be the commander
of the first landing mission.
That he was so excellent
and so outstanding
that he was sort of
preordained to be.
Well, I wasn't about
to, you know,
quarrel with Congressman
Portman, not about that anyway.
I might quarrel with him
about some other things,
but that just isn't true.
I mean, it's not true, and
my talk today, hopefully,
will lay that out for you.
And then number five, which
I think is the one that is
out there the most, because this
is what NASA said to the public,
to the press, and even to their
own astronauts at the time.
Is that what dictated
who got out first,
so it's not just the issue
of who's commanding the lunar
landing, but who's going
to be the first one
out onto the surface,
which became a big deal, that it
was all dictated by the layout
of the interior of
the lunar module.
With Neil standing
on the left side,
of course there weren't
seats in the lunar module.
Didn't need to have seats.
And Buzz was standing on
the right, and the hatch was
down here and opening
a certain way.
And so what was explained to
them at the time, you know,
if you ask Buzz Aldrin today
why Neil went out first,
he would talk to you
about number five.
It was really dictated by the
interior layout of the LEM.
And how difficult it would
have been to change places
and have Buzz go out first.
My book and what I'll, in a
nutshell, I'll sort of try
to get that far today in my
talk and explain that I think
that was a smoke-screen.
It really was, it wasn't the
reason that Neil went out first.
It was other things.
So, hopefully I'll have time
to address each one of these.
Now the question, why was Neil
first is I think a significant
historical question, and we
can learn a lot about NASA
and about the Apollo
program by answering it.
It's a different kind of
question than we might ask
about the Wright brothers.
Why Wilbur and Orville?
Another very significant
question.
I think historians have done
a great job answering that.
I mean, how these two bicycle
mechanics from Dayton, Ohio,
neither with a high
school degree managed
to solve the problem
of the century.
Figure out how to
design a heavier
than air machine
that's effective.
Why they were able to do it when
some of the greatest engineers
and scientists around the
world who'd been attacking
that problem failed at it.
That's a very interesting
question,
but it's not the
lecture for today.
Christian could give
that lecture.
You can have him
do it next week.
Charles Lindbergh.
Why Charles Lindbergh?
You know, why was he first?
Well, that's maybe not as
complicated question to answer,
you know, in terms of
who all was trying to get
across the Atlantic first.
I think more significantly than
that question, why Lindbergh,
why did Lindbergh have the
kind of impact on culture
and society that he had?
What was it about, you
know, about Lucky Lindy?
About the solo performance
of crossing the Atlantic?
Why, in 1927, was
there such a big deal
that Lindbergh became
this iconic figure?
I'll say more about Lindbergh
a little bit later in the talk,
because there's a connection
between Lindbergh and Neil
that becomes important.
But why Neil is a
different sort of question.
Neil and I, I actually talked in
one of my interviews with Neil.
We talked about, you
know, the Wrights.
We talked about Lindbergh,
and as Neil was a very
good historian when it came
to aviation history at
least, well-read generally.
You know, he understood
that Lindbergh's achievements
were very individual.
The Wright brothers, in a way,
not that they didn't have
the impact of Octave Chanute
and the correspondence
that he had gathered.
The Wrights learned a
lot from other people,
but in a way their achievement
was pretty individual as well.
Neil understood that
his, what he contributed,
was in a different framework
than those other two
great achievements.
Because there had been
over 400,000 individuals
in government, in industry
and academe that had all been,
been a national program,
that the astronauts were just
at the top of the
pyramid perhaps,
but it was this huge pyramid.
Or maybe a better metaphor
is kind of like an iceberg
where you only see the
part out of the water.
But that mass under the water
which doesn't get seen
is actually larger.
Neil understood that there were
people that made contributions
that were so significant, and
it bothered him that he got
as much attention as he did.
He did one interview
with 60 Minutes
when the book came out in 2005.
He was interviewed
by Ed Bradley.
Actually, Walter Cronkite came
down to be part of
the interview.
They met at Cape Canaveral,
and during that interview,
which was really delightfully
done, and I think everybody
that watched it and
that knew Neil well felt
that it was classic Neil,
and it was great to see him.
I wasn't chosen to be
first, I was just chosen
to command that flight.
Circumstance put me in
that particular role.
And to some, that might just
seem like his modesty speaking,
and he was a modest
man, so I'm not saying
that wasn't part of it.
But I think, even more than the
modesty was he understood the
reality of how this
actually happened.
What the reality of
the Apollo program was.
And he knew that there wasn't
anything that preordained him
to be the Apollo 11 commander.
He was just one of the
commanders in line with a crew,
and depending how
things developed,
and things might develop in
a very logical, you know,
in a way that one could expect.
Or there could be a lot of wild
cards and accidents and things
that happened to change.
And Neil understood all of that,
so that's when he said
I just don't deserve it.
I mean, he understood his role
as the commander of Apollo 11
and first man on the moon.
But to have the kind of focused
attention and hero worship
and iconography that
came with Armstrong.
And a lot of it that he would
have loved to have lived
without in his years after 1969.
You know, he was
just being honest
when he said I just don't
deserve that much attention.
Here again, in the
case of Apollo,
it was an effort
of national will.
Hundreds of thousands
of people involved.
Just one very short anecdote.
You know, when I started
research for the book,
you know one thing I asked him
at one point, it wasn't one
of the early, because I sort of
went through this his whole life
from his family background.
So, I didn't talk about Apollo
for probably 30 hours
of tape recording.
But, I asked him, I was going
down to Houston and I said,
who should I talk to in Houston?
And I thought he was
going to say, you know,
go find you know, Gene Krantz.
You know, go find Gene Cernan.
Go find Chris Craft.
And I did want to go find all
those guys, but Neil said,
first and foremost, you need
to talk to Emil Schiesser.
Emil Schiesser?
Who in the hell is
Emil Schiesser?
I had no idea who he was,
and I thought he was
just pulling my leg.
But Emil Schiesser
worked in mission planning
and was this really, really
brilliant, probably genius man
who worked in mission planning.
And Neil was totally serious.
You need to talk to Emil
Schiesser, and here was a guy
that nobody had ever probably
interviewed for the purposes
of learning about
the Apollo program.
But from Neil's point-of-view,
he was one of the unsung heroes
that was critically
important to it.
And there are others, I mean,
the names of people he gave me,
you know, was not a list that
anybody could've expected.
The story of how the
circumstances lead
to Armstrong being in the
right place to be commander
of Apollo 11 really comes down
to this person, Deke Slayton.
