Seen this movie and i was a little worried about them making this. There were some things i might have done different out of some hidden language that gave it its pg13 rain but the one thing i thought carried very well and ron howard did a great job was to tell the basic story of people that were in trouble and we certainly were in trouble although, there were problems on every mission we flew during the program and if we can look at the entire Apollo Program report its a book about that dick, its in the archives if you can get it through information. There is an appendix that lists the problems or we call them anomalies and some people call them funnys that happened on the flights and they listed them numerically by fight order and you ignore apollo seven and eight who only had one spacecraft. Apollo 13 at the second least number of problems of all the flights. We almost aborted apollo 14 an apollo 16 in response that theyre it will to work around and had them land. That was the nature of the business. As i said, the very thing about this movie that carried very well was the story of somebody with problems with challenge, challenge is really to face and showed a group of people, a Mission Control in ourselves and a few more people in a lot more people would show in the movie we criticize rod howard when i met him after the showing that depicts some of the key people i would have been in the movie as characters and he told me the movie only has so much time to develop and you can only develop so many characters and so little time. At any rate, it was a fairly large theme and we had the peak of the program in 1968 and before we landed on the moon there were over 400,000 people working on the Apollo Program. If you go down to the contractors, prime contractors, subcontractors, down to the vendors and the parts even we had contracts on every state in the United States except one of the dakotas. By the time we flew apollo 13 it already started tailing off and we still have a quarter Million People with the great brain trust. At any rate, it showed this team coming together and working together with the leadership to pull off this miracle if you will and it was not an accident because we process this to work problems and when a flight director like gene kranz played by ed harris in this movie, when they give a go for launch they really give him total dedicated and motivated team. There is nothing else more important than the mission at hand. The team had been trained through hundreds and thousands of hours and various training modes but more realistic for the flight what was we call integrated simulation. We had trainers, simulators and Kennedy Space center that were replicas and then the capsule of the landing craft, same geometry and we laid in couches, we cheated and had pigs put in to be more comfortable. He was in the simulators and the systems functioned and gave the readings just as they were operating and they were identical. We had layers and the simulator for instance you put in over 500 credible fares. At the same time these simulators were linked back to Mission Control and the controllers there would see on their scopes the replication of the system we were looking at how where they were behaving as well as the manifestation of affairs. The systems were run with a special crew called sin about a dozen people, that work behind the scenes for each of our simulations and its our piecemeal with two launches of maybe half a day, we have trees another day, orbit and lou landings so its different segments so for each of those runs they had evolved a scenario with certain failures to be put in at certain times that only they knew. These people are very smart people and they know this very well and the very devious people and took great glee in making us look great. Making Mission Control, us and trying to handle the situation look bad. Somebody never gave up until we had to give up. The sims went on a long time and they are prepared for landing and the simulation may last eight hours before we had to give up the ghost. When i was working apollo eight, on that backup crew and polo 11 we were still learning so actually the simulation was useful to dredge up certain situations and failures that we had to go back to work and back through the Program Office and worry about changing software or changing our procedures to handle that should ever happen for real. Were still in a learning curve in the early part of the program. At any rate, apollo 13 had a particular failure and an explosion. As we went through modern airplanes and designs are spacecraft, as you are going through the design of the vehicle you work through what we call i dont know what they call it in the commercial but we call failure effects analysis and led by Reliable Engineering where were looked at every component, every fail open, phil close and they are charted and what was the manifestation. It was documented, and early on in the design before you built hardware they had an effect of changes and it was instrumentation and that sort of thing. Explosions were thought of and they had rockets blowup and certainly in the systems where we had liquid hydrogen, the manifestation of an explosion was thought to be the answer was that you will lose the vehicle and lose the crew. So, we gave them a situation that we never planned on because we had this explosion and we were still breathing. So, there is no plan before most all of these troubled failures we had procedures and malfunction procedures and in our minds we had the same thing about our emergency procedures. We had this procedures, Mission Control had books behind the council and they can reach and grab for certain so credible failures that could reach in grab and have separate procedures. For this particular case, the situation we were in there was no plan b. There was a lot of scrambling and the movie showed a few of the innovations and a lot of hours by people on the ground and when i got back i talked with people and we got less sleep on the ground then i got on the flight. This was truly a great story that