NARRATOR
I interviewed dozens of NASA professionals to gather content for the second season of the podcast. It would be impossible to pick a favorite, but I definitely have a particular fondness for NASA Chief Historian Bill Barry. He spoke to the unique role of the History Office at NASA and helped me to understand the profound shift in NASA’s ambitions between the Apollo missions of 50 years ago to the Artemis missions of today.
At its core, the History Office ensures that — even as we look forward to the Moon, Mars and beyond — we always stay rooted in our legacy. They help us remember the lessons we’ve learned from our predecessors.
The office also ensures an accurate record of events as they happened. As you’ll hear in my interview with Bill, the slightest bit of confusion can lead to interesting — sometimes humorous — rumors and reporting.
If you’re curious to learn more about the History Office after listening to the podcast, visit history.nasa.gov or follow them on social media. They have a veritable treasure trove of information. Any burgeoning space historian can look to them for the resources they need to begin their exploration.
I’m Danny Baird. This is The Invisible Network.
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NARRATOR
What is your name and your role at NASA?
BILL BARRY
I’m Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian.
NARRATOR
What work does that role entail?
BILL BARRY
Well, the History Office at NASA has been around since 1959. And our first administrator T. Keith Glennan set up the History Office because he wanted to make sure that all these historic things that NASA was going to be doing were captured properly.
So sort of the three initial functions for the History Office were to: capture a chronology of events so that we can reconstruct what happened as we went forward, and then to write, you know, the official histories of various programs, and the third thing was to sort of increase NASA’s footprint with historians and historical professional societies because they knew that the History Office wasn’t going to be able to write all of NASA’s history. We were just going to be doing too much.
So we wanted to build relationships with historians so that they had access to NASA — knew who to talk to at NASA — and we told our story in a way that, you know, was effective and honest as well because, you know, the key point on the history side of things is: we want to know what happened so that we can learn from the past — the good things we did, repeat them, and also the bad things we did, so that we don’t repeat those things. And so, you have to have both of those things. There has to be some historical integrity.
So, that’s one of the reasons why Keith Glennan hired the first NASA chief historian, Eugene Emme. He basically stole him from the Air Force history program, and he came over and set up the program. And I’m No. 6 in that line of people.
NARRATOR
On a day to day basis, what is your work look like?
BILL BARRY
Well, my job title is chief historian, but it probably should be chief bureaucrat because — like any program that you have to manage — a lot of it is about managing people and resources. So, I spend a lot of time in budget meetings and planning meetings and in midterm reviews with people and things like that. So, there’s a lot of that sort of work.
Every once in a while I’ll get to do, you know, get to answer a question. Most of the questions we get are pretty easy to answer, so other people in the chain of the history program answer those. If they get to me, they’re usually pretty interesting or just weird. So, I get a little bit of that sometimes.
I get to go speak on behalf of the agency about history to various audiences, which is great fun and a great opportunity to tell our story. And sometimes I get to do weird projects, like if they want to do a movie and it has some historical content, I’ll get a call from our people who do the Hollywood liaison work and they’ll ask me to take a look at a script or something like that. And sometimes I actually get to go get involved in that a little bit.
So that’s it. You know, there are some really fun parts of the job. It’s a really great job, but it’s a job too. So, there’s a lot of the usual bureaucracy involved.
NARRATOR
Beyond the day-to-day, what’s the most interesting request you’ve fielded?
BILL BARRY
Oh, we get lots of them. We had one this week about whether or not NASA uses whale oil on spacecraft. And this is an urban legend that goes way back, a number of years.
And apparently — we traced it back. We’ve investigated this a couple times. It comes up every few years. And a reporter was doing a story. He said, “I saw this thing on the internet.” Yeah, of course you saw it on the internet, there’s lots of things you can see on the internet — and we’ve traced the story back, and apparently it comes from the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts. And there’s a docent there who at one time was telling people that NASA used whale oil from New Bedford on spacecraft.
And it appears to us that this person confused the fact that we’re using a company that’s a lubrication company that is near New Bedford that originally was a whale oil company, but now — since the ’60s when we started buying things from them — they’ve been in the synthetic lubricant business. But, I think somebody connected the dots incorrectly there.
But that’s one of those curious things that kind of comes up from time to time. You have to answer those kind of questions. “No, really, I know you saw on the internet, but it really isn’t true. Here’s the backstory.”
