Apollo 13 flight directors Gerald Griffin, center, and Milton Wendler, right, joke with commander James Lovell, left, at the Adler Planetarium on Monday. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the flight, which took place April 11-17, 1970, the Adler reunited two surviving mission astronauts and three key ground control leaders. (E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune / April 12, 2010)
By William Mullen
Tribune staff reporter
12:56 p.m. CDT, April 13, 2010
Being trapped in a severely damaged space ship a quarter million miles from home while hurtling away from Earth at 3,000 miles an hour is an undeniably harrowing experience. But for two astronauts who survived that scenario and three ground crew gurus who got them out of the pickle, it was something else, too.
"Fun."
Observing the 40th anniversary this week of the April 11-17, 1970, Apollo 13 mission to the moon, the Adler Planetarium reunited two of the mission's three astronauts, James Lovell and Fred Haise, and three of the mission's ground crew flight directors, Gene Kranz, Gerald Griffin and Milton Windler.
Calling five men in their late 70s and early 80s "swashbucklers" might be a stretch, but Monday night the five space veterans, all still trim and fit, displayed the early space program's swashbuckling élan as they held a panel discussion before an audience of more than a thousand persons at a sold-out event at the Chicago Hilton Hotel.
"This was a hoot, and they paid us to do it," Griffin said of the mission, as he and his comrades gave a blow-by-blow account of the drama of the Apollo 13 mission.
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