in the united statesarchived recordingis it possible that it is transmitting a code not just a beep signal for radio listening yes its quite possible that its transmitting a codekenneth changso the united states started a major space program and created nasa to do things that would counter what the soviet unions were doingarchived recordingthe space age had begunkenneth changand so the first space missions you just think of archived recordingshepard himself had been hauled up into the helicopterkenneth chang you think of alan shepard the first american to reach spacearchived recording john glennroger kenneth changjohn glenn the first american to orbit the eartharchived recording john glenna little bumpy along about herekenneth changand each of these baby steps that led to apolloarchived recording neil armstrongtranquility base here the eagle has landedkenneth changand of course neil armstrong walking on the surface of the moonarchived recording neil armstrongthats one small step for man one giant leap for mankindkenneth changthese were all events tied up in the identity of the united states as a nationarchived recording richard nixonthis is the greatest week in the history of the world since the creation the world is bigger infinitely i only hope that all of us in government all of us in america we can reach for the stars just as you have reached so far for the starskenneth changand so that was the mentality that drove the space program through the 60s into the early 70s and then after that it was a transition to try to figure out what to do once weve gotten to the moon how do we get to the next stepso nasa basically came up with three options to present to president nixon you could go for broke you could start planning to go to mars or you could build a space station and a space shuttle to go to the space station or you could just build a space shuttle and nixon chose just to build the space shuttle that was the cheapest that he was willing to invest in and so because the space shuttle did not have a space station to go to it had to serve other purposes one of them was that the military wanted to use it to launch spy satellites other people want to use it to run science experiments in orbit and so this sort of became this pickup truck that was supposed to do all these different chores for different parts of the federal government it ended up being a technological marvel that was not great at doing any one particular taskarchived recording8 7 6 5kenneth changi mean with the space shuttle if you think about the launch if you watch one it was an amazing sightarchived recording2 1 inaudible launch soundkenneth changyou could hear the rumble as it goes upbut you could never get over just how bright the light from the engines are it never does justice to see it on a computer screen or a tvbut it didnt