So those are — those can be a real challenge, but they can also be a lot of fun when you can actually find the right answer.
NARRATOR
That’s wild. What brought you to the agency?
BILL BARRY
Well, I could say John Glenn, but that’d be kind of expanding the truth a little bit.
I was about 4 years old when John Glenn flew in space, and my mother used to always tell me, “All you wanted to do was drive a dump truck up until that point, but then you sat there in front of the TV and watched John Glenn.” And seriously, the first thing I can remember — that I can place someplace in my memory — is sitting in front of the TV listening to Walter Cronkite talk about whether John Glenn would get home safely from space or not because of the loose heat shield question.
And man, I was just hooked.
So, I wanted to go be an astronaut and go do all this stuff. So, I sort of set myself on a track to go do that. And I managed to get into the Air Force Academy and went the pilot training. But while I was at the academy, I discovered that engineering was probably not my forte and I wound up in the fuzzy studies instead.
And so, I pretty much knew then I wasn’t going to be an astronaut, because it probably wasn’t my skill set. But I did an Air Force career for 22 years and I did a lot of things related to space. So when the Air Force sent me out for my doctorate degree, I basically wrote my dissertation on the political history of the early Soviet space program. So I kind of kept my hand and my interest in space all through my life.
And then, when I retired from the Air Force, a job at NASA in the international office landed in my lap — quite to my surprise. And so, I worked in international for about nine years here at Headquarters, and then the historian job opened up and I managed to wind my way over here to the historian job.
NARRATOR
That sort of segues nicely into — so, you wrote this paper on the early Soviet program. What were Kennedy’s aspirations for the space program and how did they play out over the ensuing decade?
BILL BARRY
Well, this is an interesting thing, because, of course, I grew up in the Space Age and my perspective on it — in fact, I was born in Boston, grew up in Massachusetts, and so the Kennedys were, you know, godlike to our family, right?— And, I always imagined it that John Kennedy — I listen to those speeches and I thought, “Wow, you know, this guy really is into space.” And then as I grew up and started learning more about space history, I discovered, “Actually, he really wasn’t interested in space.”
What he had was a political problem with the Soviets — and it wasn’t just a personal political problem. It was a problem for the Western world. The Soviets were being very successful in space. They had extremely effective engineers and a very nimble team. And they made it look like they were way ahead of the United States technologically, which caused all kinds of political problems for the West and also for all those newly independent countries that came into existence after World War II there.
They all wanted to develop too. They look and they say, “OK, well, the Soviet Union, it was a backward country at the beginning of 20th century. Now, they’re beating everybody else in space. They must be better than the Americans and the West.” And that was causing all kinds of political havoc for the Western alliance.
So Kennedy knew he needed to do something about it. And kind of out of desperation, I think he realized that the space program was kind of the key thing. If he could make — if you could nudge the Soviets off of being the leaders in space, and make it clear there was more of a, at least parity, if not that the United States were better than the Soviets, that was the most effective argument he had in that geopolitical fight.
And so, we actually have audio tapes of President Kennedy talking to NASA Administrator Jim Webb at the time. And Webb is trying to get Kennedy to approve a wide variety of planetary programs as well as the Apollo program to the Moon. And Kennedy keeps saying, “I’m not interested in the space program: all we need to do is beat the Russians to the Moon.”
And that’s what it was all about. So, the Moon race is really something that happened in a very particular set of circumstances where there was a geopolitical problem. Going to the Moon became the solution to that problem, and the United States was willing to expend a substantial amount of resources to make that happen. And if you look at the NASA budget, there’s this huge spike in the ’60s in order to get us the money and the facilities to do that. And then the NASA budget has been kind of flat ever since then. And it’s because the circumstances are the way they are. At that point the country needed that and nowadays, we don’t need a space program as big as that because we’re not really racing anybody anymore.
NARRATOR
In terms of a galvanizing moment, what in your mind is the importance of that speech he gave at Rice University that’s so often quoted.
BILL BARRY
Oh, that is the best political speech I have ever heard in my life — and I’ve heard many people say the same thing. It is a master work, particularly when you realize that, in fact, Kennedy wasn’t that excited about the space program anyway.
So, extremely well written speech — he had great speech writers — but he delivers it with such panache and, I guess, a tough audience.
