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[dramatic music]

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The area of manned spaceflight budget request for Apollo

is being reduced by $42.1 million

to $916.5 million.

This reduction will be achieved by canceling the Apollo 15

and 19 lunar missions,

redesignating the remaining Apollo flights

as Apollo's 14 through 17.

[inspirational music]

[Reporter] Everything is going smoothly here

at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch of Apollo 17,

man's last trip to the moon in the foreseeable future.

[dramatic fanfare]

[Eugene Cernan] Three, two, one ignition.

We're on our way, Houston.

I believe that this nation should commit itself

to achieving the goal before this decade is out

of landing a man on the moon

and returning him safely to the Earth.

No single space project in this period

will be more impressive to mankind,

or more important for the long-range exploration of space.

None will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

[dramatic music]

The average taxpayer is entitled to ask,

"What's in space for me?"

[Reporter] T minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal.

12, 11, 10, nine, ignition sequence start,

six, five, four, three,

two, one, zero. All engine run.

Lift off, we have a lift off, 32 minutes past the hour,

lift off on Apollo 11.

[Neil Armstrong] Roger, we got a roll program.

[Reporter] Tower cleared.

[Bruce McCandless] Roger, roll.

What does spaceflight do for people?

It's a philosophical answer.

It's exploration, it's the human spirit of going out there.

[Bill Nye] The great thing we wanna know is, "Where do we fit in?"

There's two questions that trouble us all

at some point in our life.

Where did we come from?

And are we alone?

Without the space program,

our economy would be hurled 50 years back into the past.

Think of it for a moment--

GPS, weather satellites, telecommunications, the Internet.

[Bill] By the exploration of the moon,

or by landing on the moon and walking around,

that led to a space program,

which led to Global Positioning Systems,

which led to so-called space assets,

which have affected everything.

The reason to explore space

is that it can boost our economy... period.

It boosts our economy as it changes the culture.

People think differently.

Think about the future, think about inventing things.

Think about making a better tomorrow,

rather than just surviving the day.

[Bill] You go over the hill,

you don't know what you're gonna find.

And you're not gonna go over the hill

unless you're curious about it.

It transforms the intellectual outlook of a nation,

when a nation embarks on something bold and audacious,

such is going into deep space, as it did in the 1960s.

[dramatic music]

[Announcer] Today a new moon is in the sky,

a 23-inch metal sphere placed in orbit by a Russian rocket.

Here, an artist's conception

of how the feat was accomplished.

A three-stage rocket. Number one,

the booster in the class of an intercontinental missile.

Its weight estimated at 50 tons.

A smaller second stage took over at 5,000 miles an hour

and carried on to the highest point reached,

500 miles up, the artificial moon is boosted

to a speed counterbalancing

the pull of gravity and released.

You are hearing the actual signals transmitted

by the Earth circling satellite,

one of the great scientific feats of the age.

[Neil] In 1957 Sputnik was launched.

And if you ask me what drove the creation of NASA,

it was the launching of Sputnik.

The public often thinks of Sputnik as,

"Oh, it's just an innocent little satellite that went beep."

Let's part the curtains, and you find out

this was the shell

of an intercontinental ballistic missile

that had been hollowed out

and a radio transmitter put in the head.

That's what was flying over our heads in America

on October 4th, 1957.

Spooked us to no end.

No one said, "Oh, the frontier of exploration is breeched."

No, it was, "The Soviet Union has the new high ground.

"They are our sworn enemy.

"We can't look bad in front of them.

"We've gotta do it too.

We need an agency to take care of this."

A year later, NASA was founded.

[Announcer] This special report brought to you by NASA,

the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

What we had was something

that had come out of a very can-do spirit,

that came out of the spirit of winning World War II.

It came out of the technology burst

that was going on around the world at that time.

It came out of the imaginations of people

like Wernher Von Braun, Willy Ley, and Walt Disney.

In our modern world, everywhere we look,

we see the influence science has upon our daily lives.

Now here's a model, my design

for a four-stage orbital rocket ship.

It came out of the inspiration

of people like Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein,

and Isaac Asimov, and Silverberg,

and all the great science fiction writers of the time,

who were inspiring children

and all kinds of people in that realm.

And then we had the spark that ignited that passion

into a fire that was from Sputnik.

[Michio] People said, "What happens

"if there's a hydrogen bomb orbiting head?

"If the Russians have the high ground,

then we could be outmaneuvered in the next war."

The United States too,

promised to launch an Earth satellite,

but in our satellite program,

we Americans got badly bogged down.

Why? What happened?

We had the money, the resources,

and the scientific know-how.

Unfortunately, a series of wrong decisions

led us to frustration and failure.

This order went out to the Armed Services.

Let me read it to you.

"Recent news stories which have described certain projects

"as space flight projects

"have resulted in unfavorable reaction

"at Department of Defense and congressional levels.

"In any speeches or public releases

"planned by you or your staff,

"avoid the mention or the discussion of space,

space technology, and space vehicles."

And so, by the summer of 1957,

"space" had become a forbidden word in Washington.

In totally realistic terms,

Von Braun could've had us there in 1950.

We need to understand,

we would have launched a satellite in 1950.

The reason we did not is because we didn't wish to.

[Michio] Panic set in, and after that people said, "Okay,

let's regroup, let's do something."

It was your patriotic duty to become a physicist,

a chemist, a mathematician.

It was for America and for freedom

that people said, "Yes, I wanna to become a cold war hero

for their freedom and for liberty."

The history of human reaction...

to the threat of death knows no bounds...

and knowing no bounds includes

birthing an entire space program

for the purpose of showing the world

that we will not be bested by evil godless Communists.

Such was the mood and the attitude in the 1950s.

[Narrator] Man had his first great success in space

when the Russians pushed a man across the threshold.

He was Yuri Gagarin,

the astronaut the Russians lionized

as the first to orbit the Earth.

It was the propaganda coup of the year.

[crowd cheering and applauding]

Thank you.

"But why," some say, "the moon?

Why choose this as our goal?"

And they may well ask, "Why climb the highest mountain?

"Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?

Why does Rice play Texas?"

We choose to go to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade

and do the other things, not because they are easy,

but because they are hard,

because that goal will serve to organize and measure

the best of our energies and skills,

because that challenge is one

that we're willing to accept,

one we are unwilling to postpone,

and one we intend to win.

[Gene Kranz] At the time that President Kennedy made his speech,

we had never been to orbit.

Just a little bit over a week before the Kennedy speech

to the US Congress,

we had launched Alan Shepard.

[Launch Control] Lift off.

[Alan Shepard] Ahh, Roger, liftoff and the clock is started.

