Speaker 1: Welcome once again to the Doctor Sky Show, proudly heard
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Speaker 1: If your first time listener to the Doctor Sky Show,
Speaker 1: our subject matter includes the realms of astronomy, space, aviation
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Speaker 1: drsky dot com. Hey, Doctor Sky, Rose the world to
Speaker 1: the Internet and around the world and other media we're
Speaker 1: proud to have today is a very special guest on
Speaker 1: our program.
Speaker 2: An icon of radio and television broadcasting for well over
Speaker 2: half a century and the longtime anchor and managing editor
Speaker 2: of the CPS Evening News. It is a high honor
Speaker 2: and privilege to welcome mister Walter Cronkite to a discussion
Speaker 2: with Doctor Sky. Welcome, mister Kronkite.
Speaker 3: Good to talk to you in one of my favorite
Speaker 3: corners of the world.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much for being interested in the
Speaker 2: subject matter today, which of course goes everywhere from astronomy, space,
Speaker 2: aviation and of course broadcast journalism. But first, if I may,
Speaker 2: I'd like to let you enlighten all the listeners about
Speaker 2: how did you first become interested in the space program
Speaker 2: from a journalistic.
Speaker 3: Perspective, Well, I tell you I'm old enough to go
Speaker 3: back a long way into the world of aviation. I
Speaker 3: had my first airplane ride, and a walk over open
Speaker 3: cockpit airplane with a Curtis O X five engine on it.
Speaker 3: My father took me for a ride with a barnstormer
Speaker 3: in Kansas City, Missouri, where we lived. Then He had
Speaker 3: done some flying in World War One, and this, by
Speaker 3: the time I was six years old, was just a
Speaker 3: couple of years three years after we signed an armistice,
Speaker 3: so it was fairly early on in the days of aviation.
Speaker 3: And as a matter of fact, we had a little
Speaker 3: unexpected landing on that flight. So my interest and excitement
Speaker 3: in aviation was very came very early in my childhood.
Speaker 3: I followed it and through my young years reading about it,
Speaker 3: hitching rides whenever I could, and that naturally led into
Speaker 3: an interest as we began to develop rocketry and a
Speaker 3: new form of propulsion that gave us the promise of
Speaker 3: getting out into space with human beings. My next personal
Speaker 3: experience was it with it in World War Two in
Speaker 3: London when we were being assaulted by Hitlers flying bombs
Speaker 3: as they recalled and the deeper V twos that came
Speaker 3: in with true rocketry. So I saw that firsthand. I saw,
Speaker 3: actually saw a launch from one hundred and fifty miles
Speaker 3: away after we landed with the Airborne. As we correspondent
Speaker 3: landed with the Airborne in the Netherlands and the Germans
Speaker 3: were launching their V twos from vas and Are in
Speaker 3: the Netherlands, the far west side of the Netherlands. We
Speaker 3: were on the east side, hundred and fifty miles or
Speaker 3: so away, and I could I could see the contrails
Speaker 3: going up as they launched their rockets on London. So
Speaker 3: my curiosity was immediately around, particularly when they bombed me
Speaker 3: out of my apartment.
Speaker 2: Oh Jesus in London.
Speaker 3: But as the space program began here, naturally I wanted
Speaker 3: to follow as a story, and as the managing editor
Speaker 3: of the CBS Evening News, I assigned myself to it
Speaker 3: and that made it easy for me to cover it.
Speaker 2: Mister Conway, moving on to the days of the Apollo program,
Speaker 2: this is fascinating. Was President Kennedy really the driving force
Speaker 2: behind us going to the Moon? And did you ever
Speaker 2: did he ever share some of his passion about this
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 3: Directly President Kennedy. Well, it was mentioned once or twice
Speaker 3: in conversations, and there was no question that he he
Speaker 3: was very serious about it and had it. I don't
Speaker 3: know whether I would call it a passion that would
Speaker 3: seem to include a kind of inner excitement about it
Speaker 3: that I didn't really see from Kennedy. But that does
Speaker 3: not mean he didn't have it. It could simply mean
Speaker 3: that I didn't have the kind of time to develop
Speaker 3: that sort of a of a discussion with him.
Speaker 2: What were some of your thoughts and feelings as you
Speaker 2: reported in that very historic day.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm just really understanding that. So what did
Speaker 3: you say?
Speaker 2: I was asking you what thoughts and feelings did you
Speaker 2: have as you reported that man had finally landed on
Speaker 2: the Moon after Neil Armstrong made that historic first effort.