People in Texas did not like John Kennedy. And so, he was basically going into the lion’s den and they set up this speech for him to talk about space policy. And as it turns out, there was like nobody that was going to show up. They had real problems. And so, at the last minute the Texas Democratic organization managed to get all the schools in the Houston area to send all — so most of that audience in the Rice stadium: high school kids were bused in.
But Kennedy goes in there and he just knocked it out of the park, giving the sort of the classic inspirational speech. And that’s why you see that speech all the time.
Many people confuse that one with the first speech he gave in 1961 — in May of 1961 — when he first said, “You know, we should go to the Moon.” That was really sort of a tentative proposal to Congress on, “I think this is something we should do.” And he had a lot of escape clauses in there about, “If you if you guys aren’t going to fund this, don’t even bother.” And all that kind of — it kind of came wrapped in a whole lot of strings.
But by September the next year — in September 1962, by that point Congress had doubled NASA’s budget twice and were really serious about going to the Moon. And he wanted to make the point about why the Moon was a goal and objective worthy of the United States and why we needed to do it.
And he just — what can you say? You just have to listen that speech. It’s short. It’s to the point. And it’s phenomenal.
NARRATOR
So in terms of Kennedy’s motivations: they were obviously proving American superiority. How do the motivations for the Apollo program differ from our motivations for Artemis?
BILL BARRY
Ah, well. Of course,Apollo comes in a particular moment, and it’s part of the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, which was — from the perspective of 2019, the Cold War has been over a couple decades now.
And people kind of [say], “You know, that wasn’t that big a deal.”
It was a big deal, and people were seriously worried about whether they were going to survive. Whether there’s going to be a nuclear holocaust or something. So, the stakes are really high.
And so, you know, Apollo was done in that context, and it became a national struggle on the scale of — for the people involved in it — like World War II. If you look at the oral histories that we have of people that were involved in it, or go talk to anybody who’s still around who was working at NASA during the Apollo period or working for one of our many contractors during the Apollo period, those folks saw themselves engaged in an international struggle. And they had to win.
To them, it was really like their version of World War II. You know, they were a new generation, but they were all young — most of them were pretty young and hadn’t been involved in World War II. But, you know, they were carrying on the struggles their parents have done in World War II. And it was their — this was going to be their good war, where they were going to win. And the people were just completely focused on doing that.
So, you know, titanic struggle, right?
Well, it’s 50 years later now, right? Rocket science — sending people to space — yeah, it’s rocket science, but it’s not like cutting-edge rocket science anymore. We’ve done it for a number years and so it’s — the context is very different.
We now have a situation where NASA doesn’t have to lead everything because we have contractors out there who’ve been doing this stuff for us. We’re happy to let them run with the ball on lots of things and come up with great new ideas and develop new things.
We have lots of international partners. During Apollo NASA was involved with other countries. And a number of countries contributed significantly to the Apollo program in lots of ways. But now, through that and through the decades of collaboration and cooperation with international partners, those people are much, much more capable now and they can be true partners in our exploration to the Moon and beyond.
So, you know, the context is very different, and the budget context is different. We don’t have to — NASA isn’t a brand new organization. We’ve been around for 60-plus years now. We don’t have to build, you know, three centers in order to — I guess for Apollo we had to build Kennedy and Marshall and Stennis — actually four centers — and Johnson Space Center, basically had to be built in the 1960s. All that $25 billion In 1960s money that we spent on NASA was to build that capability and to seed research at universities. A lot of that money went out to universities to set up — to build buildings and laboratories, so that we’d have a workforce that could work on it.
Those things were all — that’s all been done now. So we don’t need quite that giant plus-up in money to make it happen like we did when we were starting from scratch basically, in 1961.
So, the context is very different, but I think the goals are very much the same in some ways. Not to prove that we’re better than the Soviet Union — because of course, we already proved that — but to do the other things that Kennedy talks about. You know, push the boundaries of understanding and exploration, to follow that drive that all humans have to find out what’s over the next hill and what’s beyond that. And to do all those things together a collaborative way —and a sustainable and consistent way — with, you know, commercial and international partners.
So Artemis is a very — very different in some ways, but in many ways it sort of captures the spirit of Apollo in terms of an appeal to a worthy goal that a great nation with great partners can accomplish together and push humanity’s future into the cosmos.
NARRATOR
When we look at the journey to the Moon and on to Mars, what is the biggest lesson that you take from NASA’s vast history?
