When Danielle Roosa announced her internship to NASA in 2012, she quickly discovered that people in general didn’t care much about space and knew very little about current space activities. Her announcement was met with questions like, “Why do we even have a space program?” and “I thought NASA went out of business!”.

One of Danielle’s grandfathers was Apollo 14 astronaut, Stuart Roosa. Her other grandfather was a scientist that worked on the Apollo program. Her father is an Air Force Academy graduate and currently a Program Director at Raytheon Missile Systems. So, as she says, she has “space in her blood” and seeing this general apathy about space was disheartening.

As a SAG actress, she was able to get in touch with Jim Keys, former Blockbuster and 7–Eleven CEO. She wanted to do a documentary on the Apollo program, but Jim turned down the idea, stating that it had already been done. Presumably in a nicer fashion than the guy from the Little Ceasers commercial.

Instead, Jim suggested doing something a bit more inspirational — sending the Apollo astronauts back into space. This was the birth of the Back to Space project. The mission of the project is to honor the Apollo astronauts and create a bridge into the future generations. The will accomplish this by creating a reality TV show/documentary that will track the participating Apollo astronauts along with younger volunteers and potentially prize winners as they train for and ultimately venture on a journey to the edge of space in a balloon hoisted capsule created by World View.

According to a Back to Space representative, the capsule for this project will be ready approximately one year after the first payment has been made for the capsule. They hope to be able to launch either in late 2019 or early 2020.

Critics of the project might label it as some sort of publicity stunt. Certainly, the aspect of a TV show and sending former moon walkers into (or at least very near to) space might seem nearly as absurd as sending an electric sports car out in the direction of Mars, but just as with the launch of Starman, the inspirational effect of projects like this can be of monumental importance.

In additional to the very important inspirational aspect of the mini-series and eventual mission, there will be actual science being performed on board the capsule in the form of a laser communications demonstration and experiments created by students and selected by a national (or possibly global) contest.

Charlie Duke and Jim Keys (Chris Rogers)

However, there was more to this morning’s event than just a briefing on the Back to Space project. Former Apollo astronaut, Charlie Duke was on hand for an interview and to answer questions. Although much of his interview was well know information from the various Apollo documentaries and previous interviews, he did share a few humorous anecdotes and some important insights about space travel and the need for more interest in space by today’s youth.

Among the stories he shared was the story of trying to do a high jump on the moon and falling on his back. As he said during the talk, “it sounds funny, but it was really very scary”. The backpacks they carried were basically carbon fiber. A direct fall onto the backpack would have shattered it and exposed and potentially damaged his life support systems, possibly killing him. Fortunately, he was able to rotate as he fell and land more on his back than the pack.

He also explained that their landing site was filmed in advance by the Apollo 14 crew while they were on orbit around the moon. However, the resolution on those images was 45 feet. Anything smaller than 45 feet was not visible on the camera. To that, he quipped, “there are a lot of craters on the moon smaller than 45 feet.” In fact, when they landed on the lunar surface, they quickly realized that they were just 6 feet from such a crater and, while they might not have tipped over, they very nearly lost their science package.

Eventually, Charlie brought the discussion back around to the purpose of the Back to Space program. He asked for a show of hands of everyone in the room who was under the age of 45. Most of the room raised their hands. He then pointed out that none of those who raised their hands were even born during the Apollo era and that was a big part of the problem going forward in space.

Charlie spoke very highly of SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other commercial ventures and stated that he was exhilarated by the advances made by commercial space and the fact that they were not encumbered by a big bureaucracy and thus could be more nimble. He even mentioned, multiple times, SpaceX taking humans into space (expected to happen late this year or very early next year), the Falcon Heavy, and even SpaceX and other commercial ventures eventually enabling human space flight to the moon and beyond.

To this regard, he was adamant that there is a need for many more skilled people to help with the upcoming expansion into cis-lunar space. While competition for being an astronaut is incredibly stiff (18000 applications last summer with only 12 people selected), there are plenty of other fields that need personnel. Additionally, space technology companies are currently struggling to find employees, so there is plenty of demand.

Charlie emphasized that everyone should dream big, get the best education that they can manage, and work hard. But he also warned against boxing yourself into something you don’t like by stating (paraphrased) “If you decide you want to be an astronaut, so you go to school and study physics, but you hate physics, your going to be stuck if there is no space program for you to join”.

(Back to Space)

Microsoft and Softtek were the sponsors of today’s event. In the opening address for the event, Raamel Mitchell (Microsoft Public Affairs and Citizenship Director) stated that Microsoft sponsored this event because they want to encourage people to achieve more. Jim, Danielle, and Charlie all emphasized that today’s event and the Back to Space project were about inspiring the future. Based on the awed looks from some of the young people asking questions, it appears that they are well on their way.

NOTE: Buzz Aldin was expected to show at the event, but was unable to due to illness. The event sponsors hope to have him at a future event.