GBH Openvault

NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with James T. Rose, Engineer, part 1 of 2

Part of To the Moon Interviews.

1998

James T. Rose, Engineer, is interviewed about early Apollo missions. Rose describes the Gemini program as vital to the Apollo program because it trained the astronauts in the knowledge that was required for the Apollo program, and talks about the differences between the Mercury and Gemini programs because of their different levels of automation and greater learning of man's potential in space. The spacecraft was designed to be user-friendly, and changes were made as more was learned about mankind's medical limits in space, and Rose credits Max Faget with figuring out the fastest way to get men into space. Each mission had specific objectives, including Rendezvous, extra-vehicular activity, and testing long stays in space. Rose describes the origins of the name "Gemini" and the variant pronunciations of the name, and the phases of Gemini as having degrees of difference from the Mercury program. Rose also describes his championing of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) to get to the moon, describes a meeting at NASA where Houbolt was criticized for his LOR idea, and explains how LOR works with the NOVA shuttle. The end of the file has 1 minute of audio from Robert Seamans' interview and 1 minute of audio from James Rose's interview.

Series

NOVA

Program

To the Moon

Program Number

2610

Title

Interview with James T. Rose, Engineer, part 1 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

0:23:54

Asset Type

Raw video

Media Type

Video

Subjects

Astronaut

Apollo

American history

Moon

Space

Gemini

Creators

WGBH Educational Foundation (Producing Organization)

Contributors

Rose, James Turner, 1935-2015 (Interviewee)

Rights Summary

Rights Holder: WGBH Educational Foundation

Citation

Chicago: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with James T. Rose, Engineer, part 1 of 2,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed April 24, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_129F9C31B2DC44C5A187A295098C1D18.

MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with James T. Rose, Engineer, part 1 of 2.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. April 24, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_129F9C31B2DC44C5A187A295098C1D18>.

APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with James T. Rose, Engineer, part 1 of 2. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_129F9C31B2DC44C5A187A295098C1D18