Speaker 3: Well, I've said before that I had just as much
Speaker 3: time to prepare for a man's landing on the Moon
Speaker 3: as NASA did. I covered the development of NASA even
Speaker 3: before it was NASA, when it was all part of
Speaker 3: the Air Force program in rocketry, and so I had
Speaker 3: all that time to prepare for it. Wally Cherral, the
Speaker 3: astronaut from the original Mercury Program, who was my technical
Speaker 3: assistant in the Mysteries of space flight at the anchor desk,
Speaker 3: and he kept asking me all night as we were
Speaker 3: waiting for the landing up there. He said, what are
Speaker 3: you going to say? What are you going to say?
Speaker 3: And I said, well, Wally, I never planned anything like
Speaker 3: this in advance of what I'm going to say. I
Speaker 3: know the facts that I want to include, but as
Speaker 3: to how I phrased him exactly, I don't know what
Speaker 3: I'm going to say, but don't worry about it. I'll
Speaker 3: be saying something. Well, when they announced that man was
Speaker 3: on the Moon, all I could say was wow, golly gee,
Speaker 3: there you go the immortal words.
Speaker 2: That's very, very interesting. I've also had the privilege and
Speaker 2: honor of interviewing Captain Sharh and I would agree he's
Speaker 2: a wonderful person and we share some thoughts on some
Speaker 2: of the same concepts about going to spaces I'm sure
Speaker 2: he's helped you over the cost of course of time.
Speaker 2: But of all the astronauts that you've interviewed in that area, who,
Speaker 2: in your mind stands out as probably some of the
Speaker 2: more interesting or intriguing individuals.
Speaker 3: Well, Wally himself was one of the most interesting, simply
Speaker 3: because Wally has a great sense of humor and we
Speaker 3: weren't getting a lot of that out of the space program,
Speaker 3: not on the air or in interview situations, where the
Speaker 3: astronauts were all trying to be as serious as they
Speaker 3: possibly could about this very great load that they were
Speaker 3: carrying of successfully getting us out to the Moon and
Speaker 3: back safely in that decade, and the space flight was
Speaker 3: an Euroic effort on their part, they had every right
Speaker 3: to play it the way they wanted to play it.
Speaker 3: But Wally would get on the air and I not
Speaker 3: quite play it as seriously as some of the others,
Speaker 3: which made him a lot of fun to be around.
Speaker 2: All right, more down to Earth.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, yes, if you want to make that punt,
Speaker 3: let's do it.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But but all all of them were interesting. I
Speaker 3: think it would be hard to pick one above the other.
Speaker 3: They each had their own personality, they each had their
Speaker 3: own interest in particular aspects of spaceflight, and and u
Speaker 3: to the same question, you could get several answers about
Speaker 3: motivation and and now they felt about the flight itself. Uh,
Speaker 3: there was a there was a wonderful story that that
Speaker 3: Wally Sharra told me as a matter of fact or
Speaker 3: that that is the answer he gave me when I said,
Speaker 3: come on, Wally, when we hear about your original flights
Speaker 3: in his mercury and he was the third man of fly,
Speaker 3: I think I remember he uh he, I said, come on, Wally.
Speaker 3: You know all you guys are so serious, and when
Speaker 3: we ask you about what you're really thinking of as
Speaker 3: you lay there on that couch with your with your
Speaker 3: face to the sky and that little tiny capsule, uh,
Speaker 3: the what were you really think? You know, you can
Speaker 3: keep telling us how brave you all were, and you
Speaker 3: had all this redundancy building and there wasn't any concern
Speaker 3: about it. And he said, well, I can tell you
Speaker 3: what I thought. He said, waiting on that and that
Speaker 3: little redstone rocket there to go up, he said, when
Speaker 3: the ridge anyway? Lying there in the capsule mercury capsule,
Speaker 3: He said, I looked at all those instruments. I looked
Speaker 3: at all the buttons. I looked at all those toggle
Speaker 3: switches that I had to hit at certain times. And
Speaker 3: I had all that plumbing that I could see the
Speaker 3: important fuels that were being used. And he said, I
Speaker 3: looked at all that lying on my back waiting for
Speaker 3: that rocket to go up, and I said to myself,
Speaker 3: good gosh, just think this whole thing was built by
Speaker 3: the lowest bidder.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's absolutely correct, and amazingly it worked. That's
Speaker 2: what we look at in the history of the space program.
Speaker 2: Just a few more questions that I think our audience
Speaker 2: would certainly love to have your opinion and perspective on.
Speaker 2: But with the recent mission of Dennis Tito, the first
Speaker 2: official quote tourist in space, what is your feeling about
Speaker 2: private citizens going to the space and would you yourself,
Speaker 2: if I'm correct, to yourself worse related to go up
Speaker 2: as a future tourist or sometime in history. I think
Speaker 2: I've heard that that you were looking to do that.
