GBH Openvault

NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., NASA engineer and manager who helped establish NASA's Mission Control Center, part 3 of 4

Part of To the Moon Interviews.

1998

Christopher Kraft, NASA engineer and manager partly responsible for creating NASA's Mission Control Center, is interviewed about various Apollo missions. Kraft discusses Apollo 8 and the decision to orbit around the moon, why Apollo 10 did not go to the moon, issues with Mass Concentration calculations, the lack of coverage of Apollo 12 in the media, the scientific capabilities of space flight, the decision of where to land Apollo 12, and the injection of science into Apollo 17 with the presence of Jack Schmitt. The interview ends with Kraft's overall summation of Apollo as one of the biggest technological feats of the 20th century.

Series

NOVA

Program

To the Moon

Program Number

2610

Title

Interview with Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., NASA engineer and manager who helped establish NASA's Mission Control Center, part 3 of 4

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

0:23:25

Asset Type

Raw video

Media Type

Video

Subjects

Apollo

Moon

Gemini

Space

Astronaut

American history

Creators

WGBH Educational Foundation (Producing Organization)

Contributors

Kraft, Christopher Columbus, 1924- (Interviewee)

Rights Summary

Rights Holder: WGBH Educational Foundation

Citation

Chicago: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., NASA engineer and manager who helped establish NASA's Mission Control Center, part 3 of 4,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed November 21, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_C7EFF66ABB1F4039B76E89094DDFCA94.

MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., NASA engineer and manager who helped establish NASA's Mission Control Center, part 3 of 4.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. November 21, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_C7EFF66ABB1F4039B76E89094DDFCA94>.

APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., NASA engineer and manager who helped establish NASA's Mission Control Center, part 3 of 4. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_C7EFF66ABB1F4039B76E89094DDFCA94