[Gene] We'd never been to orbit,

and we were challenged to beat the Russians to the moon.

So, to a great extent that initial challenge

was one that I believe was geopolitical,

but it also had the economic benefit

to basically generate the enthusiasm

and the passion within the American public.

-[engines roaring] -[inspirational music]

The spur to education-- very, very important.

I think that's almost as significant

as our actual flights themselves,

because it gave all the young people

something to look forward to, and excitement,

something that they could live up to.

Every day, I meet people now in their 50s,

who said, "Look, when I was a little kid, you know,

you inspired me to become an engineer,"

or become a scientist, to becoming a doctor,

and that gives me a sort of a sense of satisfaction

that I was in a program that helped other people

form good careers.

[engines roaring to life]

[dramatic music]

I think one of the greatest moments of the last century

in the space program was the flight of Apollo 8.

I was on that flight.

At the time that we did it,

I don't think we fully understood the significance

of the very first flight to the moon,

the whole 240,000 miles.

We were the pathfinders, we didn't land,

but we checked the navigation, checked the communication,

circled the moon and looked at the far side,

the side that we never see from the Earth.

[ominous music]

We brought back with us a photograph

of the Earth from the moon...

we called "Earthrise,"

which I think in just one picture

told us how insignificant we all are here on Earth.

The Earth is merely a small planet...

that just so happened to be at the right distance

and the right mass to sustain life...

going around a rather normal star,

and that star is in the outer edge of a galaxy

called the Milky Way,

just one of millions of galaxies in our universe.

And maybe, just for a small amount of time

in December of 1968, everyone kind of felt a closeness

that we had not felt before.

For the first time in history today,

man got a long distance live view of the planet he lives on,

transmitted and described by the first three human beings

to travel to the moon.

The Apollo 8 astronauts

sent back those pictures this afternoon,

and we'll have more along with the full story later in this broadcast.

I think what happened

was Kennedy wanting to demonstrate to the Soviets

that we were the biggest, baddest kids on the block,

that our technology will kick

your technology's ass any time.

And it worked, and it was glorious,

but it wasn't sustainable because it was a crisis project.

[Neil] If it was actually about exploration

and about the scientific frontier being pushed outward,

if it were actually about that,

maybe we would have had a scientist

on the first mission to the moon.

But no, there was no scientist on Apollo 11,

nor on Apollo 12, or Apollo 13,

or Apollo 14, or Apollo 15, or Apollo 16.

The first scientist was on Apollo 17,

and Apollo 17 was the last mission to the moon.

There was not a statement made

that we're gonna go to the moon

and establish a human community.

We're not gonna go to, you know,

the moon and then on to Mars.

We're not gonna go do this and then that.

It was simply, "We're going to put a human being on the moon."

And we achieved it.

Do you wish

that the first Apollo Mission hadn't reached the moon?

Or that we hadn't gone on to Mars

and then to the nearest star?

That's like saying you wish

that you still operated with scalpels,

and sewed your patients up with catgut,

like your great-great-great- great-grandfather used to.

Ever since the time of Sputnik and President Kennedy,

I think our dedication to the space program

has been high, higher than most countries.

And I feel like, probably over the past decade,

it's waned significantly.

I feel like we should be doing more in space

'cause I think there's a lot of learning to be done

as far as vaccines and a lot of things

that can help the American people,

even though it's not a sexy program

like it used to be with the moon landing.

I think it's more important now than it has been in decades.

I know that it's not really doing much anymore

since the Space Shuttle program was closed down,

so I don't know what they're up to.

Be cool if they were doing something soon.

You know, when I see them building robots, you know,

to go on Mars, or I see what the Rover, Curiosity,

Opportunity, and Spirits are doing, we basically just--

it excites me to know that we're doing that.

To me, a culture that's not doing that is stagnant,

and a culture that is doing that is progressive

and moving forward in a positive direction.

Back in the '60s when we first, you know,

when the space program was in full swing,

I fully expected us to have colonies

on the moon by this time.

Where are they?

I'm disappointed to see that we're--

that we're not putting more effort into something like that.

I think it's just absolutely essential

that we maintain this program and advance it.

All those who think it's a problem

that we haven't been outside of low Earth orbit

for four decades can only say so

because they think that going to the moon

was the first step of this great adventure

where we explore space,

and somehow we've failed

on the expectations we had for ourselves.

But once you realize we went because we were at war...

and then they're not going to the moon,

they're not going to Mars, and the Cold War's over...

what's your motivation?

[Announcer] The moon, a lonely world

in the absence of man.

But here we have left our mark,

a signature attesting a legacy to future generations.

We stood on the shoulders of giants and touched the moon.

[John Logsdon] The decision what to do after Apollo

was driven by desire to limit NASA spending...

to only a fraction of what it had been

at the height of the Apollo program.

And in order to reach that lower budget,

you couldn't continue to use Saturn V's.

They were too expensive per launch,

so the program devolved back

into a low Earth orbit program.

Senator Edward Kennedy urged today

that spending on the space program be cut back

after the goals set for exploring the moon

have been achieved.

Senator Kennedy said a substantial portion

of the space budget should be diverted

to what he called "pressing problems here at home."

Going into outer space is very expensive.

It costs $10,000 to put a pound of anything

just into near-earth orbit.

That your weight in gold.

Now, to put you on the moon cost about $100,000 a pound,

and to put you on Mars

would cost over a million dollars a pound.

That is your weight in diamonds.

Back in a 1960s, the great superpowers didn't care,

spending so much money on the Space Race,

because it was a matter of national pride

and national security.

But now that the Cold War is over,

the great powers are not willing to spend

so much of their National Treasure,

because national pride and national security

are no longer at stake.

Imagine if you and I climbed in a plane right now

and wanted to fly to New York City and back.

And along the way,

all of its pieces are gonna be thrown away,

so that when you arrive in New York,

if you make it at all,

you'll arrive in a little capsule and land.

Now, the only way you get to come back

is for them to rebuild the entire rocket

upon which that original capsule stood,

climb in it and fly back, and by the way,

you're gonna throw all the pieces away again.

What that pretty well assures you

is that very, very few people are gonna make that trip.

[upbeat rock music]

[Mission Control] Stage two, clear.

[Narrator] If all goes according to schedule,

scenes like this, a reusable Space Shuttle

making its final approach to land,

will be a common sight beginning next fall.

The Space Shuttle was promised to us in the '70s

as a vehicle that would fly over 50 times a year.

The Shuttle was gonna bring the cost

of going into orbit down to $100 a pound.

