Author Q&A: Teasel Muir-Harmony on the objects of Apollo Free

Historian and curator Teasel Muir-Harmony just might be the busiest person at the Smithsonian this month. As the curator of the National Air and Space Museum’s Apollo spacecraft collection, Muir-Harmony has been traveling around the country talking about the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and helping to get the museum ready for the thousands of visitors expected to visit for the 20 July anniversary.

The Smithsonian’s rich spaceflight collections serve as inspiration for Muir-Harmony’s new book, Apollo to the Moon: A History in 50 Objects, which combines beautiful photographs of the artifacts with thought-provoking essays about the role each object played in the Moon landings. In the July issue of Physics Today, reviewer Nick Howes calls the book a standout among the crowd of 2019 Apollo books. “To say this is simply a book about objects would be doing it a great disservice,” he writes. “Apollo to the Moon reaches out to everyone—not just spaceflight historians or those interested in technical detail, but all those who want to know more about how, a half century ago, an impossible dream became reality.”

PT: Tell us about the path that led you to the Smithsonian.

MUIR-HARMONY: The history of astronomy has been a lifelong interest. After college I got an internship at the Air and Space Museum. It was great exposure to what it would be like to be an historian of science because part of my job was to research the history of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. That eventually led to many, many years of graduate school and a dissertation on the history of spaceflight and space diplomacy. [Muir-Harmony also worked at the American Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics Today.] When a position at Air and Space came up, it felt like a great fit.

In fall 2018 I took over the Apollo spacecraft collection. It was lucky timing, but it has also been a bit overwhelming. We have an incredible collection of Apollo artifacts—thousands of them, because in the mid-1960s the Smithsonian and NASA set up an agreement that let the Smithsonian collect all the relevant hardware from the Apollo program. I was familiar with the major artifacts like the command module, of course, but there were a lot of smaller items that I had to learn more about as we prepared for the anniversary date.

PT: What inspired you to put together a book about those objects? Was that always part of the Smithsonian’s plan for the anniversary?

MUIR-HARMONY: In 2017 we had a department meeting and started to brainstorm. We thought there should be some kind of book. Initially we were planning to put together an edited collection of essays highlighting some of the recent scholarship on Apollo and spaceflight. I said I would be interested in taking the lead on that.

But as I thought about it more, I wanted to create a book that brought interesting insights from current scholarship to a much broader audience, to help people understand Apollo in a different way. If you write a general history of Project Apollo, focusing on an overview of the missions, you don’t always get the opportunity to tell stories about the program that touch on political history, social history, the technological developments, and gender and civil rights issues. I thought a book focusing on artifacts would be a great way to tell a lot of individual stories that together represent the complexity of the program.

PT: Do you have any favorites among the artifacts you covered, or ones that were especially fun to write about?

MUIR-HARMONY: I start the book with the pieces of the Wright brothers’ airplane that Neil Armstrong took to the Moon. Those pieces connected the first lunar landing to the first powered airplane flight, and they show that Armstrong recognized that connection too. That example embodies a lot of what I wanted to talk about in the book: the significance of artifacts and how they connect us to the past.

[CBS anchor] Walter Cronkite’s model of the lunar module is another item that I think deserves more attention. Over 90% of Americans watched the landing on television, and the vast majority of them watched it on CBS; the network had continuous coverage. Cronkite studied space exploration quite extensively so that he could break down the technical details for his viewers, and he used a little model to help explain the flight. I’m really glad we had that in the collection because it gave me the chance to talk about the fact that for the majority of Americans, their experience of Apollo was mediated through television and through Cronkite’s presentation in particular.

PT: What else is the museum planning for the Apollo 11 anniversary?

MUIR-HARMONY: A lot! We’ve concentrated most of our events in the week of the anniversary. On July 16 we’re putting Neil Armstrong’s space suit back on display—it’s been undergoing extensive conservation. Then we have many other activities planned inside the museum, as well as the Apollo 50 Festival out on the National Mall July 18–20. I developed a six-part television series with the Smithsonian Channel called “Apollo’s Moon Shot,” which has been airing since June. We also created an associated augmented reality app, which uses high resolution 3D scans of artifacts as well as other Apollo-related content.

I’m especially excited about a public event I’m planning on July 18 at George Washington University that focuses on the history and future of space policy. Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 command module pilot, will be part of the event, as well as Ellen Stofan, the current director of the Air and Space Museum, and Charles Bolden, a former NASA administrator and the US Science Envoy for Space.

PT: Once the Apollo excitement is over, what comes next for you and for the museum?

MUIR-HARMONY: Visitors may notice that we’re redoing the entire museum. Every single exhibit will reopen in the next few years.

I am also finishing a book manuscript on the role of the Apollo program within US foreign relations.

PT: What are you reading?

MUIR-HARMONY: I’m working on a book review of about five books on the Apollo program—there are so many books that have come out in the past year. It’s been fascinating, seeing what stories people are telling and all of the ways they’re thinking about the program. But I’m looking forward to reading about other topics again!