GBH Openvault

NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, part 1 of 3

Part of To the Moon Interviews.

1998

Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, and space scientist who worked on the Apollo program, is interviewed about his early career and time with NASA. He explains how he worked with NASA while working for the Bell Company, and his creation of a classification of lunar surface features, which he later used to determine site selection for Apollo missions. El-Baz originally joined with NASA as a temporary job, but stayed once he grew interested in the program, and was able to bring his knowledge of metallurgy into the program. He details some of the discrimination he faced as an Egyptian geologist, and explains how he had mapped the moon before they had gone to the surface. When El-Baz and fellow scientists wanted to advocate for a site on a mission, they would find a way to get to the director to plead their case, and explains the divide between the engineers and scientists on the Apollo program. According to El-Baz, the astronauts did not like the geological aspect of the training, and it required convincing to get the astronauts interested. El-Baz explains what it was like to teach Ken Mattingly and Stuart Roosa, and calls his astronauts his best students.

Series

NOVA

Program

To the Moon

Program Number

2610

Title

Interview with Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, part 1 of 3

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

0:23:11

Asset Type

Raw video

Media Type

Video

Subjects

Moon

Astronaut

American history

Apollo

Gemini

Space

Creators

WGBH Educational Foundation (Producing Organization)

Contributors

El-Baz, Farouk, 1938- (Interviewee)

Rights Summary

Rights Holder: WGBH Educational Foundation

Citation

Chicago: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, part 1 of 3,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed April 20, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_B3FA467EE1D1428399E330DDF03D0101.

MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, part 1 of 3.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. April 20, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_B3FA467EE1D1428399E330DDF03D0101>.

APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, part 1 of 3. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_B3FA467EE1D1428399E330DDF03D0101