#1677 Final Frontiers: Lewis and Clark and the American Space Program

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clay talks with veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who flew four Space Shuttle missions for a total of 53 days, 49 minutes in space. Clay outlined a list of issues related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06, including propulsion, navigation, food, waste management, record-keeping, and re-entry, and explained how Lewis and Clark addressed these dynamics. Then, Tom Jones explained how these concepts are applied in space. Topics included religious activity in space, romance in space, mutiny in space, the wonder of going where no man has gone before, recruitment, training, and re-entry. Tom Jones is the author of half a dozen books, including the acclaimed Skywalking: An Astronaut's Memoir. He believes we owe it to the four remaining lunar surface astronauts that we land again on the moon before the last of them dies. This episode was recorded on September 30, 2025.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone, it's Clay Jenkinson with this introduction to this week's podcast. This is
0:05.9	one of going to be one of my favorite programs ever. I just had an hour with Tom Jones,
0:12.1	the astronaut, and the all-American boy, Tom Jones. It's spent 58 days and 49 minutes in space
0:18.6	on four shuttle missions. Three space walks has written a number of
0:25.9	books, including Skywalking, an astronaut's memoir, which won the praise of the Wall Street
0:31.6	Journal, is one of the handful of greatest books on the space program. Ask the astronaut,
0:36.4	astonishing answers to questions, which I just read.
0:41.1	Space Shuttle Stories, first-hand astronaut accounts of all 135 missions and so on.
0:47.8	You can find him at all the usual sites, but if you can only find time for one of his books,
0:53.6	Skywalking is the one that I recommend.
0:56.0	He's an extraordinary man, straight up, all-American, no nonsense, forthcoming on every possible subject.
1:04.0	We talked about his life as an astronaut and the world of the Lewis and Carque Expedition.
1:10.0	How do you propel your vessels?
1:12.5	How do you choose your men? How do you report back? What kind of reentry issues to people have?
1:18.7	The question that I wanted to ask was, at any point in your training, did they say, I know this is
1:24.2	almost unthinkable, but at some point you meet an alien, another life form out there.
1:30.8	If there is a confrontation, as with Lewis and Karkin, the Lakota, or a really tense and uncertain first meeting, as with Lewis and the Shoshone leader, Camio, 8, were you at all trained even for an hour on this subject,
1:46.7	or was this just regarded as an impossibility and therefore not worth a moment's attention?
1:51.7	I'm fascinated by this. I was fascinated by so many of Tom's answers. I did not know, for example,
1:57.9	that he and two colleagues took communion in space.
2:04.4	I love that.
2:06.6	Buzz Aldrin did when he landed on the moon in 1969,
	...

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