AAASE Inaugural Distinguished Lecture
Oct. 12 (Wed), 2022, 8 PM EST
Perspectives on the Future of Human Space Flight
Speaker: Charlie Bolden,
Former astronaut, 12th NASA administrator
Abstract
As the 12th Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the lecturer was privileged to be on hand for major changes in both the strategic plan for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) and the method of conduct of human space flight for the Nation’s civil space agency.
This lecture will provide snippets of the lecturer’s recollections from this eight-year experience at the helm of NASA and it will attempt to take the audience on a brief walk down memory lane. He will invite you to travel with him from the height of the Cold War and morphing of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 in response to the surprise launch and orbital flight of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik communications satellite. It follows NASA through the early days of human space flight with the Mercury and Gemini Programs culminating in the Apollo Program and humanity’s first successful mission sending a human to the Moon with Apollo-11 in July 1969 and continues to today with the International Space Station (ISS) and NASA’s plans for returning humans to the Moon with its Artemis Program and venturing on to Mars within the next 20 years.
Moderator: Prof. Vigor Yang, Ralph N. Read Chair and Regents’ Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology
Co-Sponsors: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Princeton Asian-American Students Association; Princeton Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; Princeton Rocketry Club