NPC in History: News from outer space
In 2015, National Press Club President John Hughes pondered this question. A century earlier, the Club made news when then Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan made one of the first coast-to-coast, long-distance telephone calls from the Club to the San Francisco Press Club on Jan. 26, 1915.
What would be a similar feat today?
The answer he came up with was a press conference from outer space – specifically with an American astronaut aboard the International Space Station. With a lot of cooperation from NASA, Hughes arranged a morning Newsmaker on Sept. 14, 2015, that included astronaut Scott Kelly appearing live on a huge screen, talking with Hughes, as well as with Scott’s twin brother, astronaut Mark Kelly, and his NASA compatriot Terry Virts, who had recently returned from a space station mission, seated with him in the ballroom.
Scott Kelly had been launched in March to begin a 342-day stint in the space station that would help determine the effects of long-term space flight on the human body. Halfway through this venture during the press conference, he would become the American who had spent the most time in space when he landed.
It started this way:
MR. HUGHES: Station, this is National Press Club. How do you hear me?
SCOTT KELLY: I have you loud and clear, welcome aboard the space station.
MR. HUGHES: Welcome. Thanks for joining us, Scott. We have a full room here. I know it’s around lunch time up there. We just had breakfast. Could you tell us what you're doing today?
SCOTT KELLY: Yeah. Well, first of all, it’s great to be here with you guys today. Yeah, I know you're having breakfast because both my brother and Terry Virts there sent me pictures of their food. I guess they're trying to make me feel bad about what we have to eat up here. But today’s actually a day off for us because we had some crew members departing late last week, so today is actually a free day.
The questions focused on what tests Scott was undergoing in the space station to determine how astronauts would fare on a much longer space flight to Mars. With his identical twin brother as the control, NASA was trying to determine what changes happened to Scott during his extended time in space right down to a microbiological level.
SCOTT KELLY: It’s kind of a serendipitous thing, I think, that my brother and I are both identical twins and astronauts … So, they can look at the data they collect with him over this year and see what kind of deviations we have on a genetic level, which could be a result of this environment; the weightlessness of the environment, the radiation that we see. And from that, figure out other areas we need to investigate so we can eventually complete our journey to Mars and elsewhere.
But for Hughes, one question was this: Now that the Club pioneered long distance telephone communication in 1915 and held an outer space press conference in 2015, what will the Club president of 2115 do to top that?
This is another in a series provided by Club historian Gil Klein. Dig down anywhere in the Club’s 110-year history, and you will find some kind of significant event in the history of the world, the nation, Washington, journalism and the Club itself. Many of these events were caught in illustrations that tell the stories.