[Announcer] It looks like a jet plane,

will lift off like a rocket,

and will return like a glider,

commuting to space every two weeks is the plan.

If you measure it by that metric,

the program was a complete and utter failure.

-[dramatic music] -[engines roaring to life]

[Story] The basic drivers were low cost, reliable, reusable.

Let's call it a space bus.

That was the motivation in 1969-- a bus,

up and down under all conditions.

And the Shuttle program did not turn out

the way it was supposed to.

It was supposed to be $10 million a flight,

and ended up $1.2 billion a flight,

so you know it missed by 1200 times over.

The Shuttle is kind of all things to all people.

Originally, from NASA's point of view,

it was going to be a supply vehicle

to go to a large space station.

And NASA in 1969 proposed building the Space Station

and having it supplied by the Shuttle.

The Nixon Administration decided not to approve a station,

and so the rationale for a shuttle had to become reinvented,

and it became a launch vehicle for everything.

[Reporter] That's the theory of Dr. John Logsdon,

a George Washington University Political Science professor,

who has written extensively on the space program

for the last dozen years.

NASA so get used to the luxury of the extra money,

the public attention,

the importance to the general public

that came with Apollo,

and the excitement and the challenge,

and wanted to do it again.

What do we need a Space Shuttle for?

Or a Space Station?

Well, some people said that we need a Space Station

to be the terminus for the Space Shuttle.

Well, then why do we need a Space Shuttle?

To be the way to reach the Space Station.

Now, I think that's a bit circular, isn't it?

[Logsdon] You know, at first, you look

at the space program, "Oh, that's so cool.

The Space Shuttle, that's amazing."

Then you know, "This is great,"

and then you really look at it and you realize,

"Hold it, they're not going anywhere.

They're not doing anything."

[Reporter] John Logsdon says the Shuttle

could turn out to be a classic mistake.

It's a pretty good space truck

for taking things up and down,

but for doing anything once you're in orbit,

it's a very inflexible and underpowered vehicle.

The Shuttle is the most complex space vehicle

man has ever built.

It is a result of nine years of compromise,

negotiation, and cost overruns.

Soon, we'll begin to find out if it was all worth it.

John Danzing, NBC News, at Kennedy Space Center.

So, the shuttle was designed to be reusable,

and therefore much less expensive,

and in the end there was no way to maintain the flight rate

that was projected for it.

It just didn't work out that way because it was too complex,

too expensive, and then we had the accidents.

[somber music]

It is the worst disaster in the history

of the American Space Program,

and President Reagan has declared a week of mourning

for the seven astronauts, five men and two women

who lost their lives on their way into space this morning.

Yeah, the Challenger really changed everything.

It was one of the-- it was a priority in the nation

to get every payload onto the Shuttle,

to get it's usage up,

to make sure it's utilization was as high as it could be.

There was a lot of attention focused on it.

It was a terrible tragedy replayed over

and over again on television.

And, there had sort of been a feeling

in the space community

that if there was a tragic accident with a Shuttle,

it would never fly again.

There was 32 months, I think it was,

before another Space Shuttle flew,

but there were changes, considerable changes

to the nature of the Space Shuttle program after that.

For example, originally the Shuttle was gonna be launching

just about every satellite

that the United States wanted to put up.

Instead they said that, "No, you are only gonna use this

"for things you really need to have people involved in.

"If you can just launch it on a rocket,

"launch it on a rocket.

You don't need to launch it on the Space Shuttle."

[Rick] To take these highly skilled

amazing people called astronauts,

and put them in charge of driving this truck

around in circles in orbit

instead of doing something really exciting and important--

you know, that's where the problems came from,

and that came from a lack of leadership

down the street from NASA,

you know, in Congress and in the White House.

The Shuttle did mature us, though.

It was so difficult-- new scientists, new technology,

so difficult to operate. It made us good.

We had to be good to operate that system,

but at the end of the Shuttle program,

we are a massively good spacefaring nation.

We, the US now, we're fantastic now, we are good now.

We are excellent in the spacefaring business.

The difficulty of the Shuttle made us good,

but after that, the Space Station,

was a massive strategic error.

[ethereal music]

[Announcer] Skylab was the first test of our ability

to endure weightlessness,

and astronauts found that they could effectively work,

exercise, eat, and sleep in their temporary home.

More recently, the Space Shuttle has allowed us

to fly into orbit, conduct our business, and return.

In addition to providing a laboratory

for carrying out experiments in microgravity,

the Shuttle has also benefited us

commercially and scientifically

through the deployment and capture of satellites.

But, the Shuttle was designed with a larger goal in mind,

to transport astronauts and materials

to a proposed base, a permanent manned Space Station.

Space Station was NASA's primary objective after Apollo.

What NASA hoped to get approved

was a 12-person Space Station launched by Saturn V,

and supplied by the Shuttle in the '69-'70 period.

The White House did not approve that program,

and instead we went ahead with the Space Shuttle,

but the shuttle was designed

to launch modules of the Space Station.

It was clear in 1971 or '72

that, once the shuttle started flying,

NASA would go back and ask approval

-to develop the Space Station. -[Mission Control] We have lift off.

[Logsdon] And indeed they did that in 1983,

and finally President Reagan

announced approval of the Space Station

in the State of the Union Address in January of '84.

Tonight I am directing NASA

to develop a permanently manned Space Station

and to do it within a decade.

[Reporter] Despite problems with recent missions,

NASA is still pushing hard

for a permanent Space Station someday.

[Announcer] Many scientists and politicians

say it is not clear what purpose

the Space Station is supposed to serve.

We're doing it backwards.

We're saying, "We're gonna have a station.

And by the way, what can you do if you have a station?"

[Miochi] Yes, it cost $100 billion.

Yes, it's a cooperative effort of many nations,

but a lot of the Space Station I think was wasteful,

because the science done on the Space Station

was actually minimal.

[Story] Skylab, '72 was a massively successful station.

It already had 200 experiments built in.

All those things matured us,

in terms of on-orbit space ops and long-term space flight.

We already did that.

See, I'm not criticizing Space Station.

What I'm saying is, what does Space Station

do for the man on the street?

They don't know.

Go out and ask them.

I honestly don't know,

and they make no effort to tell normal people,

so I mean I don't actually--

I don't know what's going on at all.

Yeah, I really don't know what they're doing.

They don't really say anything.

All you hear is they bring supplies back and forth,

so I mean what is the object of it?

I have no idea what they'd be doing up there, honestly.

I don't pay that much attention to this kind of stuff.

[Reporter] Okay.

-Unfortunately, we don't know. -[Woman] Not now. Not now.

