In pulling together our interviewee list for "The Greatest Leap," we knew we wanted to talk not just to the luminaries who made Project Apollo a reality 50 years ago, but also to modern-day astronauts. After all, the NASA we have today owes its existence to the space race of the 1950s and '60s, and in many ways, it's still the same agency that put people on the Moon. (Though, as we all sit here on Earth without a moonbase above our heads, it's clear that the agency lacks the followthrough many people expected it to have.)

We were exceptionally lucky to be able to sit down for an hour or so with Victor Glover, an accomplished aviator and test pilot who became an astronaut four years ago. Glover's perspective on the current state of the astronaut corps and the way NASA operates provides a fascinating window into what it's like to be an astronaut now—and what it might have been like to train for that voyage from the Earth to the Moon.

Listing image by James Blair / NASA