And if you're a young person
and you haven't studied the
Apollo history very well,
Deke Slayton is a crucial part
of the early US-manned
space program.
He was one of the seven
original astronauts,
along with Gus Grissom and
John Glenn and Al Shepard
and Carpenter and so forth.
But he had, the doctors found
that he had a heart condition.
A murmur that needed to, he
essentially got grounded.
And so he didn't get to fly.
And he was the one
Mercury astronaut
that didn't get to fly.
He later got, eventually,
into space as part
of the Apollo Soyuz
mission in the mid-70s.
The docking with the cosmonauts.
But what they gave him
was a more important role
than he probably would've
ever had as an astronaut,
and that was he became the
chief of the astronaut corps.
And he was in charge of
putting the crews together.
Here you see him with
Wally Schirra one
of the other original seven.
And Deke's principle,
you can see here,
how I lay it out in the book.
His idea was that you get a
qualified commander, you know,
when you're putting
crews together, you know,
on the top line, you're
picking your very best guys.
You know, here are
your commanders.
You know, once you've
got the commanders,
you know then you can fill in
and get the crews
underneath them.
But, first and foremost,
you want the guys,
and the commanders
are almost co-equals.
From Deke's point-of-view,
they were all, they were going
to be trained up for special
missions, so it wasn't
like they all ended up doing
exactly the same thing.
But the idea was
that they were all
of the same general
abilities and capacities
and leadership that, you
know, you could put them up
and if missions got shifted
where you thought you had them
here but then that didn't work
out and you have to
move to the next one.
If you get the right commanders,
you know, you're a long way
down the path towards
being successful.
In Slayton's memoir, which
was published and finished
after he died, so we still
need a really good book
on Deke Slayton.
I think a real biography
of Slayton is necessary,
but in that memoir, Deke
makes the comment that,
you know of course, Gus
Grissom had been one
of the original seven
astronauts,
and he'd flown Mercury, Gemini.
He was part of Apollo 1.
Of course he's going to die
in the fire on the launch pad
in January 1967 along with
Roger Chaffee and Ed White.
And in the memoir,
Deke Slayton says,
if Grissom had been alive I
would've been strongly inclined
to make him, put him in command
of the first landing mission.
Now, some historians
have taken that to mean
that Deke would've virtually,
would really have done that.
Would've made sure that
Gus would've been the first
commander of a lunar
landing mission.
I don't think that's
what Slayton meant.
I think he actually had
a fondness and he felt
that Gus was a great commander,
would be a great commander,
but I don't think
Deke's principle
that we just looked at, I
think he would've been just one
of those under commanders
and he would not have,
Deke would not have manipulated
the scheduling of the crews
or the missions to
make sure that Gus got
to be the lunar landing
commander.
I just don't think
that was what it was,
but he did have a special feel
for Deke, between Deke and Gus.
So, here it could have been
any of these Apollo commanders.
Any of these guys in
Deke's point-of-view.
Frank Borman, Jim
McDivet, Tom Stafford,
Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell.
And April 1967, this is a few
months after the Apollo fire.
Of course the fire is
a significant moment
in NASA history.
Some felt, I mean there were
congressional investigations
into this.
Some thought that, you know,
maybe the Apollo program
should have the plug pulled.
It was just, because it had made
such an apparently big mistake.
It had killed three astronauts
on the launchpad
down in Florida.
The fire meant that the
Apollo command module
that North America
was building had
to be totally redesigned,
and it was.
But it wasn't just the redesign
of the Apollo command module,
it really gave pause
to the program
for about a year and a half.
Where they could go back
and look at everything.
You know, they had been moving
along so fast from Mercury
through the Gemini missions
and into the start of Apollo.
Now, they had to call time
out, let's pause and refresh.
Let's rethink.
Let's get things, make
sure we got things right.
But they couldn't wait around in
terms of their mission planning
because they wanted to get
this done before the end
of the decade.
President Kennedy had made
this speech in May of 1961.
Land astronauts on the
moon, return them safely
by the end of the decade.
So that was the mandate
that NASA was working with,
but this is the way that
it was being laid out.
Certainly, the way the
astronaut office looked at it
and how the crews were going
to have to put together.
Virtually, you know, it
didn't go A through Z,
but you saw what the A
mission was supposed to be.
The B mission was going to be
an unmanned test of the LEM.
C, the first command module
test in low Earth orbit.
D, the manned command
service module
and lunar module
in low Earth orbit.
E mission, the first landing
was going to be the G mission,
and then there were plans beyond
that, H and I and J. You know,
which were going
to be the missions
when exploration
got more extensive.
So, all this was laid out,
and the idea was, you know,
we do A successfully, then
we move on to B. We do that.
Move on to C. It's an
incremental approach,
systematic, you know, make sure
we know what we're doing before
we move on to the next step.
Well, in terms of
the crew assignments,
this is how it looked
in 1967 after the fire.
You know, what Deke had
in mind for the crews.
Now, it's going to
not turn out exactly
like this, but that's my point.
At that point in time, Apollo
7 was going to be the C mission
with Eisele, Schirra
and Cunningham.
Then 8 was going to
do the D mission.
That's Dave Scott there, so my
captions don't follow the order
of the appearances necessarily.
Apollo 9, interestingly,
this was going to be Borman,
Anders and Mike Collins.
And then, these are
the backup crews.
Cernan, Conrad, Armstrong.
Armstrong was in a backup.
Borman on the Apollo 9, which
was going to be the E mission.
Okay, now that was what
the thought was going into,
as they were moving
past the fire
and projecting what we were
going to need to be moving
on quickly once 1968
comes around.
And then actually get
this done in 1969.
The later crews at this point,
10, 11 and 12 to do the E,
F and G mission were
still undecided.
Oftentimes it seemed
like, you know,
if somebody did 8 then three
missions later it would probably
be that crew's mission again.
So, one could kind
of anticipate,
but a lot of things could get
in the way to mess that up.
Now, here was the first
wild card that came
in that kind of blew
up the plan.
The lunar module,
which was being built
by Grumman wasn't ready.
And of course, the mission,
the D mission called
for the lunar module to
be tested in Earth orbit.
Well, it's not ready.
It's not ready to fly.
So, do you sit around and wait
for the LEM to get finished?
Do you pause the program?
Or do you do something else?
And here comes a guy
named George Low.
One of the real giants
of NASA's management.
A great engineer from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute,
managing the space-flight, the
manned space-flight operations.
Low comes up with this proposal,
okay the LEMs not ready,
so why don't we just
put a command
and service module
together and fly that sucker
around the moon and back?
