Jim Mayberry

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In honor of our recent moon landing anniversary, we got on the line with Jim Mayberry, curator at the New Mexico Museum of Space History, to discuss the kinds of advancements we’ve made since the amazing days of the Apollo program over 40 years ago.

Where are we now in spaceflight, thanks to the Apollo program? Are you surprised at the speed with which we’ve advanced since then?
In terms of spaceflight, we have made great strides since Apollo, but the era of manned space exploration has definitely peaked. Until new technologies are created, human space flight will be quite limited, other than continued use of the ISS, in my opinion. I remember watching Apollo 17 blast off in 1972 – we all believed there would be colonies on the moon, if not Mars by now, so in my experience, our advances have fallen far short of the expectations of 1972.

Why do you think so many people believe the Moon landing was a hoax?
bq. Unfortunately a lot of people also think the Earth is flat and is orbited by the sun. Rejection of education is an age-old trait in America, but there have been conspiracy-theory minded people who have taken advantage of the gullible. The worst of these was the Fox ‘News’ special in 2000- I have to debunk it to this day. I Don’t know what their agenda is, but they had to know what they were showing was not true.

How were electronics and computers advanced during the Apollo program?
I’ve been told that the "CSM, the command module for Apollo, had as much computer power as one of today’s calculators, and the LEM, which landed on the moon, had as much as a digital watch. Luckily, the Apollo astronauts didn’t know enough to be scared. My understanding is that there were a lot of advances in both fields during the program.



What sort of technology is NASA developing now to usher in the next era of space flight and manned missions to other worlds?
Unfortunately, NASA is having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to manned flight – the old systems were not safe enough and the money is not there to develop anything truly new, which was behind the recent decision to scrap the Constellation/Orion project to return to the moon. As far as journeying to Mars, “Franklin Chang-Diaz”, one of our best astronauts, is working on an ion engine that might make that possible.

What is your impression of the commercialization of space? People like Richard Garriott as well as Virgin and Scaled Composites’, VSS Enterprise? How did Apollo get us there?
Since we are associated with the Spaceport being built by Virgin and other groups, we are very much in favor of the commercialization of space. I hope that beginning in a year or so, private companies will be shuttling astronauts and supplies to the ISS, so we don’t have to depend on the Russian Soyuz, which we will have to do after the Shuttle is retired.

I think the potential for commercial spaceflight is limitless myself. As far as Apollo’s connections, these new efforts are almost ‘UnApollo’ in their approach, as it was a massive program involving tens of thousands. I hope that some of the technologies developed for Apollo are being used, and I’m sure many in today’s space programs are still as appreciative of the heroism of the Apollo astronauts as everyone was in ’69.
 












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