GBH Openvault
NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with John Young, astronaut and engineer who served as Commander of the Apollo 16 mission, part 2 of 2
Part of To the Moon Interviews.
1998
John Young, astronaut and engineer who served acted as pilot and commander of multiple Gemini and Apollo missions, is interviewed about the early years of the Apollo program. Young describes the early experiments with Lunar Orbit Rendezvous and extravehicular activity (EVA), and talks about how Gene Cernan's EVA on Apollo 9 informed Young's EVA on Apollo 10. Young talks about the potential for a joint program between the Americans and Russians, and talks about his whereabouts during the Apollo 1 disaster, the spacecraft, and Gus Grissom. As the longest-serving astronaut, Young says he stayed in the program for so long out of a sense of discovery, and a belief that humans need to spread out. Footage ends with B-roll of John Young walking through a hallway, NASA, scientists looking at images of the moon. End of the video contains 3 minutes of audio only with interview material and room tone.
- Series
- NOVA
- Program
- To the Moon
- Program Number
2610
- Title
Interview with John Young, astronaut and engineer who served as Commander of the Apollo 16 mission, 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
0:25:56
- Asset Type
Raw video
- Media Type
Video
- Subjects
- Gemini
- Apollo
- American history
- Astronaut
- Moon
- Space
- Creators
- WGBH Educational Foundation (Producing Organization)
- Contributors
- Young, John Watts, 1930-2018 (Interviewee)
- Rights Summary
Rights Holder: WGBH Educational Foundation
- Citation
- Chicago: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with John Young, astronaut and engineer who served as Commander of the Apollo 16 mission, part 2 of 2,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed April 24, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_3A1F23E9B27A4682A3E83C205E75B79F.
- MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with John Young, astronaut and engineer who served as Commander of the Apollo 16 mission, part 2 of 2.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. April 24, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_3A1F23E9B27A4682A3E83C205E75B79F>.
- APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with John Young, astronaut and engineer who served as Commander of the Apollo 16 mission, part 2 of 2. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_3A1F23E9B27A4682A3E83C205E75B79F