A Fascination with NASA: Tour Memories and Near Misses

The speaker reminisces about their lifelong fascination with NASA, beginning from childhood and influencing their college aspirations. They discuss how a college friend's advice led them to reconsider their career path after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The narrative focuses on a memorable tour of NASA in Houston where they visited historic mission control rooms used during the Apollo and Mercury missions. The speaker expresses disappointment at narrowly missing an encounter with Fred Krantz, the mission controller from Apollo 13, illustrating the excitement and occasional frustrations of being a dedicated NASA enthusiast.

00:00 My Love for NASA Began Early

00:05 College Dreams and the Space Shuttle Disaster

00:31 Space Shuttle Program and Space Force

00:38 NASA Tours and Space Camps

00:58 Houston Tour and Apollo Missions

01:29 Missing the Legendary Kranz

02:05 Reflecting on Missed Opportunities

[00:00:25] Sherry: They're laying off. And so I thought, okay, well, I'm majoring in something that. [00:00:30]

[00:00:38] Sherry: teaching lot, but I, I recommend taking tours. Either the one in Houston.

[00:00:42] Chris: went to a space camp thing. I don't know if Oh, really? But I think that might be in, it was Florida though. Yeah, Alabama. Well, we were thought it was, maybe it is in Houston. Thought it was Florida, but I don't know that Oh,

[00:00:55] Phil: Yeah. Okay. I don't, I've never seen any of it in person. Yeah. We took, uh, the tour down in [00:01:00] Houston. And because they take you to all the places, they take you to the control room where all the Apollo and Mercury missions were, so the very room, the control room where they did Apollo 13 and 11. Yeah, you don't

[00:01:12] Sherry: No. I know you

[00:01:14] Sherry: I thought I know you see the old one. Yeah, but we no longer use that one, do we

[00:01:19] Sherry: Oh, yeah, maybe we did. Anyway. I don't

[00:01:44] Phil: Krantz, the guy who was, you know, mission controller over Apollo 13. Ed Harris. Yeah. Ed Harris character.

[00:01:52] Phil: The, the group that was just ahead of us. Krantz, you know, still had worked there, I guess, or maybe he popped in, but he had, he, he just popped [00:02:00] in and talked to the, the tour group.

[00:02:05] Chris: Well, they didn't, I don't know if his quote in the movie is how, you know, what he really said, but if it's true, like they didn't stick with his kind of his feelings about stuff, right? Cause in the movie he's has the, there's a, I don't know what the problem was.

[00:02:27] Phil: was like, damn, he was just

[00:02:29] Chris: You [00:02:30] just missed Neil Armstrong doing cartwheels in the lobby. Well, thanks for letting me know. Yeah, fucking wonderful. Thanks. Thanks.