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 1 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 the decision to go to the moon, novel technologies that were created to get people to the moon, and the difference between engineers and operations professionals. Kraft then discusses the importance of Gemini in gaining technical and operational knowledge that was used during the Apollo program, and names Gemini 7-6 as the most important of the Gemini missions. When discussing the differences between the Mercury program and Apollo program, Kraft describes the expansion in the need for computers and processing power, and likens it to a "toy versus a very complex machine", and explains the societal benefits that came from the space program.

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 1 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

0:23:09

Asset Type

Raw video

Media Type

Video

Subjects

American history

Space

Astronaut

Apollo

Gemini

Moon

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 1 of 4,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed December 26, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_D3C5C4806A594EBBA71C328C169D6C48.

MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., NASA engineer and manager who helped establish NASA's Mission Control Center, part 1 of 4.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. December 26, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_D3C5C4806A594EBBA71C328C169D6C48>.

APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr., NASA engineer and manager who helped establish NASA's Mission Control Center, part 1 of 4. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_D3C5C4806A594EBBA71C328C169D6C48