Speaker 3: Oh. Yes, the government was going to send a up
Speaker 3: journalist as the first civilian in space after the two
Speaker 3: members of Space committees from Capitol Hill. They were going
Speaker 3: to play their politics first, and a journalist was going.
Speaker 3: And they were in the process of eliminating those who
Speaker 3: they didn't think were qualified, getting down to a few.
Speaker 3: I think they were down to about ten or twelve
Speaker 3: while I was still in the running, and we were
Speaker 3: antssipating one of us being selected and one selected as
Speaker 3: a backup, taking all the training and going unfortunately for
Speaker 3: the teacher, maybe fortunately for us, but unfortunately perhaps for history.
Speaker 3: The teacher, of course, was lost on the shuttle. Yes,
Speaker 3: very President Reagan was trying to build votes with the
Speaker 3: Teachers' union, and I had lived in a speech in
Speaker 3: Chicago at their convention, and I'm going to see that
Speaker 3: the teacher is the first who goes into space. So
Speaker 3: poor Christophercauliffe was were the ones selected for the Challenger flight,
Speaker 3: which was the flight that the journalists would have been on.
Speaker 3: But despite that, I think most journalists would go in
Speaker 3: a minute to space. It's a great story and I
Speaker 3: would go today if they only let me.
Speaker 2: Oh, that would be wonderful. As you know, Arizona State
Speaker 2: University's School of Journalism and Telecommunications is named in your honor,
Speaker 2: Can you give some advice for students listening here that
Speaker 2: would like to pursue a major and a career in broadcasting.
Speaker 2: To hear it from yourself, I think would be most impacting.
Speaker 3: Well, my advice to them as it would be to
Speaker 3: learn the arts of journalism long before they tackled the
Speaker 3: practicalities of broadcast. I think they learn to write and
Speaker 3: to report, and to understand the principles and ethics of
Speaker 3: good journalism. They can write for a newspaper or magazine
Speaker 3: or the internet, or broadcast the techniques of broadcasting. While
Speaker 3: there are, particularly in television, some fundamental cosmetic situations that
Speaker 3: have to be faced. Unfortunately, the person who has the
Speaker 3: compl capability of following these journalistic principles is the one
Speaker 3: who is going to succeed.
Speaker 2: Wonderful advice, And this one last closing question or two,
Speaker 2: if possible, What are some of your latest projects that people,
Speaker 2: whether it be on the internet, radio, or television, can
Speaker 2: stay in touch with some of the activities that you're
Speaker 2: now involved in.
Speaker 3: Well, I do a lot of speaking, public speaking, and
Speaker 3: and some magazine writing, and I write forwards to friends books.
Speaker 3: I may be the foremost forward writer in the United
Speaker 3: States today. But the that's a joke. Of course, I
Speaker 3: didn't hear you laughing, So I have to be careful.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm just patiently listening. I do understand.
Speaker 3: Well, I've got very busy, and of course I still
Speaker 3: have contacts. I still play the reporter role, whether I
Speaker 3: actually on the air or not. I pick up the
Speaker 3: phone and golf sources in government, private business. When a
Speaker 3: story interests me and prove a little bit, make some
Speaker 3: capital out of it with my speed, with my talks around.
Speaker 2: It's very fascinating. I just want to thank you, mister
Speaker 2: Crunkite for taking the time to join me doctor Sky
Speaker 2: here on our program today, and I'm sure our audience
Speaker 2: is most thrilled with hearing directly from you as we
Speaker 2: have some of the historic portions of the space program.
Speaker 2: And I myself remember, at age forty five today, back
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine, on that very historic date when
Speaker 2: you told all the world about our first human being,
Speaker 2: Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon. I remember, like
Speaker 2: many of us, watching in a small black and white television,
Speaker 2: and even to this day, I find it incredible that
Speaker 2: we really did go there. But it really is a
Speaker 2: high honor and privilege, and I want to thank you
Speaker 2: for coming on. What doctor Sky is doing is past.
Speaker 3: My best wishes to all my friends out there at
Speaker 3: ASU and the journalism school there. It's a great program
Speaker 3: they've got and I'm very happy to say that it's
Speaker 3: winning a lot of plaudits around the journalism world. You
Speaker 3: know that as a former professor in the business.
Speaker 2: Yourself, well, thank you very much, and mister Kronkite, it's
Speaker 2: a high honor and I do hope we can speak again.
Speaker 2: And your words are most exciting to the listeners out
Speaker 2: there and most motivating. Thank you, sir, and godspeed to
Speaker 2: you and look forward to speaking to you soon and
Speaker 2: a rapid recovery to you. Please, thank you sir, as
Speaker 2: doctor Sky always encourages you. Please always remember to keep
Speaker 2: your eyes to the skies.