Let's do a circumlunar flight,
and when he makes this proposal,
I mean, I use the
word audacious.
It's just that, I
mean, we haven't been
out of Earth orbit yet.
You know, we've just had a
command module, you know,
a few months back that caught on
fire because they were testing
in 100% oxygen atmosphere
when they shouldn't have been
doing it and they had all kinds
of combustible stuff
that shouldn't have been
laying around either.
So, they were still
concerned about the redesign,
but Low comes up and says,
because the Russians are
thinking about, you know,
they're still planning on
getting to the moon ahead of us.
There is this thing
called the space race.
The Cold War was still going on.
So, Low said, you
know, we'd better,
you know let's do
this as a stop gap.
And so, that gets embraced.
NASA says yeah, let's
go for that.
And that becomes Apollo 8.
So the order of things
gets changed,
and what had been
the Apollo 9 crew,
and the Apollo 9 backup
crew becomes the crew
and backup crew of Apollo 8.
We have Borman, Anders
and Jim Lovell.
Armstrong, Aldrin
and Fred Haise.
So they get put together
to train
for the circumlunar mission
which takes place
in December 1968.
And for those of you that are
living, are old geezers like me
that remember Christmas 1968.
A very memorable Christmas Eve.
They're orbiting from the moon.
We have televisions from
the spacecraft looking
down at the lunar surface.
They're reading from
the book of Genesis,
which ends up causing
controversy.
There's a famous American
atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair
who thinks government
money shouldn't be spent
on astronauts going and reading
from the book of Genesis.
So that gets part of the hoo-hah
after the mission's over.
But it's a beautiful mission.
1968, for those of you
who lived through it,
I was a junior in high school.
[ Laughter ]
Was a really, you want to
say it's an awful year.
Robert Kennedy is assassinated.
Martin Luther King's
assassinated.
The democratic convention
in Chicago goes to hell.
You know, Vietnam, I think
Tet offensive is '68.
So we're starting to lose
more people in Vietnam.
The protests against it.
There's race riots.
You know, it's a
really, really bad year.
But some people say
because of this mission,
I forget the newsman
or columnist
who first made the comment,
but it said that
Apollo 8 saved 1968.
You know, that it was such an
uplifting moment, you know,
and I don't think anything
could've saved 1968
from all of that tragedy.
But it was a very strong,
emotional, successful mission.
They do circumnavigate.
They do get back safely.
It's a wonderful mission,
and people remember it.
So, after 8's over, now we go
to a 9 that's a redefined 9,
with Dave Scott, McDivett
and Rusty Schweickart.
And this is doing the
E mission, which is,
the lunar module's finally
ready, so let's go and test it.
We're going to test it in
Earth orbit, you know, first.
Make sure it's working in
Earth orbit before we take off
for the moon with it.
So, that's successful
in March of 1969.
Then May, we have number
10, which is really kind
of a complete dress
rehearsal for 11.
It is basically doing everything
you need to do to land.
Descending, you know, detaching
from the command module,
taking the lunar module
down to within, what,
50,000 feet of the
lunar surface.
And then realizing, well,
we don't get to land.
We've done everything,
but we don't get to land.
And so, that's the
dress rehearsal,
and that was very successful.
So again, that's May,
and now it's become clear
for the first time.
That you've moved through F, the
G mission's the landing, so now,
the next crew is going to be
the one to do the landing.
If these other missions hadn't
worked the way that they did.
If they had to repeat
something, you know.
If 8 hadn't become the audacious
circumlunar mission in fact,
then it's very possible that
11, it might not have been 11.
Eleven might have done
the dress rehearsal,
12 might have been the
landing, in that case,
Pete Conrad would have
been the commander.
There are two factors changing
crew assignments that are worth,
that's worth mentioning.
Frank Borman, after Apollo 8,
resigns for personal reasons.
You know, his wife,
Susan is kind of tired
of Frank being in danger.
Taking all this time
away from the family.
And Frank decides, you know,
and he goes on to, you know,
a pretty extraordinary career
as an ambassador and then also
as president of Eastern
Airlines.
That doesn't go so
well, actually.
And then, you have a
surgery for Mike Collins.
Collins has a spinal
issue that needs surgery,
and so he had done a
really good Gemini mission,
and Deke Slayton liked him a
lot, but he had to take him
out of the rotation for a while.
But then the idea, so, the
original schedule for 9,
remember, this was the group
that was 9, then became 8.
Originally, it was going to
be Borman, Anders and Collins,
but Collins' back surgery
meant he couldn't do it,
and that's how Lovell came in.
So, if Collins hadn't had the
back surgery, he would have gone
on 8, and Lovell would have had
to been placed somewhere else.
Well, knowing that
Collins gets placed on 11,
Lovell could've been placed
on 11 if it had not been
for the back problem
for Collins.
So, here again, Lovell
originally scheduled as part
of the Apollo 9 backup,
then he moves to the 8 prime
because of the Collins surgery.
Deke wants to get Collins back
into the rotation as
quickly as he can.
So, as soon as he's healed
from the surgery, Deke puts him
into the prime crew
for Apollo 11.
Now this is an interesting
story that I tell in the book,
which believe it or
not, the only two people
who knew this story
until Neil told it
to me was Deke Slayton and Neil.
The night of Christmas Eve
during Apollo 8 when Lovell,
Borman and Anders were
circling the moon,
at mission control Houston,
Deke pulls Neil into one
of the back rooms and says,
something that Neil kind
of expected given the way
that crews were put together.
But that, you are
going to command 11.
And 11, very likely,
if things work out,
11 could be the landing.
So, Deke has this
conversation with Neil.
Neil knows he's going
to command 11.
Deke wants to know
who he wants for 11.
Of course, he's been training.
He's had Aldrin with him.
He's had Fred Haise with him.
Deke doesn't think
Haise is ready
for the prime crew assignment,
and Collins is now healthy
again, so Deke wants
to put Collins into the picture.
So that's how Collins
becomes part of Neil's crew,
and Haise gets pushed back.
The other interesting
thing that was said,
I have to see what
my slide says here.
Yeah, here we go.
That same night, when he told
Neil he was going to command 11,
he asked Neil do you want
to have Lovell on your crew?
In which case, we'll put
Lovell in Buzz Aldrin's place.
And I think there's two
things going on there.
One, high respect for Lovell.
Two, not every commander
wanted to work with Buzz.
Let's just face the facts.
Frank Borman had made it clear
to Deke and made it clear to me
when I interviewed him down
in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Borman had told Deke, do
not put Aldrin on my crew.
I'm not going to work with him.
