The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guests: Jared Isaacman & Charlie Duke | 4/2/26

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, commonly referred to as NATO? Glenn breaks down the history of NATO's creation, what it was originally intended for, and how, somewhere along the way, the reasons for America's continued membership in NATO began to diminish. Retired NASA astronaut Charlie Duke, who was the youngest astronaut to ever walk on the moon, joins to discuss his reaction and thoughts on the Artemis II launch. Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor David Hanson joins to discuss the conflict with Iran, whether it was avoidable or inevitable, and what he thinks the outcome will be.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey, in today's podcast, you're going to get a lot of really good stuff, but there is no way to separate the best today because it's all so good and important. You might want to listen to the full podcast, but here's the reduced version, and you're going to get, oh, so liberating and so great. My message to Europe about NATO, what I think we need to say to Europe and NATO, that the president just won't or can't. Well, I don't want to count him out. He might someday. But I said it today. Also, Charlie Duke, he was the youngest guy ever to walk on the moon, one of the last guys to walk on the moon. We talk about the moon launch and its importance.

Also, Jared Isaacman, he is an amazing, I mean, he is almost an Elon Musk, and he is now the head of NASA. We talk about the launch and the importance of the launch. People don't understand what's really happening. This is not 1968. This is not Apollo 11. This is an entirely new economy and new vision. Don't miss a second of today's show. Here's the edited podcast.

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And thanks for standing with us. Now let's get to work. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. In such amazing times. And yesterday I was thinking, you know, 15 years ago, I remember doing a monologue saying, look at the minds, the intellects that were our founding fathers. They were the greatest. I'm Benjamin Franklin.

We have a paper from the London Times back in the day where Benjamin Franklin had been on a boat for three months, going over there to talk to the king, and they said, hey, he's been doing these electricity experiments with lightning. We think he has a lightning gun. If you live in London, be careful because he might just try to use his lightning gun to burn London

down. I mean, he was so far ahead of things at the time. And Jefferson was the same way, and I thought, where are the great minds? I want to tell you, we are living through remarkable times right now. The brains, the talent,

And the good people that are actually working to change and save our country is, is, I don't, I don't think we would, I don't think we would have survived if, if Elon Musk hadn't have changed things at X so we could actually have freedom of speech again. And Jared Isaacman is an amazing American. He is the NASA administrator, the new NASA administrator. He is a guy who is a private citizen. He was also one of the first private citizens in space, the first private citizen to perform a spacewalk.

He ran Dracon and Shift 4 really successful private businesses, and now is making the changes needed at NASA that is going to change everything in the world. And he joins me now. How are you, sir? Doing great, Glenn. How are you? I am really, I am really. really great. What an amazing day yesterday. I talked to somebody who was with you and watched you

and said he was very stoic. Everybody else was cheering and clapping and you just smiled there towards the end. You were very stoic. It had to be, at least it was for me, because I watched the Challenger explode. It was terrifying all the way. It was exciting, but I was worried about every little thing. You know more than I do. What was going through your mind? Yeah. Well, I have to tell you, being strapped into the rocket, being on top of it, is a lot less stressful than being on Earth and being responsible for it. So, you know, those astronauts embarking on Artemis II for sure are undertaking the opening act in America's great return to the moon. But they also really represent, you know, kind of the spearhead of America's space program right now. So there is an awful lot on this

mission, and I understand that assent, which is what you witnessed yesterday, it's just one part of the story, right? It was a very clean launch. There's no doubt about it, but we have nine more days to go until they splash down off the West Coast of the United States. So, Jared, can you explain? Because I am shocked at just the responses from some of my tweets, the people who say, this is a waste of money, this makes no different. this is, you know, we didn't go in the first place, all the way to, this is just America's ego trip. Can you explain clearly to the average person why this is not the Apollo, you know, we're not going to get tang out of this, that this actually will change everything as we know it,

the space economy alone. Oh, for sure, Glenn, thanks for the question. Honestly, we could be talking about this all afternoon. Like, we don't hit the pause button on progress here in this country. Like, we continue to move forward. You know, are the arguments good that we have a lot of other problems and hardships we should be dealing with? Sure, absolutely. You know what NASA's budget is?

