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Blue Dot 176: LEADERSHIP, PROBLEM SOLVING, SURVIVAL: The Epic Story Of Apollo 13

NASA

In a time of global crisis, it's good to look at the lessons of history, to help us understand that we do have the ability to overcome terrible adversity. The story of the near loss of Apollo 13 in April of 1970 is filled with amazing leadership, problem solving and heroism that led to the survival of astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert.

 

In part one of our two episodes dedicated to this tale of overcoming seemingly insurmountable problems, Dave interviews one of the four flight directors, Gerry Griffin, Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise, Flight Dynamics Officer Jerry Bostick and Apollo journalist/historian Andrew Chaikin as we look inside the story of a week 50 years ago when we came precariously close to the first loss of an astronaut crew in space. 

 

Credit NASA

You may think you know the story from Ron Howard's 1995 movie, but find out the real one from people who were inside it from beginning to end.

 

Dave Schlom is the longtime host and creator of Blue Dot. From surfing to Voyager in interstellar space, rock guitar to orcas in our imperiled oceans, the topics on Blue Dot are as varied as the host’s interests and connections -- which are pretty limitless! An internationally respected space history journalist, Dave is also deeply fascinated by all aspects of the grand workings of nature’s awesome machinery on scales ranging from galactic to subatomic. And topics take in all aspects of the arts and sciences.
Matt Fidler is a producer and sound designer with over 15 years’ experience producing nationally distributed public radio programs. He has worked for shows such as Freakonomics Radio, Selected Shorts, Studio 360, The New Yorker Radio Hour and The Takeaway. In 2017, Matt launched the language podcast Very Bad Words, hitting the #28 spot in the iTunes podcast charts.