BILL BARRY
I think probably the most important lesson we can take is a heavy dose of humility. It’s really important to understand the context of things, which is why I think history is important to NASA.
You can look at a chronology and say, “Yeah, these things happened in a sequence.” And you can look at a list of lessons learned. Lessons learned are great because they’re good way to digest things, right?
But a good narrative history that immerses you in what was happening — you know, if I was a program manager and I was starting a new project, I’d read program management histories because I’d want to know, what did the other guys do wrong? What did they do right? How did they do it?
And you can get some of that fromlessons learned or other things, but a real good narrative history that puts you in the shoes of the person making decisions? That’s a really key thing. So, I think it’s important to really understand history, and that’s part of the purpose of the History Office is to get out there and get those lessons out.
But, but if I were to draw one sort of large lesson from Apollo for Artemis and the future, I think a dose of humility is really important, because space is really, really hard. And just when you think you’ve got it, something will come up and bite you.
The Apollo 1 fire is, to me, the premier example of that. Everybody in the Apollo program was concerned that we would lose astronauts in space. And so, they’re focused on, “We’re going to be as safe as possible in space. We’re going to make sure the spacecraft is capable.” And it hardly crossed anybody’s mind that ground training and ground things could actually be problematic. And so they didn’t really think about it.
And we put a crew of three men in the Apollo 1 capsule with no way to open a hatch, 100% oxygen [atmosphere inside the craft] pressurized above normal PSI. So they can’t open the hatch, high-pressure oxygen, and in a spacecraft that had all kinds of flammable items in it.
There were reports that — before the fire happened — there were reports from a number of people saying, “Too many flammable items in the cockpit. We need to do something about this.” There were worries about the wiring in the spacecraft. There were some people concerned about the 100% oxygen atmosphere. There were people concerned about the hatch, and the counter argument was, “Well, the hatch blew off on Gus Grissom’s Mercury flight, so we want to make sure that the hatch can’t blow off by accident.” We solved that problem, but came up with another one. They weren’t even thinking about it.
And after the fire, it was like a collective forehead slap by everybody at NASA, and they said, “Holy mackerel. Putting a crew in a situation that’s extremely dangerous, and we just didn’t even see it coming.”
And so that’s the thing where I think history is. The lesson that we need to draw is that just when you think you’ve got everything wired, and you’re all set, and you’re feeling pretty confident and that stuff, that’s when you need to have somebody going around poking at things saying, “Well, what about this? And what about that?”
And you need to take those things seriously. And you can’t just say, “Oh, stop causing trouble. Sit down and be quiet.” That’s the worst thing you can do. You need to have a little dose of humility and be willing to dig in into the sometimes hard, painful and expensive solutions to problems that are all too easy to ignore.
NARRATOR
And last question, if a member of the public is super-interested in NASA history, what’s the best resource to get them started?
BILL BARRY
Well, of course www.nasa.gov will get you to the history site. We actually have a dedicated history page at history.nasa.gov. That’s a great resource for people who want to do a deep dive and do research on history. If you want sort of basic NASA history, nasa.gov is the place to go. But for people who are — students doing papers or people who are looking for NASA history publications, the History Program has published over 220 books since our creation, and all those are available free in PDF format for download and a number of other NASA publications that weren’t written by the History Office, but that we think of as important historic content. You can find those all available free online. And that’s a great place to go.
And we also have Twitter and Facebook accounts as well: @NASAhistory and NASA History on Facebook — get a daily dose of NASA history.
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NARRATOR
This season of “The Invisible Network” debuted in November of 2019. The podcast is produced by the Space Communications and Navigation program, or SCaN, out of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Episodes were written and recorded by me, Danny Baird, with editorial support from Matthew Peters. Our public affairs officers are Peter Jacobs of Goddard’s Office of Communications, Clare Skelly of the Space Technology Mission Directorate and Kathryn Hambleton of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.
Special thanks to Barbara Adde, SCaN Policy and Strategic Communications director, Rob Garner, Goddard Web Team lead, Amber Jacobson, communications lead for SCaN at Goddard, and all those who have leant their time, talent and expertise to making “The Invisible Network” a reality. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts of the episodes, visit NASA.gov/invisible. To learn more about the vital role that space communications plays in NASA’s mission, visit NASA.gov/SCaN.