-Not now, nope. -Yeah.

If you have a program which costs $150 billion,

and you ask the person on the street

what are you getting for this and they don't know,

you've missed the vision, sir.

[Marcia] We actually didn't finish building the Space Station

until 2010. It was supposed to be done in 1994.

Well, it did in fact basically suck the life

out of the human spaceflight program for 25 years,

and so it was very hard to get approval

for new things going forward, not that people didn't try.

We must commit ourselves anew

to a sustained program of manned exploration

of the solar system, and yes,

the permanent settlement of space.

As George HW Bush came into the White House,

he indicated he wanted to do something

to revitalize the space program.

And his advisers prepared for him an announcement

called the Space Exploration Initiative.

[Robert Zubrin] Back to the moon, on to Mars, this time to stay.

Great stuff, but NASA came back

with a program to do it in 30 years

that involved building floating spaceports

and giant interplanetary spaceships,

and all kinds of things that were never gonna happen.

And of course, the architecture meant

you have to have a launch system

and you have to have all the other pieces

of what it would take to do an entire mission

to the surface of the moon and go on to Mars.

Well, you total up all those assets necessary

over a 20-year period, and the total was $500 billion.

Well, that figure got leaked to the Hill,

and the way the Hill looks at money is

$500 billion dollars with a B is in like today's money.

And so, it was dead on arrival.

They never even bothered to look at it.

Let me introduce to you

our speaker for this afternoon,

Robert Zubrin from Martin Marietta... Astro.

He's a senior engineer there

on the Moon and Mars Initiative missions work

that Martin Marietta is doing.

Robert, come talk to us.

[applauding]

[Robert] Mars Direct is a plan for sending humans to Mars

with present day technology.

It's a plan that could be implemented

within eight years of program start.

This was developed by myself

and another engineer named David Baker

while we were working

at the Martin Marietta Astronautics Company circa 1990.

What Baker and I did was design a plan

that would allow us to do a human Mars Mission

in just two launches of a Saturn V heavy-lift booster,

okay, like the one we used during Apollo.

And before you know it, you've created the beginning

of the first human settlement on a new world.

There's nothing in this that is beyond our technology.

Around that 1993, Mike Griffin was appointed

Associate Administrator for Exploration,

and he liked Mars Direct.

He had us go back to Johnson Space Center

and talk to them again with this time

the people at headquarters telling you

that they had to listen,

and they listened,

and they came up with a variant of Mars Direct

as their new Mars Mission plan.

And according to their analysis,

it cut the cost of a human Mars exploration program

by a factor of eight. Okay?

Unfortunately by then, Clinton was in office,

and he wasn't interested, so he told them to just shut up.

You know, but the problem is,

is that we've never had a situation where both NASA

and the administration were on board at the same time,

except during Apollo.

[Michelle] My name is Michelle Stellhorn.

I am a teacher in the Gifted Education program

of the Rockwood School District,

and I teach a unit called Mission to Mars.

And we cover the Congressional space debate

and the importance and future of space exploration.

[Interviewer] Do you wanna be an astronaut?

No, because I like Earth, and I want to stay on it,

but I think that space exploration is really cool.

It's too expensive.

We have national debt and we have the job deficit.

[Interviewer] Do you think that we should be spending

more money and effort in space exploration?

Well, I think--

I personally think we should,

but I think that since there's so many people

around the world who are struggling

to just put food on the table,

I don't see how we can.

I mean, we could, but there's so many other problems

that are major focuses that the government should be studying,

that should be working on.

We need to get our national debt paid off

before we can go and play around in space.

[Interviewer] If given the opportunity, if somebody said

do you wanna go to space, would you go?

Me, I think that depends how much they pay me.

Don't wanna be an astronaut, what are they gonna fly?

There's nothing to fly.

There is no Mars program.

There is no astronaut program.

There's casual talk about it.

I know what a program is.

I know when a man says, "You're going to the moon,

you're coming home eight years from now,"

I know what that means.

[Rob Navias] The Space Shuttle pulls into port

for the last time, its voyage at and end.

[Rick] You know, there's a lot of people that think that

the end of the Shuttle program

was the end of America going out into space.

It's absurd, it's ridiculous.

Flying a Shuttle in circles around the Earth is not exploring.

It's not pushing forward the human frontier.

You're simply making work.

You're simply funneling taxpayer money

into certain people's pockets

who are working in different areas,

politicians, aerospace companies,

people who runs space centers.

That's not what this should be about,

but that's what it's become because there's no leadership...

because there's no vision.

[ominous music]

[garbled speaking on radio]

[Charlie Hobaugh] And Columbia, Houston,

we see you tire pressure messages,

and we did not copy your last.

[radio static]

Columbia, Houston, comm check.

Columbia, Houston, UHF comm check.

Columbia, Houston, UHF comm check.

[James] February 1st, 2003, Columbia reenters tragically

and breaks up over Texas.

The notion that we could continue flying the Shuttle...

for a long time went away.

[somber music]

[Marcia] The commission that investigated that accident said,

"If you're going to be risking human lives,

"you really need to explain what it is

that you're trying to accomplish in human spaceflight."

Consistent with safety concerns and the recommendations

of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board...

the Shuttle's chief purpose of the next several years

will be to help finish assembly

of the International Space Station.

In 2010, the Space Shuttle,

after nearly 30 years of duty, will be retired from service.

[Marcia] The first Shuttle tragedy made everybody stop

and think exactly what it was we were using the Shuttle for,

and did you really need to have humans aboard

a spacecraft in order to launch satellites,

and the second tragedy, Columbia,

really brought it down to a real focus on,

"Well, why are you doing human spaceflight at all?"

Using the crew exploration vehicle,

we will undertake extended human missions to the moon

as early as 2015,

with the goal of living and working there

for increasingly extended periods of time.

[Rick] See, I was-- I was there,

I was literally in the room when President Bush announced

we were gonna go back to the moon and on to Mars.

And I'm a Texan, I was close enough

to where I could look at him.

We're fairly good at spotting BS in each other,

and I think he really meant it.

[James] President Bush to his credit said,

you know we're not gonna just do this anymore,

we're gonna do something different,

and we should go back and we should explore.

[Jeff] A powerful argument was made

that what needed to happen

was we needed to start making economic use

of all of the things that we had found

by all this taxpayer-funded space exploration.

If we want to start going back to the moon,

but this time for economically useful purposes,

how would we do that?

And they came up with some really interesting ideas,

all of which were affordable,

all of which were executable,

all of which were quite reasonable

paths that we could have gone forward,

none of which looked like Apollo.

