GBH Openvault

NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, part 3 of 5

Part of To the Moon Interviews.

1998

Gene Kranz, former NASA Flight Director, is interviewed about the Apollo 11, 12, and 13 missions, and his role during each. Kranz talks about his feelings during the lunar landing during Apollo 11, and talks about the tense moments that occurred, including the program alarms and fuel issues, and mentions his speech to the flight controllers before the astronauts fully landed. The Apollo 12 landing site was touched by some controversy, and Kranz talks about the miracle of leadership that took place during the launch issues during Apollo 12. Kraft then explains why the crisis that occurred during Apollo 13 was never simulated for in training, because the issues were so critical that it was not deemed likely to occur. Had the crisis taken place during the Apollo 8 mission, Kranz believes that the astronauts would have died for lack of a lunar module. Kranz ends by explaining his feelings during the tensest moments of the Apollo 13 mission and explains the details of solving the problems.

Series

NOVA

Program

To the Moon

Program Number

2610

Title

Interview with Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, part 3 of 5

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

0:22:35

Asset Type

Raw video

Media Type

Video

Subjects

Astronaut

Space

Gemini

Moon

Apollo

American history

Creators

WGBH Educational Foundation (Producing Organization)

Contributors

Kranz, Eugene "Gene", 1933- (Interviewee)

Rights Summary

Rights Holder: WGBH Educational Foundation

Citation

Chicago: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, part 3 of 5,” 1998, GBH Archives, accessed December 26, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_F25F0913298A4D0AB362A4DDA0835635.

MLA: “NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, part 3 of 5.” 1998. GBH Archives. Web. December 26, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_F25F0913298A4D0AB362A4DDA0835635>.

APA: NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, part 3 of 5. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_F25F0913298A4D0AB362A4DDA0835635