is working with problems and people working together under the right leadership to make things happen and end up in this case a good hollywood ending im, happy to say. laughs id like to run a video and show you some of the real stuff and you saw a little bit of it on the ground site of Mission Control and the Launch Control center at Kennedy Space center, i was looking at the video from the back here and now ill show you its called first 13 minutes is called the quick look of apollo 13. It has no soundtrack i will narrate it and will just let it run on through till the end. If we can now get the video cranked up here. All right, we have a countdown even, three, two, one, thats appropriate. The saturn when used for our missions to launch the sky lab that part of the program is still the biggest rocket that was flown if you saw today its laying on the side of it in huntsville now down to Kennedy Space center. On the side laying down and it would cover a football field plus both end zones, plus three feet. So thats a size of this rocket and its too spacecraft on top of each other and its way up on the top and landed in that little roll. We were quite a way away from the launch pad and we happen to be in this then it got a little fancier over the days but this i think was a converted milk wagon or something. laughs it was painted of fancy and got benches and hooked up to the inter calm who escorted us out and decrease layton was out in the van there and there are four people waking up at the top so you had four people waiting for you to help get inserted and strapped in and hatch closed and they were waiting a couple hours he got launched. The launchpad looks kind of eerie but ive been out there many times and tested the spacecraft and its normally a lot of people up and down and the day eagle for real is just people that are with you that are ready to go. The engine starts a little bit seven seconds before lift off and allow this the Chamber Pressure to stabilize with the fone engines and theres five up here running and they collectively generate seven and a half Million Pounds of thrust, push if you will. Goes very slowly and its not so motion this is the real motion. But the reason is, the entire stack is over 6 Million Pounds. You dont have a great thrust ratio. Having flown the airplanes with fighters, its not that exciting in the sense of the g level and the peak gee and first state burnout because its going up and burning tons of blocks and propel and every second. I guess its about four and a half jeez. Even the airplanes i flew you routinely come back and you go six to seven and the bigger ones up to eight or nine. Four and a half wasnt a big deal. This was the front edge of the digital age and im sure if we threw one of these today would be a little bit better but the big engines at the bottom were exaggerating the motions instead of jerking around with the engines now is probably the most unusual thing that i saw riding the rocket from sensation. We went into earth orbit and i read around a couple of times to get the opportunity to check out systems in the mothership and Service Module and back up the prime to the extent we could and verified nothing have been damaged during lunch. During the stage as been connected by people on the ground and accelerated the state philosophy velocity a 25 Miles Per Hour and thats where you are here in this scene, jack has separated the module and moved away a couple of hundred feet and is coming back good with the probe that dark circle and disappearing on the upper right and using that target and that little tee and the black circle to keep himself aligned in the control of the top of the upper hatch of the aircraft. Then you can find latches that were tightly together and formed an airtight seal and would open hatches on either side and be able to go between the two and you can see a scene of that later. That is the third stage, its up inside there and this for the first time has been all subsistent flights have figured out how to use vinnie on that stage to redirect this payout so it made an impact to the moon. We had thermometers there on apollo 11 and Paul Bob Paulo 12 and we had thermometers on all flights. With that meter impact youre looking at some several things they use without looking for gas and oil. They use seismic events to search substratum on earth. This is the mother earth to be shut down which is the mothership but its never supposedly shut down its always there for you. That was probably the most worrisome thing to me is how this was going to act to trying to get back up. Because it never planned to be shut down and never tested it in the environment until we can turn it off. In this case, for days in the water tanks. This shows a scene of me drifting through the tunnel and jim level, the commander and im playing around at zero gravity which is a euphoric being able to float yourself with certain objects around. And actually made those little vehicles probably seem bigger. I mean, you can imagine in this room we had another set of chairs on the ceiling if we use this entire body and a program thats not using. This is real people in Mission Control, as i said, little sleep, and mitchell and theres kim mattingly, and jim level is rubbing his hands and it got pretty cold when you have the power way down to preserve the batteries and they ran off battery power. This is meant to be a today vehicle if you kept it at normal power so weak went down to a low power level and we have 12 and a half ands, 30 bold d. C. System. If you think about your threeway light bulb at home and you go to the third clip, if you did that on two lamps thats about the power we went down to on that vehicle. It got very cold, it was not meant to operate on that small of that draw next. We put on three sets of underwear, we had some layers so thats what we did to try to keep warm. This is shown in the movie, the rid of the cartridges and they actually tested that chamber that has been going on with human subjects and on the ground they did as much as they could after they perfected a fix, they