And then he hired a new NASA administrator,

who said he was absolutely dedicated

to carrying out the president's vision,

and that was Dr. Michael Griffin.

And Griffin came in and said,

"I know how I'm going to do this."

And he had a plan.

He had a way of getting America back to the moon

and then on to Mars.

It is very Apollo-like.

It may have a different shaped heat shield.

It may have a different surface contact system,

but the outer mold line is very Apollo-like, except larger.

Think of it as Apollo on steroids.

Everything was tanked.

All of the ideas were dropped and ditched,

because Mike Griffin had his own plan for "das programm."

[ethereal music]

[Narrator] NASA's new program for human space exploration

is called Constellation.

For the first time in a generation

we will be traveling beyond low Earth orbit,

returning to the moon

and expanding human presence to Mars.

Exploration must be taken in steps.

Because we learn from every journey,

there is a link between every place we go.

[dramatic music]

Very quickly the Bush Administration

started to cut back on some of NASA's...

hoped for budget increases.

That brought you to the Obama Administration

in which they said--

I understand that some believe that we should attempt

a return to the surface of the moon first...

as previously planned.

But I just have to say, pretty bluntly here...

we've been there before.

Will American astronauts return to the moon

in the foreseeable future?

NBC News has learned

that plans to travel there and beyond

may in fact be scrubbed.

The White House was willing to support the vision

of returning to the moon by 2020

and going on to Mars verbally,

but not when it came down to the nation's pocketbook.

It had been known from the start

that the Constellation could not be executed

on anything like NASA's current budget.

The assumption was made that NASA

would receive a very substantial budget increase

in order to do something like Constellation.

[Marcia] When President Obama came into office,

he set up this committee

to take a look at the Constellation program

and that committee determined that technically

the Constellation program was doing quite well,

but that there wasn't enough money.

The budget for that program had been reduced

substantially every single year since it started,

and as a result, our look at the Constellation program

that we were then pursuing was that it was not executable.

The program was on a trajectory to fail.

We did recommend that either NASA's budget be increased,

rather substantially,

or that they should be given some other mission

that they can do within their current budget.

Everyone agrees that there's a $3 billion shortfall

in what we need to accomplish our goals.

Of what you have suggested as alternatives, other options,

are any of those accomplishable without that shortfall?

[Man] Do you wanna deal with that?

-[Man 2] No. -Okay, there you go.

The White House was not willing to invest

that kind of money in it.

Congress was not willing to invest that kind of money in it,

so the Constellation program was canceled.

The reason we were unable to sustain humanity in space

or on the moon after Apollo,

was there was no decision to do so...

and there was no technology that was designed

to allow us to do so because the decision was not there.

Interestingly, in the Constellation program

and under President Bush, he said, "We're going to establish

human permanence beyond the Earth."

Unfortunately, the people in charge

were unable to understand what that meant,

and instead redesigned a bigger,

badder version of the Apollo program.

It was doomed to failure from the beginning.

[upbeat electronic music]

[Narrator] September of 2011,

NASA proposes a new capability for human exploration,

a massive rocket, the largest ever built,

for a variety of missions beyond low Earth orbit.

[Marcia] When President Obama announced

that he was canceling Constellation,

what he wanted to do was to wait five years

and invest in game- changing technologies,

and after that period of time

a decision would be made as to what new rockets

or spacecraft were needed

to go wherever it is the nation

was gonna go next in human spaceflight.

And that presupposed in five years

you could do something that essentially

obsoletes chemical propulsion.

We will increase investment right away

in other groundbreaking technologies

that will allow astronauts

to reach space sooner and more often.

Well, there was nothing in the pipeline

at all that would do that.

I mean, there was discussion of what might be.

There was some hypotheses of what could be done,

but now we're five years later

and there really was nothing in the pipeline

that was even remotely mature enough.

[Marcia] And Congress hated that idea.

Congress felt it was really important to have a destination

and a time frame within which to meet

specific visionary goals for human spaceflight

and so Congress wrote into law

directing NASA to build a new big rocket,

which they called the Space Launch System,

and to build a multi-purpose crew vehicle,

which we know as Orion,

in order to provide the capabilities

to keep a vigorous human spaceflight program going.

So Constellation was canceled

but Congress promptly reinstated

the all the expensive parts of it under new names...

but did not give NASA the budget increase

that would be necessary to fly missions with them.

Do you know what the budget

for the SLS Launch System is?

Uh, I--

We don't know, so you don't know either, quite frankly.

-That was a leading question. -[Grunsfeld] All right.

And if that money was gonna be taken

out of your budget to develop the SLS Launch System,

rather than go with the launch systems

that we've already got, would you be supportive of that?

-No. -Right.

We really don't have a lot of momentum

and a lot of vision on what

Space Launch System is gonna do.

It's been pegged "the rocket to nowhere."

When they finally get it upgraded

to 130 metric tons, which may be 2025,

it will be equivalent and almost equal to a Saturn V,

which we will have had 60 years earlier.

We're talking about after proving one flight,

that we might do an orbit around the moon

called Apollo 8.

You're keeping Space Station alive,

you're supporting the various NASA centers,

you got two piece of hardware you're developing,

but they have no destination

and they're like what we did 60 years ago.

I always call it a rocket to anywhere

because it's just like the shuttle.

When the shuttle was designed,

it was designed to be a shuttle of capability.

It didn't have payloads identified.

All those missions were nonexistent...

on the day the first shuttle flew.

[Rick] If space is a frontier...

and I shall hereby declare it to be so,

and your goal is to settle the frontier--

in other words, for people to live there

like they do here in what used to be a frontier--

then you have to create

a means for that to occur.

No frontier has never been opened

based on the development and operation

of a single giant government vehicle.

[Jeff] They can launch two to three--

at least two and potentially three SLS's per year.

They can build that many and they can launch that many.

That's the way the design of the infrastructure

and the vehicle and the assembly plant is set up to do,

but they need more funding.

To date, unfortunately,

the budget has not been increased,

and that's a major concern.

It's been a major concern since day one,

and if there's anything our commission emphasized,

it was that we have to have a budget

and a space program that are consistent with each other.

And unfortunately, throughout the human

space flight history, for a couple of decades,

that's not been the case.

Tonight, NASA announced further cuts

have been ordered in its new budget

and one effect will be a delay

in the timetable for the space shuttle.

50,000 employees are not looking forward.

They're looking elsewhere.

If this country really needs another expensive

piece of hardware in orbit,

when here on the ground,

we can hardly get the mail delivered.

[Reporter] Congress cut the shuttle's budget

by $234 million.

Already there have been some cutbacks

and there could be others.