And there were other commanders
who had reservations
about Aldrin too.
Not because Buzz was
incompetent, he was hardly that.
A very competent and intelligent
astronaut, but there are aspects
of Buzz's personality
that bothered a lot
of the commanders.
So, here it is, what Deke
is giving Neil is a chance
to bump Buzz off of his crew.
And what does Neil say?
I think this was
illuminating, Neil tells Deke
that night, can I
think about it?
Can I think about it overnight?
Well, you know, that sort
of tells you something
significant right there.
I mean, Neil's going
to think about this.
He comes back to Deke the
next night, next day or night,
and he tells Deke two things.
He says, one you know, Buzz has
been working with our crew fine,
you know, I'm okay with Buzz.
And I think Neil was probably
the best commander for Buzz
to be put under honestly.
I think, that Neil's
personality was
such that he could handle Buzz
I think better than maybe some
of the other commanders
could do it.
So, that was part one, but I
think the really important part
of Neil's answer
was, he told Deke,
Lovell deserves a
command of his own.
Instead of making him lunar
module pilot for me, for 11,
when he gets back from 8, you
need to make him a commander.
That's my advice to you.
So, I think as much as wanting
to make sure Buzz
doesn't get bumped,
I think Neil was more concerned
that Lovell got a command.
Lovell knew nothing
about this conversation,
and of course Buzz, none
of them did, as I said.
Neil never told this
story to anybody
and Deke never wrote about it.
And when Neil told me
about a month later,
I interviewed Lovell
at the Astronaut Hall
of Fame banquet in Dayton, Ohio.
And I asked Lovell if he knew
that this conversation
had taken place
and that he had had a chance,
if Neil had agreed to become one
of those who walked
on the moon first.
And Lovell said he
knew nothing about it.
Neil had never told
him that story.
And I asked him, I said, well
you know, given what happens,
that you're going to command
Apollo 13 and you don't get
to the moon, you
have an accident.
I said, wouldn't you have
preferred to be on the crew
with Neil and be on the crew
that landed first on the moon.
And he said well,
that's a tempting
and very attractive notion,
but I think maybe I
was on 13 for a reason.
You know? And of course, we
know he did a remarkable job,
as did his other crew members.
But I think that's
an interesting story.
So, it became Armstrong,
Collins, Aldrin.
The backup for 11 was
Lovell, Anders and Fred Haise,
and so they now after
10's successful,
they move forward
with the plan to.
They know that they're going
to give this landing a try,
you know, and it's going
to be done in July.
And again, to put this back into
context, you've seen the slide,
you know, Neil is aware of all
of these contingent developments
that lead up to his
crew and him being
in the right place
at the right time.
But he knew that it
was circumstances
that put himself there.
That if circumstances
had been different,
it could've easily been one
of the other commanders.
And so, that explains
Neil's position.
That he just doesn't
deserve the kind of focus
that a lot of people gave him.
Now, up to this point, and
taking almost all of my time,
is explaining the
contingencies that resulted
in Armstrong being, you know,
being the commander
of Apollo 11.
And it was the first
landing attempt.
You know, having said all
that, I certainly don't want,
I need to emphasize that Neil
was certainly a great choice.
I mean, as I said to you
about your four-minute video.
I mean, you look at
that, and you go, duh,
I mean this guy's
really prepared.
Could anybody be better
prepared than him given the type
of flying that he'd been doing?
You know, especially
in the X-15,
but this guy had proven himself.
He was a true, he was
the real right stuff.
He was a research
pilot, you know.
There was one line in,
and I love your video,
so I'm not quarreling with
the video, but I'm trying
to use it to make a point.
There's one line in
there about how it said,
Neil approached the
engineers or talked
to the engineers
about this or that.
My objection to that phrasing
in that narration is
Neil was an engineer.
It isn't like he went over to
talk to people he didn't know
who they were or how they think.
He was, first and foremost,
and engineer himself.
So, when he went to
talk to engineers,
they weren't just talking to
a pilot, they were talking
to a guy who had an aeronautical
engineering degree from Purdue
and knew engineering
very, very well.
So, he was one of
them, you know.
It wasn't like he was doing
anything out of the ordinary.
My biography, of course, goes
all the way to the beginning,
and that's what biographies
need to do.
And if you're really trying to
explain why Neil was qualified
and why he was in the position
to be the first man on the moon,
you know I believe that the
child is the father of the man.
You know, you have to
understand how Neil grew up.
What kind of community
he came from.
What his parents were like.
I mean, I think all
of that helps to,
you can't understand the
development of personality
of an individual without
going through all of that.
One point I want to make with
this, you know we're going
to be celebrating his
birthday on the 65th
of August, right, couple days.
He would've turned 87.
He was born in August 5th 1930.
One thing that, I say this half
seriously, you could not be
on the first crew to land
on the moon unless
you were born in 1930.
You had to be born in
1930, that's just a fact,
because Aldrin, Collins and
Armstrong were all born in 1930.
Now, you could say, well
Dr. Hansen's just joking
with us here, but the
bigger point is, you know,
where all of us are born in a
particular continuum of time
and space, and if they
had been born in 1925,
I think Glenn was born around
that time, mid 20s, you know,
they would have probably
been a little too old
for the lunar mission.
If they'd been born in 1935,
they would have been a
little too young for it.
They were born at a time
when, okay, the 1930,
World War II begins for
the United States in 1941.
They were 11, so they
don't have to go to war.
They're not in the
second World War,
but they have that
experience as.
I mean, Neil's a part of the
Boy Scouts that's identifying
airplanes for civil
defense all during the war.
You know, and then
he goes to college
in an immediate post-war period.
Then Korea breaks
out, of course,
by that time he's
become really passionate
about airplanes,
building models.
He got his pilot's
license at age 16.
This is what the little grass
airfield looks like today
where he learned how to fly when
he was just a young teenager.
He goes to Purdue in 1947.
He had skipped a year
of school because he was
so smart and so well read.
I think he skipped second grade.
So he graduated, he
entered Purdue at 17.
He is on a scholarship from
the navy, so he you know,
has to take some
special courses.
And more importantly, when
the Korean conflict breaks
out in 1950, he has
to stop his education.
He gets called on to Pensacola,
he does naval aviation training.
He becomes a naval
aviator, and this is one
of my very favorite
pictures of Neil.
This is what he looked like on
March 2nd, 1950, 19-years-old,
after his very first
carrier landing.
I wish I had a close-up of
his face there, but he looks
like he's about, what,
12 or 13-years-old,
but it's just a remarkable
picture.
