Apollo 11 and the Woman Who Helped Get It Home

Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

The Planetary Society

Science, Technology

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Poppy Northcutt was a pioneer—the first woman to work as an engineer in Apollo Mission Control. The program she helped to create got the astronauts back to Earth. Fifty years later, she sits down with Mat Kaplan for a look back. They are joined by JPL planetary scientist Rosaly Lopes who was inspired to become a STEM professional by Poppy. You’ll also hear Apollo moonwalkers Buzz Aldrin and Charlie Duke at a 50th anniversary celebration, along with Casey Dreier’s introduction to The Planetary Society’s comprehensive Apollo at 50 resource. And we’ll get a LightSail 2 update from Bruce Betts. Learn more about all of this week’s topics at: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0717-2019-poppy-northcutt-apollo.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Celebrating Apollo with a woman who helped get the astronauts home this week on planetary radio.
0:07.0	Welcome, I'm at Kaplan, of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our
0:17.0	solar system and beyond.
0:19.0	Poppy Northcutt was the only female engineer working in Apollo Mission Control from Apollo 8
0:25.9	through Apollo 13. Wait till you hear my extended conversation with her. It's
0:31.4	coming right after we hear from a couple of moonwalkers. And later
0:35.3	Casey dryer will tell you how you can join the celebration and learn more about
0:39.6	those amazing missions at planetary.org. Rousbets has another light sale update for us as we near the time when the little Cubesat will
0:48.6	spread its wings.
0:50.6	We'll start our 50th anniversary party with a little shindig thrown on Saturday, July 13th at the
0:57.1	Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.
1:00.5	The one the only Buzz Aldrin right here.
1:10.0	Thank you.
1:11.0	While there were other astronauts honored that evening, there's no question that Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo
1:16.2	11 lunar module pilot and Moon Walker, was the guest of honor.
1:20.1	I could give you a number of examples where I ended up being one of the most fortunate people
1:29.8	because it didn't look like it was going to come by way being an astronaut.
1:36.8	Charlie Duke was on stage with Buzz.
1:39.1	He was the Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 16 in 1972 and became the 10th of only 12 humans so far who have left footprints on another world.
1:50.0	I stepped on to the moon and it was like a little kid at Christmas and birthday all
1:57.3	rolled into one I was so excited.
1:59.7	I'm on the moon, I'm on the moon.
	...

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