It is, without question,

the biggest waste of money I've seen

since I've been on the United State Senate.

Today, President Clinton put in his latest bid.

He outlined $13 billion in savings

at four federal agencies,

more than half the cuts at NASA.

The bailout, the bank bailout,

that sum of money is greater

than the entire 50 year

-running budget of NASA. -[Joan Walsh] Wow.

I think we have to be realistic

when it comes to the budget.

If we need additional funds for a heavy lift rocket,

we're going to have to set priorities

and have to shift funds from other parts of the program.

I don't think that NASA or our space program

is somehow going to defy budget gravity

and be the only agency to get an increase

when every other agency is either gonna be flatlined

or be subject to the budgetary constraints.

So I think we're just gonna have to be smarter.

We're going to have to make sure

we don't have cost overruns

and we're gonna have to set priorities

and use the money that we do have better

and then we can get the funds,

say for a heavy lift rocket.

If we started today,

how long do each of you estimate it would be

before we could place a person on Mars?

-With the current budget? -[polite laughter]

[Mr. Posey] Yes. Give me a date with the current budget

and a date with the Apollo-era budget.

With the current budget-- bear with me-- I would probably say never.

Hey...

China.

Can we borrow some money to finish our Mars trip?

[audience laughing]

You know, with Constellation, Mike Griffin,

and now people with the SLS,

just assume that if we develop the SLS,

it will fly forever.

We had the Saturn V.

It worked.

It was flying humans to the moon...

and we canceled it.

[dramatic music]

[Neil] When did we last leave low-Earth orbit,

you know, a couple hundred miles up

where the Space Station Space Shuttle orbit...

to go somewhere interesting with humans?

When did we last do it? 1972, Apollo 17.

It's been more than four decades

since we've left Earth for another destination.

What's the problem?

What are we missing? Is it political will?

Is it motivation? Is it money?

Is it-- are we distracted?

Are there other issues?

We went to the moon...

in the 1960s!

What, we didn't have problems in the 1960s?

[upbeat rock music]

We were at a hot war in Southeast Asia,

a cold war with the Soviet Union,

the Civil Rights Movement was fully under way,

there was campus unrest,

there were riots in the urban centers.

[John F. Kennedy] It shall be the policy of this nation

to regard any nuclear missile

launched from Cuba against any nation

in the Western Hemisphere

as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.

We had the greatest problems the country has seen

since the Civil War

and in that climate, on that landscape,

we went to the moon.

So don't turn around and tell me

that these past four decades

we've had challenges we couldn't overcome.

That's why we're not going into space.

No, that's not the reason we're not going into space.

[rock music]

It is the most natural question in the world to say...

you know, if you're a young person in this country,

"Wait a second, we were on the moon?

"American citizens were walking around,

"jumping around on the moon?

"They were driving a golf cart on the moon?

"They brought back hundreds of pounds

"of specially selected rock samples

"to see what the geological history of the moon was...

"and you stopped?

"Why did you stop?

Are you people nuts?"

My read of history tells me there's only

two, maybe three motivations

for ever doing something so grand

and one of them is war.

The other is money. Let's do it for money.

If you can do it for money, it'll happen.

I've never seen anyone do it to explore.

There is a growing tendency to think of man

as a rational thinking being, which is absurd.

There is simply no evidence of any intelligence

on the Earth.

Mm-hmm, wait!

[rocket engine roaring]

[Jim] Why did we stop producing Saturn V rockets?

It's one of the great mysteries to me.

The Saturn V rocket can put more mass

into low-Earth orbit than our shuttle.

It had been a natural to help build

the International Space Station.

[inspiring music]

The Saturn V was a really unique rocket

in the sense that it was really

the first rocket designed for exploration.

The Mercury Project's launched on a Redstone,

which was an intermediate-range ballistic missile.

It was modified. Then the Gemini

went up on a Titan, which was an ICBM.

So, the Saturn program was really the first rocket

that was never designed

to be launching missiles on other people.

It was actually the first one that was designed

to launch people to new destinations.

So the Saturn V was a leap beyond anything

that had been seen before.

It had five million-and-a- half-pound thrust engines

on just the first stage.

The second stage had five

quarter-million-pound thrust hydrogen engines on it,

and had a third stage with another

quarter-million-pound thrust.

It was a massive rocket.

It was something that had never been done before

and it worked very well

and it was able to do things

that nothing could have been able to do

and nothing can do today.

[rocket engine roaring]

We have a tendency in this country,

like "The Tortoise and the Hare."

We are the Hare.

We build something, we do something,

we go back and try something else.

Look, folks, modern design!

Whoo, whoo, whoo hoo!

The Russians, in the meanwhile,

are the tortoise.

They build something, they keep it going.

Do you know that the booster,

the rocket that put Yuri Krekorian up in space in 1961

is basically the same vehicle

that's putting our astronauts and their cosmonauts

into the International Space Station today?

The same vehicle,

and yet, we don't keep ours.

The Saturn V could have been improved.

That'd been a good stepping stone towards

going back to the moon.

We could have improved the lunar module.

We couldn't done lots of things

to the Saturn V to upgrade it,

and we'd have had, still, a viable lunar program going.

It's a tragedy,

and I'll mention that every time that someone tells me.

It's a tragedy that we stopped building the Saturn V rocket.

The decision to stop production of the Saturn V

dates back really to the Lyndon Johnson administration.

The Space Agency, facing severe budget restrictions,

has decided to cut back Apollo moon landing missions

to two flights a year.

[Logsdon] NASA had stopped ordering

long lead-time items for the Saturn V in 1968

and announced suspension of its production.

There were 15 built, and then there weren't

gonna be any more.

Then there were ambitious recommendations

to Nixon in September of '69

to use Mars as a long-term goal of the program

and build a space station.

Those recommendations were rejected in the fall of '69,

and then there was no need for

the kind of capability represented by the Saturn V,

so it was in the budget cycle in December of 1969

that the decision finally was made to suspend production,

basically shut the program down.

[dramatic music]

[typewriter keys clicking]

[pen scratching]

[Dale D. Myers] We had a president who was

not particularly interested in the space program.

We had a... Vietnam War that was picking up a lot of money

and... so as soon as the NASA budget

for Apollo began to drop off a little,

the White House looked at it

like a big place to get money.

[dramatic music]

[pen scratching]

Thomas Paine, administrator of the Space Agency,

said today that 50,000 people will be dropped

and the Space Program stretched out

as a result of what he called

"very stringent budget cuts ordered by President Nixon."

Most of those who will lose their jobs

work for private contractors,

the rest for the Space Agency.