It's a quarter percent of the discretionary budget. I think that is a small price to pay to go out and see what we, you know, what we might learn, what we might discover that could have scientific potential, economic potential, geez, national security potential. I mean, the high ground of space matters right now. And where we are going, we are going to the moon, but it's going to be different this time. No doubt we are picking up after the pioneers from the Apollo era, but we're going back to stay. We're building a moon base, and we are going to turn that moon base into a scientific and technological proving ground. We are going to test things you can't do on Earth. You can't do in lower Earth orbit

where the International Space Station is. What we will learn there will help us someday go to Mars. This is our destiny to go out and explore the solar system. I mean, it's part of our DNA. We've crossed all the seas. We've climbed all the mountains. We've discovered all the islands. Well, you know where the next grand adventure is.

It's out there in space. So, Jared, I think that we are missing a good portion of the American people. I would not be surprised if it was only 20% of the American people knew. about this launch yesterday, which is a crying shame. And then people don't really understand it. And when it's couched as this is just about discovery and science and crossing into the unknown, I don't think it connects with people as much as actually talking about a spaceport, about how this is the future, this and AI, that is the future.

of the economy. Am I wrong? No, there's absolutely no doubt. We all know that a orbital and eventually a lunar economy is inevitable. I mean, we're going to be 3D printing with the lunar regolith at some point in time in the future. You could be mining helium-3 on the moon, which can generate a more efficient fusion reaction. I mean, right now, energy is everything, right? So there is absolutely economic potential out there, but certainly scientific as well, right?

knowledge is absolutely power. And then, look, I think an inherent component of everything we do at NASA is also inspiration. I guarantee you, after this mission, there are going to be more kids dressing up as astronauts for Halloween that are going to want to grow up and contribute to this adventure and take humankind farther. You know, what price do you put on that? So we're going up in Artemis 3, I think next year, right? and what is that one for?

So Artemis 4, we actually land on the moon, right? Right. So we are getting back to the basics, the formula we used in the 1960s that helped us achieve the near impossible then, which is we're undertaking these missions in phases, learning to inform the next one. So right now, Artemis 2 is testing the spacecraft.

And just to give you an update, those four astronauts right now are getting one heck of a view in a highly elliptical orbit. So at its peak, right now they're approximately 43,000 miles away from Earth, right? And at its low point, they swing around extremely fast, very low to Earth, about 115 miles above Earth. And they're going to stay there until about another 12 hours or so. We're going to have a meeting and make sure all the systems are good. And then we're going to send them on the trans lunar injection where they will go around the moon farther into space than any humans have ever gone before.

This is all a flight test for this vehicle and rocket. That's Artemis II. Artemis 3 in 2027 is going to be very Apollo 9-esque, where we will rendezvous the spacecraft Orion with the landers, but we're going to do it in Earth orbit, where we're close to home. And we're going to get very comfortable with the integrated operations, and then in 2028, you're going to have Artemis 4, which will actually land mass astronauts on the moon.

In parallel, though, we are building the moon base. Starting in early 2027, literally on a NASA moon base, website, you are going to see robotic uncrewed landings on a near monthly cadence as we start testing out mobility and power and navigation, you know, surface, surface improvement, scientific experiments, tech demonstrations, like actually working with the water, ice on the moon. We're going to do that in parallel, building the base and when our astronauts arrive, they've got a lot of equipment to work with. So can we talk about why that's important to have a lot of equipment up there? Well, I mean, we've never, you know, we've never inhabited another celestial

body. And I'll tell you, and this is remarkable, and you know this, of course, for more than 25 years, there has been a continuous American presence in low Earth orbit at the International Space Station. So if you're 25 years old or younger, there hasn't been a time you've been alive on this planet where there weren't American astronauts orbiting above you. But if you're going to put astronauts in space and keep them alive, the best place to do it is low Earth orbit. You've been, You've got the atmosphere and Earth's magnetosphere there that protect you from radiation and micrometeorets and orbital debris. But where you want to go next is to the surface, the surface, the moon, where you can interact

with the regolith, you can build habitation, you can cover the habitation with regalids for protection against meteorids and radiation. You can work with the water ice. And if you can work with the water ice on the moon, you can make hydrogen, you can make oxygen, and those are key propellants. And why does that matter? because when you send astronauts to Mars someday, you're going to need to make your own propellant to come home.