And he then goes on, he gets put
into fighter squadron 51, VF-51.
He's the youngest member of that
squadron, and he goes to Korea
and he flies 78 combat missions.
This is a point that, if
there's anybody in the air force
out there today, you're just
going to have to deal with this.
It's just a fact, that six of
the seven commanders selected
for the lunar landings
were naval aviators.
Dave Scott was the
one exception.
And the man who picked
those commanders, remember,
was Deke Slayton, and what
service did he come from?
United States Air Force.
So, you know, make
what you want of this.
I had a really nasty letter
from an air force pilot
after my book came out.
He said, you know, that he
didn't see any reason why naval
aviators were any better
or couldn't have done
just as good a job.
And I didn't argue with
him, I just here's the fact.
Deal with it.
For some reason, you know, is
there something in the training
of a naval aviator,
especially the carrier,
landing on carriers.
You know, maybe there
was something there,
but that's just what happened.
So, here's Neil as
a jetfighter pilot.
He flew panther jets in Korea.
Little arrow's pointing to him.
Incredible experience.
Extremely formative, and
I tell you, his feelings
for his squadron mates that were
in Korea with him on the Sea
of Japan when these raids and
bombing raids and strafing
and all they did in North Korea.
Neil would go to every reunion
of his fighter squadron mates.
He was a very reluctant attendee
at the reunions of
the astronauts.
He really had a strong
feeling for these guys.
They took such great
care of him.
And then, of course,
we have his story here.
And since you know
a lot about that.
Again, the only one
of his astronaut class
who had done any flying in
rocket-powered aircraft.
This is one of the larger points
I make, and I'll stop with this
and get questions from you.
I mean, I could go on.
You could spend the
rest of the day with me,
but I don't think you're
allowed to do that.
[ Laughter ]
But you know, in literature
about Armstrong, in particular,
you get these stories that,
you know, this idea that going
to the moon came out of
an impulse, you know,
that was looking at the stars
and looking through telescopes
and dreaming about other worlds.
And there were stories
that turned out not
to be true stories that people
told about Neil as a boy.
That Neil was really
into science-fiction
and that he was going to
a neighbor's house to look
through telescopes every night.
Turns out that these stories
are made-up by people who wanted
to be part of Neil's story.
Neil didn't do those things.
Neil was the, remember
the picture I showed you
of the passion for airplanes.
He was the model-builder.
You know, he was the guy having
his little brother and sister,
taking some of the models
that weren't his best ones,
he turned them into
flight articles.
Test-flight articles.
He had taken them up to
the upstairs bedroom window
and told them how he wanted
them tossed out of the window.
And so his little brother
and sister are tossing
out his models, and he's
down on the grass driveway
with popsicle sticks marking
where the glide path
ends for each one.
And keeping track in a
notebook, you know, how they do.
And then picking them all up,
running them back up again.
And then sometimes if they
got really bad, he'd set them
on fire and he'd throw them
out the window on fire.
I mean, that was beyond
the test program I think.
You know, test program
was over at that point.
But here he was, a
little proto-engineer
at age eight or nine-years-old.
He became, his path
and our country's path
to the moon landings wasn't
really a path of the dreamers
and the science-fiction
people, it was the path
of the technology of flight as
it was developing from the 1930s
through the second World War.
The arrival of jets and rockets.
The capabilities of
moving up farther
and faster into the atmosphere.
Doing the X-15 program,
and then having rockets
that could take spacecraft
into orbit and beyond.
Neil was part, and that's why
I go back to this born in 1930,
he was like perfectly, those
folks were perfectly timed to go
with the evolution
of the technology.
And so, that helps to
explain as much as anything.
Now I want to go back to
the very start and I can,
because I started
with this and I feel
like I have to stop with it.
Here we go.
Which one of these do
you want me to take care
of in questions and answers.
Maybe I should at least say
something about number five.
The way that the interior of
the layout of the LEM was,
the way it was set
up, there was concern
about how two astronauts
inside of it could move around.
Once they had their EVA
backpacks on, you know,
which were pretty
bulky and sizable.
The wall of the LEM was so
thin you could stick a pencil
through it at different places.
And it had fuses and
switches and levers
and there was a real concern
that two astronauts walking
around inside the LEM, if
there was too much movement
that they could damage
the spacecraft.
And they didn't want to do that.
They didn't want to do that.
So when Slayton explains to the
press and then to the astronauts
as to why the commander
is going to go out first,
he uses this technical
explanation.
Well, the way the hatch
opens up, it's easiest
for the commander to go out,
if the lunar module pilot has
to go around, you know,
that could cause a problem.
So we're just doing
it on that basis.
And the reason it was an issue
at all was one would think,
well, doesn't the commander
always go out first?
Well there had been a precedent
set in the Gemini program
where the first space
walks took place
in the United States program,
where the precedent was
that the commander
stayed in the spacecraft,
and the other guy went
out and did the EVA.
The commander was supposed
to stay with the spacecraft.
So, as they moved
into Apollo there was
that precedence set by Gemini.
And in the press, and even among
the astronauts, they're kind
of thinking well, you know, this
is the way we did it in Gemini.
Maybe we'll do it in
Apollo that way as well.
And Buzz liked that precedent.
He thought that was a
really good precedent.
And he thought that's
how it should be done.
Well, the fact of the matter is,
two facts, two family and facts,
and then I'll stop
for questions.
I interviewed Alan
Bean about this issue.
And Bean was Buzz Aldrin
for Apollo 12, right.
He was Pete Conrad's Buzz.
And I said to him, well,
didn't the interior layout
of the LEM dictate
how this was done?
He said Jim, that was all BS.
He said it would
have been very easy.
If they wanted the lunar
module pilot to go out first,
we would have just, before we
don the outfit, with the gear,
with the backpack,
to go out, you know,
when we're still just kind of in
cities, inside the spacecraft,
we'd just walk and
change places.
And then we put on our stuff.
I could have been on that
side putting on my stuff
and could have been right out.
So there was no reason in
the world that the layout
of the LEM, if they wanted
the module pilot out first,
it could have happened,
no problem.
So that's one point.
Second point, and this
was something also
that was a revelation
in my book.
There was a meeting between
four key people in Houston,
George Low, who you've
heard mentioned before,
the audacious proposal
for Apollo 8.
Bob Gilruth, the head of
the Spacecraft Center,
that king Johnson Space Center.
Chris Craft who was
earliest flight director.
And Deke Slayton, chief
of the astronauts.
And they had this
meeting, and Craft has,
you know, told me about this.