Among other things,

Paine said production of the Saturn V rocket will be ended.

The last one will be used to launch

an experimental space station.

The rocket was designed

at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

[dramatic music]

[Richard Nixon speaking on tape]

The idea of going to Mars was not selling.

Putting a base on the moon was not selling.

We weren't gonna get the big space station.

We knew we weren't gonna get the nuclear rocket.

With the Apollo program doing so well,

we thought we would be able to at least continue

with the sort of budget support that we had had for Apollo,

which had been terrific, and... didn't happen,

and so we were pretty depressed group for a while.

Saturn V, Saturn IB,

command module-- all disappeared.

And there will be a mission to Mars someday,

but I don't know when.

50 years from now maybe.

[Announcer speaking]

[somber music]

[Jim] When I look at the present direction

of our space program today...

I feel disappointed.

I feel that our leaders don't really

have a good reason for continuing it.

I think that-- that it's not their desire to really have

a first-class, first-rate program that they can be proud of

and we look at ways that we waste money in this country

when we could put it to good use

in a program that everybody really--

the average individual-- really wants to see done,

then it-- it kind of makes me feel sad.

[Rick] Today, we stand on the shoulders of giants.

And we have to honor those people.

I know a lot of Apollo astronauts.

They're pretty pissed off...

'cause they did their job,

they did what they were asked to do,

they put their lives on the line.

They went out and they did something incredible...

and then nothing happened.

Can NASA mount a project? Can they do a project anymore?

Or does the project become so politicized

and so wrapped up in Washington

that it gets strangulated and can't happen?

Unfortunately, I come from the '60s.

I'm not cynical. I come from the '60s...

the greatest project management the world has ever seen

on any project, and we did it.

We did it urgently.

We did it on cost, on schedule,

and we did it right,

even with 45 years of hindsight history, we did it right.

I believe that when we landed

on the moon in 1969 as a flight tracker,

my children would see an American back on the moon.

I'm starting to lose that belief.

I had hoped that I would see it myself.

That is now... impossible.

Ironically, going to the moon

could have been a natural continuation

of the westward migration

that began with the 13 colonies

and continued to the end of the 1800s,

but we didn't do it that way.

We had a government planned crisis project

instead of opening up space like a frontier.

You realized during the entire

golden age of space exploration

that we generally associate with the 1960s

and the voyage to the moon,

we remember ourselves as pioneers in that era,

but in fact, we were reactive...

to the statements made by the Soviets

rather than proactive in fulfillment of dreams we had.

They put up a satellite, we gotta put up a satellite.

They put a animal-- non-human animal in orbit,

we put a non-human animal.

They put up a first human, we put up a first human.

This went on and on and on

with Russia beating us in practically everything.

Then we get to the moon before they did. We said, "We win."

If that's how we look at it, we didn't understand...

who was pioneering that race.

So, we are better at reacting than proacting.

Given that fact, we may have to sink

deeper into economic... poverty as a nation

before we wake up and say,

"We gotta do something about this."

It's an unfortunate fact of how we function.

[Rick] You know, there's a generation out there right now

that doesn't believe we've ever been to the moon.

Now, that's not because the shadows

from the flag fall the wrong way

or the lens flare is wrong

or you can't see the stars because of the contrast ratio

or this or that or the other or anything like that.

The real reason that any of that... sticks at all...

is that we're not there now...

and it's incredibly hard to believe

that if we ever did something that magnificent,

that exciting, that inspirational...

why did we stop?

That's the reason there's people who believe we never went.

Why aren't we there now?

It's peace time, Jim. The government isn't making that kind of appropriations.

Oh, they'll need the rocket one of these days

and if it's not ready, the government will do the job.

And they'll turn to you, to private industry, to do it.

Government always does that when it gets in a jam.

It has to. This time,

I figured we might be ready for the government.

[Bill] The British government explored Hudson Bay.

Then, the Hudson Bay Company was created.

The US government explores the moon,

then the lunar, gofindlunarrocks.com

company will get created.

We have companies now, SpaceX leading the way,

bringing cargo to and from the Space Station.

That should have been happening decades ago.

You don't need astronauts to serve as truck drivers

hauling cargo back and forth.

An unmanned vehicle can do that

and let the commercial marketplace take care of it.

Let them bid for that.

They can do it faster, cheaper, better,

than any government program could do it, for sure.

[Mark Sirangelo] When airplanes were first beginning,

a very smart group of people decided

that they were not going to--

America was not going to own its own fleet,

its own airline.

It said, "What we're gonna do is help build

the airline industry and the airplane industry,"

and they did that by simply guaranteeing

a certain amount of mail

that was gonna be traveling on airplanes.

And what happened was that an industry developed

here America became the leading country

and the leading technology developer

of what we now know as modern aviation.

[inspirational music]

People should be able to come up

with creative, beneficial things

that they can figure out how to afford to do

and if there's science involved that can benefit the country

and the federal government can get involved,

if there's technology that needs to be developed

that can help people, the government can get involved there.

We could have partnerships and we can move out.

We can have the 21st century equivalent

of the Transcontinental Railroad,

which by the way, was built by private companies

without a government department of railroads

telling them how to do it.

We did it with land grants.

Well, we could do the same thing in space.

We could do the same sort of

innovative partnerships in space.

We just have to get away

from this sort of bureaucratic mindset

that it needs to be a government program to do it for us.

The vast amount of brains, talents, special skills,

and research facilities necessary for this project

are not in the government, nor can they be mobilized

by the government in peacetime without fatal delay.

Only American industry can do this job.

[Rick] The way frontiers have been opened,

and the way that they should be opened,

is by an interaction of the private and the public sector,

working for the good of all

so that the government is providing

a Lewis and Clark function,

a Magellan function, a Drake function,

and then those explorers are returning

and telling us about what's over the hill,

what's across that ocean,

and then the private sector moves into that realm

and begins to turn what it is that's been found

into new land, new wealth,

and that's how you open a frontier.

You don't open a frontier

by sending a few highly- paid government employees

out there in a large and expensive government vehicle

and throwing most of it away on the way there and back.

[patriotic music playing]

Well, I know one thing.

If they do build a space station in my lifetime,

or send a ship to the moon,

I'm gonna be ready to go.

What courses are you taking next year?

Oh, my schedule is already made out.

In the ninth grade, you have to take mathematics

-and English and history-- -No science?

Well, I had my choice of taking

general science this year or next,

but I've put it off a year.

Then you put your trip off a year.

Science is the engine of prosperity.

All the wealth we see around us comes from science,

but science is made by scientists, mainly young people.

Young people have to be inspired.