Better to prove that out on the moon when you're three days away than on Mars when you're nine months away. But we're also, we're not that far ahead of China. I mean, Russia's way behind, other nations are way behind. But I know a lot of nations that do not want to do business with China are rushing to us now and saying, can we be a part of your space program? Because it's going to be one,

one or the other, whoever gets there first is going to get the prime spot unless we have, you know, loaded a lot of boxes in that area. And the leadership matters, does it not? It does matter. And I'll tell you, that's changed under this administration. You know, and under the prior administration, you'd be shocked, but a lot of our international partners were actually considering and having discussions with the Chinese because they thought America's space program has lost its way. That's changing. Would we have, now we have it?

Would we have launched it? Would we have launched yesterday had Trump not? And I don't want to make that, because it's impossible for you to answer this about you. But if he hadn't have made it possible for you to go in and you make the changes that needed to be made in the last year, would we have launched yesterday? Well, I'd be very honest with you. I'd be very honest with you. Artimus 2, for sure, would have launched at some point this year, you know, almost regardless of who is the president. The question is, would we have an achievable plan to actually get back to the moon in the next, you know, a couple of years? The answer is no. Without the President Trump's national space policy and without the investments from the one big, beautiful bill, we would not have the mandate or the

resources to increase moon rocket production, launch again in 2027, that critical risk buy-down mission of rendezvousing the spacecraft with the landers, we would not have had achievable path back to the surface. We certainly would not have a moon base. So one last question. We're going to run out of time. I could talk to you all day. I am a small government guy,

but I also love NASA. But I want to make sure that we're smart, and I think sometimes government, almost always, just becomes big and lumbering and can't get out of its own way. I like the fact that SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other private companies are partnering. Do you see in the end NASA as kind of, would be running our military and anything government needs to do, but more of the port and then we're charging these other companies to come and use the port,

but our government is kind of in charge of the big port to space? Or do you see NASA as the full thing? So I think that the taxpayers all contribute into NASA for us to do the near impossible with no company or other government agency or other nation is capable of doing. Now, that's not always been the case. There are times, you know, when you lose your way and you're doing a lot of things to make a lot of people happy and what you find out is that as an agency, you're actually competing with the SpaceX or the Blue Origins.

That's not how it is supposed to work. This is why we are recalibrating back to doing the near impossible. We announced two weeks ago, space reactor one, freedom, a nuclear power and propulsion spacecraft. It's an interplanetary spacecraft that we will launch in 2028. There are no humans on board. It will carry the skyfall scientific payload, which is three helicopters, if you will, that are going to fly around the red planet and explore it. That's what NASA is supposed to do.

Nuclear power and propulsion. Unbelievable. SpaceX and Blue Origin. You know, NASA figured out the chemical propulsion game a long time ago. We handed it off to industry. SpaceX and Blue Origin through competitive dynamics, have improved the capabilities. You have reusability now. It costs less.

Great. That helps us in our mission to do more science and discovery, to build a moon base. But it means we need to shift focus and resources to doing what they can't do. You know, there's no business case for nuclear reactors and nuclear power and propulsion in space. That is something that NASA should be doing. and when we figure that out someday, if there's a business case, we can hand it off the industry, and then we'll work on our fusion drives because someday we're going to want to actually be able to have a mission to another star system. So NASA never goes at this alone. We didn't go alone in the 60s.

We work with our commercial partners and international partners to do the near impossible. Jared, it's really exciting to know you and an honor to know you, and you are exactly the right guy for the job at this time. Thank you so much. And congratulations to everybody on the team all over the world that has put Arnhemus up and we will continue to pray for the astronauts. Thank you. Thank you. We'll keep you posted. I was glad to see you at the launch yesterday. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, Jerry. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. All right, so let me just start with the basic. What is NATO? What is NATO?

Well, there was a time right after the guns fell silent in 1945 and we realized the Atlantic Ocean didn't divide it. us, it actually binds us. And we had a common enemy. We have, you know, we had fascism and we had communism. And out of the ashes of World War II came this North Atlantic treaty organization, NATO. Wasn't just a military pact, but a promise that we would stand together against tyranny if anybody tried to overrun the West and try to kill Western civilization again, we would do that. And because we're like this, we decided we would help repair Europe because you had nothing. It was over for Europe. And so, yes, we're imperfect.

