Last Thursday, Nov. 11, Veterans Day was celebrated in the United States. Here at Southeastern, the department of history and political science sponsored its annual veterans lecture to honor veterans of all U.S. armed services and to educate students, faculty, staff and the community about aspects of military history and military affairs.
This year’s event was held in the Student Union Theater, and Roger Launius presented a lecture titled “Our Shared Dependency on Space: National Security, Commerce and Exploration.”
Launius serves as a senior curator in the Division of Space History in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, which is located in Washington, D.C.
Department head Dr. William Robison attended graduate school at Louisiana State University with Launius.
“Dr. Launius is an incredibly talented and prolific historian in addition to being an extremely engaging speaker and a really nice guy,” said Robison.
Prior to giving a brief introduction for Launius, Robison asked that all the veterans in the audience stand and be recognized for their service to the country.
For the duration of his lecture, Launius discussed the space history of the United States and how the space program is intertwined with the military. Some of his slides touched on the relations in national security and commercial space, space as a new theater for national security, the space program and dual-use technology and challenges for the future of spaceflight.
To supplement the slides, Launius showed several videos, including a snippet of a John F. Kennedy speech on the goals of the space program and a video of a shuttle launch.
After ending his lecture, Launius opened the floor for any questions from the audience and signed copies of his books in the lobby.
“I found the speaker to be excellent because he made the subject matter interesting,” said Jonathan Diaz, a sophomore industrial technology major. “Some of the information I knew beforehand, but I still found it interesting because he is an expert on our country’s space program.”
Prior to his job as a Smithsonian curator, Launius served as the chief historian for NASA from 1990 until 2002.
He has also written over 20 books on U.S. space history. Some of the books include “Smithsonian Atlas of Space Exploration,” “Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution and Interplanetary Travel,” “Space Stations: Base Camps to the Stars” and “Reconsidering a Century of Flight.”