They have to look into the sky and say,

"Wow, I wanna be part of this great endeavor

to explore the universe."

The real spin-off that matters

out of the Apollo program...

was a generation that saw that

and in their mind, they mixed,

"Here's the Apollo program

"and people really doing something cool out there in space,

"and here's Captain Kirk

and these kinds of shows and movies,"

"2001 Space Odyssey,"

and if you put this all together

in the mind of a child or a teenager, what begins to happen

is a synthesis that says, "I wanna do that.

"Somebody's done it.

"I can do it.

I'm gonna figure out how to do it."

The biggest spin-off of the Apollo program

was a generation who stayed in school, who studied,

and now, they wanna do that.

They want to give back to civilization

in the way that they were inspired to do as children.

My son looked up at me one night and asked me--

sorry, it still breaks me up--

"Daddy, is it really true

that they used to fly to the moon when you were a boy?"

I was really disappointed that we had not sent anyone to Mars,

that we had not progressed beyond Apollo,

and I kept waiting for when we would,

and it just didn't happen, year after year.

I submit that if we engage in another bold vision

like we did in the '60s,

this time not motivated by war,

but by an understanding of the impact

of that adventure on our culture...

our culture...

what people wanted to be when they grew up.

I am a child of Apollo.

The greatest influences I had growing up

were NASA and "Star Trek."

I didn't just believe we were going into space.

I expected it.

[Neil] It stimulates an entire generation

of scientists and technologists.

It's the 21st century.

You need them if you care about

the health of your economy tomorrow.

You need folks like that around you.

I went to the NASA website to just see,

"When are we going to Mars?"

And I couldn't find that out.

[laughter]

Then I thought, well,

perhaps this is a question of-- of will.

Is there sufficient will to do this?

The reason I fight so hard for this cause

is because I believe we are here

to expand and grow

and carry the light of life into space.

[Neil] If we don't embrace space as a frontier,

what are we as a species?

We have the power to do it.

We have the know-how to do it.

We know what it can bring us...

culturally, economically, militaristically.

To not do it is to simply not have the foresight.

In these final hours before Apollo 17,

some people are gloomy about

the future of space exploration.

Not among them is Dr. Wernher von Braun,

the retired rocket expert to develop

the big Saturn launch vehicles

used to send men on their way to the moon.

I talked with Dr. Von Braun earlier this evening.

I think that all good things have an ending.

I consider Apollo a little bit as it were

as a sailing ship and dog sled area for the south pole.

Or next time we go to the south pole,

we'll go by turboprop airplane.

We doubled the number of science graduates

in this country during Apollo at every level:

high school, college, PhD.

What force was operating to make

everyone want to become scientists?

We were going to the moon.

So, our motivation was militaristically driven,

but we benefited economically from it

because scientists and technologists

invent the economies of tomorrow.

We used to invent new things with such frequency

that you didn't fix something that was about to break.

You put in something completely new

that took you to a new place.

You didn't have to worry about the old thing breaking,

because you just replaced the entire structure

with better materials, lighter materials,

more durable materials.

These are the things that come out of an innovation nation.

You know how you get in an innovation nation?

You put a bold project in front of them

that inspires people to want to innovate in the first place.

And I know of no greater force of nature

than what going into space can do...

for the next generation of people

who are tasked with taking us into the 21st century.

I believe that we can carry this battle

and basically address it, articulate it

as an economic challenge to the nation,

a technological challenge to the nation,

a spiritual challenge to the nation,

that we have to believe as a nation...

we are capable of doing difficult things

and move forward and do it.

We need to bring America's character

to bear on America's frontier.

And if we do that...

there is no limit to what we can accomplish.

We were given the Apollo program

because of a set of challenges

that a very young president faced.

We were fortunate at that time

we had the articulators.

We had the Von Brauns and the Lows

and the gurus who were capable of going up

and basically talking to this president

and talking to the US Congress and selling this program.

We need the people who have that fluency, that belief

and are willing to expend themselves in that cost.

During the Apollo era,

you didn't need government programs

trying to convince people

that doing science and engineering

was good for the country.

It was self-evident.

Maybe we need a department of future thinkers...

who aren't thinking, "Will I get reelected this November?"

Who aren't thinking, "Can we afford this now?

Are these other problems I have to solve?" No.

We need like a new presidential cabinet position:

the futurist.

They can help set priorities for how we invest

versus the return on that investment later on.

That's what we need.

We don't have that...

and I've been trying, but I've been failing,

so basically, I gave up.

Just going back to my lab.

I'm tired of screaming into people's ears.

What we got paid back for

were million of scientists, engineers,

doctors, medical researchers, inventors, okay?

Who are the people who created

the economic boom of the 1990s?

These 40-year-old techno billionaires

who built Silicon Valley.

These are the 12-year- olds of the 1960s.

Apollo worked because John F. Kennedy said in 1961,

"We are going to be on the moon by the end of the decade,"

and while administrations changed in early 1969,

we were practically to the moon

and they weren't about to cancel that at that point.

If instead, Kennedy had said, "I think it'd be good idea

to go to the moon and we should do it by the year 2000,"

we never would have made it to the moon.

It's not about the rocket equation.

It's not about physics.

We solve those issues every single day.

We have built a cage around our ideas.

We have built a cage around our future that says, "You cannot."

We are telling the generation that exists today

that they're going to have less...

that they should give up their dreams,

that their job is to save a planet that we've screwed up.

What really matters is that someday

there's a kid living on the moon,

there's a kid living in free space,

there's a kid living on Mars,

who looks back at the Earth and says,

"That's where we came from,"

turns their head, looks the other way,

and says, "That's what we're going."

It will be a human endeavor.

It will bring out the best in humankind.

Space exploration has changed your life,

and it's made your life better.

The food you eat, your communication systems,

your transportation systems are all made better by space.

But deeper and bigger and more importantly,

your view of your relationship to the cosmos,

your place in space,

is fundamentally influenced by people

who have insisted that we explore space,

that we go over the horizon,

that we look beyond what we can see,

and that is all to the good

and it is in everyone's best interest to support it.

We cannot allow ourselves to settle

for the condition and the state that we are in today.

We have to become the foot soldiers in the fight for space,

and it has to apply to every person

who lives, works, and dreams of space,

and it's time to do it now.

[dramatic music]

[dramatic music]

[classical music]

[upbeat rock music]

[enchanting music]

-I got fired. -[Man] Really?

Yes, sir, out the door.

"We're not gonna fly you again.

We don't have a job for you."

They get tired of hearing this stuff,

and when you're jabbing them, the bureaucrats--

you're jabbing them,

they've had enough.