Interview With Astronaut Reid Wiseman As He Reflects On Apollo 8's 55th Anniversary

Space.com

Artemis 2 NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman who commanded the first moon mission in half a century talks to Space.com about the parallels between the two moon efforts.  The 55th anniversary of Apollo 8's historical orbital mission in 1968.

Transcript

00:00And we're speaking around the 55th anniversary of Apollo 8, which flew three astronauts around

00:05the moon in 1968. Artemis II's flyby is coming close to recreating that scenario. And so can

00:12you talk about the parallels between the two missions from your point of view?

00:16We see parallel. I wish Victor and Christina were in here because they would give you a far better

00:21answer. We see all those parallels. Let me give you two sides of an answer. First, the parallel

00:28I most like to draw right now is that we are building on the Mercury Gemini Apollo era for

00:35sure. But when I look at what we're doing in Artemis, it feels to me in Artemis that we are

00:40more building on the international space station and a long-term presence. I feel the international

00:46space station in everything we do. I feel the international community. I feel the way we do

00:50export control, the way we farm out hardware to different experts around the world. And then we

00:55pull all of this together. We have an international crew. We don't really have that, like, before

01:00this decade is out, we are going to do this. We don't feel that space race necessarily as

01:04the crew. But we do feel a really robust international team. Everywhere we go, we try to highlight the

01:10Artemis Accords. I think we're up to 32 nations, maybe even 33 now. So I just feel like this, to

01:16me, feels like it's built on the international space station legacy of a little slower, methodical,

01:22we're here for the long term. However, the day we got announced when you were here, April 3rd,

01:28sitting on my couch later that day, completely exhausted. My cell phone rings. It's an unknown

01:32number. I thought it was a telemarketer and I picked it up all annoyed. It was Tom Stafford,

01:37you know, who flew Apollo 10, not eight, but 10. And he was so excited that we were heading back to the

01:42moon. And just to know that we are going to go out and try to wrap Apollo 7, 8, and a little bit of

01:51like 10 into one mission, it's just, you know, Victor walks around and says, the moon is the

01:57mission. And he's right. Like, we have got to get used to flying out into deep space. We've got to get

02:01out of low earth orbit, start making it comfortable to go out to the moon. And that's what Artemis 2 is

02:06going to go do. And then Artemis 3 will do more than we could ever even dream of. So I love the

02:11parallels. I think Apollo 8, once we did Apollo 8, I think everybody in the United States knew we can

02:16land now. Like that was, that mission meant so much to just go and go and the systems work. Holy

02:23smokes. We can fly around the moon. We can read from the book at Genesis on Christmas Eve on the

02:27back, far side of the moon. You know, it's just, all that stuff is just amazing to me. So we do think

02:32about that legacy a lot.

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