That it was a meeting about
what was going to happen
to the guy that was first out.
And they knew that
whoever it was was going
to be world famous, was going
to become a historic figure.
He's going to be on
all the history books,
one to step out on
another heavenly body.
It was going to be another
Lindbergh that's going to,
who knew what all
was going to happen.
But they were convinced
it was going to be,
this person was going to
be under the spotlight
for the rest of his life.
And who did they
have to choose from?
Neil Armstrong, modest, no ego.
They were confident he would
never try to take advantage
or exploit the celebrity,
the position.
Or you had Buzz Aldrin,
who they knew fairly well
that Buzz was a quite
different sort of person.
And it was unanimous, they
didn't really even have to,
there wasn't like a
vote taken or anything.
They all agreed, it
has to be Armstrong.
Neil's the perfect guy for this.
You know, we can trust him.
He'll handle this
extremely well.
Buzz, he's, we don't know
what he'll do, you know.
And so there was this decision.
And of course, Deke
Slayton couldn't come out of
that meeting and tell,
well really tell anybody
the truth of the matter.
He couldn't go to the
press and say, yes,
we've decided it's going
to be Commander Armstrong
because we just don't
trust Aldrin to go do this.
I mean, you can't
say that, right.
And you can't go
to the astronauts.
I mean if you're going
to get Buzz to calm down,
because he had been going to
Collins' office and other people
and trying to campaign behind
the scenes as to why he thought,
well shouldn't that Gemini
president still be in place?
And, you know, I'm a lot
more talkative than Neil.
Neil's not going to go out there
and be articulate and, you know,
the space program needs
somebody to really speak it up.
And so Buzz, behind the scenes,
was kind of pushing this.
Although he denies a lot of
this, and has denied a lot
of this in later years.
But, you know, Slayton couldn't
go to Buzz and say Buzz,
we just don't trust you.
You know, it's got to be Neil.
So they stayed with
the technical reason.
They stayed with, oh it's just
the, you know, we're dictated
by the interior of the LEM.
And, you know, it's,
Al Bean knows it's BS.
And I think a lot of
other people know it's BS.
But it's amazing, again, if
you talk to Buzz about it.
And even if you talk
to Neil about it.
When I did talk to Neil about
it, Neil would always sort
of focus on that
explanation too.
Because he didn't, I guess
he just, maybe he didn't know
about the story of
the private meeting.
Because that did come
a little bit later.
Civilian, that's the
last thing I'll say.
There are still people
who say NASA picked him
because he was a civilian.
Well, he was a civilian at
the time of the program,
the Apollo 11 mission.
But he had been a combat
pilot, you know, in Korea.
And he had, you know, resigned
his officer's commission
in the late 50s early 60s.
So he was an active military.
And there was, the
press did kind of think,
well this makes sense.
We're in the Cold War.
NASA's a civilian agency.
Apollo's not a military program.
So it must make sense for
NASA to put out Armstrong
as the main figure
of this mission,
first man on the moon, civilian.
Well, the historians
who've looked
into this are quite confident
that that had nothing
to do with the choice.
It really had to do, you know,
with those contingent factors
of how those crews lined
up and whose turn it was
and why mission needed
to be done.
Now, it maybe had some
beneficial side effects,
unintended benefits
of being able to say,
you know, he's a civilian.
But NASA never really
promoted that,
and it was just really
picked up in the press
as something they thought
must have been a factor.
So, I'm out of time.
I'm beyond time, I think.
So, you know, my wife when I
was writing the book I talked
about nothing but Neil.
She gave me this rule
that I could only talk
about him once per meal.
But she didn't give
me a time limit.
So, even with time limits, you
know, it doesn't work too well.
So Cam, is there time for
questions, or do I need
to tell them to go back to work?
>> I wouldn't make them
go back to work anyway.
So I do have a question for you.
>> Yeah.
>> You are the author
of the only authorized
biography of Neil Armstrong.
Did anybody else think
of writing the book?
And how did you get
to be that person?
>> Yeah, I think there were
lots, you know, in the years,
I'm still, I'm doing another
book on Neil that's, you know,
there are over 80,000 letters
to Neil, fan mail mostly,
in the archives at Purdue.
I'm going to publish book
in the anniversary year
called Dear Neil Armstrong,
Letters to the First
Man on the Moon.
So I've seen, I've read
through 80,000-some letters,
and some of them
are really amazing.
I mean, it gives you
a really good idea
of what he had to go through.
Because people were
asking him for everything.
I mean, they were never happy.
And if they didn't get what they
wanted they wrote nasty letters
back to him.
The letters are really,
really amazing.
They came from all
over the world.
And some of the letters
are fantastic.
I mean, they're wonderful
letters, nice letters.
But, to answer Cam's question,
is looking at the letters,
I found letters from, you
know, from Herman Wouk,
from James Michener,
from Stephen Ambrose,
from Norman Mailer
over the years,
wanting to write
Neil's life story.
So, authors much more qualified,
you know, better writers
than me, got turned on by Neil.
And I was turned on originally.
It's a long story, I won't
start as to how it ended
up that I got to do it.
I think in the end, bottom line,
is that he came to trust me.
And I had a background,
I had worked, you know,
David was kind enough to
hold up my Engineer in Charge
and Spaceflight Revolution
book on Langley's,
NAC and NASA Langley's
early history.
And I had shared
those books with Neil.
And I think Neil became
convinced that he,
some day he needed to
have a book like this.
He needed to agree to something
like this at some point.
He was 70, I think, when
I first contacted him.
And that I had a background
in writing about engineering
and writing about flight
research that he appreciated,
and he knew that I wasn't going
to sensationalize his story.
So I think, again,
timing is everything.
I think I caught him
at the right time.
I also grew up, you know, he
grew up in Northwestern Ohio.
I grew up in Northeastern
Indiana
about 50 miles from Wapakoneta.
And my accent even, and Neil's
accent, I mean, are similar.
And he came from
a farming family.
I came from a farming family.
He lived in Ohio,
went to Purdue.
I lived in Indiana,
went to Ohio State.
You know, and in fact,
the road from Fort Wayne
to Columbus goes right
past Wapakoneta, Ohio.
So all through graduate school
I was driving past the Armstrong
Museum, never thinking
that I would be doing this.
So it just, I just lucked out.
It was the biggest
moment in my career.
And getting to know him,
I mean, I had 55 hours
of tape recorded
interview with him.
You know, most people got lucky
to have any interview
time with him at all.
And if they did get it, I mean,
they had to immediately
ask what.
What did you feel like when
you stepped out on the moon?
