Teasel Muir-Harmony — Operation Moonglow

Perspectives on Science

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Teasel Muir-Harmony, author of Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo. In her book, Teasel Muir-Harmony discusses Project Apollo and the successful mission of landing humans on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. Dr. Muir-Harmony discusses the ways in which fears about Sputnik and the Soviet space program were either downplayed or amplified by politicians such as Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson in order to advance their political aims. She recounts how the goal of sending humans to the Moon was a foreign relations response to the loss of American prestige following Yuri Gagarin's historic spaceflight and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. Muir-Harmony demonstrates that Project Apollo was primarily an international diplomacy endeavor to try to bring newly-independent and developing nations into America's "orbit" that had secondary effects of advancing technological development and inspiring millions to dream of going to space. Teasel Muir-Harmony is a historian of science and technology and curator of the Apollo Spacecraft Collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. To cite this podcast, please use footnote: Teasel Muir-Harmony, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, September 3, 2021, https://www.chstm.org/video/126.