NASA Legend Visits Montgomery

“We have never lost an American in space. That’s not going to happen on my watch…”

 

That’s Ed Harris playing real life hero Gene Kranz in the movie Apollo 13.

 

Kranz had the opportunity to tell the crowd exactly what happened while he was in charge.

 

But he says things have changed since his time at NASA.

 

“I think the space program to a great extent is floundering. I think we need a mission and basically a mission is not a flight. I think right now we have a flight to go to an asteroid or do this. Basically we need the bigger picture,” said Kranz.

 

Part of that bigger picture could be the mission to Mars. Kranz says we’ve got a long way to go.

 

“The easiest part is to build the hardware. The toughest part is to build the team and that is one thing I think is sorely lacking within NASA today.”

 

He gets asked a lot about his role in rescuing the Apollo 13 crew.

 

He played a huge part in bringing the three men home after an explosion on the space craft. 

 

But he says one of his proudest memories was working on the unmanned Apollo 5 mission.

 

“As soon as it got up in orbit the first transmission it had was wrong. So it shut down the engine in the middle of a burn. From then on we had to take over and fly the whole thing by ground,” said Kranz.

 

If there’s one thing that he wants people to take away from his talks, it’s this…

 

“Dream, aim high, and never surrender. I think it’s time for America to go back with the dream of Kennedy and start dreaming again of what we can do.”