And it was just like the last
thing in the world he'd want
to be asked for the
umpteenth millionth time.
Well I talked to
him for probably 30,
35 hours before I said anything
about the moon or
the space program.
We were talking about the navy.
We were talking about
what he was doing here.
And he'd much rather, some of
you that know him that are here,
know that he'd much rather talk
about airplanes than anything
to do with the space program.
And like I said, he would go
to his navy reunions, and,
you know, they'd have to
really badger him to try to get
to an astronaut event.
So I think I caught
him at the right time,
and for whatever reason,
I had the right toolkit.
I had the right toolkit and
the right attitude for it.
And the biggest compliment,
the only compliment he gave me,
which I think is a huge
compliment, if you know Neil.
This was his compliment to me
when we were done with the book.
And that was Jim, he shook
my hand, and he said, Jim,
you wrote exactly the book you
told me you were going to write.
That may not sound like
much of a compliment to you,
but you got to remember, this
was a guy who people had tried
to trick into, and
manipulate and exploit
and tell him one
thing and do another
for his whole life
post-Apollo 11.
And for somebody to do
an honest job for him
and do exactly what I told
him I was going to do,
and what's really remarkable
about Armstrong among the many,
many remarkable things, is
that once he gave me the okay,
all he did was answer
my questions.
He never said, now Jim I
want you to talk about this.
Or Jim, I don't want
you to talk about that.
He just answered my questions.
I would send the
questions in advance for two
or three days' worth
of interview.
You know, then we'd wait
another month or so.
I'd go back to Cincinnati.
And if I didn't, if I
hadn't been smart enough
and done enough research
in advance
to know what the
good questions were,
I wouldn't have gotten
the answers.
I mean Neil only answered
the questions I asked.
So if there was something that
I needed to know from his point
of view, well there
wasn't anything like that.
There was just, and that's
why, if you had taken,
and some people did,
take up the book to him.
There's this gorgeous picture of
a little boy, little blonde boy,
kind of looked like Neil as
a boy, walking with a copy
of my biography to Neil, you
know, and Neil's got this look
on his face is like,
I'm going to have
to tell this little boy I'm
not going to sign that book.
So if you wanted him
to sign First Man,
he would say, it's not my book.
It's Jim's book.
I don't sign Jim's
book, you know.
So that's just Neil.
And no other astronaut
that I know
of would have given an
author the independence
to write exactly what I wanted
to write without interference.
I mean, I got help from him.
I wanted his help.
I wanted to make sure I had
things as accurate as possible.
So we'd go over every chapter.
But he gave me an amazing
amount of autonomy.
And for that reason,
I think it's, I mean,
I think it's a special
book for that reason
because you just aren't going
to get other astronauts.
And not too many people,
generally celebrities who,
you know, just let some author
take off with their life story.
Any other questions?
>> So I want to ask on maybe
a reason that isn't up there,
any thought, of course Neil
did a lot of development of LL,
the training vehicle,
research vehicle.
>> Absolutely.
>> I think that was
his expertise.
So first time for a LEM,
landing on the moon.
I'd almost pick him.
>> Yeah, I agree with you.
And I would put that into
the package of slides
that where I was talking
about what he did here.
I mean, it's certainly no one
else had the hands-on intimacy,
not just with the
training vehicle.
I mean Neil will have a,
you know, an exciting time.
You know, he's going to have to
eject from the trainer in May
of 1968 before it explodes.
But he's involved
in the very genesis
of the lunar landing research
vehicle concept, you know.
And so that gives him
a special expertise
that the other ones didn't have.
Now I don't remember, I can't
recall any particular statement
from NASA ever that said
that linked that as a reason.
But certainly in the mix of
experience that Neil had,
that would be, you know,
right near the top.
So I think that's
an excellent point.
But even with all of that,
you know, having said that,
even though he was,
there's every good reason
to say he was maybe the best one
for this first landing mission,
I think from going back to
Deke Slayton's principle
that if it had worked out
where something flipped,
missions flipped, crew
assignments had to be changed,
I think Deke would have
had every confidence
in Pete Conrad doing it or
McDivitt doing it or, you know.
So as inevitable and ordained
and as appropriate as it seems
to us today that it
be Neil Armstrong,
one thing that I believe
deeply in history,
I think all historians do,
things didn't have
to happen at all.
And they certainly didn't have
to happen the way that they did.
There are reasons why they did.
And that's what historians
do, try to explain, you know,
all the different factors that
go into why something happened.
But sometimes you have to sort
of explain why it didn't happen.
Why the, the what ifs,
or the alternative paths,
why they weren't taken.
And I think history
becomes a lot more exciting
when you see it as almost
chaos theory, you know.
That things happen from
which unbelievably unexpected
events occur.
I mean what would have happened
if Sputnik had not been first?
What if the Americans had
launched the first satellite
and we would not have
had the Sputnik crisis,
which sort of launched
all of this, you know.
All kinds of things
would have been different
if Sputnik had not been first.
So that's a chaos moment.
Anybody else?
Yeah, over here.
>> So I was just curious,
you mentioned that there were
over 50 hours of interview time?
>> Yeah.
>> Are they available
for public?
>> They are.
They are in the Purdue archives.
All of my research
materials went to Purdue.
And all of Neil's
papers now are at Purdue.
And Purdue is digitizing.
All my recordings are
on microcassettes.
But they are digitizing.
They might be finished with it.
And I promoted a concept, and I
think they're thinking about it,
but you know, here was a guy
that was very hard to get
to through most of the years
of his life after Apollo 11.
Not doing interviews.
And he was hardly a recluse.
He made lots of appearances, but
he was kind of hard to get to.
And there was a lot
things he wouldn't,
didn't want to talk about.
But I had this idea that
you have now, put everything
that Neil ever said,
including my interviews
with him, make it digital.
Anybody from any computer
anywhere in the world could go
on to the Purdue website
and type a question
for Neil Armstrong.
And up would come Neil giving
you the answer on the audio
with maybe some supporting
documents.
Now, that would really
be maybe doing a,
me pulling a trick
on Neil, you know.
You weren't available to us
for four years, but by golly,
you know, we're going
to have instant,
your instant attention
from now on.
But Purdue thinks that's kind of
a cool idea to be able to have
that kind of immediate access.
So, and the technology is there
to do something like that.
>> Did Neil ever comment about
any disagreements that he had
with Buzz during the
mission or as they got close
to the landing time, or?
>> He was, I certainly
asked him a lot about Buzz.
And there were certain
issues for sure.
Their approach to simulations
was a little bit different.
