"Houston, we have a problem..."

“Houston, we have a problem…”


Words we have all come to know as spoken by actor Tom Hanks in 1995‘s “APOLLO 13”, but today marks the anniversary of the “REAL” Apollo13 mission, and folks, the true story of American heroes is who we celebrate today…

1970, a time when kids my age actually skipped school and glued themselves to their television sets, if your parents owned one, or went to a neighbor’s house to watch theirs. A chance for Americans to “shoot up into outer space!” Who wouldn’t want to try that?! This was still an age of burgeoning technology and it seemed that there wasn’t anything we brave Americans couldn’t do, or wouldn’t do. It was a very real concept that any one of us kids could grow up, adopt a cool nickname like “Buzz” and blast off into outer space with the best of ‘em.

We all watched the take off and anxiously awaited the live reports back from space. What would they tell us this time? What would they have seen? What would they bring back? Would they throw a football or baseball on the moon this time around? We waited and then it happened….

The date: April 13. The time: 2108hrs.

The rest is history, but in those precious and tense few hours, we waited to hear from our heroes in space.

We as kids, watched as adults made conjectures as to how they would make it back. We watched as many gave up hope and called it a lost cause and that we should never have put men in space. We watched as news reports kept reporting nothing except the same story over and over again just to keep viewers. And then it happened…

Our heroes were home safe on Earth. Of course, they were! We had no doubt at all. If we could have real people go into space, of course they could always figure a way to come home. Why didn’t they just ask a kid how to do it?

I’m saddened that today’s space program has been put on hold. I think we should always be prepared to advance the program and be ready to explore whatever else might be “out there”. I miss the collective awareness of being able to gather around a TV set and watch another group of new heroes launch toward another exciting mission for all of us here on Earth…waiting for our turn.

Thank you

Commander James A. Lovell, Jr.

Comm. Module John L. Swigert

Lunar Module Pilot Fred W. Haise, Jr.

　

　
That’s a wrap!



　
-Hollie Wood