Mondo Cult Presents Walter Cronkite Apollo 11 Interview with Robert A. Heinlein & Arthur C. Clarke

This video is part of the "Mondo Heinlein" celebration of Mondo Cult Magazine Online:
www.MondoCult.com
www.mondocult.com/articles/Hei...
On July 20, 1969, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite interviewed the two most famous science-fiction authors whose work had inspired a generation of scientists and engineers to attempt the moon landing.
Robert A. Heinlein wrote the 1947 novel Rocket Ship Galileo that Heinlein participated in the adaptation and filming into the 1950 George Pal movie Destination Moon.
Arthur C. Clarke had described communication satellites in a 1945 article so precisely that if he had applied for a patent it most likely would have been granted. The year before the Apollo 11 moon landing the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Clarke had co-written with director Stanley Kubrick, described a future in which humans had established a moon base.
Walter Cronkite in addition to being CBS's signature face of news was a genuine space enthusiast.
Walter Cronkite sits in CBS's New York City studio with Arthur C. Clarke,
Bill Stout begins the Heinlein interview sitting in front of TV cameras at North American Rockwell in Downey, California.
Note when Heinlein says, "We are about to make that one step from Tranquility Base in a matter of minutes now." Heinlein says this on CBS before Neil Armstrong says from the moon, "One small step."

[@Sombrafox1]

I never thought I would hear Mr. Heinleins voice. Thank you for posting this.

[@FlaSheridn]

Ricky Joya There are some other recordings available; the best I've found so far is his “This I Believe.” That and others are listed at www.sffaudio.com/?p=17220

[@GregDAgostino13]

Thanks so much for posting this, I've been waiting 35+ years to see it. Never had the opportunity to see Mr. Heinlein speak before; this is a treasure.

[@austingrisham753]

Such genuine optimism.......Clarke and Heinlein were both low key guys but you can see the genuine enthusiasm and positive energy these guys had.... wish you saw that today

[@Lazarus0357]

OHMYGOD, to be able to see and listen to the Master! And Mr. Clarke to, indeed. When I finish listening to this clip I'll run to the bookcase to start re-re-re-rereading "Time Enough for Love". Regards

[@G0K3001]

I just found this, Thank You! RH was a huge part of my youth. My imagination was fueled and encouraged by his his plots, to this day there are remnants of his writings embedded in my mind. I see them in our culture, society and sciences.

[@slipperyjim1497]

Like many people here I grew up reading Heinlein so this video was a treat. I knew he was on the broadcast but I never thought of searching for it on KZbin. Amazing stuff.

[@chuck1prillaman]

I remember this day and the great feeling of happiness and optimism at school, at the grocery, everywhere. We were complacent with news of success. ("tired of winning"?) But even then, this was undeniably awesome. In a few years, the cretins and troglodytes will no longer hold power and we will resume our advance.

[@jneilschulman]

Charles Martel: Your first statement contradicts your second. Unmanned drops of preparatory materiel before a first human Mars landing is in fact a proposal for human travel in space.

[@johnrobinson4445]

Happy to see Heinlein (and Clarke) but rather sad to see how old he looked. He had just turned a mere 62 a couple weeks earlier. Fragile health.

[@sonofalbasteelman3842]

+John Robinson That's right, he doesn't look too good. He seems to be fighting for breath in places. Then I remembered he got pensioned out of the navy for pulmonary tuberculosis, so that might explain that. Suffers from a stammer, too.

[@johnrobinson4445]

+Son of Alba Steelman Indeed, he suffered from stuttering in his youth and worked hard to overcome it, apparently. He was truly a remarkable man. I don't share his politics in some ways, but he was an artistic genius.

[@matthewfike4491]

Thank you for posting this.

[@deoppressoli-bear2600]

Heinlein underestimated the capacity of human beings to lose interest in the exploration of space. Why should we go to Mars? More than any other reason, to reignite the passion for discovery.

[@johnrobinson4445]

+Jim Funkhouser I wonder if people lost interest because we simply didn't establish a colony there. If we could have left people there while the main crew came back....Maybe shuttling material back and forth from Earth to Moon orbit. People are interested most in people. It started out as a tech job that sold itself but then it became a sales job and no salesmen were on the project lol. Heinlein might agree.

[@mikeshearman8370]

I don't believe it's a case of humans losing interest but more of a case of our media purposely ignoring space flight, engineering, and further manipulating the masses into meaningless trivial nonsense. Our media has changed for the worse since the days of Walter Cronkite. It thrives on the blind hubris of disinformation and political nonsense. Just my thoughts of course.

[@tohopes]

Space travel, as sold to the general public, was a gimmick. It was attractive as long as people could project onto it their fantasies about how fabulous it would be (like moon hospitals for the elderly by the end of the century, which Heinlein predicted here). The reality is that space exploration is enormously expensive and that it requires more methodical engineering and changes the world much less rapidly than most people's fantastical sides have a stomach for. The practicality was never going to live up to the hype.

[@tohopes]

In other words, the disillusionment was unavoidable. It's the result of people having been deluded beforehand, not of people being overly cynical afterwards.

[@julianabrown8283]

People lost interest because NASA is too busy filling orders for Beoing and Russian souyuz rockets, to be able to start a Mars or even a Moon mission. It won't matter soon tho. Spacex is leading the way.. .and givin nasa a kick in the pants, now. Which is already reportedly happening. It will indeed motivate NASA.

[@Cannibal713]

Very cool video. Thanks for sharing.

[@xucaen]

Thank you.

[@tymanthius]

LOVING hearing them both. Poor RAH looks sick. I know he often was, so this must be a bad day.

[@kimholmes229]

tymanthius I

[@airb2804]

How disappointed they'd be if they knew how we'd toned down manned programs though I'm sure they'd fascinated by the the PC & internet.

[@CindyCharlebois]

It's hard to see this. Heinlein and Clarke were my childhood idols and to see how massively wrong they were and so naive. It is disheartenling.

[@TL602060]

3:19 is maybe the most important lesson to the human race

[@chrisnewport8370]

foolhardy but that's what we did

[@levacer_91]

16:53 to 18:00 for presentation

[@PeasInOurThyme4U]

It's kind of vain not to mention short-sighted to disable embedding

[@petehodge3460]

My hope is that we give up human travel in space. We should send robots/computers. For example, it is ridiculous to send humans to Mars now. We should "prep" it first with machines and technology and only send humans when the conditions there are such that we can go, stay, and return at will.