Sometimes we're loud. Sometimes we're often unrefined. But we had a big wallet. We opened our wallet. We opened our hearts. We opened our factories. And we rebuilt Europe. Okay.

And we were proud to do it. proud to do it. But then something happened along the way. A couple of things. One, you just expected us to keep doing it. And then two, you decided that you were going to be an empire builder. 1956, this is when our special alliance really started to fall apart. It was the Suez Canal crisis. The Suez Crisis is it's called Britain and France, alongside with Israel, moved on Egypt and they just assumed that America was going to fall in line.

Well, our president at the time was General Dwight D. Eisenhower and he was like, no, no, we're not going to get involved in this. In fact, we have to prevent you from doing this. And he didn't do it to weaken Europe. He tried to do it to save Europe. The world was watching.

The Cold War was tightening. And the West couldn't look like it was an, you know, an empire clinging to its past. and that is the moment that the relationship changed. And it should have become a partnership of equals, but it didn't. It just got worse and worse and worse for us. So Europe, let's discuss this special relationship that you're so worried about now. And I want you to know, I'm just one American.

I'm speaking for myself. And I actually like Europe, or at least what it was, not what you are becoming. and quite honestly you might feel the same way about us and that's fine but let me at least help you understand where many Americans are coming from back in the 1980s we continued to pay for your almost your entire defense Ronald Reagan stood before you and warned do not become dependent on Russian energy don't trade short-term comfort for long-term vulnerability he said it plainly and repeatedly. You heard him, but what did you do? You built pipelines anyway. And we were dumb enough to go, well, we're going to continue to defend you while you're doing business with your enemy.

This is when the consequences came. When Russia moved again, America stepped in again. Recently, we spent political capital at home against the will of the American people. None of us wanted to be involved in Ukraine. We still can't figure out how that's our war, okay? But we sent billions upon billions upon billions of dollars in aid more than you did. Weapons, intelligence, logistics, support. We spent our treasure in the illusion that we were partners. But I guess in some ways, we were partners. I mean, I guess. I mean, we spent billions of dollars so the Ukrainian elite could buy Italy's Ferraris. So Paris could sell its beloved Couture. So Monaco could rake in the dollars on its gaming tables. You're welcome, Europe. And in a moment of our own insanity, we actually paid

the pension for the Ukrainian government workers. We put ourselves deeper in debt for your security and our hypothetical security. Okay. How is this a problem for America. But I want to thank you for thanking us so much and repaying. Oh, no, no, just like always, you never repay us, at least not in cash. Instead, you take our hard-earned money from American taxpayers and you squander it. We can do that ourselves, quite frankly. We're pretty good at it. We don't need you to help us. We, you know, also something that really bothers me. We seem to worry more about the rapes of your own daughters and mothers and sisters on the streets of Ukraine, and Denmark and Norway and Great Britain and France than your governments do.

Why do we care more about that than your government does? Maybe it's because your government believes that the American cash machine is always going to be there and they think you're dumb enough just to allow them to continue to buy your vote. But you're not that dumb and neither are we. You know, we wonder why they should care about who's raping your citizens when it seems at least they're so busy raping the American people. We have hemorrhaged treasure in Ukraine, a country that honestly means nothing to our national security in my opinion, but everything to yours.

And we did it not because it was popular at home. It's because apparently we still believe. perhaps stubbornly in the idea that the West stood together on something, that we were all together trying to fight the bad guys, the bullies, the bloodthirsty. But let's be honest about what together actually has become to mean. America spends, you hesitate. America deploys, you debate. America warns, you delay. Or just walk right through it. And then when the American people hire somebody, Donald Trump, who will actually say what you're all thinking in your own countries and point to the problems and then try to solve them in our country, the criticism comes back from your leaders

that America is rude. Yep, we are. Sorry, we don't have tea in the afternoon. America is brash. Yep, that's what got us over here and made us cross the mountains. Now it's America is somehow the problem. No, no, no. Not going to stand for that.