tested it and made sure in some way it worked as a did with this cartridge and the environmental system. The chamber in bill seven and they put a person in there and live with that cartridge for a while. We never had lights on, it seemed to pretty bad and this is shooting my own self and this is probably the first space selfie. laughs it was a 16 millimeter battery and i just put it out there and let it sit there so i was shooting a picture. We never had lights on. We are in power down mode and we shut off all lights so we had to use a flashlight if we need to reader light right. Someone shot me asleep and my arms are tucked in and not because im a favorite of napoleon or something. The zero gravity the arms tend to do this and that would wake me up so i always cutting my arms. That was the small glance of gene kranz smoking a cigarette, smoking was okay in Mission Control. That was the day and age thats the thing we saw that surprised me. The upper section there, looking shiny and smooth as a lower section thats one part of the aircraft. We were surprised because of the explosion, it has not seemed as severe as what we saw. We gave up in all the powdered stuff, its not even too good if you have hot water and certainly not good with cold water. We had queue key cookie cubes, snacks and jim had a package there and jack was there to and this is the earth as were heading back in and were coming in at the same velocity and the upper entry was strange in the fact they got rained on a little bit because it had been so cold and they turned off that that slowly built up from that respiration. Humidity built up and this panel, they went to power of that vehicle and they wiped off the panel and it was covered with water and it fell out at the front end of entry. Otherwise, another one of those miracles in this command module that was supposed to be power down came on, came to life and gave us a second most accurate bring down and only apollo ten had a better the movie ron howard went to the similar helicopter that was shown and brought on board. I had a urinary tract infection so the crew went to a party on the hanger deck. People in Mission Control celebrating, because they were so tired they did not have the usual party right after a flight when the crew recovered. So, where the only crew and we got our own party a few weeks later. We got to attend that. Were following this mission to backup jon young on apollo 16. I knew i was going to get go fly apollo 19th at that point, the last mission to go to the moon was that and we are getting caught in canceled, 18 or 19. I ended up being a deadhead assignment with bill hogan jerry car who moved out to go from giving them a flight which were running out of seats. I stayed on and inherited mitchell who was on apollo 14 and finished off that assignment. I eventually get into pro management so i went off to Harvard Business school with the mp and decourse and came back into the project office on early shuttle development and there i was doing Sports Lighting including this japanese val. For any aircraft that had been rebuilt to resemble the japanese aircraft and we inherited an operation in south texas and in their ship. When they, flying from hamilton texas where we kept this bomber and with a couple of zeroes in Crop Production fields it was in galveston to get it on track and get it cleaned up for their show coming up a dallasfort worth. At 300 feet, a lost an engine and it clearly what i thought and this is an airplane airplane why couldnt raise the landing and it dug ditches. One landing year flipped, cartwheeled and flipped and ended up going upside down and awhile before i could get out and receive 65 coverage. Thats second half or third and hes got three months in these diversity of texas. Another one of the things thats initially unemotional thing for me because i thought i lost my career, after he got past the critical stage and ive not burned my respiratory system and knew i survived we went to the doctors and the team again, its a mix team of doctors at the university of texas hospital and it was going to be done by two doctors and they had a partnership that was in the adult ward at the ufc hospital. It worked out a protocol in some things differently that will get back to fight status. The university of texas hospital they need shirt to never tell anyone i graduated from the university of oklahoma. laughs i did get back on my feet and in 14 months physical their b it was one elbow and one knee that was burned all the way around the joint and had some scar tissue and had full mobility and regained flight status and was named in 76 and was in early 73. In 76, i was name to be one of the two cruise that flew the Space Shuttle enterprise that had a personal landing tests and this was in 1977. We flew a test flights and i got to command five of the eight flights we flew in a program. We dislike the real shuttle, and the longest flight i think was five minutes and 21 seconds, you had to do test maneuvers on the way down with the dynamics in the aircraft. This is a scene of the first flight we were going to separate and its called free flight one. This is me climbing up there and most tests operations are done early in the day because in the high desert the winds started to kick up later in the morning and early afternoon. It either got a little refers so when you are there they are trying to know when to start in this case its predawn. We climbed on board and got all the machinery at the enterprise and push the two vehicles out and we headed out towards the runway over sitting up there on top, you notice were cocked up and later when we are flying cross towards kennedy it was more streamlined so we were generating lift of the 7 47. Its kind of strange the first time we got in an enterprise it looked like everyone knew that you cant see the 7 47. Its kind of like magic with a flying carpet to cue up and suddenly climbed altitude and racetrack pattern to get to a point and tom mick mercury where the pilots and sam where the two flight engineers and fits with push it over and call that