GBH Openvault
NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Leon "Lee" Silver, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, and Gordon Swann at Sunset Crater, part 2 of 2
Part of To the Moon Interviews.
1998
Leon "Lee" Silver, W.M. Keck Foundation Professor for Resource Geology, emeritus, at Caltech; Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt, geologist, astronaut, and Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 17; and Dr. Gordon Swann, geologist with the US Geological Survey (USGS), and Principal Investigator for the Apollo 13 field geology team, are interviewed about training the astronauts of the Apollo program. Silver tells the story of Jim Lovell's discovery of a Paiute pot during a training exercise, and Jack Schmitt talks about finding a similar pot, and the two discuss the ways that everybody in the group educated each other in different parts of the program. The two discuss the coloration of the soil samples found on Apollo 17, and talk about the wisdom of appointing Jim Lovell as the CapCom to the back room. Footage also includes some shots of Silver and Schmitt discussing the discovery of orange soil and their experiences with the crater and working in the back room. Silver is interviewed about his thoughts on Apollo and the importance of sending people to the moon. Gordon Swann joins them and talks about his experience in training the astronauts in geology, and describes the creation of the Sunset Crater and Cinder Lake. The interview ends with Schmitt's discussion of the things that were learned from the orange soil discovered on the Apollo 17 mission, and contains some audio from the B-Roll sequences.
- Series
- NOVA
- Program
- To the Moon
- Program Number
2610
- Title
Interview with Leon "Lee" Silver, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, and Gordon Swann at Sunset Crater, part 2 of 2
- Series Description
NOVA is a general-interest documentary series that addresses a single science issue each week. Billed as "science adventures for curious grown-ups" when it first aired in March, 1974, NOVA continues to offer an informative and entertaining approach to a challenging subject. It is also one of television's most acclaimed series, having won every major television award, most of them many times over.
- Program Description
Alan Binder, former Principal Investigator of NASA's Lunar Prospector mission, is interviewed about the Lunar Prospector. Binder says that if moon travel became viable again, he would want to go to the moon, but says that in order to get financial and public support for space exploration, scientists need to sell the science of the moon. Another option, according to Binder, is to make travel to the moon commercially viable, and lists many benefits of going to the moon, including using it as a fuel source, or colonizing the surface for human habitation (audio cuts out from 00:07:30 - 00:09:00). Binder explains the work of the Lunar Prospector and talks about the necessity of having computers to do a lot of the work. On Apollo, Binder calls the program the most significant event of the 21st century, and talks about the roles of the Apollo program, the Clementine spacecraft, and hte Lunar Prospector. The interview ends with Binder's views on his relationship with NASA, which he characterizes as being needlessly bound up in beaurocracy and red tape.
- Duration
0:24:27
- Asset Type
Raw video
- Media Type
Video
- Subjects
- American history
- Gemini
- Apollo
- Space
- Moon
- Astronaut
- Creators
- WGBH Educational Foundation (Producing Organization)
- Contributors
- Schmitt, Harrison "Jack", 1935- (Speaker)
- Silver, Leon "Lee" Theodore, 1925- (Speaker)
- Swann, Gordon, 1931-2014 (Speaker)
- Rights Summary
Rights Holder: WGBH Educational Foundation
- Citation
- Chicago: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Leon "Lee" Silver, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, and Gordon Swann at Sunset Crater, part 2 of 2,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed April 19, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_61DF4F7ACED0443A81D7835EC5FF778A.
- MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Leon "Lee" Silver, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, and Gordon Swann at Sunset Crater, part 2 of 2.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. April 19, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_61DF4F7ACED0443A81D7835EC5FF778A>.
- APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Leon "Lee" Silver, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, and Gordon Swann at Sunset Crater, part 2 of 2. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_61DF4F7ACED0443A81D7835EC5FF778A