We're not the problem. The problem is this. A partnership where one side carries the weight indefinitely. That's not a partnership. That's a very special alliance. But one we shouldn't be in. Alliances are tested in moments that cost both sides something. And recently, when the stakes were not theoretical,

when the stakes were immediate, you couldn't even grant the United States your special alliance something that would have cost you nothing, nothing. When the moment comes that requires a smidge of clarity and courage, you couldn't even agree to open your own airspace to the very ally that has carried your burden for decades. We didn't ask you for troops. We didn't ask you for treasure. We asked if our our planes could borrow your sky for a few minutes. Sky that would have allowed us to strike the future capability of nuclear-tipped missiles. Missiles that have pointed north instead of elsewhere would have reached your cities,

your capital, your people. And your leaders have the balls to say, that threat wasn't real. Really? Really? asked Mr. Starmor to explain the missile that Iran launched at us that traveled 4,000 miles. Gee, I could have hit Paris, France. But it didn't, so it must not exist. And while we're here speaking plainly, let's talk about oil for a second. Because Donald Trump said, go get your own oil.

And this is one American that says, yeah, yeah. And I like Europe. I really like Europe. But I am sick and tired of this. For decades, you have enjoyed energy that was cheaper. I mean, not cheaper than here because most of your money, it's all in taxes. But you have cheaper oil than you do now. Why?

Not because of smart policy, but because the United F-in-States Navy patrolled the sea lanes. Who was it that shot the Somali pirates in the head? You guys or us? Who confronted the terrorists in the straight of our moves? You or us. We absorb the cost of keeping global trade flowing so your economy can run without interruption. That stability is not free, gang.

It was paid for in American ships, American lives, and American dollars. So yes, yes, your gasoline, your petrol is going to cost you more now because of the short-sighted politicians. and you know it. You're not with them. You know it. And by the way, you think your fuel costs are high now? Most of that cost is tax so they can house and feed and care for the very extremist that came to destroy you. Remember, NATO was to stop anyone who was trying to destroy the West. You're importing them as are we. But we're at least trying to wake up and stop it. By the way, wait until you see what your taxes. do now that you actually have to raise an army to protect yourself,

if you even have enough natural-born citizens that still believe your country is worth fighting for, ask Germany how that's working out. We're cousins. It doesn't have to be this way. But your politicians chose to slap your partner across the face while still expecting us to guard your front door, your back door, and all your windows. And we understand why. You and I both know. Many of your cities are now dealing with something your leaders are unwilling to name because they're chicken.

This is an ideology that doesn't believe in the West, doesn't believe in your values, doesn't believe in your civilization. It doesn't believe it should even endure or be there at all. It's the same ideology that we are now confronting directly, openly, in Iran. and your leaders hesitate, not because they don't see it, but because they fear what it means to admit it. But you know what? Denial doesn't neutralize the danger. It invites it. So Europe, here's where at least this American stands.

We are not walking away from the world. We like you. We want to have a relationship with you. But we are so done pretending that an alliance is healthy when it's all one. decided, where we're always paying the bill. We're done pretending that friendship requires silence. Real, real friendship, real relationship says, you got a problem, dude, you got to solve this. We're trying to help you. And we are done pretending that reality can be negotiated. This American says it's time for America because we're in a bad situation too. We need to defend our

interests. We will confront threats as we see them, and we will write our future deliberately, defiantly, maybe a little roughly at times, but with the belief that tomorrow is not to be feared, it's something to build. And honestly, truly, truly, I pray that you will get politicians that will stand with us in that work. But understand this. If you continue to to refuse to look into the mirror, if you refuse to name what's happening within your own borders, if you continue to depend on others while resenting them for it, the story we once wrote together, page by page, sacrifice by sacrifice, it's not going to end in triumph for you. It will have you ending as a cautionary tale. But make no mistake, while you're forced to put

your pen down, America will keep writing. You're listening to the best of Glenn Beck. Need a little more? Check out the full show podcasts. Anywhere you download podcasts. Let me go to Charlie Duke, retired NASA astronaut, youngest person to walk on the moon. And Charlie, I don't know if I ever told you this. You are the guy I remember as an eight-year-old kid watching Walk on the Moon. I don't remember the Moon landing, but I remember sitting in class. watching you walk on the moon and drive the lunar rover and everything else. So thank you for those memories.

