The flight director for Apollo 11 is reminiscing on the mission in honor of its 50th anniversary. Gene Kranz visited Purdue University yesterday, where he said the moon was like a heavenly body that had never felt a footstep.
Kranz reflected on how tense it was in mission control, when the lunar module had run out of fuel shortly before reaching the moon’s surface. He said his team of engineers locked themselves in the control room and no one would go in or out until they either landed, crashed, or aborted the mission.
Of course it did land, but unlike everyone else around, his team couldn’t celebrate..
Kranz says that in today’s age, we have all the tools for another moon landing in terms of information and resources, but Kranz says the new challenge is finding people who are fearless and ready to go.
NASA is now working towards a new goal, to put a woman on the moon for the first time by 2024. The Artemis program’s objective is to experiment with sustaining life on the moon, in preparations for possibly moving human kind to Mars in the distant future.