GBH Openvault

NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with George Mueller, engineer and associate administrator at NASA, part 1 of 3

Part of To the Moon Interviews.

1998

George Mueller, engineer and associate administrator at NASA, is interviewed about his early days at NASA. Mueller says that the prospects of going to the moon within the decade were initially dim, and they had to convince Congress that they would be able to do it, in order to galvanize media and public support, and also had to build the program and figure out what they were going to build. To Mueller, Gemini was important in figuring out the developments that enabled Apollo's lunar accomplishments, but he argues that Apollo could have gone to the mono without Gemini. Gemini was also important in figuring out the medical limits of space, and helped NASA discover how to best work in space, and Mueller credits Buzz Aldrin with helping NASA figure out how to move and work in space suits. Mueller discusses rumours of Russian attempts to go to the moon, and talks about the Apollo 1 fire, which triggered a number of changes in the wiring and velcro of the spacecraft. On Mueller's brainchild, the Saturn all-up procedure, in which everything is tested at one time, Mueller explains how he came up with the procedure, the opposition he faced, and how it felt to see the Saturn craft do the test.

Series

NOVA

Program

To the Moon

Program Number

2610

Title

Interview with George Mueller, engineer and associate administrator at NASA, 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

0:18:00

Asset Type

Raw video

Media Type

Video

Subjects

Space

Astronaut

Apollo

American history

Moon

Gemini

Creators

WGBH Educational Foundation (Producing Organization)

Contributors

Mueller, George Edwin, 1918-2015 (Interviewee)

Rights Summary

Rights Holder: WGBH Educational Foundation

Citation

Chicago: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with George Mueller, engineer and associate administrator at NASA, part 1 of 3,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed December 26, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_8FB01AE291B5400E96F65A7B2D359091.

MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with George Mueller, engineer and associate administrator at NASA, part 1 of 3.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. December 26, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_8FB01AE291B5400E96F65A7B2D359091>.

APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with George Mueller, engineer and associate administrator at NASA, part 1 of 3. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_8FB01AE291B5400E96F65A7B2D359091