Well, thank you very much. That was Apollo 16 with John Young. We had a great time. And you were up there. You know, I saw, let me let me start here, Charlie. You went up there for 71 hours. You did something that I think only what 19 astronauts have ever done. And that is stand on the face of the.

the moon. And there are so many people that say we didn't go. And yesterday, as I was covering the launch and posting things, I was astounded at the number of people that said one of two things. This is a hoax. We never went. Or this is such a waste of money. And, and, you know, we were in a race to get to the moon. And it was a lot about national pride back in the 60s and the 70s. We were trying to beat the Russians, but we got a lot of things out of it. But this time, going back and staying there is entirely different. It is good for America. Is it not?

I think so. Certainly, you know, after so long, it's good to go back. The knowledge that we gained from the moon from Apollo has been extraordinary. 600 pounds of moon rocks, all experiments we left up. there that have been operating they've operated for about four or five years and then NASA finally had so much data they shut them off but it the evidence is overwhelming that we really did land on the moon and and so I think going back again eventually done a land like this time on the South Pole will be extraordinary

beneficial for us to see the terrain down there and the possibility of liquid of some sort down on the South Pole region. So we don't know if it's water, we're just assuming that that's water, that ice? Well, it, we, years ago, we sent a satellite into, it crashed into the moon, and it was followed by another one that took some sort of experimental package, and the debris that came out was analyzed and it was uh looked like water vapor i guess to them and so the the supposition is if there is water on the moon it's at the south pole frozen as ice so we're going to go down and see uh eventually and uh land down there if if that's true that means we can make oxygen right

and you can live there right well yeah Yeah, to build a moon base is, I think, one of the plans in the future, and probably down there at the South Pole, the sun angle is low most of the time, about two degrees above the horizon. So you get deep shadows, but you get real bright sunlight as the moon turns around. once every 28 days. So anyway, I think that's where we're playing on landing. And eventually, I think it's a good idea to build a moon base up there

and start seeing how we can use some of the resources that are on the moon that are readily available. I will tell you, I have Jared Isaacman on with me in about an hour from now. spent time. He's the head of NASA now. He's a businessman. Uh, he was one of the first pilots to go up in space commercially. Uh, he's an amazing guy. Um, and we were talking about what we are going to be doing with, beginning with Artemis 3 and Artemis 4. Uh, and it's, we are going to move rapidly. Um, and it, it, it changes it, it is, uh, it just changes everything. It just changes everything. Economically, it changes everything. And one of the things I like, about this now is, you know, back in the 1960s and 70s, only government could pull this off.

But now we're not just the government doing it. It's SpaceX and it's Bezos and it's other countries that are also involved. And we are looking to build like a space port. We would be the ones that would have the giant port, if you will, that is shipping everything up and down from space, which is extraordinarily. important. I agree. A moon base, for me, is the final objective to have a permanent station on the moon. We did it in South America, the Arctic, Antarctic, and it's worked down there in that hostile environment, and we can do the same thing up on the moon eventually. And, you know, with vehicles that we can bring up there through the lunar rovers and, experiments packages that we could in place. We find, I think, a tremendous opportunity as a science station on the lunar surface.

Can you tell me yesterday, I was watching it, and when they took off, I thought of these guys, and it's different than it was in your age, because usually you guys went up once, and then somebody else had a turn. These guys have been up several times, not this far, but they have been up in space multiple times. And so I think it kind of changed it a little bit to where, you know, it's not their first time experiencing a launch. But as I was watching it, Charlie,

I because I watched, and I know you did too and so many others, because I watched the Challenger, until that thing was fully separated and at the envelope of space, I felt weird cheering. When it first started, I was like, yes, yes, and it was so exciting. And then I saw that plume of smoke and it reminded me of the Challenger and you are just never, ever safe. What were you feeling when they took off?

Do you go through that where you're worried about things that could go wrong? Well, both they and us in Apollo, we had an automatic abort system. that big rocket up on the top of the spacecraft was your escape. And if the automatic system sensed an explosion, it was going to fire that rocket and lift the spacecraft off to a safe area. And that was automatic up through a minute or so, if I remember. And then after that you went to manual so that the commander could command it. could command it if you wanted to.