There was one famous simulation
when the lunar landing
simulator crashes.
If you've ever seen
that, there's an episode
of the HBO mini-series
From the Earth to the Moon
where they actually
dramatized this time.
And Buzz had an approach
where he thought you needed
to win the simulation.
Neil thought you
needed to learn as much
from the simulation
as you could.
And so Neil would sometimes
let simulations run, you know,
farther than Buzz
thought they should go.
And there was one famous
instance where, you know,
the simulator crashes,
and you know,
it's clear that they're
dead in the simulation.
And Buzz is really
upset about this.
And Neil has to, you know,
Neil doesn't always
explain himself to people.
He didn't feel like he needed
to explain this really,
but this sort of
dragged into the evening.
And Buzz was telling
over a glass of scotch,
Buzz was talking to
Collins about this
and what had happened.
And it got noisy enough that
Neil comes out of his bedroom
and tells him to quiet it down.
And then sort of does
have to explain, well,
I pushed it as far as I did
because I needed to know how,
not only how we were
going to react
but how were the flight
directors going to react.
How is the whole mission
control going to react
if we kept pushing it?
You know, so we learned
what we needed to learn
from that simulation, and that's
why we're doing simulations is
not to win every simulation.
So there was that.
And I guess I could quickly show
you, there's one picture I think
that summarizes Neil's
relationship with Buzz.
Yeah, I may see it.
I'm sorry I'm going through a
lot of them fast, but this is,
this one I can't say
much better than this.
Yeah, there you go.
[ Laughter ]
That's kind of, you know,
although I would say it's
maybe not a totally accurate
portrayal, because I think
Buzz would be looking
at Neil wanting an answer.
And Neil would not, and
Neil wouldn't be answering,
you know, that.
And then there's, of
course there's the issue
that I won't be going into.
You can read about
it in the book.
But there's the issue,
of course,
I didn't get to a lot of slides.
There's the matter of
all the photographs taken
on the lunar surface.
Is that Neil or Buzz?
It's Buzz.
Is that Neil or Buzz?
Buzz. Is that Neil or Buzz?
Buzz. Whose footprint is that?
Buzz. Some people think
that Neil had the
camera the whole time
so Buzz couldn't take pictures.
Buzz had the camera, and
he took a lot of pictures.
He took pictures of
his own footprint.
You know, when I asked him
well why aren't there explicit
pictures of Neil that you
took on the lunar surface?
He took some great ones of you.
And Buzz said, I
should have done it,
but it wasn't in
the mission plan.
It wasn't in the mission plan.
And I said, well was
it in the mission plan
to take a picture of your foot?
No, that wasn't in the
mission plan, you know.
And this was Gene Kranz, when
I interviewed Gene about this,
Gene said, I don't
have an explanation.
To me, that's something
that's unacceptable,
that they didn't have, that
the first man on the moon,
and there are not
decent pictures of Neil.
Buzz didn't take any.
You're going to have,
and when I asked Neil
about that I said,
did that bother you?
He said oh, Buzz was a lot more
photogenic than me, you know.
Typical Armstrong
answer, you know.
And there's the story, if I had
time I could tell it, but it's,
you know, I'll just finish
up with the last few.
Here he is when he was NASA
associate administrator
for aeronautics.
Of course, he went to
Cincinnati to teach.
He was a key figure.
He was the vice-chair of
the Writer's Commission.
A very, very important role.
He really did a lot
for that commission.
Here he is at a shuttle
launch in '97
with his second wife, Carol.
Was he the best possible
first man?
Well, I think so.
Behind the icon was a
man, and that was I tried,
that's who I got to know.
He's very three-dimensional,
worthwhile person
to know beyond the icon.
A couple more pictures.
This is at the National
Cathedral after his death.
His wife, his son,
his step daughter.
Buzz is here.
John Glenn's in the picture.
I'm somewhere halfway back.
I attended both this and the
private funeral in Cincinnati.
That's my favorite
picture of him, you know.
Maybe you can't recognize
me anymore with the loss
of hair and the coloring.
But this was outside of
his house after, you know,
after the book was finished.
You know, I think as a
biographer you're supposed
to stay independent
and objective
and unemotional and
dispassionate.
But I really got
to love the guy.
And, you know, I hope it
doesn't bias the book too much.
I don't think it does.
But you know, I kind of
decided, a couple things,
one I don't have a lot
of books left in me.
They're hard work.
And secondly, I don't think
I'd ever do a biography
of somebody that's living unless
they're a really young man
that's not expected
to go for a while.
His death in 2012
really hit me hard.
And in my new edition of
First Man, which will come
out in a year or so, I'm dealing
with the last seven years
of his life and his death.
You know, he died after a heart
bypass surgery, and it was,
you know, the details of exactly
what happened are withheld,
have been withheld from
the public by the family.
And I certainly abide by that.
But it was tragedy to lose him.
And it would have been
great if the whole crew
of 11 could have
been around in 2019
when we celebrate
the 50th anniversary.
And so, thank you
very much for coming
and hope you learned a little
bit, not just about him
but about Apollo and about
the history of, I mean this is
such an incredible place.
You've had a major, major role,
if Neil had not been here,
you know, he probably wouldn't
have been the first man
on the moon.
This experience here was so
formative to what he did.
So, thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you Dr. Hansen,
that was fantastic.
We do have a couple
of things for you.
One is a Center Coin.
>> Oh, super.
>> Armstrong Center Coin.
>> Oh excellent.
Yeah, thank you.
>> You're very welcome.
That commemorates the
day of the name change.
>> Yeah, fantastic.
Oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness.
>> It's a model for
you of the X-15.
It says to Dr. James R. Hansen
from your friends and colleagues
at the Neil A. Armstrong
Flight Research Center,
Edwards, California.
>> Oh my, I'll hold it for a
second here for [inaudible].
[ Applause ]
That is fantastic.
Thank you.
I had a conversation with
Joe Engle about a month ago,
and he was giving a
talk at this event
down in Arizona called
Space Fest.
And he had a model of the,
it wasn't this nice of one,
but he had a model of the X-15.
I was talking to him about
some of Neil's flights.
So he was moving the X-15 around
and turning it different
directions.
And so, oh this is terrific.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate it from everyone.
>> I think we'll have time
for you to sign some books
if you have a few minutes.
>> I'd be happy to, yeah.
>> So thank you.
This is the end of the program,
but we'll set up a table here
and have Dr. Hansen
available for you.
Thank you again.
[ Applause ]
>> That's terrific.
Certainly unexpected.
>> I'll leave it here.