And eventually you'd jettisoned it because you didn't need it. But anyway, everything went well, and they have, it was a design very similar to Apollo and state systems and stuff like that. So I felt very confident. The only thing, of course, they have solar panels and we had fuel cells. and solar panels are more reliable, and I think, and so they've gone into that, whereas, you know, in Apollo 13, we had an oxygen tank to explode, we lost all the fuel cells. So we had a crippled spacecraft, and fortunately, with the lunar module, we could get them back on the lunar module,

but that was a major work of mission control who saved the day. So when you went up, you didn't circle the earth for a full day. Right now, they're not headed towards the moon. They're orbiting right now for 24 hours where they're just checking all of the systems to make sure nothing goes wrong because it's a new system. It's Artemis. And the first time humans have flown in Artemis. So they're doing that. You didn't have to do that.

But then on the way to the moon, what is that like headed for five days? just going to the moon? Well, we orbited for one and a half revolutions, and over Australia we accelerated to escape velocity, and we were on our way. Then we had to retrieve the lunar module after we got out of orbit and on our way. And it was, you know, 72-hour trip

was the way it was designed so that we had arrived, at the moon at the proper velocity and still have enough fuels to get into orbit and then you get out of orbit. So that's the way it was designed as a 72-hour trip. And if you could get, you can get to the moon in 14 hours, but you're going so fast. You didn't, in Apollo, you didn't have enough fuel to slow down and get in orbit. So that's why they shot you out ahead for, in a 72-hour trip. That is, is there any sense of speed in space?

Not once you get out of orbit is not. In Earth orbit, of course, you look down and you're just whizzing across the surface. And, you know, you go across the United States in 20 minutes. And so you get a very big sensation of motion in orbit. it. But on the way to the moon, you just see the earth receding and their moon growing. And so it's very slow. And you, you don't sense your velocity. That's what I'm trying to say. Right. Yeah, yeah. They're making a big deal that we're going farther than we've ever gone in deep space. We're going, I think, 5,000 miles past where we have been before. Right. Is that a big deal?

Why are we doing that? Well, that's just the way the orbit is designed, and I think we're going out there to see the back side of the moon, the whole of the backside. We've never seen human eyes. Haven't we flown around that? I mean, when Apollo went down, the person up in the capsule was, go ahead. But we flew around it, but we were only 170 miles above the moon. And so you just have a thin strip of the back side that you sit. along the equator.

They're going to be 7,000 miles out, and they're going to have a view of the whole backside. I don't know what the sun angle is going to be, and that might be some of it in darkness, but it's going to be a spectacular view from back there. You see the moon, and then beyond that, you'll see the earth, and so it's going to be a spectacular view from back there. So we have no idea what the backside actually.

We know what a strip of it looks like, but we have no idea what the rest of it looks like. Well, no, I think there's been some satellite photographs from back there. So I think we have a pretty good idea of what most of it looks like. But I can't answer that specifically. I know that in Apollo, the maximum altitude we were, on the back side was about 170 miles above it. So you just saw a thin sliver of the backside. And now from that distance, 6,000 miles ago have the hole of the backside visible.

But I think the sun angle is going to be such it's going to be from Earth. It's going to be about a half moon. So you'll see about half the backside in sunlight and the rest in sort of dark shadow or dark. So we'll see how it all looks. It's going to be, they'll be on their way soon, and that's going to be a pretty spectacular event. The only trouble is they're not going into orbit. They're just going to swing back 6,000 miles and come back.

How frustrating is it? Charlie, how frustrating is that to be that close and not land? It's got to be terrible. It would be a very first place. frustrating thing. We were in orbit and an hour before we'd land madingly and the other spacecraft reported a major problem which caused them abort and you can imagine to disappoint a one hour before we would land on the moon and they're going to tell us to come home. Fortunately mission control

saved the day and it took them seven hours to get us back to landing but they did it. And I, you know, I'm a great expositor of the mission control. They saved the day on every Apollo. They were really good. Charlie, it is an honor to know you and be able to call you friend. Thank you so much for talking to us. I appreciate it. God bless you. And God bless you, too, Glenn. I really enjoy knowing you and enjoy your program. Have a great day. Happy Easter. bet.